page_title: Rota Club
section_title: Social composition
hierarchical_section_title: Rota Club / Social composition
caption_attribution_description: English: A wood cut of a seventeenth century English coffee house
context_page_description: The Rota Club was a debate society of learned gentlemen who debated republican ideology in London between November 1659 and February 1660. The Club was founded and dominated by James Harrington. It began during the English Interregnum and lasted until the early months of the Restoration.
context_section_description: The Rota Club as an institution seems to have had a wide variety of social classes in attendance. It was open to all, ranging from bohemians, aristocrats, officers, soldiers, merchants and other parts of society. The only stipulation for attendance was a fee to be paid, which did limit attendance to those who could afford it but also allowed for a wide range of persons who would not usually have access to such venues. This freedom of attendance allowed for the Rota Club no truly fixed membership as there was a free flow of individuals, those who sat in one meeting would not necessarily be there at the next one. For instance Samuel Pepys, a known member of the Rota Club through his diary, records a fairly sparse attendance. In some periods he records attending the debates once every third or fourth night, followed by long periods of time with no mention of the society at all.
  This freedom of attendance and membership did however allow a very large groups of men to meet, filling the Rota Club's room at Miles' Coffeehouse on any given night. The size of the group allowed that many of these men were spectators to the debate which would have had relatively few direct participants. For these spectators the Rota Club was a novelty, and a popular one at that. This high attendance operated as a stage for Harrington's republican ideas to play and gain ground.
  However, there was a core group who carried out most of the debate between themselves. Among these more notable and regularly attending members of the Rota Club were John Aubrey, Samuel Pepys, Henry Neville, Major Wildman, Francis Cradoc, Edward Bagshaw, William Croon, Philip Carteret, Maximilian Petty, Sir John Hoskyns, and Roger Coke. These were men from a wide array of backgrounds, much like the general attendance themselves. They were antiquarians, authors, members of parliament, Justices of the Peace, military officers, theologians, future New World governors, and aristocrats. In general they were Harrington's republican disciples and the virtuosi, well educated and attracted to the free flow of ideas and intellectual debate. They, like the mass of spectators, would not have attended every night, with the exception of Harrington himself, but they did play significant parts.
  Those of differing views on any topic were encouraged to attend, and Harrington himself sought out men of every kind of viewpoint.
caption: A 17th century coffeehouse
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