“I do swear”: Oath-Taking among the Elite Public in Victorian England

Abstract

This essay examines the widespread practice of oath-taking among England's professional classes and the anxieties such ritual performances provoked. In instances like the Tolpuddle Martyr trials, unauthorized oath-taking proved problematic for Victorian elites by virtue of its potential for censure. Yet traditionally authorized oaths, including those sworn in the realms of medicine, law, and government, could likewise incite public concern. Such oaths simultaneously expressed and confirmed their swearers' elite status by invoking the divine to invest that status with sacred authority—a performative act that, when repeated by lay participants, threatened to undermine carefully monitored divisions of civic power. As a result, oath-taking remained an issue of concern for Victorian elites, whose status depended upon the authority it conferred. While these individuals sought to assuage their anxieties through a variety of means, their attempts to uphold the sanctity of oath-taking ultimately exposed the practice to political and literary parody.

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