• Name: Jennings, Joseph Clayton (Jennyns)
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date:
• Death Date:

Philp's Godwin's Political Justice refers to the 'elusive Jennings' (p. 163) and he has retained that status. The only candidate from the DNB is James Jennings (1772-1833), writer, an associate of Coleridge and Southey in Bristol, who moved to London shortly after his marriage in 1795. However, this is unlikely to be Godwin's associate, as a Mrs Jennings appears as early as 1793. James Jennings does, however, appear later in the diary: one entry reads: 'meet Jennings. l'auteur , and J C Jennings:' (18.12.1801) so perhaps this is the writer James Jennings and Godwin uses the full J C Jennings for his previously close associate so as to differentiate them. On 8.4.1811 he specifies 'Jennings (Pantisocrat)' so again, this is likely to be James Jennings, given that writer's links with the Pantisocrats.

Godwin's Jennings enters the diary in 1789, associated with the Hollis circle. By 1793 Jennings is also fairly strongly associated with Maria Reveley, and his lodgings emerge as a major venue. Godwin sees him when visiting Gerrald in Newgate and he often comes up alongside Holcroft, Foulkes, Tooke and (later) Curran. Appearances drop off sharply after 1795.

J Ann Hone identifies a Joseph Clayton Jennings (also spelt Jennyns) as a barrister and stalwart member of the Society for Constitutional Information. The connection between Godwin's Jennings and the law is clear in Godwin's diary: Jennings is very closely associated with Foulkes in 1794 for example, and there are links with Fergusson, Gurney and so on, in the same year.

Thorne's history of The House of Commons notes Jennings' involvement in contesting elections in rotten boroughs in 1803 and 1805. In the Gatton election of 1803 Jennings received one vote, which was disqualified, and Philip Dundas was elected with one vote!

On this basis we reject the suggestion that the Jennings in question is Henry Constantine Jennings (1731-1819), writer, art conoisseur and an acquaintance of Tooke'. This tentative identification is suggested in Pamela Clemit's edition of Mary Shelley's Life of William Godwinin (Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and other Writings, vol. 4, p. 30). The DNB entry also provides grounds for thinking that H C Jennings did not settle in London until the early 1800s.

• DNB
• Philp's Godwin's Political Justice
• J. Ann Hone, For the Cause of Truth: Radicalism in London, 1796-1821 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)
• Mary Shelley, Life of William Godwin ed. Pamela Clemit, in Mary Shelley’s Literary Lives and Other Writings, ed. Nora Crook, 4 vols (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2002)
• The Prison Diary (16 May – 22 November 1794) of John Horne Tooke, ed. by A.V. Beedell and A.D. Harvey (Leeds: Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, 1995).
• R. G. Thorne The House of Commons, 1790-1820, Volume 1

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.