IDEAS OF ORDER IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

7/28/2019 IDEAS OF ORDER IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

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IDEAS OF ORDER INEARLY MODERN

ENGLAND


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The Wars of the Roses - a series of dynastic civil wars for

the throne of England, fought between supporters of two

rival branches of the Royal House of Plantagenet : thehouses of Lancaster and York (the "red" and the "white"rose, respectively). They were fought in several sporadicepisodes between 1455 and 1485 , although there wasrelated fighting both before and after this period.

The final victory went to a relatively remote Lancastrianclaimant, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who married

Elizabeth of York, the daughter of the late Yorkist kingEdward IV, to reconcile the two factions and founded theHouse of Tudor, which subsequently ruled England and Walesfor 117 years.


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The Tudor myth claimed that Richard IIs overthrow by his

cousin Henry Bolingbroke (later King Henry IV) and his

subsequent murder spawned a trail of unrest, culminatingwith the 30-year Wars of the Roses. The wars drew to aclose when the first Tudor monarch, the Lancastrian HenryVII, defeated Richard III, ascended to the throne, and unitedthe warring houses by marrying Elizabeth of York.

Henry VIII (28 June 1491 28 January 1547) was King of

England from 21 April 1509 until his death. the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his

father, Henry VII.He was Lord of Ireland (later King of Ireland) and claimant

to the Kingdom of France.


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Henry VIII is known for his role in the separation of the Church of

England from the Roman Catholic Church . Henry's struggles with

Rome led to the separation of the Church of England from papalauthority, the Dissolution of the Monasteries ; Henry establishedhimself as the Supreme Head of the Church of England .

Henry oversaw the legal union of England and Wales with the Lawsin Wales Acts 15351542.

His desire to provide England with a male heir which stemmedpartly from personal vanity and partly because he believed a daughterwould be unable to consolidate the Tudor Dynasty and the fragile peacethat existed following the Wars of the Roses led to the two things thatHenry is remembered for today: his 6 wives (two of which he hadbeheaded) and the English Reformation that made England a mostlyProtestant nation.


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This course means to outline some early modern ideas

about:the design of the cosmos divine order

the nature of mankind human fallibility

the type of political government monarchic rule

theorganizationofsociety hierarchical

relationships

the role of women patriarchal doctrine .


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Political thought created a common language for the

conduct of everyday life in Shakespeare's timepeople could know what the common cultural beliefs were

without subscribing to them in full or practising them at all

There was a consensus that monarchy was the best formof government although there were differences of opinionabout the precise extent of the monarch's authority.

Similarly, people who accepted a monarchic governmentcould nonetheless challenge the existing ruler by fomentingrebellion, plotting assassination, scheming to deflect therecognized lines of royal succession, or just speakingdisrespectfully of the head of state.


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the organization of private life fewer formalcontroversies, with the exception of some heateddisagreements on the role of women in society.

In Elizabethan and Jacobean England, the situation with

respect to ideology was not unlike that of religion. Whileindividuals may have held a wide variety of personal beliefs,they nonetheless knew what the authorized beliefs were.

many points of connection between political thought andreligion.


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I. THE RELIGIOUS CAST OF POLITICAL THOUGHT

Five reasons why politics and religion- difficult todisentangle in Shakespeares time.

1. Early modern England was a Christian country .

All political arguments referred to the Christian God the divine right theory, one of the most significant Tudorideologies of legitimization, proclaimed that the King isGods deputy/representative on Earth.Therefore, it was widely held that resisting to or judging

the king was a sin that would be severely punished byGod. The fall of Lucifer from heaven and the fall of man

in the Garden of Eden- politicized as allegories of


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2. Much political conceptualization in the sixteenth

century was occasioned by religious upheavals.

People of faith were asked to adapt to the abrupt breakwith the Roman Catholic Church effected by Henry VIII(1534), then to a more radical Protestantism inauguratedunder Edward VI (1547-53), next to the enforced restorationof Roman Catholicism by Mary I (1553-8), and finally to amoderate (Protestant) Anglicanism under Elizabeth I (1558-1603).

Because every reorganization of religion was caused by achange of political leadership, it was often defended orattacked in terms of political loyalty or political resistance.


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3. The eventual ascendancy of Protestantism inEngland can be correlated to a developing political

consciousness , a new nationalism and a suspicion of foreigners.

While there were doctrinal controversies betweenCatholicism and Protestantism, what sometimes seemed tomatter most of all was whether the English church washeaded by an English monarch or by a Roman Pope.

Elizabeth's restoration of an English form of Protestantism

was compatible with widespread convictions about England'spolitical sovereignty.


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4. The church became the monarchy's most effectiveinstrument for spreading political propaganda .

Literacy was far from universal in early modern England,and so royal messages were most reliably disseminatedorally, through church sermons.

During Elizabeth I's reign approved ideology wasrepresented not only in the Book of Common Prayerused by parish priests but also in a collection of Homilies ,or state-authored sermons, which priests were required to

read to their congregants every Sunday.


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An Homilie against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion,

(1571)

The author of the homily insists on the fact thatobedience is the most important virtue that a subjectshould possess.

Subjects must obey their King in all circumstances as theKings will represents the will of God.Even in the case of an evil king, the homilist argues,

people must be content with whatever kind of king God chooses to give them.A rebel is worse than the worst prince and rebellion is

worse than the worst government of the worst prince;


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if all the subjects who dislike their prince should rebel,

no realm would ever be without rebellion.

But what if the prince is evil indeed and evidently so to allmens eyes? To this question the homilist answers byplacing the whole matter beyond human judgement. Godforbid, he says, that subjects should judge which prince iswise and godly and his government good and whichprince is otherwise ; that would be as though the footmust judge of the head

This demand for patient endurance and passivetoleration of tyranny was to be accorded only to the evilking who was Lords anointed and who had lawfullysucceeded to the throne.


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5. As head of the established church the king had manyweapons to ensure that churchmen supported his

theories.

weapons: punishing, even executing priests who made

heretical statements or who enacted unauthorized formsof worship.Henry VIII and his successors- the most important

ecclesiastical patrons in the country.The number of martyrs executed by Henry and 'Bloody'

Mary demonstrated that there were men and women of conscience in this age, but there were also moreadaptable members of the clergy who recognized thatreli ion was sometimes a matter of olitics.


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II. ORDER AND DEGREE IN THE UNIVERSE

God had created the universe as a system of multiple,corresponding hierarchies .

The Great Chain of Being organised the world into a fixed

order, with God at the top, descending successively throughangels, men, women(!),animals, birds, fishes, insects, treesand plants to stones. There were seven orders of angels, witharchangels at the top. Men were organised in a fixed orderfrom king down to serf.

Such domains within the greater hierarchy meant that thestructure of each class of being reflected the structure of creation as a whole.


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Even parts of the human body corresponded to otherelements in society: the head was the king , the arms

warriors , the hands workers , and so on. As you went upthe chain, each link had power over the link below. Todisobey those in authority was to defy the divine plan:superiors had to be obeyed even when they seemed to do

wrong. The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre

Observe degree, priority, and place,Infixture, course, proportion, season, form,Office and custom, in all line of order.

(Troilus and Cressida1.3.85-8)


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A key term was 'degree' , a step or stage in the scale of

order and rank. To occupy one's place in the hierarchy was to

respect the mandates of degree.The various hierarchies were believed to be so closely

interrelated in their analogous structures that a violation of degree in any one sphere resonated in all.

The founding Christian myth of the origin of evil involved aviolation of degree as well as an act of disobedience.

Lucifer dared to challenge his place in the hierarchy of God's angels. In consequence, he and his compatriots werecast out from heaven. From then on, Lucifer was known byhis fallen name, Satan.


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III. OBEDIENCE AND THE LAW OF NATURE

Like every other object in the universe, man was believedto have his degree, or place ranked between angels andbeasts.

Man's earthly situation defined in the moment whenAdam and Eve were seduced by Satan. 'Thus became rebellion , as you see, both the first and

greatest, and the very root of all other sins, and the first andprincipal cause both of all worldly and bodily miseries sorrows, diseases, sicknesses, and deaths and, which isinfinitely worse than all these, as is said, the very cause of death and damnation eternal also'.


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Jesus was understood to have redeemed the sin of Adam

and Eve by means of a contrasting act, of an endowment

from God. This gift, known as the 'law of nature' consistent with

the biblical Ten Commandments.

It was thought to be natural that children should honourtheir parents, that families should be headed by fathers, andthat countries should have kings.


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IV. A SOVEREIGN MONARCHY

All authorized political theory had two aspects. Politicalorder was founded in an unequal distribution of power.

In its first aspect ,mainstream political theory sought to

explain why it was right and necessary that is, 'natural' forpower to be concentrated in inequitable, hierarchical ways.In its second aspect , political thought exhorted obedience

to all those higher in the hierarchy.Government - necessary to prevent the chaos, savagery,

and cannibalism that would otherwise prevail.prevent mankind from descending on that Great Chain of

Being to the level of beasts.


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the best form of government was monarchic .All the hierarchies bore out and thus 'naturalized' this

conclusion: as the cosmos was commanded by God, as thechurch was headed by Christ, as the body was ruled by itshead, as the family was led by a father, so the kingdom wasgoverned by a king.

Because the system of hierarchies was understood to havebeen created by God, Renaissance political theorists couldargue that the king received his power from God . In other

words, he did not require the consent of the people togovern. A king who did not derive power from his people wasultimately not accountable to them. He was accountable onlyto God.


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Only one reason for a citizen to resist his sovereign: when a

royal command conflicted with God's moral law.

However, even when such an eventuality was imagined,only passive disobedience could be countenanced.

A subject caught in this hypothetical dilemma was

authorized to resort to tears, prayer, and flight. The mostfrequently repeated political statement in Shakespeare'stime was that force must never be used against the monarch.


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V. POLITICAL DISSENT AND REBELLION

there were historical events that made the discourse of authority and resistance far more complicated than thesetreatises indicated.

The most radical manifestation of political opposition wasrebellion.

Each Tudor monarch survived at least one major rebellionduring his or her reign.

The Battle of Bosworth (1485) - the Tudor royal line wasitself created by an act of rebellion . Henry Tudor seized thethrone from Richard III and created himself Henry VII.

Yorkist risings against Henry VII failed to displace him.


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Henry VIII and his son Edward VI , each put down two

significant uprisings for economic and religious causes.

Mary Is marriage to Philip II of Spain provoked the Wyatts Rebellion (1554) a vain attempt to prevent the foreignmarriage.

Elizabeth I confronted The Northern Rebellion (1569) whena group of earls plotted to replace her with her cousin MaryStuart, Queen of Scots.

Elizabeths childlessness helped motivate the Essex

Rebellion (1601)Such issues of consent and dissent were recurrentlyrepresented on the Elizabethan stage , which itself constituted an important alternative site for politicaldiscourse .


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One of the conceptual challenges for orthodox politicaltheory was that the biblical Ten Commandments, understoodto summarize Gods moral laws, were largely apolitical.

They required honour to God :'Thou shalt have no other gods before me'; Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image';

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God invain'.They also included prohibitions important for social

order : 'Thou shalt not kill';'Thou shalt not commit adulter '

VI. THE PATRIARCHAL FAMILY


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The fifth Commandment could be reinterpreted to take on

political meanings : 'Honour thy father and thy mother'.

If God had ordained that parents were to be honoured intheir families, then it followed that monarchs were also to behonoured in their kingdoms.

The early modern family- described as a politicalinstitution.In their Godly Form of Household Government for the

Ordering of Private Families According to the Direction of God's

Word (1598), John Dod and Robert Cleaver repeated afamiliar conceptualization:


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A household is as it were a little commonwealth, by

the good government whereof, God's glory may be

advanced; the commonwealth, which standeth of severalfamilies, benefited; and all that live in that family mayreceive much comfort and commodity [advantage]

commonwealth = family self-justification: themonarchy borrowed credibility from a social institution ,the family, that seemed more 'natural' than any other.

As indicated, the commandment to `Honour thy father

and thy mother' was taken to refer to heads of state as wellas heads of household.But in early modern England the monarch had only one

domestic analogue, the father.


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To advance its figurative meaning, then, the literal

meaning was suppressed.

Other biblical passages were cited to justify an elevation of the father over the mother.

St Paul: 'Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the

Lord, for the husband is the head of the woman, as Christ isthe head of the Church'.In a kingdom committed to the monarchic the family

had to be conceived as patriarchal.


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VII. CONTESTED AUTHORITY IN THE HOUSEHOLD

Aristotle in the Politics - multiple forms of government: inaddition to monarchy there were democracy and aristocracy.

Although the other alternatives received little attention in

early modern England, despite Aristotle's enormousinfluence in the period.The early modern household- a social and economic

institution as well as a political one.It was a centre for production and consumption, as much a

small business as a commonwealth.the wife had essential responsibilities, as John Dod and

Robert Cleaver recognized:


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The duty of the husband is to get goods, and of the wife to gathe

them together and save them. The duty of the husband is to trave

abroad [outdoors] to seek living, and the wife's duty is to keep the houseThe duty of the husband is to get money and provision, and of the wivesnot vainly to spend it.... The duty of the husband is to be Lord of all , anof the wife to give account of all. The duty of the husband is to dispatcall things without door, and of the wife to oversee and give order for althings within the house.

Even though they believed the husband should be lord oall in his household, Dod and Cleaver could not hel

admitting that wives frequently had to oversee and givorder as well.Nevertheless, many early modern social critics lamente

the number of domineering wives and contentious marriages.


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However, troubled domestic relations were not causedsolely by personality conflicts and political disobedience.

Larger structural problems resulted from the way thedomestic sphere was conceptualized to suit political ends.

The priorities of the state forced a discontinuity betweenideology and social reality. Again, the stage was a sociallaboratory to explore some of the fault lines.

There were impertinent servants in The Comedy of Errorsand The Taming of the Shrew, disobedient daughters in A

Midsummer Night's Dream and King Lear, and assertivewomen in nearly all Shakespeare's plays.


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VIII. THE PLACE OF WOMEN

the inferiority of women could be 'proved' with passagesfrom the Bible.

St. Paul: all women deserved punishment because Eve hadbeen the first to eat the forbidden fruit in the Garden of

Eden.the Homily on the State of Matrimony described wedlock asa penalty:

'Truth it is, that they [women] must specially feel the griefs and

pains of their matrimony in that they relinquish the liberty of their own rule, in the pain of their travailing [labour inchildbirth], in the bringing up of their children, in which officesthey be in great perils and be grieved with great afflictions,which they might be without if they lived out of matrimony'.


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women had more social, economic, and religious freedom

than the ideological literature would lead us to believe

yet, they also had few political and legal rights.they could be denied the ability to own property, write

wills, or take part in civic government.

While boys learnt to read, write, and do sums, girls weremore often taught to read and sew.However, this discriminatory distinction gave many

women a means to support themselves with their needle.Political ideology, being family-based, did not

acknowledge that almost half the adult women in earlymodern England were single either unmarried or

widowed and thus responsible for their own livelihood.


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The famous speech that closes Shakespeare's The Taming

of the Shrew in which the formerly rebellious Kate declares

submissively that 'Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thykeeper, / Thy head, thy sovereign' conforms almost literallyto Dod and Cleaver's outline of preferred gender roles.

The husband 'commits his body / To painful labour both by

sea and land', says Kate, 'Whilst thou', the wife, 'liest warm athome, secure and safe' (5.2.150-55).

Some who read or watched the play may have observedthat Kate's husband Petruccio had done no painful labour to'maintain' his new wife; instead, he had secured her dowry tosupport him.

Others, however, would have responded to the 'taming' of Kate less analytically and more approvingly.


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The extensive popular literature on the nature of women

was thoroughly contradictory.

collections of misogynistic tales, defences of women'srights, advice books about proper female behaviour, andsensational pamphlets about women who dressed in men'sclothes, practised witchcraft, committed adultery, andmurdered their husbands and children.

Plays like The Taming of the Shrew, polemics like The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Inconstant Women

(1615), and pamphlets like The Women's Sharp Revenge (1640)testified to men's continuing preoccupation with thepersistent and resistant power of women.


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XIX. TRIUMPHS OF DISORDER

All early modern notions of cosmic order, natural law,absolute monarchy, patriarchal structure, and genderhierarchy were interrelated in an authorized political thoughtthat purported to be comprehensive and logical. It wasvirtually impossible, however, for any ideological system tobe both.

The theory of correspondences sought to incorporate every

sphere in order to be comprehensive, but there was no singlelogic that applied to every sphere. Inevitably, there wereinternal contradictions and conceptual gaps.

The everyday world of early modern England seemed oftento exist outside this box of established olitical theor .


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Thus, women were told repeatedly that they wereexpected to be chaste, silent, and obedient. Manywere nonetheless brought to trial for havingcommitted adultery, slander and blasphemy.

The various legal courts of early modern Englandwere kept busy with widespread rebellion, crime, anddisorder.

Many Elizabethans clung to their own belief

systems such as folk practices, inheritedsuperstitions, astrological prognostication, and occultexperimentation that coexisted more or less uneasily

with orthodox Christian faith.


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The priority of most early modern political thought was to

naturalize and authorize the monarchy. This, too, eventually

failed.In 1603, Elizabeth I was succeeded by Mary Stuart's son

James, who reigned in England until 1625.James I authored such important treatises as Basilikon

Doron, Or His Majesty's Instructions to His Dearest Son (1594)and The True Law of Free Monarchies, Or the Reciprock and Mutual Duty Betwixt a Free King and His Natural Subjects

(1598).


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In these texts, James I proved himself a more extreme

absolutist than any Tudor had dared to be.

His son Charles I, who similarly maintained the king'sabsolute prerogatives, was more bold in exacting them.

In 1642, in a development that no Elizabethan could have

imagined, Charles I was beheaded and replaced not byanother king but by a Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell.The monarchy was not restored until 1660, and it would

never again have the power and authority it had enjoyed, bygeneral consent, under Elizabeth and James the earlymodern world was never as orderly as was projected inauthorized thought.


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FURTHER READING

Dollimore, Jonathan. Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of

Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984). This important bookemphasizes the gaps and inconsistencies in the 'Elizabethan world view' and shows howstageplays interrogated and challenged conventional ideology.Fletcher, Anthony and John Stevenson (eds.). Order and Disorder in Early Modern England

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Especially useful in this collection areD. E. Underdown's 'The Taming of the Scold: The Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early

Modern England' (pp. 116-36) and S. M. Amussen's 'Gender, Family, and the Social Order, 1560-1725' (pp. 196-217).Guy, John. Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). This is a comprehensive and

authoritative review of Tudor history. The book's main themes are religious and political eventsand changes between 1460 and 1603.Henderson, Katherine Usher and Barbara F. McManus (eds.). Half Humankind: Contexts and

Texts of the Controversy about Women in England, 1540-1640 (Urbana: University of IllinoisPress, 1985). The excerpts and reprints in this volume are from some of the most importanttracts in the so-called 'pamphlet wars' about women in early modern England. There is also ahelpful introduction.


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Kinney, Arthur (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1500-1600 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2000). In this collection of essays, see especially RichardHelgerson's 'Writing Empire and Nation' (pp. 310-29), on the emergence of English national

identity, and Lena Cowen Orlin's 'Chronicles of Private Life' (pp. 241-64), on private life and theideologies of marriage and householding.O'Day, Rosemary. The Family and Family Relationships, 1500-1900 (London: Macmillan, 1994).

This book reviews the structure and population of the early modern English household, theideology of the family, and social conditions and kinship relations. A comparative perspective isprovided with reference to the early modern family in France.

Pocock, J. G. A., Gordon J. Schochet, and Lois G. Schwoerer (eds.). The Varieties of BritishPolitical Thought, 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). In activecirculation in early modern England were political theories that took issue with the authorizedideas outlined in this chapter. The first three essays in this volume develop this morecomplicated picture of political discourse.Sommerville, J. P. Politics and Ideology in England, 1603-1640 (London: Longman, 1986). The

first chapter of this book, 'The Divine Right of Kings', offers especially clear and conciseaccounts of natural law, patriarchalism, and absolutism. Although the focus is on the first half of the seventeenth century, political ideas are traced back to their medieval and Elizabethanroots.


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Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture: A Study of the Idea of Order in the Age oShakespeare, Donne, and Milton (New York: Vintage Books, 1959). This classic book is still thebest and most concise review of topics like the Great Chain of Being and the theory of

correspondences.Wells, Stanley & Orlin Lena (eds.), An Oxford Guide to Shakespeare , Oxford: OUP, 2003.Wootton, David (ed.). Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writing in Stuart

England (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986). Despite the title, this collection looks back tothe Elizabethan years to include excerpts from the Homily Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion and James's True Law of Free Monarchies. The guide to 'Further Reading', pp. 127-8,

puts additional bibliography in historiographic perspective.http://www.luminarium.org/
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IDEAS OF ORDER IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND