Old England: or the Constitutional Journal was a London political weekly launched on 5 February 1743. Backed by opposition leaders George Bubb Dodington and Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, and conducted chiefly by William Guthrie and James Ralph—often speaking in the house persona “Jeffrey Broadbottom”—it advanced a Country-Whig (“patriot”) critique of ministerial power, repeatedly attacking Britain's Hanoverian commitments and arguing for liberty of the press. Widely regarded as the most influential opposition paper of the early 1740s, it spurred rival weeklies and fed reprints in the magazines; several early issues were promptly republished as pamphlets.
Its prominence drew swift official notice. Renewed legal pressure followed the 1743 launch (including Guthrie's brief arrest), even as the paper's line helped to drive a wave of popular spin-offs. Allies praised its “truly British constitutional spirit” while ministerial voices denounced it as inflammatory. By early 1744 advertising filled much of each issue, an index of reach that later ebbed as fortunes shifted.
After many opposition backers entered office in late 1744, political support ceased and Guthrie and Ralph were pensioned and redirected to long-form histories. From a weakened base the journal in early 1745 offered only conditional reconciliation to the Broad Bottom ministry, then turned sharply critical in the spring—assailing Hanover-related subsidies and even the king's departure for Hanover—before rallying loyally after the Battle of Prestonpans and resuming opposition commentary in January 1746. By mid-1746 it castigated William Pitt’s support for Hanoverian troops and, from late that year, aligned with the Leicester House opposition; the suspension of Habeas corpus into 1747, the paper said, cramped its tone.
In early 1747 the journal adopted the house persona “Argus Centoculi” (after Argus Panoptes), under which it opposed a “shameful peace,” urged continuing the war to break French trade and colonial power, and framed politics as “ministerial” versus “patriot/opposition.” In 1749 it attacked proposed naval and military reforms during the Navy Bill controversy—warning, in the case of Admiral Edward Vernon, against elevating martial over common law. The “Argus Centoculi” byline disappears in January 1750, and the title continued under modified forms in the early 1750s amid a broader late-1740s shift toward a court–country divide and waning religious controversy.
Publication The periodical began with no. 1 on 5 February 1743 and continued to no. 178 on 27 September 1746. It was published in London and printed for J. Purser, with imprints in 1743 giving addresses in Bartholomew Close and later Red Lion Court, Fleet Street; an “Extraordinary” issue dated 19 May 1743 was issued “for M. Cooper in Paternoster Row” at six pence.
Early demand is indicated by rapid pamphlet reissues of material from the paper, including “Two letters publish’d in Old England” (B. Cowse, 1743) and “A collection of letters publish’d in Old England” (W. Webb, 1743); at least sixteen issues had been reprinted before the end of 1743 (nos. 1–10, 33–34, 36, 38–40). By early 1744 advertisements occupied more than half of many issues, prompting layout changes and coinciding with a marked contraction in domestic and foreign news; as the journal's influence waned after 1745, many advertisers migrated to rival titles. The advertising mix skewed toward medical notices rather than literary promotions, a pattern characteristic of opposition journals.
Title history. Old England; or the Constitutional Journal (5 Feb. 1743–27 Sept. 1746); retitled Old England; or, the Broad-Bottom Journal on 4 Oct. 1746; shortened to Old England on 11 July 1747; later styled Old England; or, The National Gazette from 6 Apr. 1751 and Old England's Journal in 1753. Some library catalogues date the 1746 retitling from 17 January 1747, likely reflecting the earliest surviving issues in those holdings rather than first adoption of the new title. A notice of 13 December 1746 reported increased sales, promised better paper and a larger page, and—“in order to make Room for other Advertisements”—stated that medicinal advertisements would be confined to the last page.
To elude the King's messengers, the imprint name on the colophon was altered three times between 1743 and 1744; in November 1743 John Purser's name was removed from the imprint, though he appears to have continued as the paper's de facto printer.
Surviving runs and digitizations show generally weekly issuance through 1743–1746, with occasional extra issues.
Provincial circulation was central to the London weeklies, but competition outside the capital intensified: the number of provincial weeklies rose from thirty-one to forty-two between 1740 and 1746, and London magazines offered provincial readers cheap synopses of weekly essays. Even so, more aggressively anti-ministerial journals—such as Old England—appear to have maintained their provincial position.
History
Origins Old England launched on 5 February 1743. Conceived as a direct opposition intervention led by Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield with metropolitan allies in the Westminster Society of Independent Electors, it was coordinated by Chesterfield and George Bubb Dodington—as in other major opposition weeklies, effective control lay with political patrons rather than booksellers. They engaged William Guthrie—Common Sense’s chief writer—as principal author, with James Ralph to conduct the paper; by 1739/40 Ralph had come under Dodington's patronage. Chesterfield closely oversaw the operation and wrote the first essays himself; the opening issue even promised publication would cease once government was purged.
From the outset the paper drew on a metropolitan base beyond Parliament via the Westminster Society. Opposition Whigs publicly patronized the Society's anniversaries—stewards named in December 1743 for the following year included George Grenville and Dodington—helping knit those networks together. Early Westminster backing is also attested by a 2 March 1743/4 memorandum recording Thomas Paulin (a Covent Garden vestryman) offering to dispose of “half of the Constitutional Journal.”
Set against the post-Walpole reshuffle—The Craftsman weakened after its late-1730s split and Amhurst's departure, and Common Sense after Charles Molloy's exit—the new title filled that gap. Although Common Sense publicly denied any connection two weeks after Old England'''s launch (19 Feb. 1743), both papers were printed by John Purser at his Fleet Street office.
"Jeffrey Broadbottom" From its first issue (5 February 1743) the journal, writing under the house signature “Jeffrey Broadbottom,” set out a “patriot” mission to vindicate the crown while asserting the people's interest against “foreign considerations,” grounding this in a contractualist reading of the constitution that affirmed the people had not surrendered the right to cashier a monarch who infringed English liberties. The opening statements also branded the new ministry a “prerogative administration” and protested that Hanoverian interests had been made the occasion for sacrificing English ones. Even so, the first issue struck a realist note: Chesterfield acknowledged widespread scepticism about the opposition's prospects.
In its second issue (12 February 1743) the paper cast the controversy as “National Independence” and “constitutional Allegiance” versus “immediate poverty” and “eventual slavery,” and publicised the Commons division lists on the Hanoverian troops (10 December 1742). The same issue attacked William Pulteney, alleging he had settled a £200 posthumous rent-charge on “an author” better known for abuse than reasoning—an allusion to Nicholas Amhurst. A week later (19 February) it disclaimed the Whig/Tory distinction—“for neither, yet for both”—to frame its stance as constitutional rather than partisan.
After the 1737 prosecutions officials had largely eased legal pressure, but Old England's launch in early 1743 triggered renewed action, signalled by same-day anti-Hanoverian essays also running in Common Sense. In March William Guthrie was arrested and his manuscripts seized (he was discharged within days), and the ministry sought unusually high bail and issued warrants for the issues of 12 and 19 March and 14 May 1743.
After the victory at Dettingen (June 1743) the paper downplayed the battle's significance, in contrast to the euphoric Westminster Journal. Through the summer it developed a constitutional critique that the Anglo-Hanoverian connection threatened English liberty by draining British resources and encouraging ministers willing to entrench arbitrary power—an early statement of what it cast as a “German war” at odds with national interests.
By the autumn, the paper's milieu helped drive a wave of populist spin-offs: edition sizes for A True Dialogue between a Trooper and a Serjeant and the print The Confectioner General Setting Forth the H—n—v—n Desert were abnormally high and distributed nationally, suggesting political rather than purely commercial motives; ministerial critics explicitly tied the Dialogue to Broad-Bottom tactics in the 1743–44 session. On 1 October it urged unity beyond party—“The scarlet sash is neither Whig or Tory.” Private correspondence registers the impact and official unease: on 9 October Charles Hanbury Williams told Henry Fox that the journals were “inflaming & malicious,” likening their stratagems to what “Machiavel ... would have been proud to have been father of,” while Thomas Birch's reports to Philip Yorke that year are dense with notices of Old England and ministers looked for ways to “bridle” it.
On the eve of the 1743–44 session the paper shifted to mobilisation: it pressed MPs’ “duty of attendance” and urged constituents to instruct their members to dismiss the 16,000 Hanoverian troops from British pay. In consecutive issues of 5 and 12 November it summarised the case and invoked the 1690s precedent when Parliament compelled William III to dismiss his Dutch Guards, arguing the goal was attainable and that many of the “old court party” would now support dismissal, while only “the worst of Hanoverians” would vote the other way. The issue of 12 November 1743 drew particular attention from the authorities and was specifically flagged for legal action.
On 3 December 1743, spurred by George II’s role at the head of the Pragmatic Army, the paper warned that the Anglo-Hanoverian union posed an immediate threat to English liberty: Hanover drained British power and wealth, and a monarch accustomed to arbitrary rule there would favour ministers ready to establish arbitrary government in Britain. Later in the month (24 December) it folded reports from the army into its case, alleging Hanoverian preference in supplies and quarters; year-end and New Year issues (31 December 1743; 7 January 1744) derided the campaign as a mere “parading pacifick scheme,” lampooning the Hanoverian commander as the “Confectioner General,” and leaned into anti-Hanoverian rhetoric—calling the Electorate “a province scarce known to the world” and contrasting alleged Hanoverian cowardice with the bravery of “free-born” Englishmen. Contemporaries spoke of the press's new force—the “artillery of the press”—a motif noted in the Gentleman's Magazine (Jan. 1744) and echoed in Old England on 19 January.