In praise of zealotry

Early feminists like Mary Astell and Catharine Macaulay refused their male peers’ advice to remain polite in debate. Why?

Don Dismallo Running the Literary Gantlet (1790); Edmund Burke is portrayed as a fool, and Catharine Macaulay is shown at the far right. Courtesy the British Museum, London

is a postdoctoral fellow in political theory at Ghent University in Belgium and an associate member of the Senior Common Room at Oriel College, Oxford, UK. She is the author of Partisan Virtue: The Politics of Inclusion in Eighteenth-Century Women’s Political Thought (2026).

Edited byNigel Warburton

In 1706, an English woman visited her friend, Katherine. Katherine’s husband, Francis Atterbury, was a prominent politician and bishop. Upon hearing that Francis had just finished writing his sermon, Katherine’s friend asked if she could take it home to read it. Francis graciously agreed, no doubt expecting to receive some compliments from the lady. But his sermon was promptly returned to him by the woman with copious criticism and notes for its improvement. Francis was shocked: he complained to a friend that the lady lacked a ‘decent manner’ and that she was ‘offensive and shocking in her expressions’. He admitted: ‘I dread to engage her.’

This ‘indecent’ and ‘shocking’ woman was Mary Astell (1666-1731). Today, she is best known as England’s first feminist, whose paradoxical mix of conservative politics and pioneering feminism has long puzzled scholars. By 1706, Astell was no doubt used to being called offensive, irritating and impolite. She wrote most of her partisan pamphlets in the first decade of the 18th century, always studded with sharp attacks on men she disagreed with (often, but not exclusively, those on the side of the Whig liberals, the most famous of which was John Locke). One of the pamphleteers she attacked, James Owen, dismissed her as overly angry, zealous and ‘virulent’ – a dismissal that meant that he did not have to actually engage with her sharp and difficult arguments.

Catharine Macaulay (c1775) by Robert Edge Pine. Courtesy the National Portrait Gallery, London

More than half a century later, another politically active woman received similar treatment. The historian and political theorist Catharine Macaulay (1731-91) had penned a sharp pamphlet attacking Edmund Burke, who remains widely received as the ‘father’ of modern conservatism and the first major proponent of organised political parties. Macaulay had taken issue with Burke’s now-famous defence of party, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770). Instead of dealing with her critique head on, Burke wrote to his friend that ‘the Amazon is the greatest champion amongst them … no heroine in Billingsgate can go beyond the patriotick scolding of our republican Virago.’ Invoking the image of the fierce female warrior and of the loud, masculinised woman, he ridiculed Macaulay, but not without a sense of awe. Much like Atterbury, Burke admitted he was ‘afraid to answer her’.

Edmund Burke (c1769 or after) by the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Courtesy the National Portrait Gallery, London

But Burke’s dismissal of Macaulay was not just rudeness – it was entirely consistent with his broader vision of what partisanship should look like, and who should be allowed to practise it. In the very tract that sparked Macaulay’s attack, Burke argued that partisanship is best conceived of as a well-chosen, loyal friendship between polite, reasonable and like-minded men, who agreed with one another ‘at least nine times in ten’. Only in this way could partisanship exist ‘without violating concord’. By contrast, Macaulay’s pamphlet was impolite, fierce and zealous. In Burke’s eyes, then, Macaulay’s brand of partisanship certainly violated concord and harmony.

Burke was not the only 18th-century theorist to champion politeness, friendship, moderation and reasonableness. David Hume, too, stressed the importance of concord. A partisan shouldn’t be too principled; he should be able to ‘easily agree with his fellow-citizen’. Righteous partisans were ‘more zealous’ and ‘more furious and enraged’ than those who were reasonable and prone to compromise. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury also thought it was crucial to safeguard concord. For this purpose, he recommended the cultivation of ‘serene, soft, and harmonious’ manners to combat angry, zealous political ‘warfare’. The message of these men was clear: partisans should be polite, reasonable, moderate and friendly. Only then could partisanship make politics better – that is, more harmonious. Only then could partisanship, as it were, be tamed. Impolite, zealous, angry, and righteous voices like those of Astell and Macaulay were threatening precisely because they disrupted concord.

What makes Astell and Macaulay’s shared experience all the more striking is that they came from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Where Astell was a Tory conservative defender of the Church of England, absolute monarchy and religious orthodoxy, Macaulay was a radical republican and Whig, championing popular sovereignty, religious toleration and revolution. But despite disagreeing on nearly everything, they arrived at remarkably similar views on how to do partisan politics. This suggests that their insight arose not from their partisan commitments but from their shared position on the margins. As women, neither could vote nor hold public office, and partisanship – writing pamphlets, joining political groups, intervening in public debates – was one of the few avenues of political participation........

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