Thomas Gordon’sLetteron Earthquakes (1750)

Abstract

Thomas Gordon’s very last piece of writing, A Letter of Consolation and Counsel to the Good People of England, occasioned by the late earthquake (published just a few weeks before his death), was inspired by two minor earthquakes that hit London in 1750. Curiously, they occurred respectively on 8 February and 8 March, arousing the hysterical expectation that a new and devastating quake would hit London on 8 April, which was Palm Sunday. What’s more, the year fell exactly in the middle of the century, something that could not be ignored by millenarianists. On Friday 6 April a veritable exodus began out into the countryside. The following day London appeared to be a ghost city. But nothing happened on Sunday: Providence had been merciful. A Dissertation upon Earthquakes, their Causes and Consequences published in London in 1750 for James Roberts, a copious printer of pamphlets with a fondness for unorthodox ones, ended by warning ‘those who take a pleasure in moralizing’ on such events that ‘fear is a slavish passion that ceases almost as soon as the rod is withdrawn’. An ill-boding prophet published A Letter of Congratulation, and Advice from the Devil to the Inhabitants of London and Westminster on their Conduct before, at and after, the late Earthquakes.1 Above all, it was a letter from the Bishop of London, Thomas Sherlock, that touched a deep chord in many Londoners. Ten thousand copies were sold in the first two days. A 52,000-copy reprint followed in the same year, plus three further editions in London and one in Glasgow. ‘Thy little Letter,’ the Quaker controversialist Joseph Besse noted in 1750 in his Modest Remarks on Sherlock’s Letter, ‘has brought more money to thy bookseller, than all the impressions of prophane books, of any kind, have brought to the whole trade for this twelvemonth past’. In his Letter to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; on occasion of the late Earthquakes, the Bishop of London did not hesitate to sustain that divine wrath, of which these light tremors was merely an anticipation, had been aroused by various deviant forms of sexual and social behaviour stemming from growing Catholic proselytism; by the unchecked publication of satirical, philosophical, or erotic works; by regular performances of theatre and musical productions on non-religious topics; and by the failure to be guided by religious precepts in educating children. It was this threatening letter by Bishop Sherlock, and the associated retribution theology, that prompted Gordon to write his anonymous consolatory letter: Earthquakes … are produced from natural causes. … Supernatural causes are only sought and urged by visionaries, dealers in judgments, and by sharpers in theology, such as pretend to foretell wrath to come, and to avert it; nay, some of them have threatened to bring it. … No wonder that they treat the most learned and able inquirers into the powers of nature, as little philosophers; as men who would utterly spoil and disgrace the theory of judgments, and sink the solemn character of judgment-mongers.2