Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland

negotiating power in early modern society

This book addresses the dynamics of power in early modern societies and challenges the existing tendency to see past societies in terms of binary oppositions ± such as male/female, rich/poor, rulers/ruled ± in which the disadvantaged have in¯uence only in moments of direct confrontation. Drawing on recent social theory, the essays offer a series of micro-sociologies of power in early modern society, ranging from the politics of age, gender and class to the politics of state formation in the post-Reformation confessional state. They explore the weapons with which subordinated groups in their everyday lives could moderate the exercise of power over them. Recovering the agency of the disadvantaged, the book also explores the limits to the power that the disadvantaged could claim in the past. Its ®ndings have relevance for thinking about inequality in present-day societies. m i c ha e l j . b r a d d i c k is Senior Lecturer in History, University of Shef®eld. His publications include State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550±1700 (Cambridge, 2000). j o h n w a l t e r is Professor of History at the University of Essex. His book Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: the Colchester Plunderers (Cambridge, 1999) was winner of the Royal Historical Society's Whit®eld Prize.

NEGOTIATING POWER IN EARLY MODERN SOCIETY Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland edited by MICHAEL J. BRADDICK University of Shef®eld

and JOHN WALTER University of Essex

published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011± 4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia Ruiz de AlarcoÂn 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org # Cambridge University Press 2001 The book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2001 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeset in Baskerville 11/12.5pt

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Negotiating power in earaly modern society: order, hierarchy, and subordination in Britain and Ireland / edited by Michael J. Braddick and John Walter. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 65163 8 1. Power (Social sciences) ± England ± History. 2. Power (Social sciences) ± Ireland ± History. 3. Social strati®cation ± England ± History. 4. Social strati®cation ± Ireland ± History. 5. England ± Social conditions ± 16th century. 6. England ± Social conditions ± 17th century. 7. Ireland ± Social conditions ± 17 century. I. Braddick, M. J. (Michael J.), 1962± II. Walter, John 1948± HN398.E5 N44 2001 302.3'09415±dc21 2001016173 isbn 0 521 65163 8 hardback

Contents

Notes on contributors Acknowledgements List of abbreviations and conventions

page vii ix x

Introduction. Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination in early modern society Michael J. Braddick and John Walter

1

Ordering the body: illegitimacy and female authority in seventeenth-century England

Laura Gowing

1

43

2 Child sexual abuse in early modern England

63

3 Sex, social relations and the law in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London

85

Martin Ingram

Faramerz Dabhoiwala

4 Exhortation and entitlement: negotiating inequality in English rural communities, 1550±1650

102

5 Public transcripts, popular agency and the politics of subsistence in early modern England

123

6 `Bragging and daring words': honour, property and the symbolism of the hunt in Stowe, 1590±1642

149

7 Administrative performance: the representation of political authority in early modern England

166

Steve Hindle

John Walter

Dan Beaver

Michael J. Braddick

v

vi

contents

8 Negotiating order in early seventeenth-century Ireland

188

9 Order, orthodoxy and resistance: the ambiguous legacy of English puritanism or just how moderate was Stephen Denison?

206

Raymond Gillespie

Peter Lake

10

Making orthodoxy in late Restoration England: the trials of Edmund Hickeringill, 1662±1710

Justin Champion and Lee McNulty

Notes Index

227 249 306

Notes on contributors

dan beaver is Associate Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University. His previous publications include Parish Communities and Religious Con¯ict in the Vale of Gloucester, 1590±1690 (Harvard, 1998). michael j. braddick is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Shef®eld. He has published on the development of the early modern English state including, most recently, State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550±1700 (Cambridge, 2000). justin champion is Reader in the History of Early Modern Ideas, at Royal Holloway College. He has published on the politics of religion and the writings of the heterodox between 1650 and 1720. He is currently completing a study of the cultural politics in the period to be called Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 1680±1722 (Manchester, forthcoming). faramerz dabhoiwala is a Fellow and Tutor of Exeter College, Oxford. He works on the social and intellectual history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, and is writing a book about sex and society in early modern London. raymond gillespie teaches in the Department of Modern History, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He is the author of a number of works on social change in early modern Ireland including Colonial Ulster: The Settlement of East Ulster, 1600±41 (1985) and Devoted People: Religion and Belief in Early Modern Ireland (1997). He is currently working on the experience of reading and writing in early modern Ireland. laura gowing is Lecturer in History at the University of Essex. Her publications include Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996) and (with Patricia Crawford) Women's Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England: a Sourcebook (1999). steve hindle is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Warwick. He is the author of The State and Social vii

viii

notes on contributors

Change in Early Modern England, c.1550±1640 (Basingstoke, 2000) and of several articles on social and political relationships in rural communities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He was awarded the Alexander Prize of the Royal Historical Society in 1997. martin ingram is currently Fellow, Tutor and University Lecturer in Modern History at Brasenose College, Oxford. His publications include Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570±1640 (Cambridge, 1987), and numerous articles on crime and the law, sex and marriage, religion and popular customs. He has also published on the history of climate. peter lake teaches history at Princeton University. He has published extensively on the religious and political history of Elizabethan and early Stuart England including, most recently, The Boxmaker's Revenge: `Orthodoxy', `Heterodoxy' and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (Manchester and Stanford, Ca., 2001). lee mcnulty is a research student at Royal Holloway College, University of London, working on spiritual courts, church discipline and turbulent ecclesiastical ®gures in later seventeenthcentury England. His further interests are in early modern intellectual history, particularly Erastian and anticlerical authors. john walter is Professor of History at the University of Essex. He is the author of Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: the Colchester Plunderers (Cambridge, 1999) and a number of articles on the culture of poverty, crowd actions and popular political culture in early modern England. Among his current projects is a book on the Protestation oath and political culture.

Acknowledgements

Mike Braddick would like to thank the Huntington Library for the award of a Mayers Fellowship which supported the work on which his chapter was based; and the Nuf®eld Foundation for the award of a Social Science Fellowship. It was during his tenure of the Nuf®eld fellowship that much of the original work of assembling the collection was undertaken. The collection came together while he was a fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut fuÈr europaÈische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt. He is grateful to the Department of History at the University of Shef®eld for allowing him periods both of study leave and special leave which enabled him to take up these fellowships. Both editors would like to thank Cambridge University Press, in particular William Davies for his patience and indulgence and Nancy Hynes for her very careful and thorough copy-editing of the typescript.

ix

Abbreviations and conventions

APC BL CLRO CSPD DNB ERO Guildhall HEH HJ HLQ HMC JBS LMA LPL PP PRO RO SR

Acts of the Privy Council British Library Corporation of London Record Of®ce Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series Dictionary of National Biography Essex County Record Of®ce Guildhall Library, London Henry E. Huntington Library Historical Journal Huntington Library Quarterly Historical Manuscripts Commission Journal of British Studies London Metropolitan Archives Lambeth Palace Library Past and Present Public Record Of®ce Record Of®ce Statutes of the Realm

Dates are given old style but with the new year taken to begin on 1 January. Where possible original spelling has been preserved in quotations. Place of publication is London unless otherwise stated.

x

Introduction. Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination in early modern society Michael J. Braddick and John Walter

Recent work in social history has given great emphasis both to the variety of forms of hierarchy in early modern society and to the ways in which the experience of hierarchy and subordination was negotiated. At the same time historians, in¯uenced perhaps by the linguistic turn, have become more sensitive to the fact that order was culturally constructed and that life chances were affected not just by material issues but also by the ways in which the social world was imagined and described. We are now confronted by a picture of the early modern world in which there existed a variety of hierarchies ± class, status (variously determined), gender and age ± justi®ed with reference to a variety of languages which were all, to some degree, unstable and contested. Recognition of the polyphony that this has created has important consequences for a broader understanding of how the social order was represented and constructed. The underlying picture of how power operated and was experienced in the early modern period is, accordingly, more complex. The chapters in this volume offer an alternative reading of the political relationships between dominant and subordinate groups in the construction of social order. By examining this process across a variety of arenas, the essays challenge the appropriateness of a series of binary models (of which the elite/popular dyad is only the most familiar) for capturing the multiplicity of exchanges by which domination was achieved and subordination negotiated. By turning to micro-sociologies of power and of social roles, they seek to develop an account of early modern social order which is sensitive both to the variety of forms of hierarchy and to the possibilities available to the relatively weak for limiting its effects on their lives. The disadvantaged in early modern society navigated their way in a world which afforded many sources of in¯uence to their more powerful contemporaries. But in negotiating 1

2

michael j. braddick and john walter

their way around these potential dangers they did not lack negotiating powers of their own. i Advances in the social history of the period derived considerable impetus from the interest in `history from below'. As such, they were primarily concerned with the consequences of (increasing) inequalities in wealth and formal political power. Drawing on a model of social structure for which contemporary evidence was thought to provide warrant, these studies saw the key dividing line to fall along the axis of gentle/non-gentle status. Gender-blind, this model privileged differences in wealth, and their relationship to social status, as the fundamental factors in determining the distribution of political power. This elite/popular model had, of course, much to recommend it. Under the in¯uence of a concern with the recovery of `the popular' in a society where the people were thought to have been rendered inarticulate (by inequalities in literacy and access to the written record) and invisible (by their relative powerlessness), it began to challenge an earlier social history which too often allowed the comments of a literate elite on their inferiors to masquerade as a history of society. A history from below began to read critically the evidence of literate contemporaries, to recognise the normative nature of much social comment ± more prescription than description ± and to locate its expression within a print culture whose political projects it sought to decode. Rediscovering an earlier, unsung and aborted, attempt in the early twentieth century to write the social history of the period from the archive, not the study, social historians returned to archival research in an endeavour to write a history of society.1 But this time they pursued a systematic analysis of serial, and overlapping, sources in the courts of church, state and manor, and they deployed both quantitative and qualitative techniques in pursuit of their quarry.2 The return to the archive also allowed historians working on epistolary and diurnal records to restore the corrupted texts or partial editions in print, or in moving beyond them, to begin to recognise the (patchy) survival in the archive of these sources for groups below the ranks of the gentry. At the same time, under the in¯uence of important shifts in social theory and lived experience, the subject matter of what constituted a social history was being radically rethought and the range of topics thought

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

3

to be historically recoverable rapidly extended, a tradition continued in this volume by Martin Ingram's pioneering essay on child abuse in early modern society. The recovery of `the popular' had begun as an attempt to recover non-elite groups and their social experiences from the condescensions of their contemporaries (and prejudices of an earlier generation of historians), but it came eventually to problematise that endeavour. Advances in social history have challenged the appropriateness of a simple dichotomy between elite and popular as a model of early modern social structure. Even in terms of a social hierarchy conceived largely in terms of wealth and status, the growing recognition of the importance of the middling sort posed problems. They were increasingly wealthy and able to exercise considerable local in¯uence, increasingly literate and able to respond to key shifts in the cultural and mental worlds, and they enjoyed growing in¯uence in the political nation. Our awareness of these things represents a fundamental challenge to the view that the essential division in early modern society lay between gentle and non-gentle status.3 While the re-insertion of the middling sort into a general social history of the period casts doubt on one of the dominant modes for framing an analysis of social structuring, their `rediscovery' within central topics of the new social history also questioned that model's utility for capturing differences in social experience. The attempt to write a social history in terms of an elite and popular culture with identi®able social bases has proved notoriously problematic.4 At the same time, the social history of the period responded to shifts in social theory which redrew the boundaries of the political to include sites like the family and categories besides those of class. Work on gender and youth has pointed to ways in which other kinds of experience were shared across the social boundaries of class or status, while work on confessional identities and political solidarities has shown that they, too, crossed those boundaries. The linguistic turn has also sharpened historians' sense of the importance of normative vocabularies and their manipulation. The signi®cance of, and ambiguities in, discourses have ®gured in much recent work on early modern society, leading to a greater emphasis on the complex nature of expressions of power, and of resistance to it. The essays by Champion and McNulty, Lake, and Walter, in particular, show how appropriations of these languages could pose serious problems for the power of the Church to enforce doctrinal uniformity or for the

4

michael j. braddick and john walter

attempt to use state power to maintain subordination as the assigned political role for the people. The critical re-evaluation of the sources and nature of power in recent social theory has encouraged historians to recognise the multiple locations and sources of non-formal power in early modern England. For example, the limits of studies based on a straightforward division between elite and popular, rulers and ruled, are exposed in Keith Wrightson's far more subtle account both of the multiple forms of politics that co-existed at the level of local society and of their relationship to more formal political processes.5 The chapters in this volume demonstrate that there were several kinds of domination and subordination and that they were not coterminous. Although these sets of power relationships were held within overarching general conceptions of order, they were unlikely in any particular context to be easily reduced to a straightforward division between elite and popular. For example, claims to the status of respectability, godliness, masculinity or loyalty to established religious authority might be empowering for those who were otherwise relatively powerless. The elite/popular model of early modern society therefore simpli®es problems of hierarchy in a social order whose gradations were both more complex and ®ner-grained than this model suggests. Even in terms of formal political processes and institutional power, there is now a recognition that power was more widely distributed. An awareness that the problems of governance in early modern society necessitated a level of participation from below poses a challenge to assumptions that those below the level of the gentry did not share in formal power. Acknowledgement of the political power exercised by the middling sort at the level of local and county society and its consequences for governance is re¯ected in recent publications.6 While participation was by no means restricted to the middling sort, the understanding of the role they played in the extension and enforcement of state authority, and the developing awareness of the signi®cance of their emergence for early modern political history, have played a part in the growing recognition of their importance. At the same time, the growing shift of focus in the historiography from political institutions to political culture has encouraged historians to recognise still greater depth to political participation in early modern societies.7 Recent work in social history has, then, emphasised the complexity

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

5

and variety of early modern hierarchies, and this makes it increasingly dif®cult to capture early modern social relations within simple dichotomies. At the same time, great emphasis has been placed on the extent to which power relations were continually negotiated. Historians in search of popular belief initially focused on riot as a moment in which those normally rendered silent were given a historical voice. But this emphasis on riot tended to create another constraining dichotomy ± that between deference and confrontation. Recent work on a variety of power relations in early modern society has demonstrated how the relatively weak could claim agency through the manipulation of the texts, languages and performances which were intended to explain, demonstrate and justify the power of their superiors. In seeking to understand these complexities in the negotiation of power relations, an increasing number of social historians have turned to the work of James C. Scott.8 In particular, Scott has been able, in the course of his ®eldwork among the peasantries of south-east Asia, to get behind the facËade of normal social interactions in an attempt to understand what the relatively powerless really think, something which has proved very dif®cult for historians to achieve. In doing so he has thrown new light on a number of crucial, and perennial, questions in history and social theory, not least among them the nature of hegemony and the origin of challenges to established social and political order. The key concept here is his distinction between the `public transcript' ± the repertoire of acceptable public behaviour between superior and subordinate in face-to-face contexts ± and the `hidden transcripts' ± what each side may say or think when they are offstage. One of Scott's central ®ndings is that behind the public transcript of compliance and deference lies a more knowing and manipulative consciousness. The public transcript encourages in observers (and, to some extent, in participants) a belief that the existing social order is consensual. While he acknowledges that the public transcript ± which we de®ne as the acceptable public version of relations of domination and subordination ± is largely the work of politically dominant elites, Scott argues that both its boundaries and content were, to an extent, the outcome of negotiation between dominant and subordinate groups. In situations where direct physical coercion is not routine, `domination is not simply imposed by force but must assume a form that gains social compliance.'9 The apparent hegemony of values which

6

michael j. braddick and john walter

serve the interest of dominant groups is a product of the need to normalise relations, either to compensate for the absence of, or to avoid the political costs of, rule by coercion. In making authority appear natural, these modes of self-presentation by elite groups serve to `euphemise' power. But Scott is able to show, empirically, that it is not true that this version of events is accepted by the poor. `[T]he key symbols animating class relations . . . do not constitute a set of given rules or principles that actors simply follow. They are instead the normative raw material that is created, maintained, changed, and above all manipulated in daily human activity.' The objective of a social analysis of these rules is not, therefore, to reconstruct the agreed-upon consensus, `but rather to understand how divergent constructions of those rules and their application are related to class interests'.10 Behavioural conformity, and use of dominant discourses, does not necessarily signal ideological commitment to the stated order of things. It is clear, as Scott argues, that ruling ideas are routinely penetrated in the villages he studied. Nor does the inevitability of domination mean that it is accepted as just ± the rich tradition of millenarian fantasy in peasant societies bears testimony to the possibility of imagining other social orders. Moreover, the creation of a hegemonic discourse does not rule out the possibility of con¯ict: `a hegemonic ideology requires, by de®nition, that what are in fact particular interests be reformulated and presented as general interests.' In doing so, it must ®rst claim that the system it defends `operates in the interest not only of elites but also of subordinate groups whose compliance or support is being elicited.' It must, in effect `make implicit promises of bene®ts for subordinate groups that will serve as the stake which they too have in the prevailing order', and some, at least, of these promises must be delivered upon, `if it is to have the slightest hope of gaining compliance.'11 In sum, hegemonic ideas `are not only the moral categories in which villagers actually think; they also allow the poor to appropriate, as it were, the ideological resources of the well-off and turn them to good advantage. Finally, by remaining prudently within the accepted and familiar categories of moral discourse, the poor minimize the risks of a more dramatic confrontation'.12 Both sides participate, then, in the production of a public transcript which facilitates everyday interaction without revealing diverging social values or prompting confrontation. The expression of divergent views is restricted to the hidden transcripts of, in the case of subordinates, dissident political

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

7

spaces where the risk of retribution is largely absent. But this does not re¯ect complete acceptance of ruling class ideas or the absence of agency in everyday situations. Scott's work, then, underwrites a rede®nition of the political which makes it dif®cult to sustain the claim that subordinate groups in early modern society were entirely powerless or lacked agency. The potential for disruption in these public performances alerts us to the tactics by which the relatively powerless seek to defend their interests and demonstrates in compelling detail that outward expressions of conformity do not necessarily re¯ect ideological commitment to the status quo. Dominance may deliver behavioural conformity without delivering ideological hegemony. Scott's insights rest on ®eldwork in south-east Asian villages, but he has elaborated them with reference to other societies marked by extreme inequality. In doing so, we believe, he underestimates the dif®culties of recovering what he calls popular consciousness in past, as opposed to present, societies, contaminated as many of the early modern sources are by the power relations inscribed in their recording and, where not, plagued by problems of typicality. But his notion of the `hidden transcript' invites historians to be more sensitive in reading the evidence, sometimes against the grain, to recover attitudes and ideas whose open expression would have invited swift retaliation. At the same time, his analysis of the `weapons of the weak' draws attention to the ways in which apparently hegemonic statements are often, in practice, the result of negotiation. An awareness that the public transcript is the outcome of regular, not episodic, negotiation between dominant and subordinate groups extends the range of forms that negotiation and resistance might take. The earlier model of power relationships, which emphasised inequalities in wealth and formal political power, encouraged historians in search of evidence of the consciousness of the historically inarticulate and their ability to challenge the exercise of power to focus on resistance. This, and a loose alliance between history from below and a marxisant history in common pursuit of immanent class con¯ict and a radical political culture, tended to pose inappropriate and teleological questions, and it privileged certain forms of political activity whose interpretation was, in reality, problematic. Crowds were seen to give a collective voice to the dispossessed and the disenfranchised, their claims punctuating the silence imposed by subordination and exclusion. But this led to a tendency to treat the

8

michael j. braddick and john walter

crowd as an overly rei®ed surrogate for popular political consciousness. In reality, there were crowds, not one crowd, and their social composition shifted according to the cause of assembling and the object of action.13 Moreover, while some crowds, for example those operating within the politics of subsistence, might be taken to represent broader attitudes, others were more partisan. The elision between the crowd and the popular had the further disadvantage of encouraging historians to conceive of popular politics in terms of long periods of subordination, punctuated by moments of agency in rebellion and riot. But, as Scott's work shows, the absence of the crowd should not be equated with political quiescence. One of the central contentions of this volume is that the crowd was not the only site for `popular politics'. Within the power relations dealt with in individual essays, negotiation operated continuously, being inscribed in the everyday politics of relationships of domination and subordination. The relatively weak had available to them means of affecting the terms of their subordination that were both less dramatic and more continuous than riot. Some of these might be so casual as to escape the historical, if not the sociological, record. For example, subtle in¯ections undercutting the ful®lment of the gestural and verbal acknowledgements of deference certainly helped to take the edge off subordination and might also place subtle limits on the power of the dominant. To confront power is to invite a potentially wide range of unintended consequences, and minor forms of resistance might achieve more with less risk. On the other hand, however, the same is true of those confronting such minor sleights. Paradoxically, publicly to acknowledge the sleight by seeking to punish the perpetrator might put at peril an individual's claim to superiority. Much, then, of the everyday negotiations went unremarked and unrecorded.14 Scott's ®ndings, as a participant-observer in the sociological present, sensitise historians to the need to search imaginatively for the techniques of resistance which the weak can use without risking confrontation with power. Social historians have, in recent years, begun to recognise the ways in which social orders are imaginative constructions rather than simply material realities. In doing so they have paid more attention to normative vocabularies, ritual expressions of power, and the role of text, performance and ideology in constructing social worlds. The public transcript is a concept that can embrace these dimensions of social life, of course, but we would wish to emphasise

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

9

the utility of the concept of legitimation as well. The further elaboration of Scott's thinking about hegemony between the key studies of Weapons of the Weak and Domination and the Arts of Resistance seems to have occurred rather at the expense of the concept of legitimacy, a concept which does not ®gure prominently in the later work. We suggest here that legitimacy is one way of dealing with the greater variety of power relations being considered in the chapters that follow. Legitimation is, of course, a notoriously slippery concept. Discussions of the legitimation of political power give rise to general observations which are valuable for understanding the legitimation of the other kinds of power. Legitimacy is not the same as legality, since actions can clearly be legal without being seen as legitimate and vice versa. Moreover, following Beetham, we would argue that `a given power relationship is not legitimate because people believe in its legitimacy, but because it can be justi®ed in terms of their beliefs'.15 The exercise of legitimation entails an act of persuasion about its justi®ability. The success of this act of persuasion is manifest in actions `which are understood as demonstrating consent'. 16 If someone does something knowing that it will be regarded as re¯ecting consent, they will have, at some level, actually consented to the power relationship in which they are involved. Such consent can, of course, spring from a number of motives, but the sincerity or otherwise of these professions of principle is not necessarily their most important feature. Legitimating languages may be used tactically by both the powerful and the weak; the crucial issue is the plausibility of their use and the extent to which their invocation elicits consent. The behavioural conformity of the weak, or the use of the discourses which ultimately justify their subordination, does not necessarily imply acceptance of the existing order as natural, inevitable or just. The fact that, as Hindle shows in his contribution, petitioners for poor relief found it more pro®table to `perform due deference than to plead legal entitlement',17 might register only an acute plebeian reading of the power play represented by this exchange. Whether petitioners saw poor relief as part of a broader moral economy of the rural poor remains concealed within a plebeian hidden transcript. The key issue is not, therefore, the `real' intention of a political actor, but the meaning claimed for, and attributed, to their actions. As Skinner argues, even if motivated by

10

michael j. braddick and john walter

the most nefarious of purposes, `any agent possesses a standard motive for attempting to legitimate his untoward social or political actions. This implies ®rst of all that he will be committed to claiming that his apparently untoward actions were in fact motivated by some accepted set of social or political principles.' Moreover, even if these principles did not have any role in motivating his behaviour, he will still be committed to behaving in such a way that makes it plausible to claim that they did. Legitimating ideas are constraining because there are limits to the range of actions that can plausibly be claimed to lie within their bounds: `to recover the nature of the normative vocabulary available to an agent for the description and appraisal of his conduct is at the same time to indicate one of the constraints on his conduct itself '.18 To assert legitimacy, therefore, is not only to create a publicly acceptable version of relations of domination and subordination, but it is also to offer a standard against which conduct can be measured. Critically important here is the fact that the ideas in terms of which actions are justi®ed are de®ned intersubjectively ± their meaning is collectively attributed, and an individual laying claim to them cannot simply change that meaning to suit his or her immediate purposes. The public transcript could be interpreted as such an act of legitimation ± the process by which a set of power relations are presented in such a way as to make them acceptable. The use of the term legitimacy does not imply a commitment to the notion of hegemony that Scott criticises. Instead, legitimation in this sense points up the fact that, in rendering social relations acceptable, legitimating ideas offer a means by which dominant groups can be held to account. The legitimation of power, the creation of a public transcript, both empowers and constrains. Here the emphasis will be on constraint. As Scott himself wryly observes, `the masks domination wear are, under certain conditions, also traps'.19 In considering these manipulations and negotiations over the terms of subordination Scott's micro-sociology is extremely helpful. We have also noted, however, that social historians have increasingly been writing about varieties of hierarchy which were not coterminous. Scott's work is perhaps less directly helpful in the construction of a more elaborate model of the multivalency of power relations. His concern is primarily with economic inequality and the associated distribution of political and ritual power. In the communities and societies discussed by Scott, the public transcript is a version of social

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

11

relations which conforms pretty closely to the image that dominant groups would like to project ± the consequences, for example, of open resistance for a slave in the American south were so extreme that the degree of behavioural conformity achieved by slaveholders was almost complete. But work on seventeenth-century social history has drawn attention to a wider range of power relations about which Scott has much less to say ± for example, gender relations, the position of religious and ethnic minorities, or local identities and hierarchies of age. Moreover, in early modern England hierarchies of power had, as we have seen, greater social depth and were more ®nely graded than in the societies studied by Scott ± magistrates and deputy lieutenants were powerful in their country, weaker in the face of Privy Council anger; the middling sort were powerful in relation to their neighbours, but owed obedience to landed justices of the peace ( JPs), and so on. The negotiation of social relationships of power was accordingly more complex than Scott's analysis would suggest, and many people found themselves looking in two directions ± to those above and to those below them. In this respect, Scott's analysis may be limiting in discussing the negotiation of social order in early modern England. In dealing with the complexity of early modern social order other kinds of micro-sociology might be more helpful ± in particular the sociology of roles. `The normative constraints of society are . . . tangibly represented as a system of roles for the performance in which the individual is socialized, which subsequently de®ne his rights, privileges and social relationships.'20 Social order is not simply an objective social reality; it is also a collectively understood set of social roles. In a complex society individuals may lay claims to different roles and therefore to different kinds of authority ± as parent, priest, of®cial, landlord or employer, for example. These kinds of authority and the power relations in which they are embedded are usually conceptualised in abstract terms, and the social order is conceived of as a macro-sociological phenomenon. But power is expressed and experienced in face-to-face contexts, and historians could make more use of studies of the presentation of the self, of the unspoken or tacit expression of distinction, difference and domination. In entering a social situation, individuals are involved in attempts at impression-management. The impression that they are trying to give is de®ned not only in terms of an individual personality but also in terms of more generalised social roles: `culturally

12

michael j. braddick and john walter

patterned ways of unthinking interaction'. 21 When an individual adopts a particular social role `he does so because he believes that the relationship will help him to further some of his objectives, whether these are egoistic or altruistic'.22 The de®nition of roles is not in the hands of the individual actor, however, since the individual attempts to present him or herself in terms of generally understood conventions about particular social roles. This involves negotiation ± `people indicate by customary role signs, by speech and demeanour, the roles they have in mind for themselves; but because roles entail relationships with other roles, a person implicitly proffers a role to the other party which the latter may not necessarily be willing to take up'.23 Thus, social structures as we actually experience them are manifest in social roles which, to some extent, displace the individual personality. The notion of the role, therefore, `bridges the gap between micro and macro contexts'.24 Early modern social histories have revealed a complex of hierarchies, in which particular individuals were likely to have been both empowered and constrained. These hierarchies of power were experienced not as abstract social orders but as relatively standardised social roles, which were played out in the public eye. The role might have been literally represented in an individual's physical appearance or their possession of a symbol of authority ± for example, in the chair and robe of a mayor or the vestryman's gown.25 John More, the apostle of mid-sixteenth-century Norwich, `was said to have grown the longest and largest beard of his time so that no act of his life would be unworthy of the gravity of his appearance', while William Gouge, another puritan preacher, had come to resemble `the Picture which is usually made of Moses'. John Earle characterised the appearance of an ideal-typical alderman in similar terms: `he is venerable in his Gowne, more in his Beard, wherein he setts not forth his owne so much as the Face of a city'. There is perhaps a literal truth to be recovered from John Morrill's observation that `seventeenth-century Englishmen may have had dif®culty in articulating what made a gentleman: but they knew one if they saw one'.26 Or at least they hoped that they did ± early modern governments legislated to control how people dressed in order to try to ensure that these messages did not become confused. Any particular individual could make their way in this complex of hierarchies using a variety of tools and presenting themselves, perhaps tactically, in terms of particular (standardised and easily

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

13

recognised) social roles. The same individual could present a variety of such `selves', each de®ned in part by the way in which that role was received, and each drawing on a different form of power. In adopting a social role, however, individuals were engaged in an act of persuasion, the success of which could be gauged by the degree to which it elicited consent. The social order of early modern societies was frequently described by contemporaries in exactly this way, rather than in terms of the distribution of material or political resources. Discussions of early modern social order frequently took the form of a discussion of the behaviour appropriate to particular roles ± for example, the behavioural expectations attaching to particular status positions were clearly laid out both in prescriptive literature and in the advice given by fathers to their sons. Generalised expectations about the behaviour of people in particular social situations were described ± as father, landlord, wife, neighbour, son and so forth. What was being described, in short, was an interaction order, a series of `enabling conventions' or agreed social roles whose performance would create behavioural order.27 Social order consisted in the smooth operation of these social relationships. Minor acts of rebellion or de®ance were potentially very destructive ± Champion and McNulty show how the refusal to remove a hat could paralyse the activities of a church court.28 But it was also possible, while working within existing transcripts of conduct, to offer small challenges to power holders to which they could not respond without breaking the interaction order ± both sides were sensitive to the dangers of confrontation. Champion and McNulty again show how worried the church authorities were that subtle in¯ections in the public performance of the act of conformity might compromise its meaning. The presentation of the self in terms of a particular social role is fragile, therefore, and Scott writes sensitively of that fragility (although in rather different terms). In early modern society, as in the societies studied by Scott, the bureaucratic apparatus of the state was limited at the local level. The monarchy's lack of a professional army or police force and its dependence on voluntary of®ce-holding meant that the image of authority was central to the maintenance of power. The credibility of that image rested less on repression than on the ability to negotiate consent to representations of political power. Formal weaknesses in the powers of the monarchy, most pronounced within the kingdom of

14

michael j. braddick and john walter

Ireland, placed a premium on securing consent to its rule, as Gillespie shows. An attempt was made to translate power into authority, but this act of translation while enlarging the power of the state also placed limits on it. In order to secure consent, the crown had to develop a discourse of rule which acknowledged that the monarch held power under God and exercised this power in the interests of its subjects. And, as its repeated expressions of this discourse stressed, in exercising power it acknowledged a particular obligation to the poor and powerless among its subjects. Ironically, then, this discourse offered the possibilities of empowerment to those whose role within the state was envisaged primarily in terms of the duty of obedience: a central argument in Walter's contribution. As the fashioning of negotiations within a politics of subsistence showed, commoners could ®nd in the public transcript of the responsibilities of power legitimation both for their demands for access to land or food and for the forms their protests took. The weakness of bureaucracy led to a reliance on the exercise of law through courts staffed by the landed class, which in turn relied on self-policing by local communities. This also had consequences for the exercise of state power. As Hindle has argued, the English monarchy did successfully extend its authority, but `it did so only in the context of a legal system which afforded the local community signi®cant access to that authority, and in which the parameters of enforcement were set by the community itself.'29 The contributions by Dabhoiwala, Gowing and Ingram all start from the assumption that there was an important communal role in the policing of a social and sexual order, and that this might empower those otherwise thought to be disquali®ed either by gender or low social status. In early modern England the operation of the law and the law courts, by requiring subordinates to participate in the exercise of the state's authority, also afforded them an arena and language in which to negotiate the appropriate exercise of power by their superiors. This is much less true of some of the societies studied by Scott. The same structures of government also imposed constraints on those who exercised power on its behalf and who looked to the state for support of their own position. The magistracy, partly because of their own suspicions of an over-strong executive, were left with limited forces of repression at their disposal. They could employ coercion, but employed this `selectively to mark the boundaries of insubordination rather than routinely to repress every challenge to

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

15

authority'.30 The delicacy with which local elites usually set aside such powers when confronting, say, the crisis of dearth, re¯ects a recognition of how far governance rested on coalitions of central and local interest. The state in early modern England was only partiallydifferentiated: while the gentry derived authority from royal of®ce, they depended to a large extent on acceptance of their social standing to render this authority operational.31 This required elites to establish the credibility of their authority. Lineage and wealth ± in the desirable form of `broad acres' ± were necessary prerequisites for their social pre-eminence, and their rent rolls might give them immediate power. But this in itself was not enough. In order to bene®t from the naturalness of rule accorded the gentry under contemporary understandings of the operation of social power, they had to meet a de®nition of gentility they did not themselves control and which was changing in the light of larger cultural trends.32 This depended both upon their own acceptance of a cluster of values by which to order their relationships with their inferiors and on an acceptance of the proper performance of these values by their peers and ± to a lesser, but worrying extent ± their inferiors. To that extent it carried with it the possibility of contestation.33 In large part, acceptance of the naturalness of the landed classes' right to rule depended upon the routine reproduction of the gestural and linguistic code demanded of their inferiors under the social grammar of deference. Subtle subversion of these social markers might then hint at the fragility of authority. In his contribution Walter shows how an appeal to the values of gentility or knowing disregard for the conventions of deference could be employed as a political weapon either to shame or to frighten gentlemen into observing the dictates of the moral economy. Relationships which were `political' in a narrow sense were then rendered legitimate by reference to languages and roles associated with other kinds of power ± values associated with family, neighbourhood and religion, for example. Attempts to perform the role of good father, good Christian or good landlord, of course, were equally subject to public appraisal and constraint. Thus, the ability of subordinates to negotiate the terms of their subordination in early modern society owed much to the conditional nature of their superior's power. This of course had consequences for the power of the state. But it also had consequences for those who either exercised power on its behalf or who looked to its power for

16

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protection of their property and position. The use of the authority of the state to endorse the obligations of of®ce-holders and property owners to their subordinates, ampli®ed by the church, helped to alter the rates of exchange in the terms for popular acceptance of the exercise of authority. In other power relations too, as we will see, subordinates could negotiate the terms of their subordination by appropriating the legitimating languages which accorded authority in the performance of social roles. Scott's analysis of the weapons of the weak (with its sensitivity to the effects of minor forms of resistance) and of the public transcript and techniques of rule has much to offer in understanding early modern power relations within this broader context. It offers a means of understanding how the need to legitimate political power creates real constraints on individuals, and how the smooth performance of social roles can be disrupted. And it helps us to understand why power holders attached such importance to the sometimes seemingly minor disruption of these social roles. Scott's distinctive contribution is to draw attention to how power is expressed and manipulated in, literally, face-to-face contexts ± it leads us to the micro-sociology of Bourdieu and Goffman rather than the macrosociology of Marx and Weber. At the same time, these other microsociologies draw attention to forms of power that were of less interest to Scott but which are of central importance to early modern historians ± religious authority and hierarchies of gender and age, for example. The usefulness of the sociology of roles is that it reveals patterns in social interaction without reducing social relations to simple dichotomies. Goffman, read in this light, makes it clear how fragile the performance of these social roles might have been; Scott alerts us to the social and political signi®cance of disruption. ii The chapters in this volume explore the diverse relationships of domination and subordination and their role in the construction and maintenance of social and political order in early modern England and Ireland. They do so by discarding that limited de®nition of the political which privileges engagement with, and participation in, formal political processes and the institutions of the state; by rethinking the political in terms of the wider processes by which power is grounded, exercised and contested; by acknowledging the multiple

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

17

sources of power and social structuring; by emphasising the problematic relationship in early modern society between the claim to power and the exercise of authority; by abandoning the impoverishing conceptualisation of the negotiation of power solely in terms of resistance; and, ®nally, by emphasising how `weapons of the weak', imaginatively conceived to include also manipulations of text, image, words and gestures, allowed subordinate groups to exercise agency in negotiating the terms of their subordination. In particular, this collection seeks to move understanding of the social relationships of power beyond the binary opposition between elite and popular which continues to frame much of the work on the social and political order in the period. The essays that follow furnish numerous illustrations of the variety of forms of hierarchy in early modern society, and of negotiation and resistance within those hierarchies. They move from the family to local society; from informal policing of the sexualised body to the formal policing of morals in London; from the defence of popular rights in the politics of subsistence to the politics of poor relief; from gentry factionalism to the politics of state-formation in early modern Ireland; from the politics of negotiating orthodoxy and dissent in the life of a single minister to the disruptions that puritan spiritual power might pose in constructing social, gender and religious order. They can be categorised in abstract terms ± in terms of class, gender, status or religious and political order, for example ± but all are concerned with how these abstract orders were actually lived out in real human encounters. In doing so, all explore a more complex patterning of power relations than was imagined in normative descriptions of early modern social order. The study of the negotiation of gender relationships highlights the impoverishment and distortions imposed when one tries to locate power and to understand its workings in early modern England by the use of a simple and undifferentiated binary model of domination and subordination. In this instance, the model is one of patriarchal men and subordinated women, both groups being treated as uncomplicatedly homogeneous. This is reinforced by a secondary binary opposition between an unhistoricised public/private divide. Earlier work on gender relations portrayed men as the bene®ciaries of an unproblematic and oppressively patriarchal system, probed the inequalities inherent in women's political and legal disabilities and pushed for evidence of resistance. But more recent work on gender

18

michael j. braddick and john walter

in early modern England has begun to explore the complexity of con®gurations of gender and authority and to emphasise the problematic nature of constructing patriarchal authority. In doing so, it has made obvious how our understanding is impoverished if we look only for evidence of resistance to elucidate the agency women might claim in order to moderate the theoretical purchase of patriarchialism.34 Work on marriage and family, for example, has highlighted the tensions between the workings of patriarchy and the imperatives of the everyday in the running of the household. Within the household, marriages, where companionate, accorded an active role to wives whose paid work, in plebeian households, was often undertaken outside the home and in increasingly separate occupation(s) from that of the household head.35 Outside the household, patterns of work and of female sociability helped to create networks which, it has been argued, opened the possibilities for women to exercise an important role in the informal politics of local society.36 At the level of ideology, recent research has shown how earlier work relied overmuch on, and sometimes misread, the normative literature of conduct book and sermon. This was a literature which did not so much re¯ect social reality as actively seek to construct it, and so attempts to generate from it a calculus for the actual distribution of power between men and women under patriarchy were, inevitably, misleading. A more nuanced reading of this literature suggests that much of the advice to its male readership betrays anxiety about problems of achieving masculine identity and asserting male authority within the household.37 There was a practical need for the active partnership of wives who were, nevertheless, required to acknowledge their husband's superior authority. This tension is re¯ected in the paradox of two proverbs that circulated simultaneously in early modern England: while one cautioned that it was `better to marry a sheep than a shrew', the other countered that it was `better to marry a shrew than a sheep'.38 Nor were women necessarily passive recipients of the attitudes this literature contained. The actions of the wife of Viscount Fenton who, in the course of a marital dispute, was alleged to have torn from the bible a chapter treating of the duties of wives to their husband, represent an exceptional response. But the uncomfortable experience of the godly preacher, William Gouge, at the hands of the female members in his wealthy London congregation when he tried to use

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

19

the pulpit to expatiate on the duties of women suggests that Marjory, Viscountess Fenton was not alone in her feelings.39 The actions of the Wiltshire women who resisted the attempt to stage a skimmington, a sanction against women who were thought to have usurped their husband's authority (as well as husbands who allowed it), might prompt further exploration of the gender dynamics, and the meanings of masculinity, carried within charivari.40 Public rejection of patriarchy is not the best place to ®nd evidence of women's agency. As we have seen, the requirements of the particular structure of the English state created a space for the negotiation of authority at highly localised levels in acts of selfpolicing. A developing body of work has shown that women could exercise considerable power in acting on behalf of wider interests they shared with the neighbourhood. Gowing's earlier work on defamation cases showed women claiming a right to participate in the defence of moral standards within the neighbourhood. This linguistic power, the right to criticise publicly, was exercised mainly (though not only) over other women.41 But it did carry with it a claim by women to police the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion by which the moral community was de®ned. As Gowing points out, by criticising the other woman in adultery cases married women could implicitly challenge the failure of adulterous males to adhere to the dictates of the sexual and household economies required of married men. Moreover, recent work has challenged absolutist interpretations of the double standard, and argued that, in contrast to whatever was the case for young unmarried men, sexual reputation was a more important source of credit for married male heads of household. In doing so, it has suggested that women's linguistic power might have more purchase over males than earlier work allowed.42 Gowing's contribution to this volume suggests that the public fame of male sexual delinquency which led to formal court proceedings, for example against the fathers of bastards, challenged the bedrock of a household head's masculine authority which was thought to reside in the claim to self-government. Male householders often appealed to the church authorities to allow them to substitute private for public penance, re¯ecting the fact that the loss of credit could be very damaging.43 This, it has been argued, gave the mother of the illegitimate child some scope to negotiate the consequences of illegitimacy, for example by naming two fathers or treating privately with their child's father to achieve small sums of maintenance

20

michael j. braddick and john walter

outside the arrangements that the law would attempt to enforce. This miraculous ability of mothers of illegitimate children in early modern England to `father' their own children (that is to exploit the opacity of conception to ®x parenthood publicly in ways that accused males might ®nd hard to disavow) has been seen as another `weapon of the weak'.44 Women could also knowingly manipulate the public transcripts of gender relations, in this case of women as the weaker sex lacking reason, to legitimise their exercise of agency.45 In treating with power holders, for example as petitioners to authority or as plaintiffs before the courts, individual women might, where it served their interests, represent themselves as weak and ignorant. On the other hand, as the work of Tim Stretton has shown, they might on other occasions in the same sphere demonstrate competence and expertise.46 Groups of women might draw on the same contemporary representations, as well as on popular notions of their ambivalent status before the courts, to legitimise collective protests over common rights or food supply.47 While these also grounded legitimation on a sexual division of labour which accorded wives primary responsibility in meeting the subsistence of their families, they could nonetheless claim a more formal political voice for women. Walter's work has emphasised the need to see popular protest not merely as selfhelp ± a reaction to immediate grievances ± but more as an expression of an ongoing political dialogue between rulers and ruled, in which the latter interrogated authority and in¯uenced both policy and principle. This suggests that historians have yet to grasp the full signi®cance of women's agency. The sources of coercion available to the agencies of the state were few, and this weakness placed a premium on negotiating popular grievances. Moreover, the discourse of rule offered legitimation for the popular articulation of grievances. This meant, effectively that a role was accorded to women as well as to men in the formulation and enforcement of policy. The links between this and the claims articulated by groups of women in the English revolution need to be teased out. This would avoid simply exaggerating the novelty of the latter and in so doing attributing women's agency solely to the discontinuities and politicisation of the revolutionary process. Women, then, like other social groups discussed in the volume, were able to manipulate public transcripts in order to legitimise an agency which those transcripts were intended to deny and to extend

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

21

this agency into areas which those transcripts were certainly intended to exclude. But, as Gowing cautions in her contribution to this volume, it is dif®cult to reconstruct a single, shared women's culture of resistance ± it is not easy to depict women as a coherent subordinate group. We need an analysis more sensitive to the ®ner gradations of gendered power. Gowing's essay focuses on women's role in the policing of the female body to control the threat that illegitimate sexuality posed to the moral and economic order, locating two sites of authority ± the detection of pregnancy in the unmarried woman and the interrogation during childbirth to establish paternity. She documents how the interests of patriarchy required and validated women's agency, but central to her argument is the observation that this agency was the prerogative of only certain categories of women and was to be exercised only over other women. Gowing emphasises that this power of knowing was the prerogative of married women: `at its most local and intimate level, patriarchal order depended on the agency of women as well as men; but it also depended on the marking out of distinctions between women that granted authority to some and excluded others.'48 Thus the ways that patriarchal authority was negotiated and enforced in practice depended upon divisions between women. Moreover, behind the cases discussed by Gowing lurked the divisions inherent in other hierarchies, of whose operation we have plenty of evidence. Counter-examples of those women, mothers and mistresses, who sought to defend their daughters and maidservants from interrogation and examination suggest that the authority of women to interrogate unmarried women might not have depended just on their marital status and age. It might also have depended on the mesh with a more complex local social hierarchy in which local elites were extending their claims to regulate the lives of their poorer neighbours. Gender as a principle of social ordering did not operate outside of, but in tandem with, those other hierarchies of class and age. If we need to be attentive to the ®ner gradations within the gendering of power, then we also need to be sensitive to the complexities of how those gradations meshed with the distribution of power within those other hierarchies. The public control of morality is also the central focus of Dabhoiwala's contribution, an examination of the shifts in the nature of the regulation of illicit sexual activity in London, though here the gendering of that control is not the focus of concern. What

22

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evidence there is of this is contradictory. While women suspected of illicit sexual behaviour in seventeenth-century London, as elsewhere, found it harder to prove their respectability (and were as a consequence more likely to be committed to the house of correction), prostitutes (as well as brothel-house keepers) were able to escape justice by manipulating those assessments of reputation and social status central to the legal process. But this evidence of deviant agency aside, the main conclusions of Dabhoiwala's essay might suggest that the scope for women's agency, at least in the formal control of illicit sexual activity, declined in later seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century London. He traces a gradual shift in the policing of morality from communal self-regulation, rooted in neighbourhood relations and community participation, to a growing professionalisation in policing by `trading justices', informers, paid watchmen and constables' deputies. A consequence of the decline of community agency was a narrowing of the focus of public regulation of illicit sexual behaviour as attention turned away from personal behaviour, de®ned in terms of adultery and fornication, to the (perennial) problem of London's brothels. As Gowing's essay suggests, in mapping the contours of agency it is important to pay attention to the connections between the hierarchies of gender and age. These could either qualify or amplify the agency claimed. As Keith Thomas has noted, early modern England was a gerontocracy. While the gendering of of®ce-holding meant that `it was men in their forties and ®fties who ruled', it was also the case that, `for women in particular, age could sometimes mean a rise in authority', with widows who headed households in particular best able to take advantage of this.49 By contrast, young people were expected to accept a subordination that did not end until marriage which, dependent in early modern England on the ability to establish a separate household, meant that social adulthood did not come for most until their mid or late twenties. Moreover, a society that regarded youth as a dangerous period sought to curb `the licentious liberty of youth' by subjecting them to `a sustained drive to subordinate persons in their teens and early twenties and . . . [delaying] their equal participation in the adult world.'50 As we are beginning to realise, much of the advice literature and legislation in this period, whilst employing a universalist language in calling for restraint and regulation, needs to be read as being especially concerned with the young and in particular with young males.51

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

23

Neither regulative drive nor structural dependency meant that young people's experience was one of unrelieved subordination. Whatever the aspirations of legislators and moralists, young people were not without power. Paradoxically, the most common institutions used to cope with the problems of an extended youth ± apprenticeship and service ± might also bring with them opportunities for greater freedom. If resistance to what has been called `the housebound ideology' was rarely as naked as in the case of one Thomas Clark of Essex, who found himself presented to the church courts in Essex for `laughing in tyme of the sermon because the minister did tell the dutie of servants',52 others were able to appropriate a generational discourse to legitimise or license agency. Again, it is more helpful to think in terms of negotiation rather than resistance in considering the agency accorded to youth. While this might operate on an individual level, for example in a greater freedom to choose marriage partners or an ability to exploit the tensions between patriarchy and paternalism to enlarge the `rewards' of subordination, on other occasions young people might claim a larger agency. The agency to subvert the age hierarchy and criticise adults offered by a shift to other hierarchies ± for example of spiritual power in cases of demonic possession, pious early death or religious conversion ± was exceptional, but interestingly it re¯ects a willingness in early modern society to listen to the voices of children.53 Other aspects of the experience of youth offered more regular opportunities for agency. For example, the early modern crowd was often a youthful crowd. The presence of young people, usually young men, re¯ected both the relative freedom of servants and apprentices and the role assigned those being socialised into society's values to act as the `uproarious voice of the community's conscience'.54 Young people were able to exploit the liminality granted them within the festive culture's calendar to exercise agency, turning their association with disorder and absence of reason into an excuse for their actions.55 Such agency as young people were able to exercise was itself the product of subtle gradations within the hierarchy of youth as well as being conditioned by considerations of gender: power usually fell to young men in the later stages of their dependency. And, as with gendered power, the possibilities and limits of youthful agency can only be fully understood when properly contextualised. Within the patriarchal household, agency was more limited and for some, such as the female victims of sexual abuse by their masters, non-existent.

24

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Outside the household the scope was greater, but it was usually exercised on behalf of, rather than against, the adult community, and this graduated agency might usefully be seen in terms of an extended rite of passage marking the transition to, and acceptance of, the greater agency afforded by adulthood.56 Again, in this transition interrelationships between hierarchies of age, gender and social status determined both the period of subordination and the extent of agency. By contrast, children in this society were ®rmly at the other end of the power spectrum. Martin Ingram, in his contribution to this volume, uses the evidence of cases of child rape brought to the courts to explore sexual abuse in early modern England. These cases provide worrying evidence of the consequences of the vulnerability brought by a child's relative freedom outside the home and the working household's relative openness to outsiders. While there were those who worried about the power that an accusation of rape might give children, the reality was very different. As Ingram argues, the victims of rape were not infrequently reluctant to recount their experience of assault because they feared parental violence. This raises the as yet unresolved issue of the level of violence in a society which allowed a right to exercise `moderate' correction to husbands over their wives, to parents over their children, and to masters and mistresses over their servants.57 Cases like that in Essex in 1567, where the inquest's verdict that John Grant had killed his servant Joan Salmon was subverted by the judgement at Assizes that she had been killed by John-a-Love (i.e. a legal pseudonym for persons unknown), raise troubling questions.58 We do not yet know, may never know, how typical were cases in which courts and community condoned such brutality towards servants. In the case of child rape, it was the force of local opinion, with women again called on to interpret the ambiguous signs of abuse on the body, that brought the perpetrator to court. When cases of sexual abuse were brought to light, they could arouse considerable abhorrence among neighbours, judges and jurors which, on occasion, led swiftly to the in¯iction of exemplary capital punishment. As Ingram argues, this was a society that took cases of sexual abuse seriously, although inevitably having to catch evidence of both the crime and its consequences refracted in the formal records of the court means that it will never be possible to write a full history of a subject whose `dark ®gure' remains notorious even in the present.

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

25

While we can distinguish hierarchies of gender, age and wealth, roles within them were understood in different terms by contemporaries. These varieties of social role were represented in languages which are not our own. If social order is in part an interaction order, then we must be sensitive to the linguistic and imaginative resources from which these social roles (and hence social order as a whole) were created. As Beaver argues in his contribution to this volume, many familiar models of the distribution of power within early modern English society rest on a differentiation of culture, politics, economy and society. Yet these distinctions often obscure the dynamics of power in everyday life. Beaver assesses conventional models of English society in the context of a series of con¯icts over property claims, assertions of honour and hunting privileges in Stowe, an emparked parish on the border of Whittlewood Forest in northwestern Buckinghamshire. Here the construction of a deer park caused complex con¯icts expressed in a language quite alien to us. The right to hunt formed an important part of the self-identity of the gentry, granted by the crown and increasingly reserved to them by class-speci®c legislation. Both the right to eat venison and to exploit its political uses as gift gave added political resonance to the right to hunt. Food was a powerful marker of social difference in a society which not only sought to restrict a socially exclusive right to certain foods by law, but also envisaged the literal embodiment of hierarchy in differential diets that, it was thought, re¯ected the differing alimentary capacities of patricians and plebeians.59 The right to the chase, with its martial associations, was then one of those privileges with considerable symbolic importance in the marking out of gentry's status. The possession and open display of swords, crossbows and ®rearms, the breeding and proper use of hounds in coursing, and the dramatic use of a specialised language of chase and ®ght formed an important part of the gentry code of honour. (But, to the extent that this violence was part of a masculine code of honour, then it might have a wider currency, as Beaver's careful analysis of the wilful involvement of servants in the con¯icts reveals.) Recognition of this importance helps to explain the intensity of the competitive violence inherent in the disputes studied by Beaver. As Mervyn James notes in his scintillating essay on the culture of honour, aggressivity was always latent in the relationships between men of honour since without public recognition honour remained subjective.60 But by the seventeenth century, the con¯icts these divisions

26

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produced in Stowe park had to be legitimised in terms of the (royalsponsored) public transcript of commonwealth and resolution had to be sought in the royal courts. The hunt underwrote the landed classes' representation as a superior social group to whom deference should be `naturally' accorded. To that extent this translation of economic resource into cultural symbol represented an important source of power whose exercise could stretch well beyond the geographically-bounded power of landlordism. The evidence of con¯ict in Stowe thus reveals the arti®ciality of distinctions between culture, politics, economy and society, as well as the pervasive, and political, signi®cance of cultural forms such as the hunt. Of all the hierarchies operating in early modern society, the social status hierarchy has attracted the most attention. Early modern England was a hierarchical society, marked by the unequal distribution of rank and degree. Few would now accept the argument, given the relational nature of class, that England was a `one class society'. But, equally, few would dispute that lineage and land, with the wealth, power and status these brought, made the gentry, as it were, the number one class. 61 Although the basis of social division in a pre-industrialised society ± class? social order?62 ± continues to be the subject of critical debate, there is a ready consensus that this was a society dominated by a landed elite. The authority of the gentry was widely accepted, the more so since their authority was presented as natural. (It is signi®cant that in London, as Dabhoiwala notes in his contribution, the non-gentle social origins of those JPs who acted as `trading justices' in order to make a living from the law left them open to accusations of social inferiority and of seeking to pro®t by perverting the course of law.) Although important work on the `language of sorts' has raised the possibility of a class-based criticism of the gentry, a combination of ideological hegemony and relative powerlessness marginalised the possibilities of resistance. Challenges to the gentry were thought more likely to come from within, than without, its ranks. But an attention to the micro-sociologies of power in early modern England challenges these assumptions. Domination by a landed elite was neither as easy nor as automatic as discourses of hierarchy and subordination implied. Lordship was an important source of power to the landed class, though its precise content varied historically.63 The balance of power in lordship might move in the landed classes' favour according to a demographic calculus determining demand for land; as competition

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

27

for land grew with population, so did the scope for the extension of power over tenants. But it also operated asymmetrically, and not always in the landed classes' favour, according to the distribution of power in the shifting relationship between crown and gentry. While the consolidation of political power beginning with the Tudor monarchy was a guarantor of the landed classes' position against the political threat of popular rebellion, it also offered potential backing through the royal courts for tenants seeking a curb on the extraeconomic coercive powers of lordship. In compensation, royal of®ce in the provincial magistracy offered a section of the landed classes the political power of of®ce to reinforce and repair that of lordship. But in order to hold of®ce, individuals had also successfully to lay claim to the social power inherent in the role of landed gentleman. Thus the provincial magistracy had to demonstrate a double legitimation for their rule, from royal authority as of®cers of the crown and from the social power given them by their role as fathers of their countries. The political power that they exercised, however, represented the state monopoly of legitimate force, and as such it rested to a greater extent than they would have wished to acknowledge on popular agreement to the justi®ability of their exercise of this power. Thus, the magistracy had to rely on an acceptance of the power of of®ce as a natural correspondence to their social power. But whatever dominant discourses might have to say about chains of hierarchy and subordination, gentility as the basis of social and political power had to be actively represented. The power of of®ce and the social superiority of the gentry that underpinned its legitimate exercise had to be negotiated in terms of values whose generally understood meanings the gentry did not control. Lordship, gentility and magistracy were all social roles demanding active representation of the power the role claimed. To assume a social role is necessarily to enter into a negotiation with the audience or audiences for the enactment of the role. To exercise of®ce, gentlemen had successfully to lay claim to a particular social role de®ned in terms of wider expectations and symbols of legitimate power. This constrained their freedom in the role. As of®ce-holders they were engaged in an exercise in impression management, and their credibility in of®ce rested to a large degree on the reception of their performance. They were easily discouraged by abusive discourse and quick to take offence in the face of contempt for the symbols of their authority. Thus, while the dispute at the Shropshire

28

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quarter sessions over muster masters, the subject of Braddick's contribution, can be read as a familiar political con¯ict over interpretation of the powers of prerogative, Braddick teases out the more subtle evidence it provides of the fragility of a gentleman's power. The spat between two JPs at quarter sessions, the public face of the county, rendered unstable Tourneur's self-presentation, impugning his honour in front of his peers. In publicly undermining his reputation before the wider social audience of the county, it threatened to rob him of his dignity and `natural' authority. It was the challenge that this represented to his personal standing, as much as the challenge to the pretensions of prerogative, that caused a controversy which ended with Corbet's imprisonment and public humiliation at the hands of the Privy Council. This was a society in which personal and moral qualities, as much as family and lineage, determined the reception and ranking of gentility. These qualities required a public, and often embodied expression, in a complex linguistic and gestural code ± there were crucial performative aspects of the role of gentleman and magistrate. Thus, as Braddick argues, this requires a contextualised analysis of the force of speech acts like those at the heart of the Shropshire dispute. The force of a statement is in part `illocutionary', resting not merely on what is said, but to whom it is said and on the form that the statement takes. A statement can be radical or challenging not just because of its speci®c content, but also because of its context. As Braddick goes on to show, to term the of®ce of muster master a grievance was a speech act of considerable signi®cance, and the power to do so rested on appeal to the duties of of®ce and the meanings of legitimating texts. This approach leads towards the kind of ethnographic analysis of the expression of political power, sensitive to performance and gesture, developed by Bourdieu. According to Bourdieu, twentieth-century French bureaucrats, by force of the signi®ers of education and power that their deportment and quali®cations convey, are able to perform `state magic'. The records that they make of particular social facts impose an authoritative version of reality ± their view actually constitutes a version of the real world that has real consequences for the governed. Thus, `operations of regularisation, such as recognising a child, or, quite simply, recording its birth . . . are so many bureaucratic maneouvres that, in a way, change nothing, and, in another sense, change everything, speci®cally, the collectively attributed meaning and publicly recognised

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

29

social value of the act or thing in question, with very real consequences'.64 In Shropshire in 1635 the con¯ict was in part about such a piece of state magic in which the public dignity of the champion of the lieutenancy was of crucial signi®cance. Corbet's subsequent battle, when he was returned to parliament in 1640, was fought over the public record of these events ± getting the Star Chamber information against him removed and successfully entering his version in the parliamentary record. What had happened was unchanged by these manoeuvres, but the political and administrative consequences of these rede®nitions were considerable. Braddick's micro-sociology of power lays the basis for a reevaluation not only of the negotiation of the social power of the gentry, but also of the forms that resistance to that representation might take. It draws attention to the performative obligations of of®ce-holders and, in line with other work, emphasises the need to take seriously the culture of power: the rites of magistracy and gentility were as much acts of the creation, as of the celebration, of power. In elucidating these processes, therefore, the essay provides one example from among many of how apparently minor acts of dissent could have deep political implications. Attacks on the dignity and deportment of superiors had, potentially, radical or dangerous consequences. The fate of Margaret Knowsley, in seventeenthcentury Cheshire, illustrates this fact. Almost certainly the victim of sexual harassment by Stephen Jerome, the local puritan minister, she was prosecuted for slander when the story began to circulate. Gossip required a stern response and the fact that the story was probably true made matters worse ± `the preservation of the partnership of magistracy and ministry was at stake . . . [her story] was not merely a personal offence against Jerome; it also undermined public decency, good order and the credibility of protestant discipline'. The town magistrates who closed ranks against the accusations of Margaret Knowsley did so in the knowledge that ` ``free speaking [is] one of the ordinary precursors of civil war'' '.65 Thus, it is not necessary to turn to the evidence of seditious utterances, with all the interpretative problems of provenance and typicality, to ®nd evidence of the ways in which subordinate groups responded to representations of power. As Braddick observes, attacks on the self-presentation of superiors, though unspectacular, might have considerable political signi®cance. In a world where gentlemen sought to establish the naturalness of their power to exercise rule and

30

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exact deference then even laughter which sought to debunk such claims represented a real threat. Hence the eagerness of individual gentleman to prosecute through the courts those outbursts of scatological humour directed against them either in person or circulated in libels.66 For early modern elites, `the great primal joke that even the great are in thrall to their bodies' was no joking matter.67 The potential fragility of gentility and the claims to social power erected on it help to explain why elements of the landed class in the 1630s should be attracted to a Caroline regime whose version of order stressed hierarchy and decorum. It also helps to explain why, in the 1640s, growing numbers of that class should ®nd the reports of the social inversions of that decade so threatening. Again, a thickened description of the inter-relationships between social power and political of®ce suggests that if we want to explore resistance, we should not allow the collective activities of the radical groups to monopolise our attention. Plebeian challenges to quotidian social rituals in speech and body language, which were in normal circumstances unconscious but powerful public acknowledgements of the natural superiority of their `betters', were a weapon of the weak with real potential. Where such challenges can be shown to have occurred, as opposed to having been fantasised about in a polemical and propagandist print culture, then the severity of reactions to them offers an index of their impact.68 The negotiation of political authority in early modern England can be understood through thick descriptions of the representation of authority and of responses to it, and of the construction of standardised social roles that could be recognised as legitimate forms of political power. As Gillespie observes in his contribution, `social order could only be maintained by a securely-established social elite.' Social and political order in England were habitually described in terms of standardised social roles. Elsewhere in the territories of the Tudor and Stuart monarchy, such interaction orders had to be fostered, or created, under the rubric of civility. In plantation America, for example, `the model of a gentleman, with its highly desirable historical sanction and its contemporary implications of improvement, cultivation and honor, functioned as a powerful organising paradigm, embracing a wide spectrum of behavioral patterns from aesthetic preferences, through economic choices, to ideas of civic virtue'.69 As Greene's illuminating comparison of the very different social orders created in New England and Chesapeake

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31

Bay demonstrates, these social roles had to be re-invented and modi®ed in the light of local social conditions.70 Ireland, unlike England, Scotland and Wales, was an ethnically mixed community. It also lacked many of the structures which made early modern societies elsewhere function at a local level, for example, kinship bonds which were disrupted by migration or failed to form for ethnic reasons. In the course of the seventeenth century Ireland experienced a social and political revolution that transformed it from an amalgam of lordships into a recognisably modern economic and political unit. This was achieved by a series of strategies including formal plantation, informal colonisation and the borrowing of ideas from both England and continental Europe. Here, as elsewhere, the consolidation of authority represented an accommodation between the needs of local elites for social recognition and the needs of central government for social stability. Here, too, the reputation and honour of local elites was a necessary prerequisite for the enforcement of local order. But while the structures and ideology of monarchy, commonwealth and common law were central to this process, the appropriation of an extended royal authority by local elites to meet their own ends placed effective limits on that extension. The result was a complex negotiation between central government, regional elites and local populations ± the social order that an extended royal authority created became in turn the site for the renegotiation of the lines of authority. In this way Ireland presents an important case study of the transformation of a medieval world to a more recognisably modern one achieved not by the imposition of centralised royal authority, but by local negotiations, whose complexity Gillespie brings out. His work, and similar work like that on colonial America, suggests that a focus on the social relationships of power, rather than on constitutional forms, opens up the possibility of a genuinely comparative cultural history of power within the multiple monarchies of the British monarchy.71 A close correspondence between social and political hierarchies was a characteristic of early modern societies. It continued on below the level of a landed elite and operated in urban society, too. The power of the middling sort was based on their superior wealth and, importantly, their willingness to invest a signi®cant portion of this wealth in acting as patrons within their neighbourhoods. But a complex of changes in the sixteenth century both increased their wealth and made existing patterns and norms of social interaction

32

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either unnecessary (thanks to an increased labour supply) or unwelcome (forcing a re-circulation of surplus which they wished to retain for capital investment). It has been argued that these changes help to explain their increasing readiness to staff of®ces at the level of either the parish or county. Thus, increased use of royal authority arose, in part, from the (temporary) dislocations in their power base, threatened as it was by their abandonment of the customary dictates of neighbourliness. Of®ce gave them the power to call in the politics of the state to counter the politics of custom in the negotiation of the rules of the moral community. But just as was the case with the landed magistrate, these local elites also had to ensure respect for their authority, and in the face-to-face world of local society much depended on their performance of the role. Overseers of the poor, for example, had to be men whose `competencie of wealthe' ensured that they had the necessary `majestie', `respect' and `countenance' `to controll the poore'.72 Their selective use of state power in pursuit of a moral agenda might reinforce their disinclination to continue to act as paymasters to popular festive culture or to continue to observe the reciprocities of neighbourliness. Consequently this use of state power might pose considerable dif®culties for a successful performance as natural local leaders. There was a period of transition when the middling sort's disinclination to ful®l their traditional role invited con¯ict which was not compensated by the securer disciplines that an enlarged labouring poor's dependence on their dispensation of employment and paternal `charity' would bring. This transition was marked by what has been called the `politics of subordination'.73 An awareness of the underlying struggle has made historians sensitive to the political signi®cance of many con¯icts (including cultural con¯icts arising from the attack on festive culture), but the politics of poor relief have been seen as of central importance. Hindle's contribution to this volume explores how discourses of entitlement and discretion, and their manipulation by both the administrators and recipients of poor relief, shaped the institutional development of the poor law, and how these institutions and discourses came, in turn, to frame conceptions of social hierarchy and subordination at the level of local society. His chapter focuses on the politics of poor relief fought around the discursive construction of obligation and entitlement and its interpretation and implementation. While godly rhetoric emphasised the obligations of property-holders towards the poor, it also

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

33

underwrote the need for discrimination within the charitable imperative. Legislation established a framework for the setting of a rate and the payment of relief, but it was left to the local administrators of poor relief to implement principled discretion, negotiating the setting of the rate and amount of relief and determining eligibility. Underlying Hindle's essay is a hint of the need to recognise greater complexity in local social relationships and the way these might intersect with the politics of poor relief. Once again, the binary model of elite/poor seems inadequate as a way of framing discussion of the operations of power relationships at the level of local society. We certainly need to know more about the attitude of groups like those who paid, but never administered, the rate or those like the `penumbral poor' who neither paid the rate, nor received relief.74 This latter group, for example, had a potential, but unpredictable, future dependence in their life cycle on poor relief. In terms of setting normative standards of behaviour, the poor law may well have reached beyond the relatively small numbers of the poor actually in receipt of pensions and affected the much larger group immediately above them in the social hierarchy who were potentially dependent on poor relief. Nevertheless, the picture that emerges from Hindle's chapter con®rms a familiar picture of the power bestowed on local elites to use poor relief to set the rates of subordination. The statutory implementation of poor relief gave them the power to perform the `state magic' of administrative statement to create an authoritative version of the social reality of poverty. Administrative statements de®ne real rights and liabilities: that the candidate is `deserving' and therefore entitled to receive poor relief or otherwise, as at Braintree in Essex where the vestry crisply recorded, `Browne being grown very ®lthy and troublesome shall have his collection denied him until he reforme himselfe.'75 These administrative statements allowed local elites to impose their version of social reality on a particular set of facts: these were acts of power with real consequences, but power-holders did not act without constraint. Recipients of poor relief were also the subjects, not simply the objects, of poor relief. Hindle, following eighteenthcentury historians, emphasises the triangulation involved in a politics of poor relief where the agency of the poor and intervention by the magistracy (often in response to popular pressure) might have some say in determining at what level rates should be set.76 As he recognises, the attempt to recover a popular infrapolitics that

34

michael j. braddick and john walter

stopped short of collective action is hampered by the nature of the extant sources. This makes it dif®cult to assess easily where the balance of power within the politics of poor relief lay. Future work will probably reveal that both chronology and geography had a say in determining the balance of power. Hindle argues elsewhere that `elite notions of discipline undermined popular notions of entitlement'.77 But if the argument that by the eighteenth century poor relief had come to be seen as a right78 is not simply the function of later, richer evidence, then one of the missing chapters in the history of poor relief is how and why this shift in the terms of negotiation took place. Given the very long history of a recognition of the responsibility of the collectivity to remedy `nuclear hardship' ± the weaknesses in local social and kinship structures that were the product of the nuclear family ± then plebeian selective appropriation of legislative endorsement might be seen as a predictable step in this process.79 In his contribution, Walter broadens the focus to examine the agency of the relatively powerless in `the politics of subsistence', of which, of course, the tussle over rights to poor relief formed a part. He focuses on relationships of economic inequality seen primarily in terms of access to land and food, while emphasising their social and political entanglements. He, like Hindle, is confronted by the problems of evidence in attempting to determine the typicality of the strategies he identi®es and their consequences for in¯uencing the rates of exchange between superiors and subordinates. Walter shows how the process of legitimating political authority created a discourse which emphasised the responsibilities of power-holders and the rights of subordinates. At the same time, the moralization of `economic' relations within the discourses of state and church provided both legitimation and occasion for popular agency. Criticising the tendency within the existing historiography to treat `the crowd' as the only site for a popular politics, he explores the `everyday politics' of the poor and commons, themselves sometimes self-selected and selfserving labels more accurate as a measure of inequalities in power than wealth. It was the ability to read out of the public transcript a supposed obligation on their superiors to recognise a moral economy in grain and land and, at the same time, to hint at a `hidden transcript' of popular violence, that gave these weapons their force. As Walter and Hindle show, even those accorded least status and least power within both contemporary and later models of social

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

35

structure were not without power. That power could be exercised in ways that were less spectacular than riot or confrontation but in some ways, in being continuous, they were more effective. In moving from the female body to the politics of grain we have come closer to the realm of politics more narrowly, and traditionally, de®ned. In recent writing on political history in this sense, the debate over the nature and meaning of resistance has been of signal importance; so, too, the question of the degree of consensus in early modern political debate. Scott's tools are helpful here, alerting us to the tactical deployment of apparently agreed values, or the ways in which contest could focus on the precise meaning of a term whose value at an abstract level was not contested. Fundamental to an understanding of a text, according to Skinner, is an understanding of what the author was doing in invoking the conventions of political debate. According to Skinner, `there is no history of the idea to be written, but only a history necessarily focused on the various agents who used the idea, and on their varying situations and intentions in using it'.80 The same is true not just of texts but also of the deployment of normative vocabularies and key terms. Linguistic consensus does not necessarily signify political peace any more than deferential behaviour betokens acceptance of the justness of current social arrangements. Opponents of prerogative, as much as petitioners for poor relief or the authors of appeals to the king to police enclosure or the grain market, might employ a consensual, but strategic, language of concern for the rights of the crown to express direct opposition. For example, Oliver St John refused to pay a benevolence in 1614 because it was against law, reason and religion. He expressed this direct opposition to crown policy in the common currency of political argument, however. To pay would be, he said, to assist the king to break his coronation oath to uphold the laws of the land. If they paid, then, contributors faced a `hellish danger' since `verie irreligiously and uncharitably wee helpe forward the king's Majestie in that greivous sinne of periurie'.81 Clearly, in using these arguments in this way he was stretching credibility. But an analysis of the conventions of political debate is really a means by which to describe the tools available with which to argue rather than to describe consent to all acts of political power.82 In early modern societies religion played a central role in the validation of the political and social hierarchies. But in post-Reformation societies religion could serve both as a language of legitima-

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tion for established hierarchies and as a revolutionary idiom ± all assented to the desirability of orthodoxy and the defence of the true religion, but the precise meanings of these terms were contestable. The essays by Lake and by Champion and McNulty explore the negotiation of religious orthodoxy in the light of this paradox. Champion and McNulty are centrally concerned with the appropriation and subversion of the public transcript. Drawing directly on Scott's work, they argue that the idea of the public transcript and its consequences for the negotiation of dominance also offers historians of early modern religion an important tool with which to unpick the meanings of religious dissidence and orthodoxy. They use a case study of an individual minister, and his con¯ictual relationships with both his Non-conformist parishioners and his episcopal superior, to explore the politics of religion in later seventeenth-century England. By focusing on the experience of Edmund Hickeringill, they are able to show how individuals might attempt to disrupt the cultural process of making authority, not necessarily by breaking the lineaments of legal and or religious authority, but by exploiting and appropriating their procedures, forms and rhetorics. By exploring the micro-politics of Hickeringill's construction of his role as a `true priest' in the ®ght against parochial non-conformity and episcopal tyranny, Champion and McNulty demonstrate how his negotiation of this role allowed it to function as an instrument of religious order within the parish, but also as a platform for religious dissidence in relationships with the church hierarchy and its courts. From the microcosm of the individual biography, they are able to move on to question the broader understanding of the relationship between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. They argue that orthodoxy was not a monolithic given, but something that had to be actively constructed in a process which included space for appropriation and subversion. For while ecclesiastical institutions and elites could articulate what the content of the conformist public transcript was to be, the meaning of these cultural and political claims to authority had to be negotiated in the context of the local parish, most often through the routinisation, and hence naturalisation, of liturgical and gestural performance. Thus Champion and McNulty show that the negotiation of religious orthodoxy did not take the form of the imposition of conformity on a subordinated laity, and that to site resistance at the margins and among sectarian groups is, pace Scott, to misunderstand the sometimes complex negotiations from which `conformity'

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

37

emerged. Once again, a more sensitive reading of the negotiation of authority ®nds the conventional binary oppositions, in this case of orthodox religious culture and counter-cultural heterodoxy, wanting as a model for power relationships in early modern society. The representation of, and resistance to, authority is also central to Peter Lake's contribution, which revisits the debate about puritanism as either authoritarian or revolutionary ideology. Like Champion and McNulty, Lake draws on a contextualised biography to explore the role of puritanism in the negotiation of hierarchy and order. Offering a close reading of the experiences of Stephen Denison, a godly London minister and `archetypal moderate puritan', Lake demonstrates the inherent instability of puritan discourse. Core puritan attitudes and assumptions could construct authority in a number of domains ± for example, political, religious and gender relations ± in ways that were entirely conventional. But that same cluster of ®ercely-held ideas ± predestination, anti-popery, sabbatarianism, the claim of the godly preacher to represent and defend orthodoxy, together with a tendency to view political and social worlds in terms of the dichotomy between godly and ungodly ± could and did challenge conventional renderings of social, political and religious order. Central to Lake's analysis is the argument that the only workable de®nition of puritanism is experiential, rather than theoretical or doctrinal. Lived experience, not analysis of the formal content of `puritan' thought, offers a solution to the paradox of how the godly could both underwrite and undercut orthodoxy and order. Experience could subvert the godly's seemingly `univocally authoritarian social theory'. As the case study of Denison shows, when the charismatic power claimed and conferred within the godly community came to be re-inserted within the quotidian workings of the social and political order, it could challenge norms to which puritans otherwise subscribed. Much then depended on context, and the tensions between Denison's puritan clericalism and his personal position as perpetual curate, between his construction of orthodoxy and the imposition of Laudian conformism, rendered godly charisma a resource to be deployed against existing structures of authority. Lake then sidesteps ongoing debates about puritanism as authoritarian or anti-hierarchical. Rendered as lived experience, what is striking about puritanism is its political and ideological multivalency. Here, too, as in other contributions, there is a rejection of binary oppositions ± of resistance/obedience, order/disorder ± in under-

38

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standing the negotiation of authority in early modern England. The language of religious order and orthodoxy paradoxically provided the weapons for religious argument rather than the basis for unproblematic agreement. iii Social order was experienced and created through everyday interactions in which particular behavioural expectations were attached to standardised social roles. These performances euphemised real inequalities of access to sacred, of®cial, economic or gendered power, and those inequalities had real consequences for the disadvantaged. The performance of these social roles was constructed around generalised knowledge of particular texts, languages, gestures, forms of dress and so forth, and face-to-face interaction established behavioural conformity between roles. There was a greater variety of such roles than can be comprehended by the binary oppositions employed by historians concerned with one or other of these forms of hierarchy: elite/popular; male/female; old/ young; orthodox/heterodox; governor/governed. The problem remains, therefore, of how to describe this social order at a macrolevel ± what were the net effects of these negotiations? Running through the chapters in this volume are criticisms of the tendencies to frame the negotiation of power relations in early modern society in terms of binary oppositions and to write a history of agency framed solely in terms of resistance. Recognising the variety of power relations and the complexity of the means by which they were negotiated, a more complex picture of the social relationships of power emerges. But although social relationships were both complex and ¯uid, they were not anarchic. Together, these languages, performances and roles provided the raw material from which particular relationships could be constructed within more general normative vocabularies. Individuals had some tactical freedom in adopting and adapting these tools, but access to particular roles was not open to all and some delivered more power than others. There were real differences in access to sources of power, therefore, and although individuals could mediate, manipulate and negotiate, some people were, clearly, more powerful than others. Although these forms of hierarchy might be analytically distinct, they were experienced as part of an organic local order. Together,

Grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination

39

they created the basis for what we might call the early modern power grid. Individuals' placing on that grid was determined by the extent to which they were able to locate themselves on a number of hierarchies and the degree to which their ranking within those separate hierarchies was mutually reinforcing. The grid was also three-dimensional in that it had both spatial and temporal dimensions. Spatially, the ability of individuals to operate across a widening series of social universes was also important in determining their placing on the grid of power. Thus, the ability of the gentry, and increasingly the middling sort,83 to move between county and `national' communities gave them greater purchase on sources of power. Temporally, shifts over time could also re-order both rankings within, and between, hierarchies. These shifts might be cyclical (the temporary agency granted youth at points in the festive calendar) or secular (the consequences of the growth of landlessness for the rural poor's ability to negotiate what membership of the community meant). 84 Previous discussions of the workings of power within early modern social relationships have tended to draw ± too heavily ± on the normative orderings of contemporary social taxonomies, pulpit prescription and conduct books. These are important in helping us to understand the rankings accorded social roles within individual hierarchies. But they provide a poor guide to the dynamics of power between hierarchies. While closer attention to their intended audiences and to the implicit social biases in their rhetoric might have something to contribute to this project, we believe that the starting point for the reconstruction of the early modern social order lies in detailed examinations of the micro-sociologies of power. Historians need to seek out sources which provide a dynamic picture of the processes of domination and subordination in which it is possible to see how the tensions between prescription and practice were resolved across the hierarchies simultaneously in play. The courtroom might provide one such space, the church another. Work on the politics of space within churches, re¯ected in disputes over the allocation of church pews, suggests that there are spaces and sources where we can see contemporaries trying to negotiate across the various hierarchies and, in effect, producing blueprints for local social orders.85 We need to be imaginative in the location of such sources. Ironically, in their concern to construct a moral panic, the authors of propagandist tracts in the English revolution, with their polemical reconstructions of episodes in which the world was turned upside down, might

40

michael j. braddick and john walter

provide another point to reconstruct the grid of power in early modern societies.86 Contextualised studies will help, therefore, to establish hierarchy within the hierarchies. Much of what they establish may be familiar: the importance of the cultural and material realities of inequality where wealth was crucial to the representation of a status which had to be expressed in codes of conspicuous consumption; or the inequalities of political power in a society where of®ce followed the contours of class and gender. But much has yet to be established. For example, despite the well-known gender-bias in the distribution of poor relief, we have as yet little sense of the gendering of the politics of poor relief. Widows dominated lists of parish pensioners. As core members of `God's poor', the group that contemporaries identi®ed as deserving of relief, they could expect to draw pro®tably on this discourse in negotiating for relief. But parish of®cers (drawn from the male middling sort) could, as in the case of the Norfolk woman in the dearth of 1597, deploy the dominant patriarchal discourse, which demanded of women submissive obedience, to re-label the plea for relief as scolding and threaten punishment for the offence.87 By contrast, in dearth years in particular, women could also claim a collective right publicly to police the market in food. But physical attacks by crowds of women in dearth years on middlemen need also to be read as women claiming a public political right to correct male misbehaviour. If historians have neglected to consider the consequences of the gendering of these episodes, their victims certainly could not. Similarly, confessional identities could cut across the other hierarchies, empowering some, excluding others. The claim to religious truth, for example, might allow youth to subvert parental obedience and (some) women to cast off their husband's authority. Other women, by reversing contemporary assumptions about women's bodies as weaker vessels, were able to claim a spiritual power of prophesy which far exceeded that accorded them within hierarchies of gender and class.88 Members of the landed class who were also catholic and found themselves excluded from political of®ce could place greater emphasis on birth and lineage as the basis of honour codes. On the other hand, this might offer no protection against plebeian tenants who took advantage of their exclusion to improve their terms, or who as good protestants in the favourable conditions of civil war felt licensed to attack their estates.89 These examples, chosen at random, show that in any particular context it is

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41

likely that the public transcript will contain negotiations of several kinds of power relationships. Because the various hierarchies (class, age, gender) were related, then the power to which individuals could lay claim was always context-related. There was, at an abstract level, a normative vocabulary whose components commanded general assent. Behind it lay actual inequalities in power, and successful deployment of this vocabulary delivered real power, but perhaps not equally to all who spoke it. What these abstractions actually meant in each local and personal context was open to mediation and manipulation. The danger in this approach, of course, is that it risks producing a history of power without victims. It is not the purpose of this volume to deny the reality of domination. Law and the law courts, for example, might offer victims of the unjust exercise of power possibilities of redress, but it is a truism that wealth in the form of lengthy purses favoured some against others. Moreover, the judicial system placed considerable emphasis on respectability in coming to judgment, and respectability was itself associated with wealth. Reputation, also crucial to respectability, was perceived in the light of assumptions about gender. In all these ways, then, the operations of the law favoured some more than others. Thus, to argue that manipulation and appropriation, either within or between public transcripts, could serve to limit power, is not to deny the reality of domination. Catholic gentry really did experience serious disadvantages as a result of their religious beliefs; young males might be allowed to act as the conscience of the community, but when they did attempt a `war against adults', for example the projected combinations of apprentices or journeymen against their masters, then retribution was usually swift.90 Negotiation of the public transcript did not take place between equals. Embedded in the public transcript were the interests of dominant groups, whose greater ability within the early modern power grid to determine the rates and forms of exchange between superiors and subordinates was re¯ected in that transcript. At a macro-level, social order was patterned in abstract terms; at the micro-level individuals could manipulate and negotiate using these normative materials. Lived experience was more indeterminate and ¯uid than these abstractions would suggest (more liveable in fact) and these normative expressions were the currency of exchange rather than iron rules of social interaction. There was not in practice a

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single dominant or subordinate group, and social relations were complex negotiated outcomes involving individuals who occupied positions on a number of hierarchies. These hierarchies might be related, but they were not necessarily coterminous ± although some people could command better rates of exchange, almost everyone had some negotiating powers. While the distribution of power within these several hierarchies might be relatively clear, the dynamics of the relationships between them was not. The reality of social relationships was such that individuals inhabited several hierarchies and the negotiation of any particular social relationship might involve several kinds of power relationships. As the examples given above suggest, it is possible to envisage a situation in which subordinates might be able to counter the attempted exercise of power by reference to the vocabularies of another hierarchy, for example countering submission to one's landlord with the obligations of defending the faith. And as we have argued, following Scott, within these hierarchies all public transcripts ± the acceptable public version of relations of domination and subordination ± imposed practical constraints on what dominant groups could do in the routine expression of authority. In asserting a claim to legitimacy, they were also offering the means by which they could be held to account. Subordinate groups could manipulate legitimating languages and `performances' to empower or protect themselves, and did so in ways that punctured the pretensions of power while avoiding the punishments that more overt resistance might provoke. But in doing so they were negotiating the terms, rather than the fact, of their subordination.

chapter 1

Ordering the body: illegitimacy and female authority in seventeenth-century England Laura Gowing

Some time in the early seventeenth century, the leading parishioners of Birling, in Kent, approached their justices with a complaint. Jane Jacquett, a young woman born nearby, had given birth to an illegitimate child in their parish. That she had done so, and made them responsible for its upkeep, was ± they argued ± the product of a series of unfortunate circumstances, and of the malice of the neighbouring parishioners of Ryarsh, particularly its women. The petition traced Jane Jacquett's history from service to orphanhood and illegitimate motherhood. Jane, once a covenant servant in Ryarsh, was subsequently employed by the parish to nurse her family with the plague; when all of the family died, and the parish (uncharitably, as the Birling petitioners said) gave her no employment, she had ended up a vagrant and turned to `a verie loose life', becoming pregnant. When she went into labour she took refuge in a barn in Ryarsh. According to the petitioners of Birling as soone as certaine of the women [of Ryarsh] had intelligence of her being ther they gott her out againe perswaded her verie Instantlie (by her owne confession) to goe to Berlinge to be delivered ther, promised allso themselves to be good and bene®ciall unto her, conducted her by bywaies and fallowes in her extremitie, and lefte her in a corner of Berling to leave her loade ther, hopeing by that means the paryshe of Rairshe to be discharged of her and of the child. The said Jane feeling her self in great torment of travail viz of childbirth returned again to Rairshe hopinge to be eased ther as soone as she cam two of the women tooke her up by each arme and leed her again to Birling in the midst of her travaile, when it was farr in the nighte, guarded with fowre other women; in all six viz. the wyfe of William Casier, of Edd Walsingham, of Edd Busshiop, of Gregorie Meritte, of Ð Jissopp, and a singlewoman, named Johann Knowler. Certain of these sett her in a wadd of straw under a tree; the rest of the women keppte, and watched the passage, in the highewaie, betweene Berling & Rairshe: lest she should be violentlie caried again to Rairshe by 43

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the inhabitants of Berlinge. When they had settled her ther they sent to Wallinge for a midwyfe who by them was recompensed for her labour, when she had bene in travaile 24 houres befor and tossed to and fro as you have harde. She was at last delivered of a sonn, in a litle straw, under a tree, in the commone high waie, in a cold nighte, no better provided then you heare: after a cruell, and savadge maner, contrarie to christianitie, nature, and humanitie: lefte her ther, to the broad world, and to shifte for herself and her sonn, triumphinge and reioicinge that they had atchived suche an exploite: insomuch that one in the paryshe said that ther wyves had plaied the partes of valient women.1

Two weeks later, the problem of Jane Jacquett's child remained unsolved ± she `threatens daily', the Birling petitioners complained, to leave her child there, and late one night left the baby for two hours on a doorstep while she went thieving, returning to pick him up and be off again. They pleaded to be secured from the imminent charge of the child and his mother. The petitioners' story was both speci®c and familiar. Stories of women in labour being pushed over the parish boundaries to save their community from the burden of their relief must have circulated through England; however elaborated and dramatised, they had at least some basis in the most brutal exigencies of parochial poor relief in local economies under pressure. As well as serving as cautionary tales to single women of the danger of illegitimate pregnancy, events like these and stories about them had more ambiguous implications for social order and gender roles. The Birling petitioners' complaint against their neighbours was signed by seven men (including the vicar and two churchwardens), and it was directed largely against the women who had asserted their interpretation of local order. As one kind of story about the body, it represents one articulation of the alliances, con¯icts and tensions around order, gender and the body in local communities. Feminist historians have always seen the regulation of sex and reproduction as central to patriarchal order. In the early modern period, as in so many others, the regulation of the female body symbolized and embodied the subordination of women to male authority; illegitimate pregnancy and illicit sex were key concerns in the gender order of communities, households and kingdoms. But the precise forms of patriarchal order that obtained in early modern England demand a complex understanding of the con®gurations of gender and authority. In particular, they require that we begin to attend more closely to relations between women as well as to those

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between women and men. Here, I want to use Jane Jacquett's case as a starting point for an examination of the roles women played in enforcing sexual order and authority in seventeenth-century England and, in particular, authority over the female reproductive body. The regulation of sexual bodies and reproduction had both symbolic and concrete meanings for early modern communities: single, sexually active women posed a signi®cant threat to parish economies. Overseeing sexual order was vital to the economic and moral health of household and parish; it became a collective project, sponsored by magistrates but enforced at a local, interpersonal level, between women, amongst neighbours, amongst the poor. The most recent models of authority and order in early modern England, drawing for example on the work of James C. Scott, have stressed the signi®cance of negotiation, the legitimating languages and gestures on which authority depended, and the agency which the `governed' had in the negotiation of power relations. 2 It is still not entirely clear how these models can be applied to the dynamics of gender; Scott's in¯uential work on public scripts of negotiated authority and hidden scripts of insubordination is hard to apply to gender relations, partly because of the dif®culty of reconstructing women as a coherent subordinate group with a shared culture or resistance.3 It is, however, increasingly apparent that practical models of gender relations (as opposed, for example, to those of advice literature) depended on negotiation, tensions and contradictions, and on the agency of both women and men. To get a subtler picture of gender relations in practice, we may need to pay less attention to women as a uni®ed group, with shared norms and culture, and to attend more closely to divisions amongst them. At its most local and intimate level, patriarchal order depended on the agency of women as well as men; but it also depended on the marking out of distinctions between women that granted authority to some and excluded others. Like most women who bore illegitimate children in seventeenthcentury England, Jane Jacquett was ®rst of all a single woman in service. As such, her subjection to domestic and neighbourhood discipline was physical as well as social and economic. Part of being a respectable and adult woman in early modern England was asserting the boundaries of the female body: in the birthing chamber, in the guarding of knowledge about sex and reproduction, and in refusing to be jostled in shop doorways, on the street, or in pews. Single

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women in service had few of these boundaries: the physical conditions of their work and the intimacy of domestic tasks made their bodies public property. In the minds of some, at least, sexual harassment might be read as part of the master±servant contract: in the late seventeenth century, a twenty-eight-year-old Yorkshire servant told neighbours that her ®fty-year-old master was so `kind' with her that `she could not be quiet with him two hours of a day for he was always kissing of her and playing with her and hindering her worke'; when she found fault with him for doing so he answered `what was it to her if he found her meat and paid her wages for nothing else but to lacke [play] with her'.4 Clothes were little protection: another servant complained that her employer `would often force his hands under her coats as she went up staires', so that she was `forc'd to were drawers', as most women would not have done.5 Masters' brothers, sons, even male neighbours who borrowed servants for a day might take the same privileges. Only a tiny proportion of servants, of course, ended up pregnant by their masters. But most households were small, with one domestic servant; working conditions were intimate; contracts were informal; and sermons and household advice reiterated the similarities between the relationship between husband and wife and that of master and servant. The sexualisation of domestic service must have been hard to escape. More widely, fears of illicit sex, theft, pregnancy and infanticide exposed single women in service, more than any other group, to public observation, inspection and interrogation. All of these initiatives ± habitual to the lives of early modern communities ± focused on speci®c parts of the body and particular signs for suspicion. In them, single women like Jane Jacquett became the subjects of contested ideas of authority and of right, largely at the hands of other women, through both legal and informal procedures. Two sites of authority over the female body were particularly prominent: physical examinations for proofs of pregnancy or recent birth, and verbal examinations about the paternity of illegitimate children. In each, both the body and its stories became the objects of interrogation and suspicion. searching the body The recognition and identi®cation of illegitimate pregnancy in early modern communities was an uncertain business. There was no sure

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way of proving pregnancy ± even women who had just given birth might argue that the signs found on them were misleading ± and understandings of pregnancy made it relatively possible for women not to recognise their own condition until after quickening or even later. Many illegitimate pregnancies went unacknowledged, even by the pregnant woman herself, until late on, even until after the birth. So, long before the initiation of legal action, masters, mistresses, neighbours, siblings and parents questioned and confronted those suspected to be pregnant. In these investigations, female knowledge took prime place. It was women who watched for signs of pregnancy such as the `shortness of the coats' or the `fullness of the hips', and who peered into chamber pots to see what they could tell from the water in them. It was women, too, who initiated physical searches. Such searches were part of the legal apparatus of bastardy investigation, but they were also part of the informal means of surveillance that guarded against secret pregnancy and infanticide, starting with public comment and rumour and leading to outright confrontation and physical examinations. In keeping with the common beliefs that fresh milk would be found in the breasts from the time of quickening onwards, the ®rst focus for most searchers suspicious either of pregnancy or of recent, secret, birth was the breasts. Marie Ryley, suspected of illegitimate pregnancy for the second time in Yorkshire in 1665, was confronted by a local midwife and other neighbours who demanded to search her and examine her breasts on two separate occasions; the ®rst time she let them, and the second she refused, but was then apprehended by the constable and searched again under his authority by a dozen women and the same midwife.6 Isabel Barton, suspected of having secretly given birth, was confronted by four married women who demanded that she `let her breasts be drawn for the satisfaccon of her neighbours'; she refused to let them, but they saw enough to tell that `one of her breast heads' was `blacke, and purpled', and that she was `in great feare, and did tremble very much'.7 Not all women accepted such arguments: at least one, when milk was found in her breasts by searchers, told them `that she was always soe'.8 Policing the body in this way was the province of women. Their reports re¯ected a conviction that, whether midwives or not, they could read the signs of the female body. One woman, not a midwife, after examining the breasts of a woman suspected to be pregnant,

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said `they felt hard as woamens breasts use to do after a miscarriage or delivery of a child'.9 Others talked of milk that was `fresh' or `sweet'. The extent to which reproductive processes were understood to be in the realm of women's authority endowed women with a good portion of the responsibility for regulating those processes: the centrality of the female body to the workings of patriarchal order was largely premised not on the regulation of women by men, but on that of women by women. Women's authority over other women's bodies was de®ned ®rst of all by marital status. While midwives' of®cial roles and experience authorised them to intervene both formally and unof®cially, having been married was enough to endow wives and widows with the authority to examine and interrogate. As neighbours, mistresses and mothers, married women claimed the right to search servants and daughters; sometimes these responsibilities con¯icted. Marie Ryley's neighbours, when they came to examine her, also confronted her mother with whom she lived, telling her to `looke to her daughter' and asking her whether she had seen her breasts lately; Ryley's mother was forced to admit that she had not, and asked `how shold shee looke to her when she went to faires and marketts and stayed three or foure dayes from home together'. The neighbours `commanded' her to go and search her daughter with them.10 Isabel Nicholson, a Yorkshire servant working near her mother's home, was protected by her mistress, who refused both her mother and neighbours the right to see her servant's breasts. `Let's see who dare be so bold as to view my maid's breasts without my consent', her mistress allegedly said; like the masters who claimed their right to touch their servants, her contract with her maid included an implicit authority over her body.11 The process by which Isabel Nicholson eventually admitted having given birth was gradual and painful. Throughout her pregnancy, she was questioned by her sister and her mistress, but refused to admit being with child. The suspicions of her mother and her neighbours culminated in the attempt to search her. A month later Isabel gave birth in secret, although other servants heard crying and shouting. Only a week afterward did another neighbour take it upon herself to search the house, where, in an inner room, she found the evidence of childbirth. Then, a churchwarden ± the ®rst man who appears in the story ± sent women to search Isabel again, and although they decided she had had a child she still refused to admit it. Brought before the justice of the peace

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( JP), she said she was with child and had ten weeks to go. It was the female searchers again, the same day, who persuaded Isabel to show them where she had buried the body of the child she had given birth to a week before. It took the initiative of women, as well as the of®cial authority of men, to force admissions and confrontations in such circumstances. Illegitimate pregnancy and secret birth, the ultimate threats to the moral and economic order of the parish, both required and validated the authority of married women, widows and midwives. To some extent this authority was legally sponsored. The of®cial, legal role of midwives in investigating pregnancy gave one group of women a stake in the legal process that was based on both professional quali®cation and personal experience.12 But the expertise that authorised their participation in legal structures was based most of all on their status as respectable married women and mothers in their communities. The women who investigated suspected pregnancy, whether midwives or not, and whether they did so by request of a legal of®cer or independently, were almost invariably married or widowed: in Jane Jacquett's case, those who were alleged to have escorted her from Birling to Ryarsh and supervised her labour were all, save one, wives, and one was her ex-mistress. Being a mother seems to have been less signi®cant in determining this kind of authority: it may have been access to the sexual and reproductive knowledge shared by married women that was more important than successful experience of childbirth. Age and social status must also have played a powerful role in establishing women's authority; given the ways in which older women were socially and economically marginalised, it seems likely that it was married women in their thirties and forties who played the greatest role in these confrontations. Marriage initiated women into a social network whose opinions and gossip might determine reputation and whose expertise was unique. And what marriage brought, of course, was a very speci®c kind of `knowing', a symbolic transformation of the virgin body. Married women's bodies, both known and knowing, gave them the authority to police the boundaries of ignorance and knowledge, virginity and matronhood.13 Incidents like these raise other questions about the place of the female body in local communities. The conventional narrative of reproduction in the early modern period stresses the privacy and secrecy of women's reproductive processes. Popular sexual know-

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ledge involved shared female secrets; childbirth took place in private, in ± at least ideally ± an enclosed room from which even husbands were excluded. To some extent, women's role in the policing of other women's bodies seems to support the belief that reproduction and pregnancy were, in this period, essentially a matter of female knowledge and women's rituals.14 But it also demands some rethinking of what those rituals meant. The female world of pregnancy and childbirth was not simply a protective, supportive one: women's authority in this area challenged and threatened other women. The literary critic Gail Kern Paster has theorised the female body, in the context of early modern cultures of sexual and medical knowledge, as the object of shame and embarrassment: the protection and enclosure that childbirth rituals offered, she argues, is not easily distinguishable from a rhetoric of concealment and shame.15 The role of women in regulating illegitimate pregnancy also demands that we reconsider the `privacy' or `publicity' of the female body in this period. In practice, it was not always possible to ensure private, enclosed childbirth rituals, and the existence of a separate female culture of sex and reproduction is hard to demonstrate. Ulinka Rublack has argued that the female body was by no means as `private' as historians have assumed, but that early modern communities understood matters of miscarriage, abortion and infanticide to be very clearly in a mixed public realm. Pregnancy and miscarriage, she suggests, were, contrary to many of our assumptions, public events: a woman carrying or bearing a child carried also the hopes and the health of the community.16 In the case of illegitimate mothers, what they carried was a threat to the community's economic survival and moral stability. Women's part in regulating sex and pregnancy might well be seen as testimony not to the privacy of women's bodies, but to their place in the public world of the neighbourhood, where women had a stake in moral order and economic stability. Privacy has often been seen as functional to early modern reproductive rituals, ensuring female modesty and protecting women at a vulnerable time. However, if secrecy and privacy were among the constitutive conditions of early modern child-bearing, they also held within them some of the most troubling threats to households and communities. It was secrecy that facilitated, encouraged or proved infanticide. Women's role in patrolling illegitimacy was, in

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part, to expose secrets, to prevent the kind of dangerous concealment that made child murder possible. Privacy, then, might usefully be seen as one of the problematics or dynamics of childbearing; in the light of prescriptions for female modesty, it was essential, but it was also a potential danger. In these contexts, what are the implications of this level of female participation in enforcing sexual order in households and parishes? Clearly, it does not make the regulation of the female body any more ¯exible or less necessary to patriarchal authority; nor does it mitigate any of the force of such authority. Rather, it reinforced the nature of patriarchy as a public institution as well as a familial one, in which every member of the community participated in the processes of exclusion that helped de®ne order and belonging.17 However effectively patriarchal order subordinated women, it was reinforced in practice through distinctions of class, age and status, as much as those of gender: mistresses policed servants, the parish elite policed its marginal characters. In other circumstances, the authority of married women over poor single women might work to their advantage: ®nding fathers for their children, forcing the payment of maintenance. However, the uses of female participation in keeping order could not be taken for granted. In this case, ideas about conscience, nature and femininity provided a good basis for undermining women's power to intervene. The participation of women in keeping order marked out some key distinctions amongst women: between married and single, chaste and unchaste. On these distinctions depended much of the edi®ce of patriarchal order. And yet they were distinctions that were continually destabilised. Most married women had been servants, and many would have been threatened by their masters' physical approaches. However public the social worlds of early modern society, unchastity was ultimately a matter of reputation, not proof; the processes of exclusion that eventually left Jane Jacquett on the very margins of the parish worked gradually, and at least initially with the potential of rehabilitation. The depth of knowledge and authority that married women professed over those suspected of pregnancy, their ability (as some women boasted) to tell between a matron and a maid at sight, was one way round those uncertainties, one solution to the dangers of secrecy. Women's role in keeping order was premised on distinctions between women that were, in the end, unstable.

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By its very nature, illegitimacy demonstrated the insecurity of paternity that literary critics have argued to be so powerful in early modern culture. Paternity was, in the words of Louis Montrose, `a cultural construct for which ocular proof was unattainable'.18 In many ways, anxieties over paternity and legitimacy have seemed to be key to the construction of masculinity and of gender relations in early modern England. The humiliation of cuckoldry, from popular culture to Shakespearean drama, seems to register an omnipresent anxiety for legitimate lineage, undermined by the ultimate insecurity of paternity. It has been suggested, too, that the threat of insecure paternity is at the root of double standards of sexual conduct: it is the threat to lineage that makes chastity essential to female conduct and not to male conduct.19 The struggles of parishes to name fathers for illegitimate children, intensifying from the early seventeenth century, would seem to be good evidence of the primacy of such concerns in households, communities and government.20 Only through the naming of a father could the keeping of the child be ensured; and such a father had to be present, prepared to admit paternity and able to maintain the child. Recent studies of bastardy have focused on its context in courtship practices, arguing that illegitimate births, in many cases, represented failed marriage.21 Such cases, of course, leave little evidence: the informal pressures that a community might put upon a courting couple, and the response to potential bastardy when a father was evident and available, are rarely recorded. Nevertheless, of the numbers of illegitimate births that can be calculated from baptisms, a good proportion of the mothers (around half for early seventeenth-century Somerset, for example) were examined at the quarter sessions over the paternity of their children.22 Few of these made any mention of courtship or marriage promises, and their treatment in court and during pregnancy suggested paternity was not always readily established. In a large proportion of cases of illegitimacy, then, paternity was a real and signi®cant question. The naming of fathers for illegitimate children raised deeper and different issues than simple biological paternity. Fatherhood, in these cases, is a social and economic construct that cannot be tied (as motherhood usually can) to physical proof; fathers of illegitimate children have to be found and decided. Both women and men talked

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of `®nding' or `choosing' fathers: one woman said that Robert Potter was `halfe the father' of her sister's child.23 In the late seventeenth century in particular, despite ± or perhaps because of ± the overall fall in illegitimacy rates, the increasing volume and detail of fornication cases at some church courts produced long, disputed stories about the evidence for paternity of illegitimate children, citing as proof not simply sexual contact, but affection towards the mother and fondness to the child, as well as sundry kinds of material support. In this culture, determining paternity involved a series of confrontations and negotiations between the courts, the community, the putative fathers and the mothers. The process of extracting a story about paternity from pregnant and newly delivered women could be protracted and episodic. To JPs and other of®cials, most women answered with the conventional, most acceptable response: they had had sex with one man, once, perhaps with a marriage promise. Clearly, this was not the only possible story, and both neighbours and of®cials pressed for more. Justices, where possible, questioned women before the birth; neighbours, mistresses and parents did the same; but the most truthful and the ultimate response, as legal handbooks and midwives' oaths prescribed, was expected to be obtained from questioning and threats during labour.24 As with tortured criminals, the extremity of pain was meant to force the truth from women's otherwise opaque and recalcitrant bodies; and it was one of the few occasions when women were understood to be better at extracting the right story than men. Even women who had already made a sworn declaration to a JP would be questioned again in labour to ensure a `right' story, and mothers and neighbours as well as midwives took advantage of the time of `great extremity' to press labouring women for answers. Elinor Phillips, a Worcester midwife, reported typically that, sent for to attend a servant in labour, `in the time of her extremity she did press and conjure [her] as shee would answer itt att the dreadfull day of judgement to declare who was the father of her child'.25 Elizabeth Nicklin's mother, ®nding her daughter in labour, `kneeled down and prayed God that her said daughter and her childe might never part till she had fathered it aright'.26 The threats of midwives, and the oaths with which women responded, indicate something of the weight of these exchanges at the `time of extremity', when midwives, neighbours and even mothers might refuse to help their daughters in labour until they got an answer. Alice Legreene, a Kent midwife,

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gave the quarter sessions a detailed account of the exchanges between Elizabeth Chappin, a servant, herself, and the other women at her lying in in 1602. They shifted from tentative admissions to violent protestations: Being ®rst asked of the mydwyfe who was the father of her child, and whether William Heneker was the man or no, she answered, I am afraid it will lye in his nett. Then being let alone in her pain and extreme travell the space of two houres and more was afterward asked by the said mydwyfe who was the right father of her child she answered that her maister Absolon was the right father . . . and beinge charged that she did belye him she answered that upon her conscience he was the man and wished further that she might never rise yf she did belye him. Beinge after a while againe asked by the said mydwyfe in her great extremitie who was the right father of her child she answered, wishinge that all the dyvells in hell might teare her in peeces yf she had not tould the truthe and that she had not belyed her said master.

And she went on, at the prompting of the other women there, to describe when and where both men had had `the use of her bodie'.27 Leading up to, and sometimes following, these protracted rituals of interrogation came pressure from putative fathers, masters and mistresses, local of®cials and other parishioners. In a parish-based system of poor relief, in an economic context where pressure on resources was tightening, in a local legal system that placed increasing emphasis on naming fathers, and in a culture that placed a premium on oral reputation, everyone had a say in establishing the `right' name. Christian Astbury, a servant to Thomas Lewis in Stafford, gave birth to a child alleged to be her master's in 1692. Defending himself against the paternity allegations, her master claimed that after the birth she had sent for a tailor with whom she had been keeping company, and showing him the child, told him `it was very like him and that he got it'. According to him, the mayor of Stafford and the recorder also consulted about the father. The recorder said `we will take care to have her instructed that she shall not father her child upon any poor body, because it shall not become chargeable to the parish'; the mayor replied `Nay I am not for that, for that I am for setting the saddle upon the right horse, let it light where it will'; and the recorder visited Christian's bedside himself. 28 And Elizabeth Sprang, who eventually admitting falling with child by her master's son in his kitchen, was given various advices on how to father it: an overseer of the parish advised her to `wronge nobody

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. . . and she should have no wrong by the . . . parish'.29 These rather ambiguous advices depended on an understanding of `wrongs' and `rights' that was not necessarily in line with an insistence on biological paternity. Rather, mothers, fathers and parishioners had their own ideas and their own agendas. For many pregnant women, the ®rst pressure was that of the putative fathers of their children and their immediate families ± in many cases, the master and mistress of the household. And while masters who were suspected as the fathers of their servants' children denied and evaded paternity, it was often their wives or other women who did the work of persuading women to name other fathers or to keep quiet. Joan Willmott, a married woman with a son and a female servant, con®ded to the neighbours who visited her after a colt kicked her that `her hart was broaken, for sayd shee there is a woorse thing happened, then the hurte wch I had with the coulte'; asked what it was, she replied, `our huswiffe is with child . . . and I thinke shee will put yt to our Tom . . . but he shall not father yt for . . . rather then he shall father yt, he shall runn as far as a new payre of shoes will beare him.'30 Anne Robbins testi®ed that she had given birth to her master's child in his house in Worcestershire in 1665, and that her master and mistress kept her in childbed for seven weeks, promising her that `neither her nor her child should ever want as long as he had any lande in Piddle'. She said that her mistress's mother, who lived with them, persuaded her to name another man `in the time of her extremity', promising her that if she did so `she should continue in the house seven yeares and have parte of the liveing towards the maintenance of her and her child'. However, three weeks after Anne's delivery, the same woman offered her ®ve pounds to run away and leave the child on the parish. Anne named no father, before, during or after the delivery, until two months after the birth, when she ®nally gave her master's name.31 In Staffordshire in 1684, witnesses claimed that Elizabeth Nicklin's master gave ten shillings to her midwife not to question her, and that when she had fathered the child on him anyway, her mistress came to her as she lay in bed ten days after giving birth and threatened to kill her if she did not ®nd another father for it; in another two cases women (one a sister, one a wife) threatened to slit the new mother's nose.32 Most obviously, the choice of a father was shaped by ®nancial viability. Putative fathers frequently offered maintenance that was

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conditional on their not being publicly named: Edith Gullock, with child by a fellow servant, told the Somerset quarter sessions that he had sworn not to give her a penny if she charged him, and had persuaded her to name another man.33 Margery Eades told the Worcester quarter sessions that Edward Benson, the father of her child, had refused to marry her and threatened to run away if she named him as father: instead, he urged her to father the child on several other men ± `sometimes upon one John Jones [a servant] . . . and at other times upon Charles Brooke [another servant] but . . . did urge [her] chei¯y to accuse one Mr Edward Wheeler . . . and gave her a shilling so to do further saying that . . . Mr Wheeler was best able to maintaine the . . . child'. She followed his advice and, when she was examined in labour, charged Wheeler; only over a year later did she tell the magistrates that the father was Edward Benson.34 Neighbours, especially women, had their say as well: Elizabeth Clement, pregnant in Somerset in 1651, told the JP that she had been persuaded by three women of the parish (and one man) to father her child on John Bellamy, a man who she had only met once: one of the women, Grace Streate, had told her `that she should keep her hold, and she . . . did believe that there would be a good purse of money come from . . . John Bellamy.'35 Motives for such pressure might come from ®nancial concern ± it was clearly in the parish's interests to have a father named who could maintain the child ± but Grace Streate and her fellows' persistence might also come from other grievances, neatly revenged by the public inconvenience of being named as a father. What also came into play was the mother's own sense of who the `right' father was; and this might change over time. Marian Cooper, giving birth in Kent in 1606, ®rst named her master as her child's father; in labour, though, she told the three wives present that the father was another man, a Mr Chambers of Halstowe. Chambers had (she said) brought her from London and placed her in service in a neighbouring tipler's house `wheare by a tricke that he had he could open her chamber dore and come to bed unto her as often as he lyst'. When the women at her labour demanded `why she had formerly laid it unto . . . her master', she said `she had done him noe wronge, for when her dame carried her pots and measures to Sytingborne before the clarke of the market . . . her master lay with her in his owne chamber the same day twice', and con®rmed it, `desiring of god that if she said any more than truth that she might

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never rise again'. In Marian Cooper's various confessions, the role of her master ± taking advantage of his wife's absence to lie with the maid ± makes him just as culpable as the man she later claims to be the father, the man whose sexual privileges over her accord pretty well with those of some masters.36 The mother's sense of the timing of conception might also ®gure importantly. A month before she gave birth, Sara Powell had told the JP that she was with child by Thomas Gregory after lying with him in his house the second and third of January 1652. When she went into labour in July of the same year, this story became implausible, and the women present at the birth `prest her earnestly' to `gett the truth of her'; she kept on naming Thomas, so they `left her in her great extreamity soe long as they durst, for feare of casting her away, yet they could never get any other answer, but that Thomas Gregory was the only father of the child'. Eventually she changed her dates, confessing that `he lay with her ®rst under a heyricke about fortnight after Michaelstyde'; asked why she had set down January the second at her ®rst examination, she answered `shee had done it, and now shee could not help it'. Most women examined about dates of conception were ready with a date that ®tted their expected time of delivery; Sara Powell's refusal to provide the right kind of information suggests the power of her own memory, in which the New Year's incident had replaced the earlier ones. Like most others, she was insistent too that she had only lain with him then, never before or since. Only the women's examination in labour, and their threat of withdrawing help, made her rethink the story she had told to the JP at her ®rst examination.37 Choosing and naming a father involved careful timing. With the possibility of miscarriage or stillbirth, many pregnant single women must have been torn between admission and secrecy; in the speci®c culture of early modern pregnancy, many may also have been mentally unable or unready to acknowledge their pregnancies. Those who kept their pregnancy secret, as some managed to, risked conviction for infanticide if the child died at birth; but they might also have hoped for a secret miscarriage or stillbirth, after which they might have managed to maintain their positions. Anne Mast, an Essex servant, managed to keep her pregnancy unsuspected until the end because, a neighbour said, she `carried it so close'; questioned why she did not charge the father earlier, Anne said `it would have bine a greife unto her freinds' and `she feared she should not have been relieved if she had made it knowne that she was with childe'.38

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The maintenance of a single woman's reputation had a concrete economic importance: survival in the parish, in service or out of it, depended on keeping a good name as long as possible. Concealing pregnancy might also allow pregnant women and prospective fathers to plan a wide range of unof®cial arrangements to avoid judicial involvement ± `to prevent the troubling of any justice with it', as one man put it. In 1630 Joan Michael, servant of a yarnmaker in Somerset, explained to the JPs the machinations for the fathering and the keeping of her child, conceived (she said) by her master's son either in a bakehouse in her master's house, or in the truckle bed at her master's feet. When her master and mistress examined her about the father, she named in succession two servants, a feltmaker, and `divers other fathers'. But she had done so, she said, at the temptation of their son, upon his promises `that he would allwaies releive her and maintaine her and the child'. He wanted to leave meat and linen for her in his father's orchard, but she objected because it was `to much in his fathers house', and he directed her instead to a hollow tree at the end of the orchard where he kept his tools. In the event, the child died; but it is clear that Joan expected to be turned out of her service, and to continue living near enough to collect occasional ad hoc sums and goods from her master's son, and that she believed her best hope lay in informal recognition and relief rather than an of®cial af®liation.39 At least where the fathers were single, individual arrangements like this might continue to offer the hope of eventual marriage. These refusals to be named publicly don't suggest that men were evading af®liations simply out of a concern for their sexual reputations. For some ± in particular, perhaps, those who saw themselves as godly ± this was the issue. For others, ®nancial concerns might be more important.40 The implications of fathering an illegitimate child, and being publicly known to do so, must have varied widely between men. With a less solid basis in reputation, these implications may have been less predictable than the implications of sexual unchastity for women.41 What was also at issue was some men's refusal to become the subjects of judicial authority. George Clark made himself a prominent father, feasting the midwives at his child's birth, buying them new gloves and buying a cow for its milk; but he refused to be publicly named as father, and only ended up named in court ten years later.42 In late seventeenth-century Hereford neighbours reported how Blanch Davies' master got her with child, and

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tried to get her to leave the county and father it on another man, but when she refused, visited her after the birth, promised to have the child `well brought home', and when it died at eleven weeks old, bought ale and bread for the funeral and a penny loaf for every child in the lane.43 As much as the economic aspects of poor relief and paternity orders, and the social `shame', it was the judicial side, the legal determination of what a father was and how he should act, and the implications of being a subject of judicial authority, that these men shied away from. To be the subject of a bastardy order undermined a master's principal identity as a man: his self-government. Masters, the guarantors of domestic, sexual and social order, were also often the greatest threat to it; and being named as the father of a servant's child, or made the subject of a bastardy order, might be a potent threat to mastery and masculinity at home and outside it. With this ¯exible understanding of what a father was, illegitimately pregnant women had a potential weapon. Anne Stanton, examined at the `extremity' of her labour for the name of her child's father, answered `what is that to anyone I have a father that will maintain my child without troubling anyone'.44 Margaret Ray's child was born in Theydon Bois in January 1637. Examined by women present at the birth, she named John Greene as the father, saying he had forced her from her horse in Epping and that `she wold either have [him] punished for the wronge he had done her or els she wold make away with herselfe'. A fortnight after the delivery she came to the house of a neighbouring wife, who, `pitteing her by reason of the weather' called her into the house and said `Meg, you have a prittie child'; she replied `it must needs be a prittie child, for as proper a man as any in Essex was the father of it . . . John Greene the son of Mr Green of Burrows . . .'. However, the dates she gave for the assault by John Greene were too late for her delivery, and those who heard her said she must be doing him wrong; she answered that the JP who examined her had said `that such a younge woman as she was might come a forthnight before her time, in regard of the misery she had endured'. To others, though, she admitted the child came ten weeks too soon for it to be John Greene and named another father, her master, George England, saying that when she left his service he told her to `lay it to somebody else and that she should never want', and that she had hoped to die in the delivery of it rather than bring his name in question. But George

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England brought witnesses to prove that her dates did not ®t him either, and in the end John Greene was decided to be the father. Reproved by the JP for `having so many fathers to her child', Margaret Ray responded `I will laie it to any man in the towne that I list'.45 It is, of course, the ability to say this that makes female sexuality so problematic in the structures of household and patriarchy. And yet it is not just the ultimate biological uncertainty of paternity that makes chastity the key to household order. It is, also, the fact that women's words cannot be trusted, that their stories, even when extracted at the moment of greatest pain, are unreliable. The predictable ritual of the story which most examined mothers told ± that they had had sex once, with only one man ± made it an implausible narrative, though a necessary one. The ability to produce and to vary a story of conception may have enabled single women to manipulate some of the scripts of local order, but it was also what condemned them to painful, protracted questioning in search of a right answer. The instability of women's confessions was connected to the status of their sexual bodies. Both stories and bodies were subject to interrogation from masters and mistresses, parents, neighbours and local of®cials. Both were opaque and potentially unreliable; both were `read' and interpreted over and over, and most of all by other women. Married women and widows were considered the best guides to the confusing signs of pregnancy, the unreliable statements of paternity, and the concealed evidence of birth or infanticide. Within the patriarchal structures of early modern England, women had a broad base of authority, customary rights and public roles. Bernard Capp has argued that women's social networks offered `support, independence, and even power', and that they could constitute `a refuge from patriarchal authority and a means to contain and accommodate it'.46 In riots and demonstrations, for example, women's actions were based on social cohesion, and sometimes on speci®cally female responses to public events. Women's collective authority gave them a basis on which to challenge men on the grounds of social, political, spiritual or economic disorder. Women also participated in keeping patriarchal order over other women. Their roles encompassed physical, verbal and legal initiatives. In insults, gossip and everyday conversation, women's talk regulated neighbourhood morality. In witchcraft accusations, women

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testi®ed to the domestic damages, the bewitchment of children and the male®ce that seemed to be entwined in neighbourly con¯icts. Women's role in confrontations over illegitimate pregnancy was thus rooted in a wider realm of popular customs. For much of the time, women's part in keeping sexual order must have ensured that marriages were made early enough and that single women did not become illegitimate mothers. Only when all the other resources of gossip, rumour and communal pressure were exhausted or evaded did confrontations like those traced here take place. This kind of female authority was less dependent on women's networks, or a `female domain', than on divisions between women: it was the gulf between married and single, orderly and disorderly, matrons and virgins that gave searchers, neighbours and midwives their power. Women's role in ordering the body was central to patriarchal order and it raised some intimate tensions. One was the publicity or secrecy of the female body: married women's interventions into illegitimate pregnancies and their supervision of illegitimate births exposed and publicised matters that could be seen as shameful and private. There was also the question of womanliness and compassion: the stress that the petitioners of Birling laid on the savagery of their female neighbours' role in Jane Jacquett's labour was echoed in the stories about midwives who dutifully refused to help single women in labour until they had spoken the father's name. And there was the question of knowledge: with the authority of touch, midwives and neighbours laid claim to a way of knowing the female body that depended on intuitive feeling, not textual authority, and that was ultimately ambiguous. Women's very expertise in the matter of sex and reproduction was expected to negotiate some of the most troubling faultlines in patriarchal order ± the fear that chaste and unchaste women were not actually so far apart as de®nitions of femininity insisted, and the possibility that unchastity and pregnancy could be kept secret. The practicalities of patriarchy in this context belie a gender order based on the simple opposition of female and male, or plebeian and elite, interests. Throughout the process of illegitimate pregnancy and marginalisation, the interests of mothers, fathers, local matrons and legal of®cials intersected. In many cases, unmarried mothers and fathers were equally concerned to keep the child's paternity private and to make informal arrangements. Where the local community and its of®cials became involved, justices and matrons were often

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acting towards the same ends: enforcing marriage and making men ®nancially and legally responsible. Pregnant single women, the subjects of a punitive legal system administered by elite men, might also be its bene®ciaries. And elite men, the ultimate guarantors of sexual order in households and communities, could also be its greatest threat; to focus on the relations between women, as this chapter has largely done, should not suggest that the role of men in keeping patriarchal order was somehow uncomplicated. Nevertheless, the process of becoming an illegitimate mother and the role of women in trying to keep sexual order suggest that the key to patriarchal structures sometimes needs to be sought in the relations between women, in the battles over bodies and the stories through which women asserted their authority or felt their subordination in households and parishes.

chapter 2

Child sexual abuse in early modern England Martin Ingram

Late in November 1624, Ann Poole of Colchester lay in her winding sheet. The church bell was tolling for her burial, but her body was still exposed to view. An elderly female neighbour was ready with `thread to sew her up' and asked for a needle, but `the mother of the girl . . . crying said it had more need to be searched'. The two of them, together with other women present, `searched' ± that is, closely examined ± the body and `found her privy parts to be as red as blood and that she was grievously misused and hurt by some man'. Another witness reported that it `did pierce her heart to see it'; yet another, that the child was `pitifully hurt . . . in so much as she never saw the like before'. Ann Poole was seven years old when she died.1 Children are as individuals and as a group among the most vulnerable elements in any society. How they are treated, and the laws, customs, institutions and procedures that exist to help and protect them, are highly revealing of social values. Yet surprisingly little research has been undertaken on this topic in early modern England since the controversy aroused by the work of Lawrence Stone some twenty years ago. Most historians concluded from this debate that behaviour that we would interpret as the abuse of children was certainly not a central feature of early modern English society, something that respectable people, of whatever social rank they might be, would readily admit to or publicly condone.2 But plainly this tells us little about what happened in secret or away from public view.3 Modern concerns have made us acutely aware, moreover, of one especially important gap in our knowledge: the extent to which children were subject to sexual abuse. This paper, complementing recent work on the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is a preliminary attempt to address the lacuna for the Tudor and Stuart period, concentrating on this occasion on 63

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the experience of girls.4 (The abuse of boys did occur but, to judge by the number of cases to be found in the records, was much rarer.) 5 The main focus is on children below the age of 12, but the discussion also includes cases involving youngsters in the 12 to 15 age group. Twelve was at this time the legal age of consent to marriage for females, but the overwhelming majority of women were in fact much older when they wed, and contemporaries sometimes referred to girls in their early teens as a `child' or even `little child'.6 With reference both to children under 12 and to teenagers, the term `abuse' was freely used by contemporaries when describing sexual exploitation. Its resonances were sometimes different from those of modern usages: for example, adult couples were sometimes said to have `abused each other's body' even when engaged in consensual, if illicit, sexual activity.7 But many contemporary usages were very similar to what is nowadays meant by abuse.8 Estimates of the incidence of child sexual abuse in the modern world depend partly on the criteria used; but, whatever the de®nition, the real extent of abuse is hard to discover. It is notorious that only a fraction of the cases that occur come to the attention of the authorities. Studies based on interviews with randomly sampled individuals from general populations suggest that between 20 and 30 per cent of women experience at least one unwanted sexual contact (involving touching of the child's genital area) before they become adult; in about a quarter of such cases the abuse is prolonged. To take a different perspective, it is believed that consummated incest occurs in no more than a fraction of 1 per cent of families, yet at the same time it is acknowledged that `incestuous abuse' involving the sexual molestation of a child by an older relative is much more common.9 To try to gauge the incidence of abuse in the distant past poses such insuperable problems as to be fruitless. The aim of this essay is rather to investigate what light is shed on the subject by documented cases, which at least suggest a minimum ®gure and also give some indication of the extent to which contemporaries recognized child sexual abuse to be a problem and what their responses were. Even this line of approach involves dif®culties. Only occasionally is evidence available from non-judicial sources, the autobiography of Adam Martindale being exceptional in reporting a case of multiple abuse that occurred around 1651 in the Cheshire village of Rostherne, where he was vicar.10 Judicial sources offer more infor-

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mation, but the extent to which they do so varies greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. At ®rst sight the records of the church courts seem promising: they had cognizance of most sexual offences, and information came to the courts, often on the basis of `common fame' or even `vehement suspicion', via the `presentments' of local churchwardens.11 In practice, very few of the limited numbers of incest cases that came before the ecclesiastical judges are known to have involved children. Thus Alan Macfarlane's study of incest prosecutions in the church courts of Essex in the period 1560±1680 reveals no explicit cases of child abuse.12 The occasional instances that do come to light in ecclesiastical jurisdictions really offer no more than useful sidelights on the subject. 13 An institution that did handle abuse cases, on a fairly regular basis in Elizabeth's reign and occasionally thereafter, was Bridewell in London. The Governors of this `hospital' ± actually a penitentiary dispensing the bitter medicines of whipping, incarceration and hard labour ± dealt with a variety of petty disorders, including vagrancy, prostitution and other sexual offences. However, child sex abuse was not centrally their concern, and there was nothing quite like Bridewell elsewhere in the country.14 It is the courts that handled major criminal offences that furnish the bulk of the evidence concerning child sex abuse. The phenomenon mostly came before them in the form of prosecutions for rape or attempted rape, and a brief explanation of the law is needed to understand the nature of this material. In theory a heinous crime that merited the death penalty, in practice rape was a rarely prosecuted offence and convictions were hard to get.15 The ®rst Statute of Westminster (1275) prescribed the penalty of two years' imprisonment and ransom for the ravishment of any wife or maiden of full age (i.e. 12 years and over) against her will, and of any maiden under age, whether or not she consented. In 1285 the second Statute of Westminster imposed the death penalty for ravishment, but it did not make any speci®c provision regarding females under age, and the situation regarding the rape of children remained unclear.16 The report of a case from 1571, in which a man indicted for feloniously ravishing a girl of 7 was acquitted, states obscurely that `the Court doubted of rape in so tender a child. But if she had been nine years and more, it would have been otherwise.' The judges may have been questioning the physical possibility of penetration, which was essential to the legal de®nition of rape. Alternatively, if there was evidence

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that the child had consented, the man would have been subject only to the lesser penalties of the statute of 1275. A similar issue was raised as late as 1678 in an Old Bailey case concerning the rape of a girl of 8. `One of the jury being an apothecary, said it was his opinion, that a child of those years could not be ravished.' But `the Court told him [that this opinion] was to elude the statute, that having provided a punishment, had done it in vain, if there were no offence, and so he did tax the wisdom of a whole parliament; which ought not to be'.17 The statute referred to was an act of 1576 that denied all convicted rapists `bene®t of clergy': that is, the possibility of escaping the death penalty on the grounds that the criminal could read a few sentences of scripture. It also made intercourse with a girl under the age of 10, regardless of consent, a capital, non-clergiable felony. Trying a rape in 1572±3, William Fleetwood, Recorder of London, had declared that `the ®rst bill to which he would put his hand in the next parliament would be that ravishers of women would lose their [right to bene®t of ] clergy'. In fact the case concerned a girl under 10, and the accused was acquitted because the court determined `that ravishment cannot be unless the woman reveal and disclose it immediately after the fact committed, for if she agree afterwards it is not rape . . .; the woman in this case did not reveal it immediately but on long examination by her parents, and also because she had committed the fact several times'. The 1576 act cut through such specious justi®cations.18 Why was the offence created in 1576 de®ned with reference to the age of 10 rather than 12, the recognized age of consent? Given that there was much uncertainty in calculating ages in this period, there may well have been concern lest men should incur the draconian penalties of the act in ignorance of a girl's true age. Alternatively, the limit may have been set precisely because it was in cases involving young children well below puberty that juries were apt to doubt whether rape could occur. As a probably unintended corollary, for the purposes of the law of rape the age of consent was in effect lowered to 10. Sir Matthew Hale, writing in the late seventeenth century, argued that the act of 1576 merely clari®ed the situation regarding children under 10, and that intercourse with a girl between the ages of 10 and 12 remained rape in common law even if she had consented. Judicial practice was against him, and in the eighteenth century Blackstone noted that in

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practice the law regarded 10 as the critical age. In terms of child protection, therefore, the act of 1576 to an extent took away with one hand what it gave with the other.19 Studying how these laws were administered in practice is hampered by the fact that records of the assizes and other higher-level criminal courts ± those that handled the bulk of serious offences ± are only partially, if at all, extant for many areas of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, there are substantial, if patchy, survivals of depositions (statements of witnesses and defendants) and some more complete runs of indictments, the formal record of charges. These may be supplemented from the late 1670s by printed accounts of the gaol delivery sessions held eight times a year for London and Middlesex in the Old Bailey, which generally accord well with the surviving of®cial records. The records of courts of quarter sessions, which survive for most counties and some cities and boroughs from various points in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, provide supplementary evidence in cases of abuse that fell short of rape, but identi®able prosecutions are uncommon.20 The materials pose some knotty problems of interpretation. The apparently precise details on indictments, specifying the nature and date of the offence and the accused person's status or occupation, cannot always be taken at face value, and in any case such records are terse and formulaic.21 The statements of the accused and of witnesses (sometimes called `examinations' and `informations' respectively) are richer and generally more informative sources. But their use is problematic in different ways. Miranda Chaytor has analysed the `narratives of rape' (including those of children) found in Northern Circuit depositions on the assumption that `everything' embodied in such narratives, including silences and evasions, `must at some level (though not necessarily consciously) be about that event, be a commentary on it and a way of bearing its pain'. Her study is both moving and imaginative but historically not compelling. The psychoanalytic assumptions that underpin the analysis are of questionable validity, and Chaytor's account shows scant appreciation of the legal context that is essential for understanding the limitations of these documents.22 Chaytor's assertion that magistrates `wrote at the plaintiffs' dictation, changing nothing and omitting nothing' is implausible. Informations and examinations mostly emerged as the written

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record of a process of questioning conducted by a magistrate or other of®cial. Plainly defendants and even witnesses were unlikely to speak freely in such circumstances; in so far as they did, it is uncertain how far what they said and how they said it was modi®ed by the recording process. Secular magistrates in criminal cases seem to have conducted interrogations very ¯exibly. That they asked questions, and sometimes challenged what was said in reply, is often evident from numerous erasures and interlineations and from the twists and turns of the account, but the precise form of the queries they framed can usually only be guessed at. The issue of what, if anything, of the original voice is audible in these testimonies is particularly acute in the case of children: their depositions are often suspiciously ¯uent, and sometimes carry a freight of legal phraseology that suggests heavy contamination.23 Nonetheless many of the documents do embody some extraordinarily vivid information that may very well carry the voices of Tudor and Stuart children. Table 1 summarises information on the stated ages of rape victims, derived from surviving assize indictment ®les for the ®ve counties of the Home Circuit (Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey, Sussex) in the period 1558±1625. It shows that cases involving children under 16 represented a signi®cant proportion of the total of prosecutions. Since the overall incidence of rape prosecutions was low, however, the actual numbers of cases were small. To take a different perspective, the printed accounts of proceedings for London and Middlesex at the Old Bailey reveal seven prosecutions for child rape in the course of the ®ve years from 1684 to 1688. Full search of the sessions ®les, including recognizances (bonds for the appearance of suspects and witnesses) as well as indictments, would no doubt yield evidence of further suspicions without in¯ating dramatically the number of cases.24 In Colchester, which had its own sessions capable of dealing with major felonies, the examination books for the period 1573±1687 reveal fourteen cases of rape or the suspected rape of children under 16, as well as several bastardy cases in which the girl in question was only 14 or 15.25 In a jurisdiction like this, where local people had relatively easy access to the magistrates, there may have been a greater tendency to report suspected abuse. Overall, it is clear that cases were by no means frequent, yet at the same time a fairly regular feature of court proceedings.

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Table 1. Home Circuit indictments, 1558±1625: stated ages of alleged rape victims 0±4 2

5±9 29

10±11 21

12±15 8

16±20 9

21+ 1

?* 47

Wife** 10

Widow 1

Total 128

* age not stated and not designated either wife or widow ** age (22) stated in one case Source: J. S. Cockburn (ed.), Calendar of Assize Records, 15 vols., in progress (1975± ), vols. i±x.

What can we learn of cases that came before the courts? The discussion that follows is based on a sample of over ®fty cases where the information is not limited to the contents of indictments or other highly formalised records, but is to a greater or lesser extent illuminated by depositions or by the printed accounts of Old Bailey proceedings. No claims can be made for the representativeness of this data set; but it is worth noting that while metropolitan cases feature strongly (especially for the late seventeenth century), more than half the sample relates to the provinces, including locations in many parts of England. Cases relating to children under 12 predominate, especially in London. Bridewell cases, which in both form and content are sui generis, are not included in the sample; but references to this material are woven into the text to illuminate particular points, as are rare examples from the church courts. Because they mostly came to court as rapes or attempted rapes, the cases of abuse of which we have knowledge tended to be very grave. The fate of Ann Poole, whose injuries had actually led to her death, was unusual. But many of the children had suffered serious, even life-threatening damage. Anne Thompson of Colchester, aged between 8 and 9, `was so hurt that if ever she lived to be a woman and to be with child it would cost her life for that her body was so very much abused and torn'.26 Especially in late seventeenth-century London, many victims had also been infected with illnesses variously described as `the foul disease', `the pox', `a gonorrhoea', or their physical injuries had led to symptoms of discharge: a typical victim was Grace Price of St Anne's Westminster, 10 years old, `spoiled in her privy parts and . . . infected with the venereal distemper'.27 Of course physical injuries also had a psychological dimension. Gravely hurt as she was, Ann Poole was also upset that `before [her abuser] . . . did meddle with her she was not wont to make water in her bed'.28

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Injuries and infections were the most common means whereby the fact of abuse came to light: the usual signals that something was amiss were severe soreness or pain, inability to pass urine, dif®culty in walking or sitting, palpable symptoms of infection, and undergarments that were dirty, torn, or stained with blood or other discharges. For reasons that will be examined shortly, children often tried to conceal what had happened. Even if they did not, there might well be a delay before discovery was made, not least because it often took time before symptoms of injury or infection became troublesome. The signs of abuse on the child's body might well be ambiguous or puzzling; and, even if abuse was strongly suspected, it is clear that the need for advice or a second opinion was often felt. Thus there was often recourse to a trusted female, sometimes but not always a midwife. In Chester in 1667, for example, a labourer's wife told how the mother of Sara Kempe `brought unto her . . . her daughter, a girl of little stature, complaining that [she] . . . had been abused by Joshua Taylor and desired her . . . to view . . . what condition she was in'. It was not unknown for a man to take the initiative: one witness recounted how `her son Richard Stapleton [a Colchester brazier and a married man] . . . did bring his daughter Ann being of the age of three years and a half and told [her] . . . that his child was very ill in the body and desired her . . . that she would look of it'. An alternative (or more frequently the next) step was to take the child to an apothecary or physician to receive treatment; and often such individuals were called as expert testimony in court proceedings.29 Just who was ®rst informed of the abuse, and how, depended on various circumstances including the child's age, while other contingencies in¯uenced the means by which the information was relayed to the individual thought to have responsibility for the child ± that is, one or other of the parents, a relative acting in loco parentis, or a master or mistress.30 Generally the evidence points to concern for the child and prompt action, but some cases do raise doubts about how closely even little ones had been cared for. In the case of 5-yearold Jane Monke of Westminster, the chief witness (perhaps a relative) said `that the child did stink with such corruption as came from her that could not be endured; that she laid her upon the table, and viewed her, and seeing in what condition she was in, asked her how she came so?' Such extreme symptoms suggest delayed discovery. When cases did come to light, it was sometimes because injuries had

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compromised the economic usefulness of the child: Mary Davis of Colchester, aged about 10‰, was abused as she worked in the loom and reported that since then `her body hath so ached and she been so sore that she was not [able to] stir about her father's or mother's business'. On the other hand, poor parents' immersion in the work on which they depended for a living may sometimes have delayed a response. Again in Colchester, the mother of 8- or 9-year-old Anne Thompson reported that she had discovered that she had been abused, `of which she did intend to complain but that she hath been out a nursing and could not'. She did take Anne to a physician, however.31 When abuse was discovered, the child was sometimes blamed. The mother of 8-year-old Emmot Okeley of Leicester apparently declared that her abuser had `made a whore of her daughter' and `that she would whip her, and [had] got a rod for that purpose'. 32 Such overt expression of parental hostility towards an abused child was unusual in the cases in the sample. However, the evidence suggests that the children themselves were not infrequently apprehensive of their parents' anger and feared that they would be beaten. Mary Davis would have revealed the abuse `but that she was in fear of her father in law's beating of her'. But victims were just as (if not more) likely to be in fear of their mothers. Mary Golding, questioned `if any man had abused her', `fell down upon her knees and cried to her mother for pardon'. Ruth Ewbanck, daughter of a glazier in the Old Jewry, London, said `that the reason why she did not presently complain was by reason her mother having used sometimes to beat her severely, she was afraid of being beaten by her for [the abuse] . . . and the more, for that the said Altham [her abuser] told her if she discovered, her mother would beat her and send her to Bridewell'. Another young girl, Catherine Phrasier, was scared into believing `that her father and mother would throw her into the Thames if she discovered it'.33 Often abusers themselves threatened violence. Susan Nowell of Frome (Somerset), 9 or 10 years old, was told by the butcher who assaulted her `that if she did cry, he would cut off her head with a . . . cleaver which at that time he had with him'.34 Such threats help to explain why children concealed the facts. But there were other reasons. Sometimes they were offered blandishments similar to those which, as will be seen, were often the precursors of abuse; they were induced, not necessarily through fear,

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to promise silence; or they just kept quiet of their own accord. Sara Kempe's abuser `bade her tell nobody, for if she did, he was undone'; while a pamphlet account of a Westminster case of 1680 suggested that `the child [of 9 or 10] being ashamed, and not thinking of any harm, said nothing'.35 To judge by the cases in the sample, children mostly broke silence quite soon and ± assuming they had anyone to turn to ± complained to parents or others, often forced into an admission by their own pain or by the persistent interrogation of adults whose suspicions had been aroused. But some cases reveal an obdurate reluctance to tell. Eight- or 9-yearold Elizabeth Hopkins had been abused every Sunday for six months, `and she never discovered it, till some of her friends [i.e. family members] . . . examined her, and by telling her she would be in danger of hanging in hell, got her to confess'. Barbara Ricard, a widow in the household of a Colchester clothier called Sigismund Sewell, had suspected for several weeks that something was amiss with his daughter Susan. Having questioned her fruitlessly on her own, she had sent for a neighbour's wife for assistance, then summoned her again when nothing was achieved on the ®rst visit. It was only `after many persuasions used unto her . . . [that Susan] clapped her hand upon her breast and fell of a-crying', before ®nally naming the abuser.36 Among other causes of children's silence may have been the traumatic effects of abuse. Certainly some children had clearly both suffered physically and been utterly bewildered by their experiences. Particularly revealing is the testimony of a group of young teenagers abused at the Newcastle upon Tyne house of correction in 1678. Isabel Bradford `was mightily terri®ed and affrighted not knowing what belonged to such matters', and the abuse `did so affright, terrify and astonish' her `that she had not power to cry out but lay prostrate at his will and pleasure'; afterwards, according to a witness, she `did nothing but cry and lament', and was perceived `to tremble, cry and make a great work and wring her hands'. Another victim reported that the abuser `put his ®ngers up her body [and] pulled down the ¯esh, which made the blood follow [?¯ow]', and `did stamp with his feet and affrighted her'; another, that `his dealings were so strange and wonderful that she being an infant is not able to express the same'.37 Amid all the evidence of such appalling treatment, there are indications of robust responses on the part of some victims or

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potential victims. When one of the youngsters abused in the Newcastle house of correction could not contain herself from tears and mourning, considering the great trouble and grief upon her . . . the scholars in the school perceiving the same were inquisitive . . . to know what the m[atter] was, which she being ashamed could not tell, but they [guess]ing the same some of them cried . . . you need not keep it private for we know what the matter is as well as yourself . . .

Thus encouraged, she told them what had happened, whereupon her classmates exclaimed `Hang him! . . . We know his tricks in that [kin]d before now'. Although further abuse occurred that afternoon, complaint was ®nally made to the magistrates. In Devizes (Wiltshire) a girl of between 10 and 12 was able to fend off her master's attempts to interfere with her, roundly informing him `that if he did not give over his attempt and let her be at rest and in quietness she would tell her dame'. This cannot have been the only instance of successful resistance, though by their nature such cases were unlikely to come to court. Even more remarkably, a 3‰-year-old Colchester girl was able to assist in her abuser's apprehension. Questioned about who had hurt her, she was at ®rst able to give only vague indications. But when the abuser came to her father's shop, the girl `without any asking said ``Father, that man did hurt my cunny'' and pointed to the said Hadlye; so Hadlye said, ``Mother, did I?'' ``Aye,'' said the child, ``that thou didst''.' Taken to the man's house, `she went directly into the chamber where the said Hadlye did use to lie and there laid her hand upon the bed and said ``Here he did hurt me''.'38 How had this man enticed the child into his bedchamber? He was a tailor and, according to his own account, `being at the house of Richard Stapleton in the presence of Stapleton's wife, he playing with his child said unto it that he would make her a gown, and . . . at his going away the child fawned of him and so he took it by the hand and led it over unto the widow Ball's house into the chamber there where he used to lie'. Essentially he had been able to attract the attention of the child with the prospect of something she wanted and ± apparently unnoticed or unsuspected by the parents ± had been able to abduct her.39 Endless variations on this theme are evident in the records. A Cheshire ®sherman enticed one young girl into his boat `under pretence of bringing her to a ®ne garden in the mere'. More common were gifts or promises of food or drink, in one case said to be `sometime bread and butter and sometime apples and

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sometime roast meat'. Small coins, mostly pennies or a few farthings ± `each day a brass counter, telling her they were gold' in one case ± were also used as enticements, though this was evidently a more risky device since the sudden appearance of extra cash could easily arouse parental suspicions.40 Such blandishments were, of course, not inconsistent with the use at some stage of threat and force; indeed, as noted earlier, they were sometimes used to try to buy silence, or to pacify a crying child in the immediate aftermath of abuse. On the other hand, violence was often used without any attempt (before or after the deed) to win the child's compliance or trust by means of gifts or favours. Many of these children had been forcibly silenced and held ®rmly on laps or in chairs, crushed beneath the men's bodies, or wedged against beds, looms, walls or privies. The exact pattern of events depended on various circumstances including the age of the child, the character of the abuser, and his relationship with the victim or victims. This raises the key question: just who were the perpetrators of child sex abuse in Tudor and Stuart England? The ®rst point to note is that stepfathers, who feature prominently in some modern studies of child abuse, were not much in question. Their involvement was occasionally brought to light from the murky depths trawled by the of®cers of Bridewell. In 1559, for example, the 16-year-old Mary Glyme alias Typlady confessed that she was pregnant by her `father in law' (i.e. stepfather); she had had another child about a year before, but not necessarily by him, for her own mother had prostituted her to several men and she had been further abused by a string of others.41 But in the main sample of betterdocumented cases the nearest thing to abuse by a stepfather was in a case in 1687, where a sailmaker of St Katherine's by the Tower (London), a single man, had undertaken the wardship of a child not yet 8 years old `at the request of the deceased mother . . . [and] had obliged her to lie in the same bed with him'. Given that we cannot know what proportion of cases of abuse ± even those of the gravest kind ± failed to come to the attention of the courts, it is impossible to be certain that this negative ®nding is not misleading. But the paucity of accusations is very striking. Natural fathers were likewise rarely at issue in cases involving children under 12.42 They were slightly more in evidence where victims were in the 12 to 15 age range, but consummated father± daughter incest was extremely rare. A church court case from

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Boughton Monchelsea (Kent) in 1565 revealed a breakdown of relations between husband and wife that apparently led to at least a partial collapse of boundaries between father and daughter. Bartholomew Fowle, presented by the churchwardens on suspicion of incest with his 12-year-old daughter, admitted (as did she) that he had kissed her but otherwise denied the offence. His wife, who had left the home, claimed that he `laid to her charge that she was a thief and drove her out of his doors like a dog'. Interrogated about `ill demeanour between her husband and her daughter', she confessed `that he hath caught her daughter in his arms and kissed her . . . and that she would come unto . . . her . . . and tell her how that her father kissed her, wherefore she . . . would be offended with her husband for so doing, but other ill demeanour she never saw by him'. In a Glastonbury (Somerset) case in 1655, a girl of about 14 testi®ed that her father, a cobbler, had attempted various degrees of sexual contact with her nine times within the previous two years; he had apparently been inhibited by the fact that she was too small for full intercourse (though she did suffer digital penetration), by fears of being observed by neighbours and by her threat to tell her stepmother.43 Other af®nes and blood relatives were even less in evidence than fathers and stepfathers. The clearest example in the sample of better-documented cases was that of a Colchester weaver in 1605: married with `boys' of his own, he was charged with raping his niece, Susan Sewell, whose reluctance to confess was detailed earlier.44 Again, the paucity of evidence must be viewed with caution. It may be, as Louise Jackson argues for the Victorian period, that incest cases were least likely to ®nd their way to court. But, as far as they go, these ®ndings are consistent with Macfarlane's conclusion that incest was rare in early modern England.45 In the records, abusers other than relatives appear as a much greater source of danger. The events in the Newcastle house of correction described earlier were the equivalent of what is nowadays thought of as institutional abuse: the perpetrator was the master of the house, James Aysley.46 Equally horri®c in a different way was the fate of 13-year-old Elizabeth Fancourt of London: decoyed away by an associate of Frances Archer, a notorious bawd, she was washed, dressed and painted, and her maidenhood sold to a certain William De Vega. Only after several days was she allowed to return home.47 The circumstances of other cases were less lurid. Predictably a number of early adolescents in ordinary domestic service had been

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abused by their masters, who took advantage when their wives ± most appear to have been married ± were asleep or absent at church or market.48 Yet others in the 12 to 15 age group were apparently the victims of men or youths who had come to the house where the girl lived ± sometimes as a servant ± to drink, to do business or (in one case) to borrow an old coat to give shelter from the rain.49 The abusers of children under 12 in the sample of better-documented cases included a Somerset clergyman schoolmaster who indecently assaulted one of his charges in the schoolhouse. 50 The rest (apart from the relatives already considered) fall into two main categories, of roughly equal importance numerically. The ®rst included neighbours, workmen or customers, casual acquaintances or even strangers who were able, using simple violence or the inducements already described, to detain or lure children into their houses or secluded spots. The victims were vulnerable simply because, like many other children,51 they were out and about on errands or playing in the street, or had been left alone in house or shop. These abusers were of varied age, including one who was stated to be 74 while another was described as `an old man'. A wide range of social ranks were represented, from a gentleman through to workmen and labourers and including servants and apprentices. Their moral and social status ± in so far as they can be discerned from such sources as the Ordinary of Newgate's account of his ministrations to condemned prisoners ± also varied. If the pamphlet account of his execution is to be believed, Edward Altham (who denied the offence to the last) `behaved himself excellent well, and very sensibly, much like a person of a more than ordinary birth and education'; his body was afterwards taken `by his friends and others of his acquaintance, who were persons of good credit'. William Harding, on the other hand, executed in 1680 for a rape on a 7-yearold, was `a brutish fellow, said to belong to Bridewell', `the most hardened and refractory person' amongst all the criminals under sentence.52 Altham and Harding seem to have planned their attacks, but others were apparently opportunistic and their assaults may have been isolated incidents. However, a few of the culprits were clearly serial abusers. When Anthony Baker of Reading was brought in question in 1627 for the attempted rape of 11-year-old Alice Blackman, her 14-year-old sister Joan testi®ed that he had also tried to abuse her in the past, and there were additional complaints regarding two other girls aged 4 and 9. Similarly, in the Cheshire

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case described by Adam Martindale, the main charge concerning a girl of 5 was backed up by evidence of a similar incident involving a child of similar age in the past. `Many others could have testi®ed the like things touching his former practices,' added Martindale, `but it was not thought needful to examine them.'53 The other main category of abusers ± characteristically in their mid- to late-teens or early twenties ± were servants, apprentices or other employees of the children's parents, step-parents or guardians. The trust that their masters and mistresses unthinkingly accorded them had provided ample opportunities for abuse. Some had been assigned baby-sitting duties: this was how the mistreatment of the very youngest children in the sample had occurred. Thus 15-year-old John Fletcher of Colchester had several times abused his 2-year-old charge while his master and mistress were `bid to dinner', when he was `appointed to play with the child while his dame was busy', and so on. Another servant of the same town, 20-year-old John Hynone, attempted to rape two girls of 5 and 6 when `his master and dame upon a Sunday in the afternoon being at church he was left at home with their children'; he tried again on another occasion, `his master being rid out of the town and his dame not well'. Other parents had unwittingly sent their children into danger. In the case of Elizabeth Marriot in London in 1690, George Hutton `being in the stable dressing her mother's horses, she was sent to light him with a candle, and see he did not neglect them.'54 Some of these acts of abuse by servants and apprentices may have arisen from fatally misguided attempts at sexual experimentation; others were opportunistic, some occurring in drink. The best construction that can be placed on them is that these youngsters, perhaps disaffected and certainly experiencing the restrictions of service or low-paid employment, vented their aggression and frustration on victims even less powerful than themselves. The accounts of the Ordinary of Newgate are merely conventional in tracing the roots of these as of other major crimes to neglect of God, sabbathbreaking, profane swearing, drinking and other forms of casual sin. Some of the men confessed sexual relations with adult women, and there is no clear indication that any of them had an exclusive interest in little girls. Only occasionally are there direct clues to their circumstances and state of mind. John Raven, who seized and raped 8-year-old Mary Catt when she was sent to lead a horse to the stable, was 16 or 17 years old. He said that `his father was a coach-maker,

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and dying, left his mother poor, and not able to put him to any trade, therefore he was forced to be a postilion, for which he received 3£ wages by the year.' `I ®nd few so little instructed,' remarked the Ordinary, `he not being able to repeat perfectly the Lord's Prayer.' 55 Such confessions raise broader questions about the attitudes of abusers and how they saw themselves in relation to their crimes. John Eaton, a minister accused in Bridewell in 1579 of abusing his daughter, was wholly exceptional in insisting `that his . . . daughter is a virtuous child and that this ®lthy act was committed through the lewdness of himself, and that she was ever unwilling thereunto'. At the other extreme, a Cheshire baker and his companion countered 13-year-old Margaret Hesketh's claim of brutal rape with a story of a long train of events that began when the pair met Margaret and her sister on a summer evening and gave them a ride in a wagon in return for a share of their strawberries and bilberries. The men claimed that Margaret was `willing', the more so as they offered her a penny each `to buy her something with at Maccles®eld if she would yield to them'. Neither actually confessed having sexual relations with her, though one accused the other. An account of a case involving an imprisoned Irish priest ± hard to evaluate because of its xenophobic and anti-catholic colouring ± indicates that the abuser had taken a sentimental fancy to his victim, the 9-year-old daughter of a female fellow-prisoner who had run errands between the two: `being asked, if ever he used to kiss the girl and set her upon his knee, he answered, ``Yes my Lor', the chile be so pretty and do twenty pretty tings make me laugh a hundred times.'' '56 Simpson claims that an important motive for child abuse in eighteenth-century London was a common belief that sex with a young girl would cure the man of venereal disease. There is no hint of this in the sample studied here, though it may have been a hidden motive.57 Mostly the accused were concerned to deny any sexual dealings, though some did so equivocally. John Humfrye of Colchester, whose repeated rape of Ann Poole caused fatal injuries, denied `that ever he did any thing unto the child that should do it any hurt'. Others claimed they were the victims of false or malicious accusations, like Richard Atwater of Reading who protested in 1627 that he was `wrongfully and spitefully charged by bad neighbours'. Some admitted a degree of physical contact while denying the main charge. Accused of raping Elizabeth Marriot, George Hutton said that `he only took her up and clapped her breech, for hazarding the

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horses kicking her by pulling their tails'. John West confessed that he had `tickled and toyed' with his victim. Francis Carter, a weaver aged 36, claimed that 12‰-year-old Anna Phepoole `fell to toying with and hanging about' him when he was left alone with her. Twice he threw her off onto the bed, and `the second time . . . her coats ¯ew up over her head and then he did pull down her coats and in pulling them down might touch some part of her naked body'. This verged on a claim of provocation, and even closer was a Reading labourer's suggestion that his abuse of 9-year-old Anne Potter came `by her own seeking after me'. The Ordinary of Newgate likewise encountered abusers who `would feignedly have extenuated the crime', a tendency that could extend to the scaffold. Martindale noted that his neighbour, even though he had in prison `acknowledged his guilt to two of his neighbours', `when he came to die (though he did not directly say he was guiltless) insinuated to the people as if he were; telling them that he was so old, and so crushed by a fall off an horse when Prince Rupert came through Cheshire, and they might judge whether he was likely to do that deed.'58 Defendants could receive support from others. The Old Bailey proceedings indicate that character witnesses were common, and that midwives, physicians and others were sometimes produced by the defence to dispute the medical evidence. But support was not always sustained. In a Colchester case in 1605, the widow with whom the alleged abuser lodged took it `unkindly' that he was arrested, but was silenced by the evidence. In the case described by Martindale, `a jury of women were sworn to inspect the child wronged. A midwife, being one of them, was much . . . [the defendant's] friend, and talked hard for him; but when it came to swearing, she joined with the rest'.59 The courts' treatment of child abuse cases must be understood in the context of how they dealt with criminal matters in general. The facts of the case were evaluated as far as possible, but the character of defendants and witnesses was also taken into account, while juries were able to exercise much discretion. Contemporary legal commentators saw these as commendable features of the legal system, but in retrospect it seems likely that issues of class and perceived respectability may have played an undue part in some cases. Thus cases were dismissed on such grounds as `it appeared upon examination that the parents were of no good repute, and that no complaint was made of it in a long time after it was done, and several witnesses for

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the prisoner made it out to be only a design to get money'. On the other hand, the courts knew that cases of attempted extortion did occur, while some parents undoubtedly succumbed to the temptation of compounding cases for money and withdrawing their evidence.60 Malicious prosecution was also certainly a possibility. In a remarkable case in 1623, a clergyman named Edward Dalton was accused by a neighbour, Mary Vouche (or Vowtes), of having `committed a rape or incest with his own daughter' and also having `de®led his wife's daughter . . . and torn her being a child of four years of age'. His wife was accused of consenting, and it was said that she `did hold her said daughter while . . . her father had the carnal knowledge of her body'. (This is one of the very few indications of female involvement in child sexual abuse, save when bawds and brothelkeepers were at issue.) To judge by the accounts in the subsequent defamation suit, Vouche voiced these accusations with great relish, hoping `to see the said Elizabeth Dalton carted for a bawd and him the said Dalton hanged'. But Dalton's own daughter sustained the charge, and the matter went before a local justice and hence to Bridewell. However, in the presence of the governors the daughter said that she had `wronged her father in that accusation by the instigation of Goodwife Vowtes after her father had beaten her, and so confessed to the matron'. Whatever the truth of this case ± it is open to question whether the girl's retraction should be taken at face value ± it is plain that the courts had to deal with some very tangled circumstances that were inevitably hard to resolve.61 The general impression is that the courts were not systematically biased in favour of defendants. On the contrary, magistrates before trial, and judges in court, often dealt sharply with the accused, even when they were quite young. The apprentice Stephen Arrowsmith, for example, was peremptorily told by the judges that `the matter was so plain against him, that he must have as great impudence to deny it, as he had wickedness to commit it': indeed in this case the recorder refused a verdict of `not guilty', and ordered the jury to reconsider. Terms such as `wickedness', `villainy', `foul', and `odious' were likewise commonly used by the compilers of the pamphlet accounts of Old Bailey sessions proceedings and probably re¯ect, not only public opinion generally, but also the stance from which cases were approached by judges and juries. 62 Importantly, the testimony of the victims and occasionally other children was admitted in court. According to Hale

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if it appear to the court, that she hath that sense and understanding that she knows and considers the obligation of an oath, though she be under twelve years, she may be sworn; . . . But if it be an infant of such tender years, that in point of discretion the court sees it un®t to swear her, yet I think she ought to be heard without oath to give the court information.

As far as can be discerned from court records and pamphlet accounts, this gives a fair account of what actually happened throughout this period. Certainly considerable weight appears to have been given to clear and steadfast accusations made by child victims, especially when backed up by medical or other physical evidence and by the sworn testimony of parents and others. Plainly, the children in court must have undergone a dreadful ordeal. But the fact that children were sometimes able to give clear testimony, despite these intimidating circumstances, is illustrated by the case recounted by Martindale, in which his own 3‰-year-old child gave evidence along with the victim who was some two years older: though it was many months between the commitment and arraignment of this man, and my child was so young as aforesaid, and though they were oft examined before magistrates, ministers, jurors, and judges, they told the same tale punctually, without ever contradicting themselves or one another, and answered cross questions wonderfully.63

Admittedly this was not always so. In the Old Bailey in 1683, `the girl herself [aged 12], also her mother and a midwife, gave some evidence . . .; but either [because of ] their over much modesty, or for some other reason', the man was acquitted. But there is no indication, in contrast to what has been suggested for the nineteenth century, that the courts demanded sexual reticence and were hostile to plain speaking on the part of victims and witnesses.64 Of course euphemisms were often used. `Privy part(s)' or `privities' (male or female), `privy place' (female) and `privy member' (male) were stock expressions, commonly used in formal settings by both men and women. `Bottom of her belly' (or `of her body') and `place where she maketh water' may have been terms used by or with children. 65 The use of the term `cunny' by a 3-year-old, noted earlier, was unique. More forthright terms for the male organ were somewhat more in evidence, including `prick' and `yard' as well as the more evasive `thing'.66 In other respects, as preceding examples will have illustrated, the statements of victims and other witnesses were often extraordinarily graphic. Again in contrast to what has been suggested for later periods, the

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courts displayed no systematic tendency to assume that abuse had resulted from what Victorian of®cials saw as the girls' own `corruption', `viciousness' or `lack of innocence'.67 In a Bridewell case in 1559, 12-year-old Ellen Lewys admitted that she was `by the procurement of . . . Anne Tuckesse [a bawd or brothel-keeper] . . . most shamefully de®led by two [named] Italians . . . which . . . most ®lthily against nature de®led the said Ellen in the fundament', and for this she was ordered to be `carted' (paraded round the town with basins ringing before her). But such attribution of guilt to an abused child was, even by Bridewell's draconian standards, exceptional. In cases in the ordinary courts, evidence that a young girl had `taken pleasure' in what occurred, especially if the abuse was on a longterm basis, may have disinclined jurors to convict. But, at least in the case of girls under 10, judges seem to have regarded this factor as irrelevant: by the terms of the 1576 act, the mere fact of penetration was felony, irrespective of circumstances.68 However sympathetic the courts might be, they faced the obvious dif®culty that young girls found it hard to describe sights and experiences which had often been painful, about which they felt guilty or embarrassed, and whose full nature and signi®cance they did not comprehend. This compounded what was in any case often a problem for the courts: to determine whether or not penile penetration, essential to the legal offence of rape, had actually occurred. The victims ± or the magistrates and their clerks who shaped their evidence ± sometimes used terms such as `carnal knowledge', ordinarily implying full intercourse, when the girls' more circumstantial statements could be consistent merely with non-penetrative or partially penetrative sexual contact leading to emission. This helps to explain why the juries of women who `searched' the victims' bodies sometimes returned negative verdicts even when there was strong evidence that abuse of some kind had taken place. Cases in which strong testimony from the child, supported by other witnesses, was linked with clear physical evidence of penetration were the ones most likely to lead to conviction.69 The evidence is fragmentary and hard to evaluate, but child abuse cases were certainly not less, and may have been more, likely to result in guilty verdicts than rapes in general.70 Even if men were acquitted of rape they did not necessarily get off scot free. In a reported case in 1633, `it was not proved that [the defendant] . . . entered into the child's body (but the contrary)

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although he very much had abused her'; but he was retried for battery for this `foul fact' and imprisoned at the king's pleasure, ®ned 200 marks (about £135), pilloried in the vicinity of the crime `with a paper upon his head signifying the cause', and bound to good behaviour for life.71 In cases where penetration was proved, defendants were occasionally reprieved after sentence but otherwise had little hope of ®nding mercy. The swift retribution that usually overtook the criminal is well caught in the account of a Bridewell case in 1562. John Mekins was arrested on 30 May and questioned on 3 June for `unlawful companying' with Ellen Clarke, one of the female prisoners, but Upon further examination it fell out that the said John Mekins most vilely, abominably and most ungodly misbehaved and misordered two children of the said Clarke's . . . in such sort that they were swollen most piteously, contrary to the laws of this realm, for which he was carried from this house to Newgate where he was for the same arraigned, condemned and the 27th of June hanged.72

In view of how little is known about child sexual abuse in the past, the fact that the phenomenon both existed and was recognized to exist in Tudor and Stuart England is an important ®nding in itself. It was able to happen because of weak points in the pattern of domestic and communal relations, notably the vulnerability of children within households and when they were out and about on the streets and in the ®elds. Plainly parents and others with children in their care were aware of the possibilities. Signs of abuse might initially arouse puzzlement, but there would always be someone in the neighbourhood able to recognize that a girl had been abused `by some man or boy',73 and there were midwives, apothecaries and physicians ready to provide professional corroboration. Though the parents of some victims were prepared to compound with the abuser for money, in most of the recorded cases they seem to have had little hesitation in taking the matter before the magistrates. The latter, for their part, took accusations seriously, listened to the children and other witnesses carefully, and interrogated suspects rigorously. The same was true of the courts, though, as in the case of other criminal trials in the period, the outcome was at best hit or miss and often determined by technicalities of pleading and proof. In brief, the indications are that this society, according to its lights, took the sexual abuse of children seriously and certainly dealt hardly with convicted offenders. Yet it must be recalled that the law was adapted to take cognizance only of

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the most serious cases, particularly those involving the rape or nearrape of children under 10. While there is no reason to suppose that child sexual abuse was common, many more cases than those that appeared before the courts must surely have occurred, and some of these may have involved close family members. If they did not involve violence or penetration, there was no obvious means of preventing or punishing them, and they come to light only very rarely in contemporary sources. The dimensions of this troubling `dark ®gure' of past abuse can only be conjectured.

chapter 3

Sex, social relations and the law in seventeenthand eighteenth-century London Faramerz Dabhoiwala

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the public regulation of sexual behaviour had been a central feature of English society for many hundreds of years. It was generally agreed that sexual immorality was deeply disruptive of social and political order, that it had disastrous economic consequences, and that leaving it unpunished would provoke the wrath of God upon the whole community. For all these reasons, sexual activity outside marriage was prohibited, and anyone who abetted or engaged in such behaviour was liable to prosecution. The main jurisdiction over sexual offences was exercised by the church courts, which could impose shaming punishments (sometimes commutable into a ®ne) and various forms of excommunication. But there were also, especially in towns, many secular jurisdictions that punished adulterers, fornicators, whores and bawds, usually through a combination of ®ning, imprisonment, whipping and public humiliation. As is now widely appreciated, the study of these matters can reveal a great deal about early modern society. It tells us much about how men and women understood the world they lived in, about the practical signi®cance of their religious beliefs, and about how they perceived the relationship between individual and communal norms and spheres of responsibility. No less importantly, it elucidates the workings, and the broader social role, of the law, that bulwark of contemporary equity and order. And because both ecclesiastical and secular measures against sexual immorality were strongly rooted in ideals of consensus, and the practice of legal regulation depended heavily upon the involvement of ordinary householders, studying it has shed much light upon the texture of neighbourhood life in the small-scale towns and villages of which most of England consisted. 1 It also appears that public discipline along such lines was a notable characteristic of life in early seventeenth-century London, despite 85

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the tremendous size of the capital and its concomitant reputation as a centre of vice. Especially within the City of London, but possibly also in many suburban parishes, formal and informal institutions of social oversight remained as ubiquitous and important as they were in rural communities.2 And although the surviving legal records are fragmentary, they suggest that magistrates and courts across London continued to police sexual conduct very actively. Between September 1600 and August 1601, for example, at least three hundred ± and possibly up to a thousand ± men and women were punished in the City's house of correction alone, for fornication, adultery or prostitution. Every year, many hundreds more were prosecuted in a variety of suburban jurisdictions. And the city's several church courts, too, were continually in action against such offenders. 3 In London, as elsewhere, the civil war and interregnum brought radical but unsuccessful attempts to improve moral regulation; and they were followed at the Restoration by a return to the old system. Yet barely a century later, sexual discipline in the capital had changed out of all recognition. The church courts no longer bothered with public prosecutions. Secular policing was no longer rooted in community participation, but instead largely con®ned to men who made a living from it. Adultery and fornication were generally considered to be beyond the reach of the law. And even overt prostitution was now dealt with on a different and more tolerant basis. Why did this happen? How did the methods and principles that had sustained sexual regulation for centuries come to be discarded in the course of a few decades? And how signi®cant a change was this? To some extent it epitomized social and intellectual trends that were visible far beyond the capital. But it also resulted from important shifts in how men and women used the law, individually and collectively, in the peculiar environment of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London. The aim of this essay is to sketch how and why the social role of the law was transformed in this way. It looks ®rst at the principles of personal reputation and communal oversight upon which moral discipline traditionally rested, at their social and sexual bias, and the extent to which they could be subverted by precisely the kinds of disreputable people they were designed to expose. It then considers how these principles were gradually undermined by the narrowing scope of the law, which increasingly distinguished between private and public immorality,

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and between personal character and proof of fact. And ®nally, it shows how communal participation in public discipline was steadily eroded, until it came to be replaced by an essentially separate, semiprofessional system of police. Taken together, these developments radically altered the way in which social and sexual order was conceived of, and maintained, in the most important and most rapidly changing intellectual, political and social environment of early modern England. The law relating to sexual immorality was fragmented between different jurisdictions, and little of it was codi®ed. But in essence it was simple. Leaving aside rape, sodomy and bigamy, which were statutory felonies, and incest, which was rarely prosecuted, there were two main offences: committing sexual immorality or abetting it, usually as the keeper of a `bawdy' or `disorderly' house.4 The ultimate aim of proceedings against such matters in the church courts was to appease God and to reform the soul of the sinner. But ecclesiastical justice was also meant to provide satisfaction to the community, and to reinscribe social norms. Thus a woman's public penance for fornication did not just `desire Forgivenesse of Almighty God', but also of `all others that are offended thereby'; and a presentment for the same offence would warn simultaneously against `the great danger of your Soule and the evill Example [to other] Christians'. The way in which sexual misconduct came to the attention of the courts was similarly rooted in ideals of communal consensus. Prosecutions usually took the form of a presentment, by the local churchwardens, of a `common fame', notoriety or `repute' of immorality. Such phrases signi®ed far more than mere individual suspicion: they implied public knowledge and agreement, and they were always based on some degree of preliminary research. Indeed, formal proceedings might be only a last resort. When, for example, in 1696 Elizabeth Talman was cited in the London consistory court for cohabitation and fornication with Richard Holder, a Kensington merchant, it was because `notwithstanding you have been often gravely and seriously advised either by words of mouth or Letters to dessist from such your ®lthy and lascivious life and conversation, Yet you have rejected the said advice'. Typically, even in an affair of such apparent notoriety, the legal case rested foremost upon the weight of respectable communal opinion. The charge against Elizabeth Talman was held to be true because

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publick and notorious and thereof is publick voice fame and repute not only within the parish of Kensington aforesaid and in the parish where he the said Richard Holder did formerly live but also in divers other places adjacent, and amongst divers Men upon the Exchange of London where it is commonly reported and taken to be true among people of great creditt and reputacon.5

Such phrases ± `publick and notorious', `publick voice fame and repute', `commonly reported and taken to be true' ± were used time and again as proof of fact by witnesses and prosecutors in church court cases. But even `common' or `public' fames and opinions were not of equal weight: they were judged by the reputation of those who held them. A common fame about sexual immorality reported `among people of great creditt' was a serious matter; but one spread `by the nude and sole Accusation of some naughty Woman who confesseth her own naughtiness', as a contemporary handbook explained, was in fact not `a Fame, but rather a false rumor'.6 Similarly, because hard evidence was often dif®cult to come by in cases of suspected sexual immorality, the usual method of establishing guilt and innocence was not a formal trial but a process of public `compurgation', which tested the views of the whole community. If the accused could produce a speci®ed number of honest neighbours to swear publicly that the suspicion was unfounded, and if no one else came forward to contradict them convincingly, the charge was dropped: otherwise the common fame was held to be true.7 Secular justice could not always rely on the same degree of public involvement and inquisition. Its investigation of moral offences was often dominated by a zealous minority of of®cers, its methods of policing depended heavily on discretion and personal dynamics, and its judgements were frequently reached rather more hastily. Yet in principle it was based on very similar assessments of credit, reputation and fame, and its scope was equally wide. The keeper of a supposed bawdy house could be arrested, bound over, presented or indicted in any criminal jurisdiction.8 Men and women suspected of sexual misconduct could be arrested and bound over, or, if unable to provide credible sureties, summarily committed to the nearest house of correction, to be whipped if necessary and set to hard labour for a few days or weeks.9 Such punishments could be in¯icted not just for evident `evil behaviour' or an obvious breach of the peace, but equally, as in the church courts, on the grounds of `common'

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suspicion, `evil fame', `name' or `report'. Thus constables and justices of the peace were to act against anyone who be of evill name and fame, generally, but more specially against such as are defamed or detected in any of these particulars following: 1. First, against those that are greatly defamed for resorting to houses suspected to maintaine Adultery, or Incontinency. 2. Also against the maintainers of houses commonly suspected to bee houses of common Bawdry . . . 3. Also against common whore-mongers, and common whores; for (by good opinion) Avowtry [i.e. adultery] or Bawdry is an offence temporall, as well as spirituall, and is against the peace of the land. Upon information given to a Constable, that a man and a woman be in adultery or fornication together (or that a man and a woman of evill report, are gone to a suspected house together in the night) . . . he may [arrest] them.10

Further licence was provided by the long established and catch-all de®nition of `night-walkers' under statute and common law, as `strangers or other persons that be suspected, or that be of evil behaviour, or of evill fame', including all persons who `shall in the night season haunt any house that is suspected for bawderie, Or shall in the night time use other suspitious company'.11 Such language was echoed in that of the constables and watchmen who actually arrested adulterers, fornicators and prostitutes, at the request of aggrieved husbands and wives, in `suspected' houses, or wandering the streets as `suspicious', as `common night-walkers', or as `lewd, idle and disorderly women who could give no good account of their life and conversation'. And similar notions of reputation ± of being able to prove the respectability of one's `life and conversation' ± were central throughout the legal process. Men and women detained for picking one another up were almost automatically discharged by a magistrate if `it appeared they were people of some Character'.12 Others gained their release by producing reputable character witnesses. No less importantly, in cases where suspicion or evidence of misconduct remained too strong to permit an outright acquittal, the ability to produce credible sureties ± householders of good credit and reputation ± was crucial. It made the difference between being carted off to a house of correction for a spell at hard labour, and being bound over by recognizance, in other words entrusted back to the oversight of one's friends and neighbours. The comparative legal immunity enjoyed by the keepers of bawdy houses,

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irrespective of their public infamy, was based in part on similar notions of social credit: because such men and women were householders, they were by de®nition people of some reputation, and therefore entitled to sureties or to a trial by jury. They could not simply be sent to a house of correction. In short, a semblance of social respectability was a prerequisite for negotiating the legal system.13 Without it, the force of the law as an instrument of moral and social control was undiluted. Appeals to credit and reputation offered little defence, for example, to pauper families who were forcibly split up and removed to different parishes on account of the unsolemnized relationship between the husband and wife, and the consequent bastardy of their children.14 And they failed to protect those unfortunate friends who ventured into a house of correction to testify to a detained woman's good character but were themselves adjudged to be `suspitious' or `idle and ill persons', and therefore summarily whipped and committed to hard labour alongside her.15 Because the judicial criteria of reputation were essentially male ones, men generally stood a better chance of proving their respectability than women. Most men charged with an illicit sexual relationship, for example, were bound over, whilst their partners had at best only a ®fty±®fty chance of escaping the house of correction.16 Yet the appearance of reputation was hardly an objective matter, and sexual offenders were adept at grasping and twisting the law to their own advantage. The less reputable, in fact, the more experienced and successful they often were at counterfeiting the trappings of respectability. Many prostitutes and brothelkeepers were able to fool magistrates by producing as reputable sureties individuals who were in fact just as discreditable as themselves; and men and women bound over for sexual offences were disproportionately likely to jump bail and never appear at sessions.17 Other women `of ill fame' or `loose life and conversation' managed to pass themselves off as reputable citizens whilst they used the courts maliciously, for example to blackmail men for pretended rape or bastardy.18 In short, notions of sexual and social reputation were commonly manipulated even by those who supposedly had none. That the law was socially biased is a truism: it was meant to be so. Yet in this context it was often not status itself but the ability of men and women to fake it that gave them an advantage.

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The civil war and interregnum had two main consequences for moral discipline in the capital. On the one hand, they fatally undermined ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The church courts were abolished for almost two decades and then found it impossible to regain their authority when re-established at the Restoration.19 On the other hand, there was never any question of abandoning the principle of public discipline.20 So secular jurisdiction was symbolically expanded by the Adultery Act of 1650 and, in practice, maintained through established common-law procedures.21 The net result after 1660 was that sexual immorality remained a major focus of secular policing. During the decades of the Restoration, there were close to a thousand prosecutions each year for sexual offences: a considerable number in its own right, and a sizeable proportion of all criminal litigation across the city.22 The bulk of this concerned the traditional targets of secular policing: street-walking, keeping or frequenting bawdy houses, and other overtly disorderly conduct. But such behaviour had never been very clearly distinguished, either in theory or in practice, from more incidental or covert acts of `lewdness' or `whoredom'.23 As a consequence, it also remained quite common throughout the later seventeenth century for men and women to be prosecuted for illicit pre- and extramarital relations. Compared to the early seventeenth century, when the church courts had been fully active, the numbers punished were inevitably much reduced. Nevertheless, adultery and fornication plainly remained within the scope of the law, and there was plenty of enthusiasm for keeping them there. In part, especially in the City of London, this continued a long tradition of paternalist control over the morals of the lower orders. Throughout the later seventeenth century, City constables and magistrates still took it upon themselves to have summarily whipped and set to hard labour poor couples who `behaved themselves in a very lewd and incontinent manner', were `idle and incontinent . . . and liveing together as man and wife', or were simply perceived to be `of loose life and conversation' and suspected of whoredom.24 The ideals of communal self-regulation that guided such activity were epitomized by the court of governors of Bridewell, the City's house of correction. What characterized its proceedings most strongly was an emphasis on local, neighbourly opinion and mechanisms of control. Court days, at which the governors examined offenders and dispensed justice, provided a forum for both the opponents and the friends and family of sexual

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offenders to present their case; and where necessary, the governors made extensive supplementary inquiries into the background and reputation of individual prisoners.25 More than one putative whore was released when `none came against her' and inquiries revealed that in fact `her Neighbors' could `satis®e the Treasurer [of the court] concerning her liveing'. Others, arrested in a suspicious house, found themselves at their hearing `being charged by severall neighbors to be idle loose persons and night walkers and commonly picking up men in the streetes and carrying them into the said bawdyhouse'.26 Most telling of all is the treatment of known or suspected prostitutes who were released from Bridewell `to live as an honest woeman' if their `friends' undertook to see to it; or were sent home `to the Churchwardens to be taken care of ', or for `her Father in Law [to] take care of her'.27 Such referrals back to the oversight of the local community were not lightly granted, of course; but they highlight the ideal of communal harmony that the governors strove to preserve. As well as such continued paternalism, the latter part of the century also saw a number of more popular initiatives that aimed to ®ll the breach in public regulation left by the demise of the church courts. In the ®rst place, the secular law was widely used by private individuals to prosecute their neighbours and relatives for various forms of sexual misconduct, thereby supplementing and supporting the activities of parish of®cers against immorality. Secondly, despite the nulli®cation of the Adultery Act, the formal indicting of sexual offenders continued after 1660: if anything, it appears to have become more common.28 Finally, the practice of prosecuting adultery and fornication as misdemeanours throughout the 1660s, 1670s and 1680s underpinned a sustained effort in the 1690s to codify and extend the law. This was part of the wider movement for `reformation of manners' after 1688, which aimed to safeguard England's providential deliverance from popish tyranny, and which made sexual vice in the capital a prominent target of its activities. In 1693, for example, the campaign's ®rst year of sustained action, indictments were brought against nine women for being common whores, bawds and adulteresses; and about a hundred more men and women were prosecuted by other means for their adultery or fornication.29 In addition, the reformers sponsored two attempts to enshrine such common-law practice in legislation: in a radical bill drafted at the very outset of the campaign in 1690, and in a more measured proposal at the high point of the movement in 1698 and 1699, which commanded considerable support.30

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Even after the turn of the century, the reformers of manners continued to advise their supporters that `Adultery, &c and all Acts of Baudry, are Breaches of the Peace . . . For which an Indictment will lie'; but the failure of the campaign to codify the procedure plainly speeded its demise.31 By 1703 the number of prosecutions had halved; and although that level was maintained for some time, the principle that adultery and fornication were actionable at common law gradually withered away. By 1730 few ordinary men and women in London sought legal redress for sexual in®delity, and when they did, magistrates no longer recognized the criminal procedure.32 A narrower, sharper de®nition of public prostitution and its legal culpability also slowly emerged. To begin with, the basis of policing gradually contracted from a general perception of immoral character ± being `of evil name and fame, generally' ± to more speci®c proof of overtly disorderly conduct. By the early eighteenth century, for example, the meaning of the term `night-walker' had evolved from any person of suspect demeanour to the more concrete `Men and Women that walk the Streets to pick up one another to commit Lewdness on Sight'.33 In addition, even the principle that public whores were inherently disorderly was progressively eroded. Throughout the seventeenth century, the summary committal and punishment of prostitutes, as of other `lewd, idle and disorderly persons', had been an uncontentious matter.34 During the early decades of the eighteenth century, however, partly in opposition to the use made of it by the campaign for reformation of manners, such peremptory justice came under increasing attack. Not the least of its critics was the lord chief justice of the day, Sir John Holt, who ruled on successive occasions that simply `being in a [bawdy] house at a time not unseasonable, shall never be cause of commitment', and that street-walkers could not be arrested without due cause. `What!', he exclaimed in the latter judgement, `must not a woman, tho' she be lewd, have the liberty to walk quietly about the streets? . . . Must not a woman of the town walk in the town streets? . . . why, a light woman hath a right of liberty as well as another to walk about the streets.'35 As Sir John's repeated invocation of `liberty' indicates, these were not mere arguments about legal niceties, but illustrations of much broader shifts in assumptions about public and private rights, and about the role of the law in upholding them. By the later 1720s, these developments had transformed legal practice even in the most conservative of metropolitan jurisdictions.

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Faced with a caseload of street-walkers and other prostitutes very similar to that of their predecessors a generation earlier, the City's chief magistrates were far more lenient than their forebears had ever contemplated being. Now, almost half the sexual offenders who appeared before them were dismissed without punishment. One common reason was that the lord mayor was satis®ed by a promise of `future amendment' or a request for pardon: a notable shift from the traditional reliance on communal, rather than personal, assurances of good behaviour. On other occasions the magistrate simply ignored his constable's assertions about a woman's character and intentions, and held that `no fact appear[ed]' for which she could legally be prosecuted.36 This notion, that being a prostitute was itself not culpable, and that street-walkers could not be detained unless actually in breach of the peace, was, again, nothing less than a reversal of conventional assumptions. Yet by the second half of the eighteenth century it had become a legal commonplace.37 Intertwined with the narrowing scope of the law was an erosion of its basis in amateur, community participation. Around the middle of the seventeenth century, the processes of the law remained central to everyday social and economic relations, and the policing of all types of crime still relied heavily upon the involvement of the wider community. The householders of each neighbourhood were personally responsible for the nightly watch. Their involvement formed the backbone of the system of binding over, by which responsibility for the good conduct of men and women was entrusted back to the local community. The views of neighbours also informed the summary jurisdiction exercised by justices of the peace, which was often based on investigation into the background of offenders. Justices themselves were appointed in virtue of their standing as leaders of the local community, as members of the gentry whose natural social role included conciliating and adjudicating the disputes of their inferiors. These procedures had evolved in the comparatively small, closelyknit communities of which most of the country had always consisted. But they were less suited to London's rapidly expanding urban environment, and in the course of the seventeenth century they came under increasing strain. Between 1600 and 1700, the capital's population more than doubled, from around 200,000 to well over 500,000, mainly through massive immigration into the northern and western suburbs.38 Throughout the city, economic and social life was

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ever more complex and fast-paced, making all forms of unpaid, voluntary community service increasingly burdensome and unattractive. Anxiety over crime and lawlessness, and its apparent increase in the capital, spiralled upwards, especially after the revolution of 1688.39 As a result, the organization of policing was gradually reshaped. The process was most marked, and can be traced in greatest detail, in the City of London, whose machinery of justice longest retained the paternalistic characteristics of earlier ages and smaller communities. But it was paralleled throughout the metropolis. The most fundamental change occurred at the grass roots, where the tradition of co-opting constables and watchmen from amongst the male householders of each neighbourhood was gradually replaced by the employment of dedicated professionals. The ad hoc hiring of substitute watchmen by individual householders was already common practice by the later seventeenth century. In many places, this developed in due course into the levy of a local rate on those unwilling to watch in person. In richer parishes, like those in the heart of the City, parts of the West End and Westminster, such professionalization was driven by recurrent concerns over the apparent growth of burglary, highway robbery and other forms of property crime. In other parts of town, an important catalyst was the campaign for reformation of manners, which funded its activities with money raised by subscription. The ultimate outcome of these various local and private initiatives was that between 1735 and 1742 each of the parishes of the capital set up a permanent, salaried patrol of dedicated watchmen, ®nanced by a compulsory rate on its propertied inhabitants.40 Similar developments gradually transformed the constabulary. Constables were the linchpins of local policing: the supervisors of the night watch and the most visible upholders of neighbourhood law and order. The of®ce was allocated, by election, to a different householder each year. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, it was still the norm for those elected to undertake the duty in person; yet slowly but surely, beginning in the richer City parishes, they began to employ salaried deputies to do the job on their behalf. By the middle decades of the eighteenth century, the trend towards a professional constabulary was well underway.41 The growing burdens on magistrates also led to striking changes. One was a considerable increase in the numbers of justices of the

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peace appointed.42 Another was that they began to co-operate and centralize their business. From 1737 onwards, the lord mayor and aldermen, who constituted the City's justices of the peace, took turns daily to man a public judicial of®ce in the Guildhall, thereby consolidating and extending the established but erratic practice of successive lord mayors. Around the same time, the leading suburban magistrates ± ®rst Thomas de Veil, later his successors Henry and John Fielding ± similarly developed their of®ce in Bow Street into a centre of full-time law enforcement.43 A ®nal notable consequence of urban pressures was the prevalence in Westminster and Middlesex, by the early eighteenth century, of so-called `trading justices': men who acted as magistrates not, as traditionally, out of a disinterested sense of noblesse oblige, but in order to make a living from the law. In part, public concern over this phenomenon stemmed simply from distaste at the `mean degree' of many suburban justices of the peace. But along with social inferiority, trading justices were also commonly accused of ± and occasionally brought to book for ± taking bribes, in¯ating legal charges and generally perverting justice for their own ends.44 In sum, from being a shared social duty, responsibility for enforcement of the law was, at all levels, increasingly restricted to those who made a career out of it. As the holding of legal of®ce became ever less dependent on social standing, and more on professional expertise, such men even began to rise through the ranks: from informer to constable, from high constable to magistrate, and eventually even from thief-taker to justice of the peace.45 These changes in the character of policing were incremental, and they continued for many decades. But their initial implementation in the later 1730s and 1740s nevertheless marked a watershed in the nature of metropolitan justice. Above all, it signalled the abandonment of the principle that policing should be a matter of local self-regulation, based upon amateur, community participation. Henceforth, the role of active householders was largely limited to the ®nancing and oversight of the work of others; and the practice of professional patrols and business-like magistracy was to be the norm, rather than a perversion of it.46 Transferring the responsibility for monitoring crime from local communities into the hands of a comparatively small number of dedicated professionals in this way was, of course, meant to increase ef®ciency: and probably there was some general improvement in

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night-time surveillance. But it also led to a more laissez-faire approach to moral offences. It left adulterers and fornicators undisturbed. Presentments of bawdy houses steadily declined. And, as is abundantly clear from the surviving watch records, most salaried watchmen and constables tended to eschew the active prosecution of prostitutes in favour of developing a modus vivendi with the streetwalkers on their beat.47 Other types of crime were less troublesome and considerably more pro®table to pursue.48 An equally signi®cant change was that the practice of jurisdiction gradually lost its roots in neighbourhood opinion and participation. By the early eighteenth century, even magistrates in the City showed little interest any more in investigating the social background of sexual offenders before sentencing them, or in attempting to reintegrate them into the local community after their punishment. The additional layer of personal examination and jurisdiction that had operated at Bridewell for a century and a half disappeared almost completely. Its governors gradually met less and less frequently as a court; their interrogation of individual prisoners became perfunctory; they no longer bothered with inquiries of friends and neighbours; and the house of correction increasingly resembled its suburban counterparts. As magistrates became less paternal and more business-like, ®nally, they also shed much of their role as informal mediators in social and personal relations. Up until the later seventeenth century, this had been a prominent feature of the magisterial patriarchy of the City: where private conciliation had failed, for example, a couple with marital dif®culties could appeal to the lord mayor's arbitration, rather than engage in formal litigation. A generation or so later, as the exercise of justice was progressively streamlined and distanced from the everyday life of parishes, wards and neighbourhoods, this was no longer the case.49 The gradual separation of policing from direct community participation undermined the effectiveness of moral regulation even when there remained considerable of®cial will and popular enthusiasm for the rigorous enforcement of the law. By the middle of the eighteenth century, such zeal was really only directed at the problem of bawdy houses, which had come to be regarded as particularly noxious centres of crime and disorder. At the same time, however, the legal procedures available against them had proved increasingly inadequate. The Disorderly Houses Act of 1752, the ®rst statute concerned with sexual crimes since 1650, was an attempt to rectify this. It

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offered large rewards to neighbours who gave evidence against bawdy houses, required constables to prosecute whenever such testimony was forthcoming and ordered that prosecutions be paid for by the parish. These were potentially very effective revisions of the law. Yet in practice the Act led to very few successful prosecutions, and its overall impact was negligible.50 At the root of the problem lay the growing unwillingness of local householders to engage in legal battle with brothel-keepers. The immediate reasons were obvious. Such action was troublesome and time consuming, it laid one open to counter-attack from some of the most dangerous and vexatious litigants in town, and even if pursued with great enthusiasm its chances of success were not good. Not even the formation of a new society for reformation of manners in the later 1750s could overcome these practical problems.51 Yet there were also more subtle reasons for the dwindling ef®cacy of the law. One was declining neighbourly cohesion in the face of vice. In the parish of Covent Garden, for example, as in other parts of the West End, the high level of legal action against prostitution maintained throughout the later seventeenth century was but one expression of a ®erce struggle by the neighbourhood's respectable inhabitants against the street-walkers, bawdy houses and other lubricity that increasingly encroached upon them.52 By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, that battle had been lost, the more prosperous inhabitants had largely moved away, and the texture of social relations in the parish was very different. A related development was hinted at by the magistrate Saunders Welch, a tireless campaigner against bawdy houses. `Few prosecutions have been commenced upon this act', he believed, because of `the dread and terror every man is under of incurring the odious name of informer'.53 Undoubtedly such revulsion had been strengthened by the recent involvement of informers in the campaign against gin.54 But what is more signi®cant is precisely that private initiative in judicial efforts against vice had by the mid-eighteenth century become restricted effectively to informing, to the incidental passing on of information to the `proper' authorities. Throughout the later seventeenth century, metropolitan bawdy houses had been subject to fairly consistent and effective policing, animated by private householders whose relationship with the machinery of the law was still comparatively intimate. By the 1750s, in contrast, the remaining respectable inhabitants of Covent Garden sought to tackle bawdy

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houses simply by offering a reward to informers, not through any direct action of their own.55 In their own eyes, in the provisions of the Disorderly Houses Act, and in the view of professional magistrates such as Welch, respectable householders had become exclusively the requesters of prosecutions, leaving the dirty work to the dedicated agents of the law. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw considerable changes in the relationship between personal and communal obligations in many spheres of life. This essay has sketched one small but signi®cant aspect of this process. One of the most distinctive features of social relations in medieval and early modern England was the use of the law to mediate and enforce norms of sexual conduct. Such public regulation was never comprehensive, nor could it be. But its objectives commanded broad acceptance, its principles were rooted in powerful notions of communal oversight, and its practice was animated throughout by popular participation. This had been so for hundreds of years, and it remained largely true even in the complex social environment of late seventeenth-century London, where sexual discipline continued to be a matter of considerable juridical effort and neighbourhood involvement. Barely a century later, by contrast, the practice of policing in the capital was very different: largely separated from direct community engagement, heavily dependent upon men who made their living from the law, and with signi®cantly altered priorities regarding moral conduct. In legal practice, adultery and fornication were now generally conceived of as private matters, whereas public prostitution had come to be more distinctly and more narrowly de®ned. In part, these developments were shaped by intellectual and cultural trends that have not been considered here. Most obviously, attitudes towards the causes and consequences of sexual immorality were rather different by the middle of the eighteenth century from what they had been a hundred years earlier: the mental world of Pamela was far removed from that of Hudibras. Ideas were also disseminated in different ways, especially in the metropolis, where new forms of association, new types of publication and new ways of disseminating them evolved with dazzling speed from the end of the seventeenth century onwards. The effect of such trends upon the practice of sexual regulation can be seen not just in the changing nature of judicial policy, but also in its gradual supplementation by

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new public initiatives: charitable institutions for girls at risk of seduction; hospitals for penitent prostitutes; open discussions in the columns of newspapers; exercises in political arithmetic that sought to calculate the precise scale and social gradations of vice; and so on. Yet none of this is explicable without also taking into account the processes of social and institutional change outlined in this essay, which themselves profoundly affected both the practice of sexual policing and the principles that underlay it. One such process was a transformation in the way that public regulation was organized. In part this was an unintended consequence of the civil war and interregnum, which wrecked ecclesiastical jurisdiction without successfully putting much in its place. But as far as secular policing is concerned, the main reasons were more parochial. Traditionally, the enforcement of secular justice was a responsibility shared throughout the community, as a means of ensuring equity and consensus. In the unique circumstances of the capital, however, this system was increasingly found wanting. The norms of reputation and social status upon which it relied were much more fallible. The practical burdens it placed on householders were increasingly untenable. And the scale of the problems it faced, in every area of policing, became ever more pressing and more apparent. In response to this, there occurred, over the course of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a gradual professionalization of every aspect of policing, prosecution and jurisdiction, and a concomitant withering away of active community involvement in the upholding of public discipline. These developments appear to have paralleled a more general decline in the use of the law by ordinary individuals and in personal affairs, not just in London but throughout the country. By the middle of the eighteenth century, as a result, litigation and legal mechanisms were far less central to social and communal relations than they had been a hundred years earlier.56 The professionalization of the law had its own dynamic.57 But it also helped reshape the very norms and categories upon which public discipline had traditionally rested. The gradual decline of neighbourhood involvement contributed to the decriminalization of adultery and fornication. It led to a more laissez-faire approach to the policing of prostitution. And even when, as in the case of bawdy houses, the scope of the law remained undiminished in principle, the withdrawal of community participation greatly undermined its effectiveness in practice. Finally, although the distinction should not be

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exaggerated, judicial theory and practice were increasingly based on de®nitions of fact by of®cers of the law, rather than on judgements of reputation by the community as a whole. All in all, these developments testi®ed to more than just the growing dif®culty of policing a vast and sprawling metropolis. They also illustrated profound changes, between the early seventeenth and the mid-eighteenth century, in the nature of community life in the capital. Above all, they marked a lasting shift in the boundary between private and public affairs, and in the relationship between sex, social relations and the law.

chapter 4

Exhortation and entitlement: negotiating inequality in English rural communities, 1550±1650 Steve Hindle

`Go and see the miseries of our poore brethren', insisted John Rogers, minister of Dedham (Essex), a community said in 1628 to consist `onlie of a number of Clothyers and a great Companye of poore people w[hi]ch are by them sett on worke'. See their ruinous and cold houses, poore ®re to make amends with, empty cupboards, thin clothing and so neare the wind, cold lodging, slender covering, and to see what exceeding paines some take early and late, to see others in how great pain and af¯iction they lie, and how little to comfort them.

`If our heart be not made of an Adamant', Rogers argued, `this will move us.'1 Such vivid descriptions of unrelieved poverty, drawing as they did on a venerable tradition of clerical exhortation in which rehearsal of the miseries of the poor was intended to inspire compassion, were missionary in intent.2 `See', John Downame lamented in 1616, `their small provision, hungrie fare, thinne cloathes, and hard lodging, the children crying for hunger, and the parents out crying them because they have no food to give them.' Downame's description of poverty also, however, betrayed the contemporary tendency to classify `the poore', in this case into three categories: `some lying in straw for want of beddes; others drinking water instead of drinke; and a thirde sorte neere starved with hunger for want of bread, or escaping that, quaking or shivering with cold for lack of ®re'.3 For these early Stuart clergymen, then, the poor were readily identi®ed and their plight easily improved. So long as the rich were compassionate, misery could be mitigated. Although clerical discourse was hardly direct reportage of social experience, it nonetheless provides qualitative commentary on a social problem frequently assessed only in quantitative terms. Indeed, the debate on the nature, scale and signi®cance of poverty has turned almost invariably on statistical evidence generated by the 102

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institution ± the civil parish ± created by Elizabethan legislation. That evidence was, by de®nition, designed to be audited: orders and expenses for whippings, inventories of work-stocks, accounts of pensions and doles.4 In particular, calculations of poor relief expenditure and of numbers of pensioners have been used to `demonstrate' the levity of the welfare burden. Thus A. L. Beier's analysis of nine widely-dispersed urban and rural parishes in the period 1582±1630 revealed that parish `collectioners' constituted on average 7 per cent of inhabitants. Beier emphasised the existence of a second group, perhaps another 12 per cent of parish populations, who, although they did not regularly receive relief, were certainly at risk of doing so occasionally.5 There has, however, been little discussion of the precise relationship between pensioners, the casually-relieved, and those not on relief, a striking historiographical omission given that rhetorics of exhortation to charity and entitlement to relief were so vociferously rehearsed by contemporaries. `The poorer sort of people' was a term easily bandied about, and doubtless had its place in the repertoire of rule. It nonetheless fails to convey the dif®culties of either the contemporary or the historical project of delineating poverty in local communities. Those who exploited common rights, for instance, included not only those ancient inhabitants who held legally-commonable cottages but also those recent migrants who had de facto access by virtue of their residence in the shanty-towns of hovels that proliferated around wastes. Indeed, it was their very inability to police the illegitimate uses of waste that ultimately compelled many rural elites to contemplate the drastic expedient of enclosure.6 The identi®cation of the `parish poor' was similarly ambiguous. The `poor' included not only paupers and occasional collectioners, but also many others who were unrelieved altogether. At the local level, these relatively ®ne distinctions might exert enormous in¯uence on the allocation of entitlements. This chapter, accordingly, reconstructs both the discourses in which attitudes towards `the poor' were expressed, and the strategies adopted by existing and prospective paupers when they were confronted with parish of®cers. By drawing on the archives of vestry and magistracy, it investigates the in¯uence of the rhetoric of welfare on the idiom in which inequality was negotiated and explores the thresholds of tolerance within which the local politics of welfare were fought out. It argues that while the fundamental realities of economic differentiation might provoke those conspicuous episodes of domi-

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nation and resistance with which historians of popular protest have been preoccupied, the negotiation of inequality in the civil parish was characterised by more delicate political tensions and by more ¯uid social alignments. Although the principles of order, hierarchy and subordination were as central to the politics of the parish as of the realm, the signi®cance of their more subtle rami®cations is often ignored.7 This is particularly surprising in that the statutory provision of social welfare endowed those local elites who controlled the economic surplus with an even greater voice in the allocation of resources.8 the discourse of exhortation In their advice about the treatment of the poor, the propertied elites of early modern England drew upon a `common fund of ideas' about riches, idleness and poverty, which approached the status of a moral orthodoxy.9 Privy councillors, clergymen and moralists performed a chorus of exhortation to charity, which, for all its polyphony, was nonetheless harmonious. Churches across the land echoed with the injunctions that the relief of the poor was an inescapable duty; that almsgiving must be discriminating in order that resources be bestowed on the deserving poor; that charity began at home and moved outward to kindred and neighbourhood; that idleness was dangerous; that the poor should behave with forbearance and patience even in the face of oppression; that covetousness was corrosive of social harmony and social order; and that man's relationship to property was one of temporary stewardship rather than absolute ownership. These were the terms of the charitable imperative as contemporaries understood them. 10 Thus John Rogers' `rules for right relieving' speci®ed that charity be given righteously (`of our own lawfully come by, not what we have gotten by oppression or wrong'); freely (`without expecting a recompense'); cheerfully (`as a freewill offering'); seasonably (`not tomorrow, if now they need'); and wisely (`not lashing it on too fast, but measuring it out as it may continue'). Alms should also be given where they would be of maximum bene®t. Charity should be dispensed where there is `most neede: not the lusty to have it and the old, lame, blind, impotent and young children to want'.11 This emphasis on discrimination, which pre®gured the subsequent appropriation of discretion by the of®cers of the civil parish, was widely

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shared among early Stuart clergymen. John Downame insisted that the `honest poore' could be `more liberallie relieved' only if `evil devourers did not eate up their portion', a distinction which prompted a characteristically lurid description of that `promiscuous generation' of `sturdy beggars and vagrant rogues' that he regarded as a `blemish of our government and a burthen to the commonwealth'.12 Rogers agreed, describing the dreadful abuse of resources implied by indiscriminate hospitality. `It is a great disorder in some great mens keeping open house at Christmas that the rude idle prophane round about they come thither to meate, but the very poore indeed which cannot travell in the dirt and cold and crowd, they sit at home and want.' The discriminating dispensation of alms should not, however, altogether preclude the relief of the delinquent: `give even the bad in their want, if they be diligent to do what they can; yet give them with instructions and admonitions to keepe their church, have a care of their soules, and to bring up their children to worke, not to pilfering, idleness or begging, rebuking them for these or any such faults'. Even informal provision for the poor should, therefore, be accompanied by moral teaching.13 Clergymen, nonetheless, anticipated some resistance to the very principle of almsgiving. The `objections that are usually made against the giving of alms' offered by Samuel Gardiner in 1597 epitomise the genre. Those who were reluctant to give alms pleaded that they were themselves too poor (`it was as good to give nothing at all as by presenting a mite of no moment'); that the multitude of poor was too great (`thinking it better, seeing they cannot serve all, to serve none at all: for in releeving but of some, it may so be, that the worser sort may be comforted, and the better sort neglected'); that the poor were idle, ungrateful and undigni®ed (`Why should my pains maintaine their ease: my industrie, their securitie; my thrifte, their waste; my charitie, their unthankfulnesse; my wisdome, their folly?'); that they would themselves fall into penury (`they are in feare of wanting themselves, and to become poore, by releeving and succouring of the poore'); that their ®rst obligations lay with their own children (`the pensive care had of our posterity, choketh many of us, causing us either negligently to remitte, or altogether carelessly to omitte', the duty of charity); and that they had absolute rights in their own property (`that whatsoever they have is their owne: and therefore that it is at their pleasure to order it, or keepe it by themselves, or otherwise to convert it as they shall thinke it good').14

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There were, however, interesting variations on the theme. Rogers envisaged the propertied complaining that the poor were `so thievish that one can keepe nothing for them'. Because `they break my hedges, carry away my barres, pluck up my stiles', the rich man determined to `give them nothing'.15 Gardiner abhorred such selfinterest, condemning the man `that hoardeth up the good blessings of God and hideth them in his hutch, which the Lorde would have common and distributed abroade'. But his immediate quali®cation of the logic of charity resonated with that fear for social stability so characteristic of late Elizabethan thinking: `I speake not this to infringe the proprietie and just title that every man hath to the goods, which God hath lent him, and to bring in Platoes Commonwealth, and the Anabaptisticall Communion of all thinges.' `Without distinct degrees of persons and estates', he insisted, commonwealths `cannot possiblie consist.'16 In reconciling the doctrine of stewardship with the ideology of possessive individualism, Gardiner con¯ated the discourse of exhortation with that of entitlement. Rogers himself crystallised the issue: the propertied were `stewards in respect of God (though owners amongst men)'.17 This reading of stewardship self-consciously allowed for the agency of the propertied in the construction of entitlement, an appropriation which became increasingly signi®cant as institutional welfare spread across the English countryside. In the meantime, the fusion of anxieties about social order and concern for the deserving provided the intellectual context in which the Elizabethan regime sponsored an ambitious project of co-ordinated almsgiving, the provision of `general hospitality' under the terms of Three Homelies to Moove Compassion Towards the Poore and Needie (1596).18 the discourse of entitlement Especially in years of dearth, therefore, the provision of alms was stretched to the limit. As is well known, the 1590s saw the introduction of the statutory obligation to relieve the poor in cash and kind through the institutions of the civil parish.19 Although the discourses which in¯uenced the institutionalisation of welfare have received rather less attention, the widespread belief that the propertied were failing in their Christian obligations was prominent amongst them.20 `In this obdurate age of ours', complained the anonymous author of An Ease for Overseers of the Poore (1601), `neither

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godly persuasions of the pastors nor pitifull exclamations of the poore can move any to mercie unless there were a law made to compell them'. Particularly offensive was the conduct of those who `follow the law for every tri¯e, frequent idle pastures to abuse the time, consort with ill company to corrupt their manners, exceede in apparelle and diet beyond their degrees, but will not parte with a pennie unless it be compulsively to doe the poore goode'. `Most', he alleged, `give to the poore rather by compulsion than by compassion'.21 But even when poor relief had become a statutory obligation, it was alleged, the propertied proved recalcitrant. Although there were `creditable, charitable and conscionable men' whose willing contributions distinguished them as responsible ratepayers, others objected to the very principle of compulsory taxation. While some simply begrudged their rates, others betrayed a more `sinister resistance', deliberately absenting themselves from meetings and pleading that `they have no money about them' even when apprehended at church. Then there were those `sworne enemies to the poore', who scandalised the overseers, paid with `such repining', and practised such `shiftes of impiety', that they would `gripe and beguile the poor'.22 Whether or not these allegations exaggerated the scale of resistance to poor rates, they served the rhetorical purpose of conspiring with the conscientious to distance themselves from the potential abrogation of charitable responsibility. The institutionalisation of relief, therefore, introduced a vital element of compulsion to the exercise of charity. It also encouraged the systematic use of discrimination. Rogers argued that a dole `distributed by the of®cers and chief men of the town that know how to give it indifferently and where most nede is' would not only be `much greater relief to the poore and so a more charitable worke', but would also save the rich `a very great deal of trouble and prevent a great deale of sinne' committed by the `rude company' of beggars `in their unseasonable returnings home' from gentry houses. Similarly, if the poor were found employment by parish of®cers and supplied only with those necessities that `they cannot reach to by their labour', pilfering would be prevented. Rogers had no doubts about the desirability of discretionary relief, arguing that thieves should be `well punisht, either by the whip, or else their collection that week kept back'. Only the institutionalised discretion of the overseer could ensure that the poor were disciplined. `If they be not as well

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looked to', he argued, `a greate many will begge or steale rather than get [their living] by working'.23 It fell, therefore, to parish of®cers to construct the calculus according to which the entitlements of the poor were computed. Who, then, should serve as overseer, and how should he conduct himself ? An Ease for Overseers argued that because `the of®ce of overseer extendeth farre' (`to employ by worke', `to relieve by money', and `to order by discretion the defects of the poore'), parish of®cers should ideally be `subsidie men', or (failing that) `substantiall men', whose `competencie of wealthe' endowed them with the necessary `grace', `majestie', `circumspection', `respect', `compassion' and `countenance' to `controll the poore'. They should display their experience of the law; respect the honour of the of®ce; and be prepared to incur both the `skorne of the foolishe' and `the feare and regarde of the discreet'. Ultimately, therefore, overseers had not only a `pastoral' role, `to have charge over the poore as the shephearde over his sheepe', but also a `political' role, `to be governors of the poore'.24 The overseers' handbook was, accordingly, stringent about the demeanour of parish of®cers. The `mildness' of many overseers, it feared, was `a means to animate the idle: for where the of®cer hath not a countenance mixt with some austeritie the poor will presume too much of libertie'. On the other hand, however, there were those of®cers who were `to[o] busy', who had `no felicitie but in taunting, reviling and abusing the poor'. It was enough that the poor were punished by God with poverty without them also being crossed by man with severity.25 Parish of®cers should nevertheless personally visit the houses of the poor to inspect their condition. They were, after all, overseers. All too frequently, Rogers warned, parish of®cers `goe by hearsay which is oft uncertain', or (worse) `by the wordes of the poore themselves', or even (worst of all) by the words of the `most bold and importunate, when others that have more neede, and are better to be regarded, cannot so well speak for themselves'.26 `To inquire after poore', others agreed, `is the next way to procure poore'. Such is `the impudency of this age', feared An Ease for Overseers, `that many will dissemble their estates to have relief ', perhaps even pleading `to be recorded in the booke for the poore when they are better able to contribute to the poore'. 27 Although household visits were therefore desirable, the inspection of the character of the poor ought not to be excessive. Downame warned that `too much care and scrupulosity' turned overseers into

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magistrates who were `so busy examining the poore about their estate and desert that they can ®nd no leisure to open their purse or relieve their wantes'. Discrimination might easily become `a vaile to hide our niggardlinesse and hardhartednesse', leading ultimately to the abrogation of the charitable ideal: `let not the disorder and inordinate courses of some make you desist from doing the workes of mercy and pick a quarrell against almes deedes because of the unworthinesse of those who are to receive them'.28 The collaborative application of principled discretion was in®nitely to be preferred to individual caprice. Although some overseers were `so high conceited that they will hardly incline to consult with their fellowes but will bear the whole sway', they should ideally discuss welfare policy at vestry meetings, and `when everyone hath delivered his opinion, let his speech be preferred which accordeth most with reason, and consisteth best in action for the bene®t of the commonweal'. 29 But `what contentions' there were, bewailed Rogers, `at the making of rates!' The social distribution of liability was undoubtedly an issue, it being a `common oversight in this age that in most cases of taxation the sense of equalitie is disallowed: the poore cannot, the rich will not, but the middle sort must pay all'.30 Even more controversial, however, was the level at which the assessment should be set. An Ease for Overseers offered con¯icting advice on this point. In the ®rst place, it repeatedly insisted that the burden of assessment should be weighed according to the needs of the poor. The taxing of money for a stock must be `ordered according to the multitude of the poore, the abilitie of the parish and the place of habitation'. Rates should be proportioned `by the necessetie of the poore and not the poore by the direction of your rates'. It was therefore crucial that the overseer, like a general counting troops in preparation for a military campaign, should make a `just computation' of the poor. He must make ®ne judgements about the level of need and register them in `a readie form for the speedie inspection of the poore'. In the second place, however, overseers should be sensitive to the possibility that the tax burden might become excessive: `contributions are not given to make or multiplie poore but to mitigate povertie'. Just as the law gave `libertie to taxe men always as occasion requires', it also left `a discretion to abate something as the time serveth'. `When things are plentiful and cheape, those rates must discontinue which were taxed in deere and extreme times.' Parish of®cers were, therefore, encouraged to reduce assessments whenever possible: `the abilitie of the

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parishe must not be pretermitted, and a pitiful man will not overburden his beasts, much less his brethren'. `The multitude of the poore', then, `must be reduced in number for in some places they be very few and in many places they swarme'. Above all, overseers were to avoid the prejudice of the parish by ensuring that a pension was the very last resort. The `willing and tractible' should be employed in their own homes: `if you holde so many to worke as be able to worke, and ought to worke, you shall neede the less money to distribute and give away'. Those who received pensions when they might be gainfully employed were `no better than thieves'. The `wilfull and incorrigible', by contrast, `must be constrained to work in the house of correction that by applying labour and punishment to their bodies, their froward natures may be bridled, their evill mindes may be bettered and others terri®ed by their example'.31 Parish of®cers were therefore impaled on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, they were confronted with `real' problems of human misery that were not simply `constructed' by the sinfulness, idleness and disobedience with which contemporary polemicists were obsessed. On the other, they acted as custodians of communal resources, and were therefore obliged to prevent the unnecessary in¯ation of welfare costs. The obvious tension between these two positions became central to the ubiquitous struggles over the calculation of entitlement that were fought out, parish by parish, during the early seventeenth century. welfare and the negotiation of inequality In focusing on discourses rather than on material conditions, the previous analysis has sought to supplement the quantitative accounts of poverty that dominate the historiography and to throw the political negotiation of welfare policy into even greater relief. The politics of the poor rate can nevertheless be reconstructed only through analysis of the real effects of this process of negotiation. The following discussion therefore seeks to reconcile these rhetorical strategies with evidence of their material consequences. In doing so, it argues that the gradual institutionalisation of welfare both reinforced and transformed contemporary understandings of order, hierarchy and subordination. In the ®rst place, there is widespread evidence of reluctance to raise taxation for the relief of anybody except the deserving `poore

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by casualtie'. Richard Callow of Fulham (Middlesex), presented for non-payment of parish rates in 1602, argued that he was `quitted from paying of anie such dutie by statute because the constable of everie hamlet ought to keepe awaie the beggars wch they do not'. It was reported from Essex in 1629 that there was `a generall aversenesse in the countrie to the payment' of assessments, ratepayers `conceivinge that they are not bound by the statute [of 1601] to contribute to the reliefe of any other people than such as are lame, impotent, blind and such others as beinge poore are not able to worke'. Indeed, many parish archives are permeated by the fear that the interests of the ancient settled poor were prejudiced by hordes of shiftless migrants.32 When the vestrymen of North Nibley (Gloucestershire) drew up resolutions for the poor in September 1614, they predictably began with the problems of in®ltration and idleness, requiring listings of strangers, cottagers, inmates, hedgebreakers and disorderly alehouses. Their most revealing decision, however, was `to consider generally of the poore of the whole parish': viz: who they are that receive monethly almes, who they are that are ®tt to be releeved & yet receive nothinge, howe many men or women are ®tt to be bound apprentice to other men that nowe lie pilferinge and stealinge in every corner, how many and who are able to worke & nowe live idlely, what bastards there are in the parishe that nowe receive relief from the parish or from their reputed fathers, and who such reputed fathers are, howe many families are in the parishe that nowe neither give nor receive contribution.

The vestrymen envisaged this census as the basis for a reallocation of communal resources: reducing the burden of assessment by the use of discretionary punishments, apprenticeship agreements, employment schemes and paternity bonds; and balancing the demands of those in need and not on relief with the interests of those who neither paid rates nor received pensions. Precise identi®cation of the deserving would therefore permit the more equitable allocation of entitlements.33 The vestrymen of Paddington (Middlesex) were even more explicit, prefacing their orders `for the better mayntenance and relief of the poore' of August 1623 with the imperative that the parish `be not from henceforth overcharged with too great a number of poore'. The subsequent regulations stipulated the control of immigration, the expulsion of inmates, the provision of indemnity bonds, the aggressive taxation of landlords, the restriction of new building and

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the prevention of the subdivision of tenements. The local labour market was to be secured against `strangers and unknown persons' who `take awaye (by theire gettinge of worke into their handes) the meanes of mayntenance and reliefe which otherwise the poore of this parishe should have for their help and sustenance'. Above all, the `setlinge' of `ympotent and indigent persons likelie to bring a charge unto this parishe' was to be prevented. Finally, the conduct of the poor themselves was to be scrutinised: `any poore [person] able to woorke and yet neglegteth the same, through idleness drunkeness or other unthriftiness, whereby he and his charge is destitute of meanes' was to be reported to the magistrates and committed to the house of correction so that `he may be brought to labour for his liveinge'.34 Elsewhere, it seems, assessments were regarded as undesirable even for the deserving. Sergeant Hoskins advised the Herefordshire bench in 1634 how `to prevent the charge of the poore upon every parish'. Taxation could be eliminated altogether, he argued, if the native poor were bound apprentice for twenty-four years at the age of eleven; if the migrant poor were whipped home; and if ®nes for those guilty of the statutory misdemeanours (swearing, drunkenness, poaching, pilfering, tippling) were used as an alternative to poor rates as the basis for a parish stock. The reluctance of jurors to present such offenders both wronged the poor and burdened parishes `who might this waie be eased'. Hoskins' lack of con®dence that his advice would be heeded is implicit in his sardonic promise to `keep all the poore of Herefordshire at his own expense' if the jurymen complied. He nonetheless believed that these `few rules' had been used throughout England `above these dozen years with great contentment of all degrees of persons', a view con®rmed by an order made by the Northamptonshire justices in 1625. Provision `for the necessary relief of the poor unable to work and for setting to work all such persons as have no other means or trade of life whereby to get their living' was to be combined with the presentment of `all such persons as shall at any time drinke or sweare or take Goddes name in vaine or shall neglect duely to observe and keepe holy the sabbath day'.35 Where the principle of rates was generally accepted, moreover, there were political costs, and the price was paid by the poor themselves. Ratepayers had a vested interest in exploiting the latitude granted by the Elizabethan statutes, and they ensured that entitlement to relief remained conditional. A charge of 1623, for

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instance, empowered parish of®cers to report idle labourers to magistrates who would commit them to bridewell; to ascertain every weekend which of the poor had work for the next week, and supply materials on which they could be employed; to ensure that pauper children be taught knitting and spinning; and to make a twiceweekly search for suspected nightwalkers and stolen goods. Most signi®cantly, however, overseers were not only to punish, but also to withhold poor relief from, pilferers and idlers. The money thus saved would be used to reward those inhabitants who informed on pauper delinquency, at the rate of sixpence a time.36 The informal sanctions of the civil parish might as easily be used against thieves and malingerers as against drunkards and swearers. From this perspective, the poor were eligible for, rather than entitled to, parish relief. Welfare policy therefore reminded the poor of (indeed, actually put them in) their place, both in the geographical sense of their parish of settlement, and in the more obviously political sense of their relations to their betters.37 In 1596, the vestry of Swallow®eld (Wiltshire) articulated the priorities of ratepayers by minuting their desire that `all shall do their best to helpe' the `blynd, the syck, the lame & diseased persons'. This bald statement of the charitable imperative found its counterpoint in their distinction between the `honest poore' and `pilferers, backbiters hedge breakers & myscchevous persons, and all such as be prowde, dissentious & arrogant'. Above all, the poor should be content with their lot: those who `will malepertlye compare with their betters and sett them at nought' were `warned to live and behave them selves as becomethe them'. Those who failed to show due deference were to be reviled as `comon disturbers of peace and quyetnes' and `reformed by the severitie of the lawe'.38 Discretion therefore lay at the heart of all institutionalised charity in early seventeenth-century England, and whatever the terms on which it was exercised, the propertied evidently expected the poor to adopt the appropriate postures of deservingness and gratitude.39 So much for the attitudes of the propertied. What of paupers themselves? Because the `complex local politics' in the administration of the poor laws have not yet fully been explored, the in¯uence of welfare on the popular mentalities of subordination remains obscure.40 By de®nition, however, the parish pension was the product of a culture of dependency: `the mixture of relief and control represented by the poor laws' provided in `its balance of communal

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identi®cation and social differentiation a powerful reinforcement of habits of deference and subordination'.41 Keith Wrightson's judgement nonetheless raises more questions than it answers. Of course, the poor were expected to be content with their lot. `Keep a good tongue though men deale not very well with you', Rogers urged. `Carry yourselves dutifully and humbly towards the rich and all your superiors', he insisted, `not saucy, surly, ill-tongued: [be] patient and meeke when you receive a reproofe and [do] not swell or give ill words.'42 Disobedience was a sure sign that the poor were undeserving, and those polemicists who chose to emphasise it were, by de®nition, engaging in the discursive construction of entitlement. In 1597, Henry Arthington condemned the poor `misspending of former times in idleness when they might have wrought'; their `wilful wasting of goods when they had them in bibbing and belly-cheare'; their `impatient bearing of their present want, complaining often without cause'; `their dayly repining at others prosperity to have so much and they so little'; `their banning and cursing when they are not served as themselves desire'; and `their seldom repairing to their parish churches to heare and learne their duties better'. All these faults, he argued, `must be amended if they would have their wants supplyed'. Until then, it was entirely reasonable that overseers keep their purses closed.43 The institutionalisation of discretionary welfare, therefore, was undoubtedly intended to encourage the poor to bear their lot with patience and fortitude. Evidence from mid-seventeenth-century Warwickshire suggests that the discourse of discretion was indeed an active in¯uence on the politics of welfare as vestrymen practised them. Pensions were withheld or reduced wherever the poor behaved `idly', `disorderly', `rudely', `irreligiously', `uncivilly', `unreverently' or `intemperately'.44 The parish pension was, therefore, conditional, and expenditure lists silently exclude those paupers who fell short of the overseers' standards of civility. If the silences in overseers' accounts are only too eloquent, the carefully-itemised entries themselves are less obviously transparent than they initially seem. After all, they represent only the ®nal outcome of an often protracted process of negotiation between paupers, vestrymen and magistrates. Such negotiation might be the product not only of vestrymen's resistance to magistrates' orders, but also of appeals by paupers directly to the magistrates over the heads of the parish of®cers.45 Sympathetic appeals permitted the magistracy to rehearse

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set-piece statements of their paternalistic ethos, condemning the conduct of parish of®cers as `uncivil', `unmerciful', `unjusti®able', `barbarous', `peremptory' or even `violent'.46 Such cases were doubtless both re¯ective and constitutive of the gentry's self-image as fathers to their country. Although the magistracy could afford to condemn publicly the conduct of vestrymen in this way, the poor were perforce more circumspect. In their historically invisible doorstep encounters with parish of®cers, they doubtless rehearsed platitudes of deference so conventional that overseers probably took them for granted rather than taking them seriously. Rather more revealing is the language adopted in those formal petitions to the magistrates in which the poor sought to play off separate branches of poor relief administration against one another.47 In seeking to mobilise the intervention of the magistracy, paupers both appealed to the gentry's ancient standards of paternalism and emphasised their long residence, their age, their physical in®rmity, the burden of their children, and their previous good character. Even more striking, however, is the frequency with which such petitions referred to previous orders allocating them a pension, orders which had been ignored or condemned by vestrymen. These, then, were narratives constructed of a volatile compound of frustration, desperation and obsequiousness. Where they were ignored, the destitute might resort to the open intimidation of parish of®cers, publicly advertising their plight by camping out in church porches. In doing so, they both placed themselves at the symbolic heart of the community and secured access to any doles informally distributed after communion. 48 If anything, even the aged and the destitute self-consciously avoided the language of entitlement, since the mere suggestion that the poor thought they had a right to relief might itself alienate vestry and magistracy alike. The case of Widow Margaret Doughty of Salford, which attracted the attention of the Warwickshire Bench on at least ten occasions between 1619 and 1652, is particularly instructive. By 1633, Doughty had enjoyed a parish pension for fourteen years, during which time she had apparently `grown clamorous', behaving herself `in a very peremptory manner as if she were careless of the bene®t of the said collection or at least altogether unthankful' for it. The bench accordingly instructed the overseers to withdraw her pension until she began to `behave and demean herself peaceably and orderly' and to `show herself thankful for the same'.49 The

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opinion, among `men well able to work' when `reproved' for their `idleness and ill-husbandry', that `the parish shall keep them' was, similarly, con®dent enough to earn the contempt of the vestry of St Saviour's, Southwark (Surrey) in the early years of the century.50 Long after the Restoration, the poor were circumspect about asserting their rights: one petition to the Norfolk bench in 1670 delicately referred to overseers as `those whose of®ce it is to provide for the wants of such as are poor and impotent and past their labours'.51 Whether or not they believed in an inherent right to relief (a tendency which might well have been encouraged as practice taught them their rights under the statutes), prospective paupers found it more pro®table to perform due deference than to plead legal entitlement. The psychologies of deference, and especially the `private' or `hidden' attitudes of the subordinate, nonetheless self-evidently require further investigation. `Simulated deference' is characteristic of societies pervaded by total dependency: `the same man who touches his forelock to the squire by day ± and who goes down to history as an example of deference ± may kill his sheep, snare his pheasants or poison his dogs at night'.52 Although historians have been admirably sensitive to this semi-concealed dissident subculture, contemporaries were no less aware of the `saturnalia of power'.53 Preaching at Northampton in 1607, Robert Wilkinson noted the usual course of `creeping conspiracie', the poor beginning ®rst `in the night, as checkt with feare & conscience of a crime, but afterwards coming forth in the broad day': they ®rst `murmur upon some just cause', only subsequently `to murmur not for want but for wantones'.54 Others were also aware that the subordinate might use public deference as a cloak for less positive private assessments of their social superiors. Samuel Sheppard argued in 1652 that `however the country-man may bid you good morrow, and stubbornly bend his knee, his heart is full within, and at home he cares not what he murmurs against you; except you are in of®ce to controwle him, as a Justice of the Peace; or in ability to pleasure him, as Lord of the Mannor; or in credit to terri®e him, as some Of®cer at court'. Five years later, Roger Crab portrayed the plebeian tendency to dissimulate: `when the all seeing eye looks into every alehouse in this nation, and seeth of which sort are most there', he complained, `they will appear to be labouring poor men'. Their behaviour was characterised by two tendencies: although some were `cholericke and

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discontented and will not speake at all', others `in times of scarcity pine and murmur for want of bread, Cursing the Rich behind his Back; and before his Face, Cap and Knee and a whining countenance'. Neither of them, Crab argued, considered what they did in the time of plenty.55 There is, nonetheless, fragmentary evidence to suggest that even behind the mask of anonymity, the poor were rather less concerned with inverting the social order than in ensuring that those who stood at its apex ful®lled their traditional obligations. Although modern observers might be appalled by the complacency of a world-view in which all would be well so long as the rich were kind and the poor were patient, the idiom in which social relations were negotiated was one of social justice rather than one of economic equality. In short, rich and poor alike shared a strong sense of the paternalistic obligations of the rich. Reports that enclosing landlords were being hanged in ef®gy in Buckinghamshire in the 1570s and 1580s should not necessarily be read as manifestations of class hostility.56 The point was rather that these landlords did not know how to behave like gentlemen: the poor criticised their betters not because they were gentlemen but because their estate management belied their claims to be gentlemen. Gentility was, therefore, a contestable label, one from which `incroaching Tirants' who ground the ¯esh of their tenants on the `whetstone of poverty' by de®nition disquali®ed themselves.57 Similar criticism of the perversion of gentility was expressed in seditious libels. Although The pooremans Joye & the gentlemans plague, tossed into the choir of the parish church at Caistor (Lincolnshire), threatened those `gentlemen that rack your rents and trow down land for corne' that `the time would come that some would sigh that ever they were born', it nonetheless exempted by name from its bloody hitlist those gentlemen who were `good to the poor and to the commons kind'.58 There are echoes here of the idiom employed by the conspirator in Elizabethan Lavenham (Suffolk), who intended to lynch `riche churles', especially those who were `newe commme uppe and be heardemen', but to spare those `gentlemen of old contynuance' who knew how to conduct their relations with the poor.59 The popular discourses of inequality singled out idle magistrates, who `stood in justice's stead' and might therefore exploit networks of patronage and self-interest, for particular opprobrium. By the midseventeenth century, parish of®cers had themselves inherited this mantle of secrecy, jobbery and corruption.60

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Indeed, the popular acculturation of the paternalistic ideal further complicates our understanding of the signi®cance of discretion exercised by overseers. In this respect, students of social welfare might learn much from those historians of rural communities who have recently begun to explore the `social depth of politics'.61 The burgeoning literature on customary consciousness has articulated the resonant political language with which economically marginal groups legitimated their acts of de®ance.62 The historiography of riot is increasingly preoccupied with reconstructing not only the contours, but also the content, of popular political culture.63 Much of this literature, however, remains dependent ± sometimes self-consciously so ± on traditional, bipolar models of social, political and (above all) economic relationships: patrician and plebeian; governors and governed; propertied and propertyless.64 Even the belated rediscovery of the `middling sort' nevertheless underestimates the extent to which economic inequality was relative rather than absolute.65 Although the social order contained recognisable `social clusters', it was nonetheless relatively ®nely graded.66 This insight is of fundamental signi®cance for the reconstruction of the local politics of welfare, for it suggests that although contemporaries often applied the blanket labels of the `language of sorts' to subordinate or marginal groups, they invariably did so in de®ance of the complex realities of economic differentiation.67 There were, after all, substantial local variations not only in the scale of pauperism, but also in the ability to pay poor rates. Ratepayers constituted 57 per cent of the parish population in Cawston (Norfolk) in 1601, 45 per cent in Aldenham (Hertfordshire) throughout the seventeenth century, and 38 per cent and 31 per cent respectively in Halford and Ilmington (both Warwickshire) in 1639. 68 These were relatively polarised parishes in which the small number of occupiers who formed the elite and paid the rate bill exercised unrivalled authority over the allocation of communal resources. Elsewhere, however, the rating list reached far further down the social scale, including 77.7 per cent of the inhabitants of Sowerby and 81.6 per cent of those of Sand Hutton (both in North Yorkshire) in 1629.69 It was in these parishes, where the elite paid only a small proportion of the assessment, that the most controversial contests over individual eligibility would take place, in which (provided, of course, that they were allowed to participate at vestry meetings) the

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lesser ratepayers might actively debate questions of personal reputation, alehouse popularity and communal equity. In part, of course, these differences re¯ect variations in the structure of property-holding, itself a function of the character and strength of the local economy. Indeed, although the de®nition of poverty was most commonly `derived from an inability to pay parish rates', it should be remembered that paupers were only a small subgroup of `the poore'.70 It was not simply, after all, a question of either paying poor rates or receiving them. At Cawston in 1601, there were two intermediate groups: 16.3 per cent of the population unable to pay rates but not needing assistance; and a further 16.5 per cent poor, but not on relief. The equivalent proportions in Shorne (Kent) in 1598 were 20.3 per cent and 5.7 per cent respectively. In Aldenham, the proportion of households neither assessed nor relieved varied between a minimum of 16.9 per cent in the 1680s and a maximum of 39.1 per cent in the 1640s.71 The size of these intermediate groups implies that parish of®cers attempted to preclude the `vicious spiral' by which the burden of poor rates might itself push households from independence into dependency by reducing the numbers not only of those relieved but also of those assessed.72 In mid-seventeenth-century Warwickshire, conditions were apparently favourable to such policies: the three pensioners of Halford were maintained by ®fteen ratepayers; the eight at Ilmington by twenty-®ve. Of course, deteriorating economic circumstances might limit overseers' freedom of manoeuvre in this respect, as they did in Heydon (Essex), where the ratio of ratepayers to pensioners dropped signi®cantly between 1564 and 1625. 73 Overseers' judgements about the weight of the tax burden were invariably sensitive, but they became particularly controversial in years of economic dislocation. The experience of harvest crisis `reversed the proportion of ratepayers (usually a minority) to those in need of relief '. The inevitable consequence was the doubling, tripling or even quadrupling of levies for the poor.74 Even a dramatic increase in expenditure, however, did not usually result in a signi®cant social spread of liability. During the crisis of the 1590s, the number of those assessed at Eaton Socon (Bedfordshire) increased only marginally from sixty-six to seventy-eight. At Aldenham, similarly, the number of households assessed remained remarkably stable, varying only between 101 and 119 over the entire period from 1641 to 1701.75 Placing a far more substantial burden on the

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shoulders of existing ratepayers was a more common solution to the problem of augmenting income, and was particularly characteristic of the dearth years 1629±31, when several county benches were forced to increase, perhaps to double or even to triple, poor rates. 76 Because such decisions were taken by magistrates who were almost certainly ignorant of the delicate balance of communal resources prevailing in the parishes, it is little wonder that overseers should so frequently defy them. Both the relative stability of the number of ratepayers, and the expectation that they should shoulder heavier burdens of assessment in years of crisis, are therefore of profound signi®cance for contemporary perceptions of the social order. They suggest that the social identity of the rate-paying community was rather more solid than that among either pensioners in particular or the poor in general. There were obviously other ways in which these men were made conscious of, and indeed displayed, their place in the local pecking order ± the dress codes of the sumptuary legislation; the pews that they occupied in church; the prerogative of a gravestone in the chancel; the right to exempt themselves from burial in woollen ± but both the hierarchy of the poor rate assessment and the longevity of the obligations which it imposed were arguably crucial in the construction of the self-image of chief inhabitants. After all, the bulk of ratepayers (and the overwhelming majority of parish of®cers) were not usually gentlemen. Authority was exercised in most rural parishes by men who resided on the broad convex slopes rather than at the very summit of the social hierarchy.77 Since they could not therefore appeal to honour and lineage as justi®cations for their preeminence in parish affairs, they chose to fashion themselves in other ways. Particularly striking in this respect is the self-assessment of the chief inhabitants of Swallow®eld, who expressed their wish to be `estemed to be men of discretion, good Credett, honest Myndes & Christian lyke behaveour'.78 This opinion was not universally shared. Although those who became the `great governors' of rural parishes were `rich and suf®cient men', argued Godfrey Goodman, vicar of Stapleford Abbots (Essex) in 1616, their lack of gentility meant that `all others do not respect them accordingly'.79 Well into the eighteenth century, clergymen expressed suspicion about the economic conduct of the class of yeomen farmers from whom parish of®cers were drawn. John Garnett, rector of Sigglesthorne, acknowledged his obligation to

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become more actively engaged in parish politics on behalf of the poor when their common rights were at stake: it must always be the rector's rule to join with the tenants `when any rights, privileges or customs that related to the management of the ®elds and pasture are in dispute or any new customs are set up by the farmers'. The farmers of Sigglesthorne, he noted, `are rich men and will bear down all before them if not opposed by the rector'.80 The poor evidently shared this lack of conviction about the charitable motives of the of®ce-holding class, as their frequent appeals to the magistracy, protesting about the arbitrary or unmerciful conduct of overseers, suggest.81 conclusion: the local politics of relief There were obviously important continuities in the discourses of poverty in this period, not the least signi®cant of which was the notion that the relief of the poor was a moral obligation. But in listening to injunctions to charity, historians should not become deaf to their cadences. The turn of the sixteenth century saw the displacement of a clerical chorus of exhortation by a secular calculus of entitlement, a change in register that was re¯ected in the increasing emphasis on the bureaucratic exercise of discretion by the overseer rather than the idiosyncratic use of discrimination by the almsgiver. Although the distinction might initially seem banal, it was of undoubted material signi®cance to the experience of economic inequality and to the politics of poor relief. It is most obviously apparent in the substantial differences between the types of evidence each system has left in its wake. The corporate, face-to-face provision of hospitality revealed in funeral sermons, gentry encomia and churchwardens' presentments, and the institutionalised, anonymous, halfpenny dribblings of overseers' returns are not, strictly speaking, comparable.82 Indeed, their very lack of compatibility is a powerful reminder that they were, after all, products not only of different mechanisms of relief, but also of different discourses and assumptions. They were also shaped by different parish politics. The politics of almsgiving, and the discourse of exhortation from which they arose, were characterised by the increasing appropriation by the propertied of the right to construct the criteria of deservingness. The quali®cation of the doctrine of stewardship with the notion of absolute

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ownership pointed the way towards the use of greater discrimination in the giving of alms, a trend that culminated in the extraordinarily wide discretionary authority enjoyed by parish of®cers. The evolving discourse of entitlement, nonetheless, cut both ways. On the one hand, the propertied felt that the formalisation of relief had not only released them from the duties of hospitality, but also empowered them to govern the conduct of the poor. Their exercise of discretion required the delicate and continuous readjustment of the balance between the needs of paupers and the ability of ratepayers. On the other, the poor came to believe that because outdoor relief enjoyed statutory backing, pensions were their legal right, perhaps even part of their moral economy. Whether they found it politic to plead such entitlement openly is rather more questionable. While the legal rights of the sick and aged might prove uncontroversial, the underand unemployed inevitably became enmeshed in the village politics of relief. They nonetheless found it possible to subvert the discourse of discretion, questioning the terms on which it was exercised, and implying that it might easily lead to the arbitrary government of the parish.83 In these respects, the poor struggled to assert their own agency in the politics of welfare. If that agency went unrecognised, they might resort to the `infrapolitics' of clamour and murmuring discontent.84 Whichever of these two avenues the poor chose to exploit, they also had another invaluable rhetorical weapon in their armoury. For in so self-consciously projecting their paternalistic selfimage, the propertied elites of early modern England set the standard against which the poor would measure their conduct. However much, therefore, the propertied chose to read the discourses and practices of welfare in terms of order, hierarchy and subordination, the poor interpreted them in terms of social justice.

chapter 5

Public transcripts, popular agency and the politics of subsistence in early modern England John Walter

In the summer of 1596, the balladeer Thomas Deloney was facing imprisonment. While Londoners were struggling with the consequences of harvest failure, Deloney had published `a certein ballad containing a Complaint of the great Want and Scarcitie of Corn within the Realm'. His offence was to have represented the Queen speaking `with hir people in dialogue-wise in very fond and undecent sort' and to have prescribed `orders for ye remedying of this dearth of Corn extracted . . . out of ye booke published by your L[ordships] the last year, butt in that vaine & undiscreet manner as that therby the poor may aggravate their grief & take occasion of soon discontentment'.1 The episode encapsulates the argument of this chapter. Deloney's ballad spoke to a popular political culture in which the monarch was seen as a natural defender of the poor, and where legitimation for popular protest was derived from government measures designed to anticipate and address popular grievances. Although Deloney was threatened with imprisonment, in reality the structures of English early modern government made such a dialogue between rulers and ruled a political necessity throughout the period. Out of that dialogue, the ruled derived legitimation for a political agency otherwise denied to them by a state that proscribed popular action and by a church that preached passivity in the face of hardship. Crowd actions were, of course, one of the most powerful ways in early modern England in which the ruled could negotiate the exercise of power. But `riot', itself a lazy shorthand for the complexity within crowd actions, is not the focus here. Instead, this chapter attempts to recover that broader `infrapolitics' of the ruled, of which crowd actions form only a part. As the phrase suggests, the starting point for this exercise is a critical engagement with the work of James Scott. Within the constraints of this chapter, it is not possible to 123

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provide a detailed inventory for early modern England of what Scott terms the infrapolitics of the subordinate. It is certainly possible to recover something of the quotidian and largely unremarked exchanges by which individuals attempted to blunt the exercise of power in the micro-politics of manor and parish and the opacity of the workplace, to which tussles over the construction of custom were central.2 But while further work might be expected to add to our knowledge of those personal acts of non-compliance and other forms of resistance,3 it may never be possible to recover anything like the full inventory that Scott was able to identify for communities in which he worked and lived, nor to establish their political weight either in altering the rates of exchange with their superiors or in reconciling men and women in early modern England to the structures of their subordination. Here the emphasis will be on those tactics which consciously drew on the public transcript and the scope this gave for a broader agency. Scott's notion of the `public transcript' ± the acceptable public version of relationships between dominant and subordinate groups ± by which elites sought to secure their rule has considerable resonances for understanding the repertoires of rule employed by power holders in early modern England. Scott's concern with an `everyday politics', by which subordinates negotiated public transcripts, and his delineation of the `weapons of the weak', with which they effected that negotiation, both points to the agency subordinates could exercise and extends the range of activities by which they might do so. While the public transcript is largely the work of politically dominant elites, Scott argues that it was also the outcome of negotiation between dominant and subordinate groups. The concern for ideological hegemony (and the legitimation it brought) requires dominant groups to reformulate their particular interests as general interests. In explaining why a particular social order is in the best interests of subordinates, a public transcript is developed which opens up the possibilities of (legitimate) resistance in relation to the contradictions inherent in the transcript which permit it to be criticised in its own terms. Thus, the public transcript is the outcome of negotiation and it imposes constraints on the exercise of authority. Power holders have to negotiate means of legitimating their authority and thereafter successfully represent their actions as falling within the terms of legitimacy.4 In early modern England, the negotiation of the public transcript

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re¯ected the central fact that the coercive powers of the English state were limited. This placed a premium on anticipating and preempting sources of popular disorder. Thus both Crown and magistracy sought to secure consent to their right to rule, seeking to turn power into authority and ®nding sanction for that translation in a public policy acknowledging protection of the subject as its primary responsibility. A proclamation of 1549, published in response to high prices, spoke of `the king's Majesty, having the principal and continual charge of the commonwealth and tranquillity of the realm, for which cause Almighty God hath given to his majesty power to rule', and it went on to stress the `pity, which at all times his majesty conceiveth upon the lack and griefs of his people'.5 The almost dialogic nature of royal proclamations repeatedly stressed a discourse of rule which elaborated the responsibilities of royal of®ce. For example, Elizabeth's Proclamation of 1598 for the restraint of middlemen was `for the common good of her loving subjects (and specially of the poorer sort whose case her highness doth most gracciously tender and pity)', while that of Charles I in the dearth of 1630 spoke of `the king's most excellent maiestie (whose watchfull Eye of providence, for the publique good of his loving subjects is alwayes kept open)'.6 Central to the discourse of rule was a recognition of the responsibility of the sovereign for defending the commonwealth. Commonwealth was an idea whose importance to governance long outlasted its mid-sixteenth-century expression. It made defence of the common good the duty of all members of society. The responsibilities of the king to his weaker subjects extended to those who exercised authority on his behalf. As the remarkable public sermon delivered at Northampton after the suppression of the Midlands Rising to a congregation headed by the lord lieutenant observed, Christ `giveth to great personages, Judges and Magistrates in their places, an honorable patterne of piety, cheerfully to accept, & gently to answer, the cries, petitions & iust complaints of the poore, which stand in need of them, . . . & come kneeling to them as they kneele to God'.7 Property owners, too, had a duty to acknowledge the responsibilities of stewardship in the administration of their property. The `prayer for landlords' in the Primer of 1553, with its call to landlords not to rack rents nor to engross holdings, may have been (literally) a pious hope, but it represented a statement of the doctrine of stewardship which was widely held. As the Elizabethan Privy Council itself wrote

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to a would-be encloser in the midst of a run of bad harvests in the 1590s, the landlord was bound, `rather to consider what is agreeable . . . to the use of the state and for the good of the commonwealth, than to seeke the utmost pro®t which a landlord may take among his tenants.'8 Sermons from the pulpit, often co-ordinated by government-inspired archiepiscopal directives, reinforced this message, reminding magistrates of their responsibilities to the weak, landowners of the sinfulness of oppressing their tenants, enclosers of the dangers of turning `the common wealth to common miserie',9 and holders of grain surpluses of their God-given duty to place poor before pro®t. While it has been argued that by the second half of the sixteenth century, `the Elizabethan state consistently distanced itself from moral complaint', inconsistently might capture more accurately the continuing moralization of pronouncements on the politics of land and food.10 This discourse of rule was given widespread and intentionally public expression through a variety of forums ± courts, special commissions, parliament and the church. Weaknesses in the institutional bureaucracies of the state placed a premium on securing broader participation in royal rule and, consequently, greater publicity for its policies. As a result, a discourse of the duties of power ± and property ± holders was frequently rehearsed in a series of texts ± royal proclamation, parliamentary preamble, pulpit pronouncement ± whose common denominator was the concern to address a wider public audience. The compensatory strength of an undisputed royal writ for institutional weaknesses helps to explain why this public transcript in turn emphasised the rule of law and was promulgated, and policed, through courts of law. The government's use of the law and the law courts increased the scope for popular knowledge and participation. Policy was publicised in the charges delivered both at assizes and quarter sessions. For the large public audience drawn to the meetings of the courts, the charge could provide a listing of laws in force, a statement of the particular policies the government wished to see enforced, and a justi®cation for their enforcement which often drew on a commonwealth tradition emphasising the responsibilities of authority for the people's protection.11 The reintroduction of the royal charge during the economic dif®culties of the 1590s, and its particular use thereafter in similar periods of economic dif®culty, gave the charge a special place within the politics of subsistence. Those delivered by William Lambarde to the special

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juries called into being under the Book of Orders to survey grain stores and dealers in Kent in the dif®cult 1580s and 1590s, suggest how provocative such charges might be. Lambarde referred to the queen having `(according to that motherly care which she beareth towards all her natural people) given order that so near as may be none of her children be suffered to cry for want of bread, but that maugre the malice of greedy and hardhearted men, these blessings of God shall be drawn out of the secret places where they be hidden and shall be brought into the open light of the markets ready to be distributed'.12 The government's anxiety to be seen to be responding to popular grievances closed the circle. A letter written by the Privy Council to lord lieutenants after the Midlands Rising, calling for them to send up those enclosers responsible for the greatest depopulations, ended: `wee think it not un®tt that by such meanes as yow shall hold most convenient to be divulged in the Countrey that the persons noted to be guilty of these oppressions are sent for by his Ma[jes]t[ie]s commaundem[en]t to receive the censure of the lawes for their offences.'13 In direct response to local episodes of popular complaint, the government used both churches and market place in the region to publicise remedial measures in a language once again acknowledging the responsibilities of rule.14 Exemplary prosecutions of dealers in grain and enclosers required offenders publicly to acknowledge the nature of their offences `for the better manifestation of the offence to the Countrey'. They were undertaken, `so that the poor people may see that care is taken of them in time of dearth'.15 Responsibility under the commonwealth could be made ± or taken ± to extend further still. Government policies to protect the people's subsistence actively encouraged popular participation. This was formally inscribed in the requirement on local of®ce-holders to make returns to articles, in which both depopulation and dealing in grain featured,16 or to serve as hundredal and grand jurors charged with presenting offences. In years of crisis, this popular participation became more pronounced, with special juries required to report on enclosure to royal commissions touring the affected regions or conducting surveys of granaries under the provisions of the Books of Orders. As Paul Slack has recently noted, the idea of commonwealth, `carried with it no implication about who was authorised to use it . . . [and it] left unresolved a fundamental issue . . . the problem of agency . . . Far from giving a clear answer to those questions the

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rhetoric of the commonwealth muddied the waters by never quite throwing off its participatory and hence potentially subversive associations.'17 This elaboration of a transcript grounding legitimacy in the use of power to protect, inter alia, the subsistence of subordinate groups underwrote a political culture which, paradoxically, could be read as emphasising the duties of the powerful and the rights of the weak. A public transcript, which was in Scott's term designed to euphemise power relations, actually exposed them to interrogation by the ruled. This chapter, therefore, explores the means by which `ordinary people' could in¯uence the exercise of power in ways that were less spectacular, but more continuous, than is suggested by the current historiographical emphasis on the crowd. It does so by drawing on a preliminary sketch of the politics of subsistence ± constructed around access to commons and markets ± and of the political contests to which this gave rise.18 The weapons used here took a variety of forms, but all represented attempts to bring individuals who were the focus of popular grievance back to the observance of what were represented as the common (and moralised) standards by which economic relations ought to be ordered and to remind authority of its obligations in their defence. This was, of course, a normative order. Experience taught the people that relationships with landlords, employers, merchants and magistrates could be marked as much by con¯ict as consensus. Therefore, active and selective appropriation, rather than passive acceptance, characterised their relationship to the public transcript. Grumbling was the easiest and probably the ®rst weapon of the weak.19 Grumbling had a role to play in the negotiation of rates of exchange within the everyday politics of neighbourliness, in the struggles over where to draw the boundaries of membership and how to de®ne the rights and responsibilities of inclusion. It gave the poor an agency that accounts of the re-labelling of transactions of mutual reciprocity as acts of charity and poor relief by local elites are in danger of missing, and it helps us to see them as subjects, not objects, in the history of poor relief.20 Grumbling was, of all the strategies examined here, least likely to have left an impress in the historical record. But deliberately seeking a public audience for such grumblings was a tactic commonly secured by using the unregulated space of the alehouse or strategic sites like the bakehouse, workhouse or

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market. At Norwich, a conversation amongst those gathered in the bakehouse `touching the hard world' and the high price of grain, led the baker to claim that the fault lay with the farmers who failed to obey the king's proclamation and to promise, as he volunteered to the city's mayor on examination, `that if it please the kinge to make him hang man he wold hange a sorte [a score?] of them that woold not obey'.21 Examples of grumbling, visible because they were labelled sedition, therefore give some clues to its utility as a political weapon. Grumbling which re¯ected the opinions of a wider group, showed an awareness of the strategic importance of sensitive sites, and demonstrated a tactical ability to refer to appropriate transcripts had the best chance of success. In crisis years, grumbling by the poor was also able to exploit a public transcript, then more insistent on the moral nature of the obligation, which called for contributions from the rich `according to their devotions, and as charity requireth in this time of dearth'.22 Dearth years doubtless saw increased grumbling. In the aftermath of the attempted Oxfordshire Rising, one man told the authorities that he `made the lesse accompt of their speeches, for that Comonly as . . . [he] went to Marketts, he heard poore people saie, they were ready to famishe for want of Corne, and that they thought they should be enforced for hunger to take yt owt of men's howses'.23 Evidence from the godly city of Dorchester during the dif®cult harvest crisis of 1630/31 suggests how public comment and censure by the poor might put pressure on their betters. That we know about these incidents only because the grumblers were brought to court con®rms the sensitivities pricked. In the dearth of 1630, a local widow was reported for daring to complain of that godly patriarch, John White, the minister there. She had claimed, `that he did starve the Cuntry & did ioyne with the divell for mony & would be a merchant and fearmer for his pro®tt', alleging provocatively that White's sending of provision to New England was a pretext for exporting food to Spain. In Warwickshire the gentleman and JP Sir John Newdegate found himself complained against for his policy of buying grain and selling it out of the region, `which hath bin very hurtefull to the comentie' and `which if it had bin brought to the Market woulde have bine a great helpe to the poore cominte'.24 Such grumbling showed a ®ne ability to play upon the sensitivities of their victims and to tap into the public transcript. All grain exporters might be held to ¯out both laws and popular code which held that

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local communities should have ®rst claim on food; a year later in Dorchester, another local woman accused a local merchant of sending away `the best fruits of the Land . . . over the seas'.25 But White's offence as a minister was worse, it was implied, in placing pro®t before charity, the community of the godly before the community of his parishioners, and ± worse still ± papist before protestant. Similarly, Sir John Newdegate's devotion to the dictates of the market was not that to be expected of a godly magistrate and gentleman. Henry Arthington listed `their banning and cursing, when they are not served as themselves desire' as one of the sins of the poor provoking dearth as a judgement of God.26 But his complaint, echoed in the minutes of vestries everywhere, suggests that even the very poorest were able to deploy grumbling as a political weapon. A strategic choice of site (the mill or `mens doores . . . about dinner & supper time') and season (for example, Christmas or harvest time) might increase the chances of those, otherwise vulnerable to being labelled as beggars, who sought to draw on the transcript of neighbourliness. It was reported from Northumberland in the 1660s that `the beggars wherever corn is stirring (as in winnowing, sowing, etc.) do beg, or as it were get by custom a part of the same'.27 The poor, too, could grumble to authority in the expectation of action. In 1621 the Wiltshire Grand Jury presented the overseers of four communities `for neglecting to releave their impotent poore as they (wanderinge abroad for relief ) doe Complaine'. In years of dearth, local magistrates responded to the poor's complaints by bringing to court local of®cials like the Wiltshire overseer of the poor, who was brought to court in 1648 for `his abusive carryinge in execucon of that of®ce in threatnynge & starveinge of the poore people which was nowe proved'. They also issued rebukes, as in Nottinghamshire in 1623 where `divers complaints by many poor people . . . daily brought to us . . . of want of maintenance and habitation by the negligence of Churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor' led to orders to hold monthly meetings at which the needs of the poor should be reviewed.28 Cases of grumbling reported to the courts re¯ect a common strategy to bring pressure to bear on their betters. In a dispute in Oxfordshire, commoners grumbled that the purchaser and encloser of the manor, Mr Fitzherbert, a Bristol merchant, had given `nothinge to his poore neighboures and Tenannts theis twentie yeres

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to the value of one groate when wheate was sould for tenn shillinges the bushell', proof of the failure of this parvenu to acknowledge the responsibilities of either lordship or vicinage.29 In Dorchester, again, the reported conversation between three men about the `voluntary contrybucion for the provision of corn to be made in Dorchester for the pore' (itself a response, no doubt, to those earlier episodes of grumbling), in which they praised the bounty of Mr Cheeke `in giving at the colleccions in the church' and compared this unfavourably with the `little or nothing' given by another of the town's ministers, hints at the popular (and public) judgements that might allow the poor to in¯uence the `largesse' of their betters.30 Such tactics undoubtedly encouraged the greater charitable giving characteristic of the years of dearth in this period. They were, of course, the obverse of that calculated deference which, it should be remembered, could itself be a tactic to extract aid.31 Grumbling might shade into cursing. In the course of a dispute over enclosure between the commons and Corporation at York in 1536, a woman was indicted for cursing the mayor and his brethren and wishing the Common Chamber on ®re.32 In the long-running dispute over border rights in the northwest, the tenants published and distributed a statement of their grievances, Reasons of all the Commons of Westmerland to uphold thire Custome of Tennant. Among the various passages of scripture cited was Deuteronomy 27.17, `cursed bee [he] that removeth his neighbour's Landmarke'. This was a curse literally acted out in 1621 when, as part of their protests, the tenants staged a play before Kendal Castle in which they `did therein make a representacion of Hell and in the same did personate and acte manie Lordes of the Mannors'. To drive home the point, two actors, taking the part of clowns, were made to declare on looking into the mouth of hell, `it's false landlords make all that Croakinge there'.33 Reported murmurings against enclosers, middlemen and those who refused requests for relief may then conceal a more formal resort to the ritual curse. A sensitive reading of the con¯icts frozen in the accusations of witchcraft, which began with requests for small loans of food or implements and ended in grumbling and cursing following the rejection of help, might yield valuable evidence of similar exchanges otherwise lost to historians. It was widely believed that it was God who gave the poor's curse its power. Even as late as the 1660s in Northumberland, alms continued to be given to those

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who begged `for fear of their curses', and cursing made the gentry themselves afraid to prohibit begging.34 Thus, the continuing moralization of economic relationships made the transcript of the church (as well as the penumbra of beliefs syncretically associated with it) a resource to be drawn upon in negotiating the politics of subsistence. God's judgements on greedy farmers who hoarded grain were the subject of both sermons and ballads whose shared message was that God hears, and answers, `the poor's moan'.35 As we can see from the tales of the judgements that befell hoarders of grain which found their way into a Midlands justice of the peace's charge to a jury, subscription to these beliefs was found beyond the con®nes of popular culture.36 The church continued to preach that God punished illegitimate enclosure with ®nancial ruin and the collapse of lineage. This message was sometimes given powerful expression in particularising from the pulpit on the fate of individual enclosers. Since it re¯ected and endorsed proverbial wisdom which held that ill-gotten gains ne'er last three generations, it offered additional bite to appeals to enclosers to cease enclosing.37 It is dif®cult to know what exact force cursing might have had in a society whose attitudes were gradually shifting to greater acceptance of the market and developing scepticism about the power of the curse. But the rare survival of a contemporary local history of opposition to enclosure, from a period when the tide was running in favour of acceptance, suggests the need to take seriously the possible force of this weapon. At Caythorpe in Lincolnshire in the 1650s, the smaller farmers and cottagers had opposed enclosure, but `had neither purse nor stomach to make a vigorous opposition against those who were every way better furnished to carry on their designe'. They `therefore sate still, & submitted.' However, despite support for enclosure from the principal freeholders, the young lord of the manor was reluctant to agree, being `possest with a strong conceit that after all is ®nished I shall not live long to enjoy it'. He instanced several landowners who had enclosed common land and died shortly thereafter. His feelings can only be guessed at when, after having been persuaded to support enclosure, both his principal adviser and one of the enclosure commissioners died and a further commissioner only recovered from illness when, `being afrighted by the fate of ye 2 former', he retired from the commission. When Hussey himself died before the enclosure was complete, the author of the history, the local minister, concluded, `forasmuch as they never consulted with

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God, nor his most Holy laws of equity and justice, but trusted to their own wisdome & ye counsell of the lawyers, ye Lord gave them an instance of his power and displeasure.'38 In a society which continued to believe in direct divine intervention, cursing might represent a forceful weapon of the weak. Thus, in a dispute at Landbeach in the sixteenth century, the tenants hoped to prevail against their opponent `by his own conscience calling to mind the grievous plagues and strikes of God falling from time to time upon himself in his own person, upon his corn & cattle, upon his children perishing by the stern hand of God as may be feared'. 39 Grumbling and cursing might shift to the more formal negotiation of the appeal. Where, as in enclosure disputes, it was possible to put faces to those held responsible for the commoners' plight, the appeal might be made directly to named individuals. In one episode during the long-running dispute over enclosure at Grewelthorpe Moor in Yorkshire, the women of the community followed the encloser on to the moor and, `fallinge downe upon their knees, and some of them weepinge for the losse of their Comon, desired . . . [him] to be good unto them'. Appeals by such groups of women, who were responsible for the subsistence of their households, were commonly repeated in other enclosure disputes in an attempt to give the appeals additional force through the deliberate use of gender. Other strategies might have similar intent. In an enclosure dispute at Cannock in Staffordshire which saw several appeals in the form of letters directed to Lord Paget, the lord of the manor, one appeal from his tenants drew on the topos of a king innocent of the misgovernment of his of®cials to legitimise a request to him to stop actions carried out `without your Lordship's knowledge or consent as wee hope and beleeve'. Another directly employed the language of commonwealth, trusting that Paget would `not suffer soe many to be impoverished, yea a hundred for inriching of one'.40 Efforts might be made to sharpen the impact of such appeals by addressing them to intermediaries ± neighbouring gentlemen, local clergy ± with a carefully graded selection of interlocutor and audience to increase the pressure. In the Landbeach dispute, the tenants had ®rst `made moan to divers men of worship in the county'.41 Numbers also added force to an appeal. In the crisis of 1648, the overseers of Middlewich market wrote of the pitifull Complaint of the poore in o[u]r Towne for the scarcity and want of

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bread [which] moves us . . . to doe our best endeavour to remedie it; our request is to you and the rest of our neighbours that are now at Nantwich that you will be pleased to move the Gentlemen that some course may be taken that corne may come to the Markett and not be sould privately at home to breadbakers and none else and soe the poore are forced to have it uppon their termes or els starve . . . neglect it not for yesterday there came 3 Load of Corne to John Venables and not a corne to the Markett, in soe much that the poore were very harsh with us and thought it to be our fault.42

Appeals blended reproach and moral censure with the threat of ostracism and public ridicule. While they may have been directed either at those who were considered to be the authors of popular grievances or at a local magistracy from whom remedy was expected, they were in reality addressed to a wider audience. Appeals to enclosers to forbear enclosing shaded into tactics designed to mock and shame the encloser. When, despite the tearful entreaties of the wives of the community, the Yorkshire encloser Sir Stephen Proctor would not stop enclosing at Kirkby Malzeard, it was `reported in ye countrey that a picture of a man should be sett upon the dore of everie Alehouse in Englande and . . . [Sir Stephen's] name allso written upon everie dore with the picture'.43 Such appeals might exploit the greater freedom of expression given by adopting the cloak of anonymity. Where appeals to enclosers took the form of libellous letters, ballads or poems which were circulated within the market towns and communities of their country then this appeal to a wider audience was intended to shift the balance of power, threatening a greater loss of face by bringing the encloser `into the skorne and contempt of the vulgar people of the Countrie'.44 Copies were made to be read or sung at fairs, markets and alehouses, while the moralization of a discourse on subsistence made the church an appropriate space in which to display libels: for example in the enclosure dispute at Coventry where libels were found ®xed to `the Mynster' or, as in the Midlands Rising, where the libel The pooremans Joye & the gentlemans plague was cast into the choir of Caistor church.45 Where the texts of these appeals have survived they reveal a remarkable ability of the commoners to couch their criticisms in terms of key categories within the public transcript of commonwealth: neighbourliness and the moral community, the good lord and the good king, the responsibilities of of®ce. In the dispute over

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enclosure between the commons and the corporation at Coventry in the 1490s, which produced a litter of libels, one appealed bluntly to the public transcript: `Ye that be of myght,/se that ye do right,/ Thynk on yore othe'. From Ladbroke in Warwickshire, an anonymous libel under the signature of `Your lovinge friende, Thomas Unhedg all', one of a number that seem to have circulated freely during the Midlands Rising and its aftermath, proceeded to itemise in rough doggerel the moral failings of named members of the local middling sort. Its closing stanzas give a ¯avour of the moral critique it carried: Oxcalf, or Goodsteadie Chebsey, which dwelleth at the ffarme, the poore had suer forgott thy Almes, else the more had bene thy harme: Yet suerlie I will wish thee, to give out of thy store or els thy hedgs all must downe and nevr prosper more Knowe you not George Chebsey, miser, that dwelleth at the stone I knowe one foole wiser, but yet let him alone: Yet surelie I would wish him, to be a poor mans freinde or els wee must unhedg him and soe I make an end.

Although the background to this libel suggests that its provenance is to be found in village factionalism, it does convey the force of an appeal to the standards of neighbourliness by which members of local society in early modern England judged one another. As its victims complained, this was `to drawe theire names, lives and Credditts into publicke disgrace and obl[o]quye'.46 There was, of course, an inevitable tension between the ideal of good lordship, in which lords of the manor were expected to acknowledge the personal nature of their relationship with their tenants and their duty to treat them well, and the actual practices of landowners. But to the extent that this was the standard by which landlords chose to describe their role, then the tension between prescription and practice provided a resource for tenants in con¯icts with them.47 Something of the force that an appeal could carry is brought home by the rare survival, among the papers of a Midland gentleman, of a series of letters he received during a dispute over enclosure, together with his annotations upon one he considered libellous and the notes he prepared for a legal action against its authors. In November 1607, Sir John Newdegate of Chilvers Coton in Warwickshire was the recipient of a letter written `in ye name of ye cuntrie & comonwealth'. Although addressed to him, in a deliberate breach of etiquette copies had been made and passed around.48

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Opening and closing in mocking acknowledgement of the syntax of deference, the letter was nevertheless a bitter personal attack: Although few are ignorant of your purpose according to your owne report of depopulating & decaying the farmes at Griffe yet many doubt what should be the cause & end of your doeing the same for if it be upon malice & ill will you beare to the Comonwealth of your country & neighbors. Yet it is generally expected in the whole parish yt you will in a charitable devocion build an hospitall in the comon ®eldes at Griffe, bycause the Towne seeth noe reason yt they should be charged wth maynteyning the poore therof when you have all the farmes & ®eldes which should do the same, and if it be for covetousness only to inlarge demeynes of yor owne & not malice, pitty it is (saith the country) yt such ffarmes used in Comon where reliefe & hospitality for the poore hath byn & where ye parish hath byn eased in many collections, subsedies & service, should be taken in, improved & imployed only for the private bene®tt of one gentleman being alredy of so suf®cient & competent demaynes . . . and if your worship's authority be such that neyther the kinges Matie his lawes statutes nor commissions can withstand the same, then I will unfeinedly iuoy at this your new found demeyne, in the meane since beseeching you to forbeare threatening in words & not doubting of your magnemious [magnanimous] gentlemanlike resolucion in deedes to put any thinge in practize which may tend for your private bene®tt or to the publique hurte & disadvantage of yor poore neighbores & tennants.

This extraordinary letter took the transcripts of monarchical commonwealth, good lordship and gentility, and used them to fashion a wounding criticism of Newdegate's enclosing activities. Newdegate's marginal annotations provide striking evidence of the force of this tactic. Among the phrases or words he picked out were: `malice & ill wille', `Comon wealth', `covetuousnes', `country', `joy', `publicke hurte'. In a world in which ideas of gentility were increasingly dependent upon the moral qualities of the individual, particularly liberality, charity and magnanimity,49 he recognised the challenge posed to his status as landlord and gentleman in the claim that, in his case, it was his inversion of those values that de®ned his status. A further letter urged Newdegate to throw down his enclosures and reminded him that it was not long since that he went about `to seke the distruckion of man woman and child of sum of youre neighbours in Cotton'. The author, `a poore miller', who had also accused Newdegate of failing to do justice as a JP, ended by challenging him `to use youre selfe lyke a neighboure Amoungeste us And offer youre pore neighboures no wrounge'.50 The protean

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transcript of neighbourliness might offer a powerful check to the pursuit of possessive individualism.51 Taken together, these complaints represent a comprehensive rebuke to Sir John for his failure to observe the dictates of lordship, gentility and neighbourliness, as well as the laws of the commonwealth and the responsibilities of justiceship.52 In the dispute over enclosure, the commoners' ability precisely to pick apart the identity that Newdegate had constructed for himself, and moreover to do so publicly, made the threatened loss of face that much greater. It helps to explain Sir John's decision to proceed against them in Star Chamber, even though he recognised (in a note in his papers) that he had little chance of recouping the considerable expenses this would entail. But even then his opponents were able to subvert his attempt to take them to court, claiming to be dutiful subjects of the king, who `were witnesses for ye king & had comitted no misdemeanor'. In a ®nal twist of the tale, Newdegate's opponents were able to exploit the popular participation called for in the judicial aftermath of the Midlands Rising by presenting him as an encloser to the enclosure commissioners at Warwick. That this became the talk of the neighbourhood only added to the loss of face. In the end, it was Sir John who ®nally appeared in Star Chamber ± to answer for his enclosing activities.53 As the example of Newdegate shows, notions of gentility and good lordship provided a transcript which could be reworked by their subordinates. A petition arising out of an enclosure dispute at Begbroke in Oxfordshire in 1603 showed such a remarkable ability to deploy the public transcript both of commonwealth and of good lordship to represent the challenge to social order posed by the enclosing activities of their lord of the manor, that when the commoners were brought to Star Chamber for it, they were forced to blame the drafter for embellishing their grievances.54 The petition was a more formal weapon, and one therefore of which there is more evidence. The petition might be made in person, and in number. Sir John Oglander, writing of how to manage the dislocations of dearth, spoke of having `300 with me in a morning', while Essex JPs had ®rst-hand experience of mass petitioning in 1629, when a crowd of near two hundred clothworkers delivered a petition detailing their distress, `all which they expressed with too many wordes and outcryes followinge us from place to place, and moveing us for Com[m]iseration, and urginge present answer'.55 Petitions, too, sought to manipulate public transcripts in the struggle

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over subsistence. Given the self-proclaimed duty of Crown and magistracy to prevent dearth, petitions to authority were frequent in years of harvest failure. Petitioning allowed the poor a more direct appeal to the public transcript, echoing of®cial denunciations of middlemen as the creators of dearth and calling on the authorities to take the actions required by government policy and their obligation to the poor. When a group of Wiltshire JPs met after the 1614 harvest to regulate the activities of middlemen, there were `manie poore people at the meeting at Warminster craving for Justice . . . [and] many poore people to complaine against them'.56 Petitioners showed a re®ned sensitivity to shifts in the public transcript. In Somerset in 1649, during a third successive year of dearth, a petition from those calling themselves `many well affected and poore distressed people', while adopting the appropriate language of humility and subordination, managed to remind their masters of the responsibilities of power and of their equality with them under God. The petition complained of abuses in the use and marketing of grain, `the greatest cause of our sufferings (sin only excepted), hereunder according to our weake capacities, in semblance exprest, which we humbly conceive you maie and are entrusted to ease us of, and take such speedy course (by God's assistance) effectually to help us, that our poore families be not remedilessely cast away, we having all one maker'. The petitioners expected action from the JPs as men `who are both by God & men intrusted to doe it'.57 The monarch was seen as having a natural role as a recipient of petitions detailing the subject's grievances. This was a central image in that discourse of rule by which monarchs sought to legitimise their power. As such it, too, could be appropriated. According to the author of a 1540s commonwealth tract, `a king is annointed to be a defence unto ye peoples that they be not oppressed nor overyoked, but by all Godly and polytyke meanes to seke ye commen welth of his people'.58 Thus, in the disputes over enclosure in the Cambridgeshire fens, Edward Powell, alias Anderson of the Fens, secured a following with the credible claim that on meeting with him at Newmarket the king had wept when he learnt of the commoners' problems and had ordered him to report the names of any who hindered their petitioning.59 As the depression which blighted the Essex cloth industry deepened in 1629, a petition from the Essex weavers `humbly' informed Charles I that had not the local autho-

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rities intervened, `many wretched people would have gathered together in a mutinie and have beene with your Majestye before this tyme to have made theire miseries knowne unto your Majestye for they said words would not ®ll the belly nor Clothe the backe'.60 This royal role was symbolised in popular folk tales in which the king toured his country in disguise righting wrongs, and it was given reality in the complex possessionings of the royal procession. Among the petitioners heard then were those from commoners concerned with their own, more humble boundaries. While the procession gave the petitioners access to the monarch, carefully managed, it also gave the monarch an opportunity to realise the image of monarchy as fount of all justice. Thus, both parties stood to gain from an exchange, carefully choreographed on each side. In 1603 loyal petitioners to James I, on his progression south to the English throne, petitioned for the enclosure of their commons to be thrown open again, `which His Highness most graciously promised should be performed'. Similarly, a crowd of women who successfully took advantage of the king's presence at York in 1642 successfully to petition him about enclosure were reported as saying, `he is as proper A man as is in ingland'.61 Intercession might be used as a tactic with individuals, but as these examples show, its more formal use was in a dialogue with authority. In manipulating the public transcript of the responsibilities of the rulers, petitioners sought to call in authority to redress the imbalance between themselves and their powerful opponents. Where distance, either social or spatial, placed the subjects of popular hostility beyond immediate appeal, then intercession might turn to coercion. An incident at Dorchester involving the same woman who had accused John White suggests the pressures sellers of grain had to negotiate on the fault line of the market in years of dearth. On calling to a man to sell her some wheat and being told it was all sold, she retorted `that yf they were served aright they should be served as they were in france to cut holes in their baggs for that they sold al to the millers'.62 The threat made by a weaver (and exsoldier) in Essex in the dif®cult 1590s that `it would never be better until men did rise & seeke therby an amendment and [he] wished in his heart a hundred men would rise and he would be their captain to cut the throates of the rich Churles & the rich Cornemongers', probably also took place in the market since it was uttered `in the presence of many people'. The sequestered, yet public space of the

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alehouse provided a sympathetic audience. Grumbling in an Essex alehouse, again in the dif®cult conditions of the 1590s, led a blacksmith to declare that `there ware dyvers he knewe had made shifte as longe as they can . . . and they woolde not stearve, and there woolde be such a sture if this ware not redressed between this and Christmas, as they that had moste corne, cheese and such lyke should have leaste'. Lest the point be lost, he went on to warn the sellers of victuals that twenty of them `woold be hanged at our gattes before Christmas day'. Similarly, during the dearth of 1595, grumbling in a Colchester alehouse about grain supposedly being turned back from the port had led to the threat that if thys hold our wyffes & chyldren wyll starve but by gods blood before we wyll starve we wyll not goe to the worst fyrst but we wyll goe to the best & pull the bayliffs out be [by] earrs. Some hathe consented to yt but yf all wyll consent to me you shall see a whott [hot] Colchester after next Satterdaye.63

Such threats had to be negotiated by controllers of surpluses in years when tensions were anyway high, in contexts where there was no ready recourse to the protection of the state, and in a society where the transcript of the state and the preaching of the church continued to underwrite the popular right to subsistence. The threat might be delivered in person to the subject of popular grievance or advantage taken of a sympathetic audience to air it. Creative adaptation of plays and their texts might secure the latter. Reports from Norfolk in 1536 of the adaptation of a May Day play `of a king how he should rule his realm', in which the actor playing the part of Husbandry `said many things against gentlemen, much more than was in the book of the play', provides but one example of protesters' ability to appropriate popular cultural forms to stage pointed street theatre.64 But it was the resort to the `crime of anonymity' that best allowed the threat of violence, often implicit in the grumble and appeal, to be made explicit. A libel from Norfolk, undated but probably dating from the 1590s, denounced the local governors for their failure to enforce orders against middlemen and attributed this to corruption. Complaining that `for seven years the rich have fed on our ¯esh', it went on to warn that `there are 60,000 craftsmen in London and elsewhere, besides the poor country clown that can no longer bear, therefore their draught is in the cup of the Lord which they shall drink to the dregs, and some barbarous soldier

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shall lay open your hedges, reap your ®elds, ri¯e your coffers and level your house to the ground. Meantime give licence to the rich to set open shop to sell poor men's skins.' Opening with a declaration of loyalty to the Queen, it ended nevertheless with the ominous observation, `Necessity hath no law'.65 This rhetoric of violence was also much in evidence in enclosure disputes. One of the libels circulated during the late ®fteenth-century enclosure dispute at Coventry compared the commons to bees and cautioned Litell small been, That all about ¯een, They waggen their whyng, Where as they light, The been will byte, And also styng Loke that ye do right.66

Such threats might be accompanied with visual cues. Reports of graves being dug all over the disputed land, or of `certaine boughes in the fashion of a pair of Gallows' being erected in the disputes in the fens, were thought to explain why `the country people are very backward in hiring any fen grounds'.67 Authority might also provide an unwitting audience for the broadcasting of the threat. Loyal petitioners could draw on a rhetoric of violence, hinting at the threat of popular disorder abuses might produce if allowed to go unchecked. In Oxfordshire in the dif®cult 1590s, a crowd was said to have gone to the house of the lord lieutenant `and made petition to his L[ordshi]p for Releif for Corne, and for putting downe of enclosures'. According to this account, the crowd had told him `that yf they Could not have remedie, they would seek remedie themselves, and Cast downe hedges and dytches, and knocke down gentlemen'.68 Clothworkers in Wiltshire, who had drawn up a petition against the abuses of middlemen ± `which we truly knowe to be the originall cause of dearthe' ± had had it presented by only one of their number `to avoide a trouble unto your worshipps & the danger of the Lawe', but they were nevertheless able to tell the JPs of their `doubte of a farther danger yf this mischiefe be not prevented'. In the later 1630s, a poor Essex clothworker petitioning for relief disavowed any `unlawful co[u]rse', but still managed to remind the magistrates of earlier episodes of disorder and to observe ominously `it is hard to starve Job saieth,

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since for skin & all that a man hath he will give for his life'.69 The Somerset petitioners of 1649, while ending their petition `humbly expecting . . . charitable assistance in soe iuste a cause', nevertheless managed to improve their chances by referring to `further mischiefes ensuing which want of bread may cause' and observing `water we can drinke, but stones we cannot eate'.70 Thus, petitioners might make explicit the threat of violence, but do so under the guise of loyal subjects anxious to inform authority of the threat, displacing agency for the threat on to an `other' poor. Petitioners against middlemen in the dearth of 1647, though describing themselves as `poor inhabitants of Chelmsford and Moulshsam', sought to increase their chances of securing action from the magistrates by informing them that `the poor in the towne thought to goe and take away the goods from these Higlers'.71 Even a single individual might be able to deploy this weapon successfully. A `private' warning to a Gloucestershire JP from a solitary weaver, indicating that he was about to be visited by a crowd of at least 500, `such as were in want with their staves readye at their dores . . . [who intended] to doe mee no harme, but to make their wants knowne', successfully initiated correspondence with the central government about relieving the problems of the clothworkers.72 In the dearth of 1630 a libel (with footnote!) was thrown into the minister's porch at Wye in Kent.73 It cautioned: the.CORNE.is.so.deAR. i.dout.MANI.will.stARUe.this.YEARE. if.you.see.not.to.this. sum.of.you.will.speed A.miss. OUR.soules.they.ARE.deAR. for.OURe.Bodyes.HAVe.sume.CEARE Be.fore.We.ARise. lese.will.SA®se ___________________________________ NOTE.The.PORe.TheRe.is.MORe. Then.Goes.from.dore.to.dore YOU.yt.Are.set.in.plAce. See.yt.youRe.PRofesion.you.Doe.not.dis.GRAce

The ironic suggestion that `those set in place' cared more for the souls than for the bodies of the poor or their material well-being showed the ability of the anonymous author to manipulate the

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transcripts of both church and state to shame the authorities into action ± and to do so successfully. The anonymous letter was forwarded to the Privy Council with a note expressing the fear that `some distemper is growing amongst the inferior sort of people'. Within a week, the authorities at the nearby port of Faversham had imposed a toll on the movement of grain through the port and had arranged for the distribution of grain at subsidized prices to the poor. Within little more than a fortnight, the central government in the guise of the Lord Treasurer had written angrily to the town's authorities withdrawing a licence to export grain granted at the beginning of November.74 This was a common pattern. Shaming by reference to more widely held standards was a common element of all those weapons that drew on public transcripts. Where the victims were members of the local community then such a tactic might achieve its goal of prompting a response to the grievances articulated. In a face-to-face society, the effect on those who lived within the community of these and other forms of everyday moral and economic boycott, so trivial and daily as to have escaped the historian's attention, may well have stood a good chance of success. The example of a Kentish yeoman employing a middleman to sell his grain because he was `loath himself to be seen to sell it' hints at the potential power of the moral condemnation underlying these weapons of the weak. 75 As Keith Thomas has noted, laughter in close-knit village communities could preserve established values and condemn unorthodox behaviour.76 But shaming tactics might also have purchase higher up the social order, and the potential costs of loss of good opinion could stretch to some surprising places. That failure to sell grain `for the overall good of the people' was both a judgement made on an unsuccessful candidate in a parliamentary election and a criticism of two aldermen in a dispute with the corporation at Newcastle hints at the political costs that failure to observe the moral economy could bring.77 In 1597 the Earl of Huntingdon's parliamentary candidate for the borough of Leicester, a stronghold of anti-enclosure feeling, was rejected on the grounds that as an encloser he was unlikely to correct that fault in others, while in Cambridgeshire in the county election of 1614 the freeholders expressed a similar concern, `that if Sir John Cutts, etc., were chosen, their Fens would be drained, and a third Part be given away to the Undertakers'.78 Ostracism might stretch even further. The prosecution of his cousin in Star Chamber for failing to sell

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grain on the open market led to Sir Robert Sidney being treated `like a pariah' at the Elizabethan court.79 The experience of the encloser Sir Thomas Tresham in Northamptonshire offers an example of the force of this moral condemnation. Tresham's `hard and extreme usage of his tenants and countrymen' was said to have made him `most odious in this country'. In 1596 it was reported that `the common people and many others exclaim upon enclosures, and that Sir Thomas is not forgotten for Hasselbiche, although it be beforehand'. At Great Houghton, Tresham's son was forced to conclude that a scheme to enclose the village would not work since `you could not remove all the tennantes without much clamor, and especiallie when itt is so neare Northampton, whose affecttiones arr well knowen to you'.80 In 1603 he was informed by one of his servants that his attempt to sell his sheep in the local markets had provoked uproar and had been met with many speeches, `that your sheep hath done much wrong in the commonwealth'; signi®cantly, the only sale he had been able to make that day was to `a poor foreigner'. Ultimately, Tresham's reputation as an encloser led to his prosecution in Star Chamber.81 As these examples suggest, weapons of the weak were at their most effective when manipulating public transcripts in a dialogue with authority. Grumbling by the poor that their rulers had turned away grain or failed to prevent its export, or that the wealthy had failed to exercise the charity demanded of them by the church, their own selfimage and the social construction of their responsibilities to their subordinates, might have an immediate local impact. But it was when they were relayed to authority that such complaints had most chance of making a difference. Reports to the Privy Council of expressions of popular discontent were invariably followed by orders into the region to relieve the poor, to regulate the markets or to report on enclosures. There are multiple examples of this ability of the central government to defy the logic of its own dismissal of sedition as `the frutes of some idle and discontented braynes' on the grounds that they `glanceth at soome abuses worthie [of ] reformacion'.82 Following the discovery of a seditious libel at Norwich in the dearth of 1595, almost certainly the one quoted above, the Privy Council complained to the mayor, `what mutinous and haughty term that kind of people is carried, not in any sort to be tollerated', but in almost the same breath it went on to inform him, `by way of admonicion that we hold yt requizit that you take better order for

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the releif of the poore inhabitantes there by procuring them worke and by other good meanes then yt seemeth you have done'.83 But weapons of the weak also derived their clout from reference to another transcript, Scott's hidden transcript of the subordinated. Scott perhaps underestimates both the dif®culties for the historian in recovering hidden transcripts in past societies and, more importantly, the interpretative problems in establishing the level of popular subscription to that transcript. The relationship between sedition and broader patterns of possible class consciousness in early modern England remains complex. As E. P. Thompson concluded in his study of the threats of letter writers in a later period, `their intent is serious, but it may not be taken too literally'.84 For some their ability to whisper threats, as it were, under their breath in what Scott terms sequestered sites, like the alehouse, undoubtedly offered a breathing space within the cultural hegemony that otherwise constrained such open expressions. In other cases, outbursts undoubtedly reveal the high psychic and material costs of poverty and subordination. All show the potential ability of the subordinated to see through the terms of their subordination. But fortunately, the thorny issue of how wide popular subscription was to the hidden transcripts revealed in sedition need not detain us here. Their superiors' readiness to believe that threats of stirs and hangings revealed the hidden transcript of the poor allowed subordinates to use these fears as a fulcrum on which to lever authority into adherence to the public transcript of the appropriate remedial policies that authority should pursue. Cases of grumbling and sedition, thus, re¯ected a sophisticated borrowing of the elite's own hidden transcript of the `manyheaded monster'. As another libel from the enclosure dispute at Coventry warned: Such favour as ye shewe us such shall ye see. We may speke feire and bid you good morowe, But luff [love] with our hertes shull ye have non Cherish the Cominalte and se[e] they have their right For drede of a worse chaunce be day or be nyght.85

The rhetoric of violence was then an invitation to action on the part of the authorities, rather than a call to arms. As such, it re¯ected a shrewd reading of the acceptable and effective limits to collective action under the existing balance of power within early modern England. Thus, The pooremans Joy and the gentlemans plague, an extra-

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ordinarily bloody libel from the Midlands Rising, which warned Lincolnshire gentlemen inter alia `not [to] looke to dye in bed, as oth[e]rs haue don before/but let som thinke to hang upon the dore', nonetheless ended with the call, `take order som, which be very good/or ells as we have said, yt shall cost the price of blood'.86 Crowd actions were always an exceptional intervention in the politics of subsistence.87 But the tradition of disorder to which they bore witness played its part in the everyday politics of subsistence. As the Wiltshire Bench warned, the lack of work for clothworkers was such as `wee feare, & have experimentally found in times past & on lesse occasion they will take such indirect courses to supply themselves which may be of evill Consequence'.88 Knowledge that crowds appeared in predictable contexts, but that, of course, the exact timing of their next appearance could never be predicted, worried authorities who were only too well aware of the limited forces they had to repress crowds once they had risen. In the aftermath of the Midlands Rising, the Earl of Salisbury received a series of letters from provincial magistrates anxious to ensure that the harvest failure of 1608 should not lead to further violence. A letter from Warwickshire warned him that harvest failure there made `the people arrogantly and seditiously to speake of the not reformeing of Convertion of errable lande into pasture by enclosing', while one from Northamptonshire reported a meeting of the high constables at which they expressed, `the great dislike they have of th'inclosures, which bread the latter Sture among the Meaner sort . . . and . . . greve that no reformation doth follow'.89 A further letter from Northamptonshire, reporting that `the poorer sort begin to cry out . . . and I hear there has been in some of our markets some stirring of the poor people', called for the re-introduction of the Book of Orders.90 The tradition of disorder therefore lent weight to the other weapons of the weak, forcing the authorities to treat seriously even drunken alehouse grumblings. Crowd actions provide a privileged point of access to popular political culture. They represent moments when the opaque surface of the past is punctured, allowing subordinated groups, who were rendered otherwise silent by limited access to a public voice and to the preserved record, to testify to their beliefs. But reconstructing popular politics from riot and rebellion has produced what we might label a `stepping stone' history, in which periods of subordination are

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punctuated by moments of agency, and a popular politics is seen as spasmodic and reactive.91 Scott's concern with `everyday politics' is a critique of those who have attempted to read off popular political consciousness from spectacular episodes of collective action. Studies of crowd actions that fail to situate them within an understanding of the broader popular political culture from which they arose will continue to offer an impoverished picture of the potentialities of popular politics. As we have seen, Scott's notion of the public transcript can be made to address directly issues of political culture. The concern of elites to secure ideological hegemony and hence legitimation has considerable resonances for understanding both the repertoires and discourses of rule employed by power holders in early modern England. The concern for legitimation opened up a space for the development of a popular political culture which derived much of its force, and certainly much of its legitimation, from a (selective) appropriation of power holders' public transcripts. An awareness that the public transcript is the outcome of regular, not episodic, negotiation between dominant and subordinate groups extends the range of forms that resistance might take. Subordinate groups had available to them means of affecting the terms of their subordination which were both less dramatic and more continuous than `riot'. Scott's work allows us to contextualise crowd actions within a broader repertoire of the `weapons of the weak' and to see them in relation, rather than in opposition, to these other forms of negotiation. An awareness of everyday politics provides a corrective to that historiography which equates the absence of riot with the absence of popular political consciousness or the acceptance of existing patterns of subordination. As Scott himself cautions, `an assessment of power relations read directly off the public transcript between the powerful and the weak may portray a deference and consent that are possibly only a tactic.'92 Above all, Scott's work underwrites a rede®nition of the political that renders claims that subordinate groups in early modern England were either powerless or lacked political awareness dif®cult to sustain. Although without formal political power, the people in early modern England were able to exercise agency, and to do so on a more regular basis, than accounts which focus on the irregular appearance of the crowd suggest. They were able to do so because the weapons they chose to employ exploited the spaces created by

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the structures and discourses of rule in the early modern English state. It was the state's formal weaknesses in its powers of repression, and its concern to secure consent through a very public transcript of the responsibilities of power, that required authority to anticipate and placate popular protest. At the same time, this exposed provincial authorities to the threat both of popular action from below and of royal criticism from above. This heightened their sensitivities to expressions of popular grievance and made them more ready to negotiate or to invoke relief from central government, negotiations in which, ironically, they themselves were not averse to employing the hidden transcript of `the many-headed monster' to force the central government's hand. Thus, it was the people's ability to articulate their interests in terms of a public transcript that gave legitimacy to the state that also gave legitimacy to their complaints, if not always to the manner of their making. As Scott observes, `the safest and most public form of discourse is that which takes as its basis the ¯attering self-image of elites. Owing to the rhetorical concessions that this self-image contains, it offers a surprisingly large arena for political con¯ict that appeals to these concessions.'93 A rhetorical strategy based on popular knowledge of the public transcript, while allowing subordinates to shame and coerce individual opponents, was most effective when it allowed the ruled to summon authority to intervene on their behalf in the politics of subsistence. At the same time, the subordinated in early modern England were able to enlarge the terms of their agency by evoking the elite's fears of the many-headed monster, at once part of the of®cial, and the hidden plebeian, transcript. The political sophistication with which the people deployed their weapons within the infrapolitics of subsistence, manipulating both their betters' self-image and their image of the people as a many-headed monster, makes it hard to sustain the notion that they inhabited a pre-political world.

chapter 6

`Bragging and daring words': honour, property and the symbolism of the hunt in Stowe, 1590±1642 Dan Beaver

. . . some of them being armed with guns, some of them with swords, and some with clubs or pikestaves, were a hunting upon Sir Peter Temple's ground in the parish of Stowe, and killed a deer upon Sir Peter's ground, and gave out many bragging and daring words, some of them swearing that the deer was theirs and that they would carry him away or else they would lose their lives in the place. 1 John Symons, June, 1642

On 7 June 1642, John Symons, a servant of Sir Peter Temple, challenged these words, attempted to seize the deer, and received a blow to the head from John Rands, a servant of Peter Dayrell, his master's enemy. Perhaps an argument over a dead animal in a corner of northwestern Buckinghamshire seems a dubious point of departure for a discussion of order and hierarchy in early modern England. Most forms of violence, personal and collective, are usually understood as expressions of disorder, as evils excluded from prescriptive notions of a rightly ordered world. According to this view, the trespass on Sir Peter Temple's land in Stowe, a disorderly and perhaps criminal action, would precede and explain the violent confrontation. Violence is seldom construed as an aspect of the creation of order.2 This essay explores the violence between Symons and Rands, and the martial con¯ict between the Dayrell and Temple families in Stowe that supplied its immediate motives, to uncover the violent contests inherent in the culture of gentility, an essential element in early modern English views of order. Such contests often involved the participation of servants and tenants, such as Symons and Rands, and disclose the broad meanings of the symbols of status, honour, and possession or property.3 Much recent work on the social contexts of politics in early modern England has stressed the limitations of the formal power of 149

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the state and the importance of local variations in the exercise and experience of authority.4 A similar approach to the practice of gentility, as distinct from its prescriptive code, reveals the means used to acquire honour, a quality inseparable from the prestige of royalty and joined to distinctive places, such as forests, and uniquely honourable activities, such as the hunt. To display great symbols of masculine gentility, such as a chase or a deer park, was to acknowledge a subordination to the crown in the acquisition of its license. Yet this hierarchic diffusion of honour conceals its competitive nature as a scarce commodity among noble lineages. This essay examines the violence of this competition in con¯icts over property claims, assertions of honour and hunting privileges in Stowe, on the border of Whittlewood Forest in north-western Buckinghamshire. In the 1630s, the Temple family's decision to build a deer park threatened and angered other families of gentle status, particularly the Dayrells of Lamport, and led to disputes over the ownership of lands enclosed in the park and over liberties of the hunt. As the competition between the Dayrells and Temples became more intense and virulent, the networks of friends, servants and tenants drawn into the dispute expressed their interests in terms of honour; and the Dayrells and other local gentlemen led the resistance to `oppression' in hunting raids on the park and deer claimed by the Temples as an exclusive preserve. This pattern complicates the distinction between elite and commons in collective action, as the culture of gentility could legitimate both the authority of law and the duty to resist oppression. Indeed, the rationale for the Dayrells' raids on Stowe park ± an obligation to resist avarice in the interest of the commonweal ± did not differ from the rationale for other forms of crowd action.5 This small-scale war to control Stowe park and its symbolism of honour tends to con®rm the recent scepticism concerning general acceptance of the authority of law in the seventeenth century.6 In 1640, the crown became involved in the contest for gentility and honour, as nocturnal clashes in the park were compounded by forms of judicial combat. Sir Peter Temple and his faction initiated a lawsuit in chancery, and, in the early months of 1642, Abel Dayrell and his supporters presented a petition to parliament, as both families attempted to use the authority and procedural weapons of the courts for local ends. Yet the courts proved ineffective in this contest over `ancient lands' and claims to purlieu, perhaps because

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neither family held a decisive advantage in ®nancial means, in knowledge of the options in law, or in determination to vindicate the honour of lineage from abuse. As judicial manoeuvres resulted in stalemate, Stowe park became the site of a violent theatre of honour in the summer of 1642, its cast recruited from the gentry families of northwestern Buckinghamshire, their friends and their servants. In the composition of the dispute, judicial of®cers of the crown had to accommodate local interests and contained but could not suppress local violence.7 At least one justice of the peace entrusted to negotiate the settlement was himself a veteran of this battle of Stowe park. i At the heart of the violent darkness in Stowe lay a complex discourse of forests, forest properties of different types and distinctive activities that expressed unique qualities of forests in early modern England. 8 As settlements on the southern border of Whittlewood Forest, Stowe and its hamlets had escaped the formal law and institutional hierarchy of the forest.9 Yet the building of a deer park conventionally signi®ed the honourable devolution of royal powers in the forest ± `a franchise of such noble and princely pleasure' ± to a favoured commoner.10 Moreover, symbols of service in the forest had become badges of honour among the families of gentle status in Stowe. A tradition of service in forest of®ces and privileged participation in the hunt may explain the ®gure of a buck's antlers included in the elaborate table tomb built for Paul Dayrell of Lillingstone Dayrell in the early 1570s.11 Dayrell was the father of Francis Dayrell, a younger son who moved to Stowe parish in the mid-sixteenth century and settled on the family estate in Lamport, a little over a mile southwest of the ancestral seat in Lillingstone Dayrell.12 The iconography and activities of forests offer powerful evidence of the interrelationship of royalty and gentility in early modern England. Only the words and institutions of the crown could transform mere woodland into forest, and a forest thus expressed the unique nature and power of royalty.13 Gentlemen could share this royal dignity of forest and hunt for a price, as Sir Thomas Temple had purchased a patent of free warren in Stowe manor from James I in 1617, prior to the building of a park in the 1620s. 14 A discourse of the forest expressed the honour and authority of royalty and gentility

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in a common pursuit of venison, although the different forms of woodland property possessed distinctive attributes.15 An open forest expressed the power of a king, but a park enclosed that power, by virtue of a royal grant, as the absolute property of a gentleman.16 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this notion of the forest as an elevated sphere of royal power and gentility animated a general competition among gentlemen to acquire honour in the hunt, the noblest activity of the forest and indeed its essential meaning.17 According to the prescriptive literature, the hunt lay close to cherished histories of English culture and furnished a school for character, building noble virtues.18 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, gentlemen commonly possessed a general knowledge of this culture of the hunt and, even if not active hunters, would have been expected to know, for example, how the forms and beasts of the hunt divided the seasons and calendar.19 The hunt expressed an exclusive discourse of privileged knowledge and experience, delight and honour. As William Harrison asserted in 1587, `venison in England is neither bought nor sold as in other countries but maintained only for the pleasure of the owner and his friends.'20 The discourse of forest and hunt made the decision to build a park into a crucial event in the calculus of honour. A park expressed a distinctive relationship to royal power, asserted claims to privileges of the forest and hunt, and enhanced the builder's stock of honour and gentility relative to other local families. This competitive dimension of gentility became particularly marked in Stowe, where the Temples empaled Dayrell lands in Stowe park and thus enhanced their own honour at the expense of neighbours. In 1640, Abel Dayrell complained bitterly in chancery that Temple had `enclosed in his park a great part of the soil and grounds belonging to [Dayrell's] own inheritance' and had then `stored his park with 700 or 800 deer, some of them being stags and red deer and others being fallow deer'.21 In response, Dayrell and his sons, servants and friends `caused the pales set upon [Dayrell] ground by Sir Peter Temple to be pulled down' and in effect declared war against the Temples in the late 1630s, assaulting the park in armed bands. 22 These violent local assertions of family honour and estate shadowed the stately legal procedures used to adjudicate the issues in chancery and in the common law courts. In early 1642, Temple invoked royal authority in defence of his franchise, initiating a series of lawsuits against the Dayrells and their accomplices `for breach of charter in hunting and

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disturbing his deer in his park'.23 Yet the recourse to law could not inhibit the use of terror and violence in Stowe, a dramatic expression of the competitive violence endemic in the culture of gentility. ii The fragmentary manorial evidence from Stowe and Lamport suggests how honour worked as a kind of currency in a distinctive political economy. This economy was not entirely separate from the conventional agrarian economy of northwestern Buckinghamshire, but matters of `estate' extended beyond simple monetary calculations for such families as the Temples and Dayrells. An awareness of the sources of honour, dif®cult to reduce to monetary terms, gave subtle in¯ection to discussions of `estate' and `ancient lands', in¯ections that registered gradations of gentility and honour relative to other families of comparable status.24 These subtle calculations help to explain costly disputes between af¯uent families over relatively small economic stakes. Contests over the power to keep or recover economically marginal slivers of land reveal the extent to which honour represented an end in itself in the political economy of gentility, an end more signi®cant than other more conventional expressions of prosperity. The act of possession certainly became more potent than the material income of the land in disputes between the Temples and Dayrells in Stowe, and few acts of possession registered more powerfully in the culture of gentility than the construction of a deer park. These competitive displays of possession were inseparable from notions of order, for families of `estate' and `ancient lands' served as the natural leaders of local societies, but the contests to display honourable possession held signi®cant potential for con¯ict. In the early seventeenth century, the economy of Stowe parish re¯ected the mixed arable, pasture and woodland husbandries of northwestern Buckinghamshire, its lands distributed among the three manors of Stowe, Dadford, and Lamport.25 John Temple had acquired most of the land in the manors of Stowe and Dadford in the 1580s and 1590s.26 The Dayrells possessed the moiety of a lordship known as Lamport, joined to their ancestral estates in Lillingstone Dayrell, north-east of Stowe, until Francis Dayrell made the lordship a separate estate in the late sixteenth century.27 A series of rentals and surveys from the 1620s and 1630s reveal the familiar contours of

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an economy increasingly dominated by the households of these major families. In 1623, Sir Thomas Temple reserved to his son Peter the income from `all the timber trees growing in coppices in Stowe and in all its wastes, pastures, and meadows'.28 Stowe timber produced a steady income of at least £130 to £200 annually in the early 1620s.29 Tenancies were ¯exible in Dadford and Stowe. In 1620, Dadford manor consisted of four leaseholds, two copyholds, and seventeen tenancies at the will of the lord.30 Stowe manor supported seven copyholders in 1620, but ten leaseholders and eighteen tenants at will farmed most of the estate.31 In 1631, however, a survey described 70 per cent of the land in Stowe manor, around 600 acres, as demesne, as tenancies in possession only, or as tenancies at the will of the lord.32 Moreover, the total population of tenants in Stowe manor declined from 37 in 1620 to 28 in 1634.33 The tenants at will and leaseholders were closely linked to the Temple household. Of nineteen male servants to the Temples in 1620, six were leaseholders or tenants at will.34 Sir Thomas Temple's enclosure of land for a deer park in the early 1620s, and his son's decision to expand the park, must be understood in this context of local centralisation and gradual depopulation in Stowe. 35 A tract of land the size of the Dayrell estate in Lamport presented a signi®cant obstacle to the building of a compact lordship in Stowe manor and posed tactical problems for the expansion of Sir Thomas Temple's park. In the 1620s, Edmund Dayrell possessed a substantial house and enclosure of 30 acres in Lamport, but the remainder of his estate was dispersed across the ®elds of Stowe and Lamport, including lands in Windmill Field `shooting up to the park', lands in Stowe Furze `shooting up to the park gate and within the park', and land in Lamport Furze `shooting up to the park pale'.36 As early as 1590, the ®rst year of their cohabitation in Stowe, John Temple and Francis Dayrell had clashed over their intermingled possessions, duelling in chancery over a sliver of meadow in Middle Field, a mere one rod and eight perches that Temple claimed as part of his demesne. Dayrell apparently hoped that, because his servant had once mistakenly mowed this meadow, it might be wrested from the new lord of Stowe.37 This early competition for estate later became a more conventional neighbourliness. By 1597, Francis Dayrell could write to John Temple about a piece of pasture in Oxfordshire, `as ®ne and good as most about Winchendon manor', and offer to approach the owner if Temple were interested in a purchase.38

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Sir Peter Temple's desire to expand the deer park in Stowe had rami®cations for the entire neighbourhood of northwestern Buckinghamshire. In 1625, Edmund Perwiche of Shalston, west of Stowe, sent a petition to John Williams, bishop of Lincoln and lord keeper of the great seal, on behalf of Shalston and Westbury. Perwiche complained that Temple had injured both parishes `by causing a parcel of Westbury ground to be empaled to his park, wherein Westbury vicar and the parson of Shalston, with other commoners, have right of commoning'. According to Perwiche, a general hardship had been the price of Temple's grati®cation, for his park has in it ground belonging to six towns, in which towns are a thousand living souls or very near; and in one of these towns are decayed eleven ploughs already; and in one of the other towns was decayed so much ground as made a park, out of which park was driven seven score deer and odd with other cattle, as it was reported, and so is disparked and set on a racked rent. Of these [towns], 1,800 may go beg if [Temple's] plot may take effect.39

Perwiche `humbly craved' that Williams might declare this `miserable cause' in parliament, but the petition failed.40 Edmund Dayrell, son of Francis and lord of Lamport in the late 1620s, did not share the concern of his neighbours. Dayrell already had enclosed portions of his own estate and merely hoped to reach a fair settlement in any exchange of lands or enclosure related to the park. In 1630, Dayrell received letters and a Christmas gift of venison from his `very good friend', Sir Peter Temple, as part of negotiations for a mutually bene®cial exchange.41 Dayrell did not strive to make the best pro®t from this exchange but refused unfair bargains in frank terms. `I know if you had my land and my right of common there', Dayrell explained you would quickly make it worth £40 or £50 a year to you at the least, and, to be plain with you, I will not part with any land and common but I will have better land for it that shall be of some worth to me, although nothing near to that which my land will be to you. As I have said, so I say again, if your desire of enclosing may be as well for my good as for yours, I shall be content with it.42

Dayrell thus skirted an unseemly interest in pro®t and stressed a fairness of exchange and mutual advantage. `If these offers be not to your liking', Dayrell concluded, `yet I desire your love and goodwill, that we may use the ®elds as we have done in peace and quietness, as the servants of God and good neighbours.'43

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Edmund Dayrell died in 1633, and this irenic attitude to the problem of Stowe park did not survive him.44 His son Abel had complained of Temple's new enclosures even before his father's death. On his deathbed, Edmund had `charged his son Abel that he should not molest or trouble Sir Peter Temple concerning his park' and reportedly received Abel's promise to keep the peace.45 Abel apparently honoured this promise for four years after his father's death. In 1637, however, Temple's unilateral enclosure of the `wood commons', empaling in his park Dayrell lands that had been denied to him in 1630, led to Abel Dayrell's impulsive violation of the customary stint of the commons in Stowe and Lamport.46 According to Temple, Dayrell `takes away the waste from the ®eld and says that he will keep as many [cattle] as he please there because I keep deer'.47 After several verbal warnings, three of Temple's tenants, serving as `tellers of the ®elds', impounded Dayrell's cattle in 1639.48 Abel claimed that Temple had violated the stint ®rst, in his decision to stock deer, and had enclosed parts of Dayrell's `ancient lands' and `inheritance' in his park. In February 1640, Abel `caused the pales set upon his ground to be pulled down and then handed the cattle into the park to use his common'.49 After the con®scation of Dayrell's cattle and this retaliatory assault on the park, the personal dispute between the Temples and Dayrells in Stowe became joined to broader issues. In 1640, Sir Peter Temple initiated a lawsuit in chancery against Abel Dayrell. The court documents construed the con¯ict in terms of two major themes: the destructive impact of personal interest on the commonweal and neighbourhood; and the duty of power to protect the commonweal in the interest of the poor and vulnerable. Temple accused Dayrell of a corrupt violation of the stint in Stowe and Lamport commons.50 This stint limited the commoners to four `cows or cow cattle' for every yardland, and the Dayrells were allowed six horses in the wood commons in recognition of their four yardlands in Lamport. Prior to the introduction of this stint in 1590, the commons had been `overcharged', and families of Stowe and Lamport `were utterly disappointed of milk, butter and cheese, which is their whole subsistence they live by, their wives and children, their livings being but small'.51 After the stint, the annual value of `a cow's common' in Stowe Hewings had increased dramatically from twelve pence to three or four shillings.52 According to Temple's complaint, Abel Dayrell and his sons, `being rich and having great stocks of cattle',

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had violated the stint for their `private pro®t and advantage, to oppress the commoners and to spoil their cattle on the commons by rotting and tainting them with multitude of cattle together'.53 In his answer, Dayrell maintained that Temple's `oppressive and injurious' enclosures for his `great park' had violated the `ancient lands' of the Dayrell family, had divested poor neighbours of their commons and had poisoned the commonweal; he referred himself `to the grand judgment of this court whether he was likely to oppress Sir Peter Temple and his tenants or was plainly oppressed by him'.54 The accusations in this lawsuit transformed the dispute between the Dayrells and Temples into a contest to represent the commonweal in Stowe. With the matter de®ned in this way, chancery could not adjudicate. In early 1642, the court's slow process produced only stalemate. Arthur East and Peter Harris, Temple's servants, secured a supplicavit, a binding over to keep the peace, in order to curb violence in Stowe park, but Dayrell used indictments against Temple's servants to obtain a supersedeas, effectively blocking the supplicavit.55 Both Temple and Dayrell mobilised their tenants to support their views of the spoiled commonweal, and both accused their opponent of coercion against the weak in this practice.56 In early 1642, a petition to parliament by the Dayrells and their supporters expressed these moral issues more explicitly in terms of honour and the discourse of the forest.57 Abel Dayrell and Peter Dayrell of Lillingstone Dayrell used the petition to excoriate Sir Peter Temple's park as a personal affront, as a sel®sh despoliation of the commonweal and as a violation of the purlieu of other gentlemen.58 According to the petition, the hamlets of Stowe, Dadford and Lamport contained `ancient purlieu grounds, where the freeholders had liberty to hunt and chase'. Over the previous sixteen years, Sir Peter Temple, member of the house for Buckingham, had `depopulated ten or twelve ancient farms in Stowe, where the farmers had formerly lived very well, maintaining tillage, [before Temple] had turned them out with diverse other poor people, to the heavy burden of the neighbourhood'. After this clearance, Temple had `emparked a great part of these farms and their common ®elds in his own lands, [including] forty acres of Mr. Abel Dayrell, gentleman, being his demesne lands and lord of the manor [of Lamport], and made a very large park, storing the same with red and fallow deer'. Because the animals had `increased to so great a multitude' and parts of the park lay open, deer had `overrun the

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country, destroying corn and barking and spoiling [Temple's] own woods, the woods [in Akeley] belonging to New College, Oxford, and Sir Thomas Dayrell's woods'. As a result, the wood commons no longer furnished adequate ®rewood, and landholders were likely to be ruined, having already suffered damages in `corn, grass, and goods' valued at £500. To make matters worse, Temple had denied his neighbours any defence against this plague of deer. According to the Dayrells, Temple protected any deer killed beyond the pale of the park as `his majesty's game' and forced the hunters to appear before Henry Rich, earl of Holland, chief justice in eyre of the forests south of the Trent, `to their great vexation and expenses.'59 Only Temple had liberty to hunt in Stowe, and his servants defended this monopoly by force of arms. On 29 January, some freeholders of Stowe had `hunted purlieu in New College Woods and in other purlieu grounds, as is lawful for them to do'. Arthur East, Temple's keeper, had not only interrupted this hunt, but had `bent his bow and put in a forked arrow, threatening to shoot one of them'. Later on the same day, `diverse of Sir Peter Temple's tenants and servants assaulted and struck [the hunters] and their servants in the purlieu, as some of them hunted in the woods twelve or fourteen red deer besides great store of fallow deer, the keeper at that time having made gaps and passages through the park pales'. In conclusion, the petitioners begged `that the lands so enclosed be layed open again', that Sir Peter Temple `keep up his pale, according to his license to empark, if he has license', that the freeholders `be restored to their ancient liberty of purlieu', and that Temple make satisfaction for damages. Despite its distortions, the petition expressed Abel Dayrell's view of Sir Peter Temple's enclosure of his land as a form of humiliation. Dayrell's account of conditions in Stowe joined an indictment of depopulation and avarice to a lament for violated `demesne lands' and diminished honour, embodied in lost liberties of purlieu and the hunt. In 1641 and 1642, the symbols and indignities evoked in this petition were used to justify a violent defence of the Dayrell patrimony in a battle of Stowe park.60 iii The political economy of the manor or manors of Stowe and Lamport became inseparable from the calculus of local honour in

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the late 1630s, as the Dayrell estate in Lamport became a smaller and smaller island in the rising sea of Stowe park and the honour of the Temple family. After Sir Peter Temple initiated the lawsuit over the commons in Stowe, the Dayrells retaliated against the park and its keepers. In 1640, Abel Dayrell of Lamport defended his actions as the only honourable response to avarice. Temple had `plainly oppressed' the Dayrells and others in the neighbourhood. These neighbours now depended on the resistance of the Dayrells, `for if [Dayrell] was excluded [from his lands and commons in Stowe], the [neighbours] would quickly be excluded also, since Sir Peter Temple already excluded them by paling in the park, until [Dayrell] had caused the same to be thrown open again.'61 Because a deer park expressed both honour and interest or exclusive property, the Dayrells found ample justi®cation for their behaviour in the culture of gentility. Since the late ®fteenth century, a gentleman might ®nd honour in defence of the commonweal from the depredations of the powerful, including the building of deer parks, the `curse of the Lord, to have our country converted from the furniture of mankind to the walks and shrouds of wild beasts.'62 After the initial destruction of the pale in Stowe, resistance assumed the form of a series of armed raids on the park and dramatic gestures by the Dayrells and their servants and friends. Many families formerly subordinate to the Temples and Dayrells as servants and tenants in Stowe and Lamport received active and sometimes quite vocal parts in this violent theatre of honour evoked by the divisions among the local gentlemen. On 25 August 1641, Richard Charters, a keeper of the park in Dadford, witnessed one of the expeditions of the Dayrell family `within the pale of the park' during a late evening walk in his tract of the chase.63 As Charters watched, Edmund and Paul Dayrell, sons of Abel Dayrell of Lamport, and Gideon Fisher, the younger, a friend of the Dayrells from Carlton in Bedfordshire, entered the park around midnight, carrying a crossbow and swords or rapiers. A second account, the statement of keeper Arthur East, expanded this expedition to include Richard Scott, a servant of Abel Dayrell, and limited its arsenal to `swords and bucklers and long pikestaves, about ®ve yards long', more gentlemanly arms for a hunt than a crossbow.64 In any event, Charters understandably disliked the look of the props in this play and elected not to challenge the intruders, claiming that he `presently lost sight' of the group. An hour later, Charters heard

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`somebody hallowing, shouting, or crying out' and made for the sound of the disturbance. He emerged from the forest to discover Arthur East, lying `sore wounded, cut, beat, and bruised' on the lawn of the park, unable to walk unassisted.65 East had apparently surprised the Dayrells and their companions in the midst of their nocturnal sport, and the gang had beaten and knocked him down, had `almost cut off one of his arms with a sword, so that he [was] lamed, and [had] thrust him in two several parts of his body with one of the pikestaves'. According to East, one of his assailants wanted to `kill him outright', claiming that East knew his attackers and would ensure Sir Peter Temple's revenge, and had charged East with a sword, `wherewith he had nailed [him] to the ground as he lay if the thrust had not been prevented'.66 Before Charters arrived on the scene, the Dayrells and their friends had ¯ed, but East quickly identi®ed the Dayrells as two of his assailants. Leaning heavily on Charters for support, East staggered back to his lodge and then pressed his colleague to take his bloodhound in pursuit of the intruders. Charters took the hound back to the site of the attack and picked up a trail that led across the park, into the disputed territory of Stowe Furze, `where he found a deer warm and newly killed'. Ultimately, the hound followed the scent to the door of the Dayrell house in Lamport, `and as [Charters] was going into the yard he met a hound coming out with a shoulder of venison or the greatest part in his mouth'.67 Apparently, Charters had no warrant to pursue the matter beyond the closed door. The violent assaults on the park became more frequent in the autumn and winter of 1641, as Temple's chancery lawsuit against the Dayrells entered the commission phase.68 Abel Dayrell now began to receive armed support from extended kin, as his powerful cousin, Peter Dayrell, lord of Lillingstone Dayrell, entered the ®eld. 69 On 8 November and 1 December, Paul Dayrell, Abel's son, entered `the old park' at Stowe in search of `small birds' and `shot a handgun, charged with powder and hailshot'.70 These minor disturbances of the peace culminated in full-scale raids later in the month. On 14 December, Paul again walked into the park looking for trouble, pointed his gun at Arthur East, cocked it, and reportedly said `if he had [East] out of the park, he would shoot him.'71 Two days later, a raiding party composed of Edmund and Paul Dayrell of Lamport, their cousins Peter Dayrell of Lillingstone Dayrell and his son Peter, their servants John Salisbury and John Rands, and `diverse others to

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the number of about twenty persons', descended on the park `in warlike manner, armed with targets, swords, guns, pikes, crossbows, and bills'.72 `After many braving and boasting words', the Dayrells and their companions began to ®re into the park, killing a favourite hound, a gift to Sir Peter Temple from Thomas, viscount Savile. According to Arthur East, Peter Dayrell, the younger, `wished that the dog's master were there'.73 In January 1642, Peter Harris, a servant of the Temples, con®rmed East's account of this Dayrell comitatus, their `riotous assemblies' and `threatening speeches', as the common enterprise of the Dayrells in Lamport and Lillingstone Dayrell.74 Harris feared to perform his duties in Stowe park because this gang was routinely `armed in terrible manner with guns, swords, targets, and pikestaves' and had threatened `to shoot him or otherwise kill him; so he is afraid for his life and dare not stir.'75 In the spring of 1642, Temple's chancery lawsuit over the stint of the commons became inseparable from the prosecutions that stemmed from assaults on the park, but the local war only became more ®erce, as the Dayrells enlisted the Tyrells of nearby Thornton, an in¯uential gentry family, for their next and most ambitious campaign against Stowe park.76 On 13 May, Arthur East had appeared before Robert Heath, chief justice of the King's Bench, to untangle the `businesses' concerning the supplicavit against the Dayrell comitatus, secured in chancery after the December raids. Five days later, the Dayrells and Tyrells attacked the contested northeastern corner of the park around Stowe Furze.77 A hunting party of perhaps one hundred friends and servants was recruited from Chackmore, south of Stowe, and from Nash and Wicken, several miles further east, closer to the seat of the Tyrells in Thornton. Sir Edward Tyrell commanded the expedition, consisting of his sons Toby and Francis `with diverse of their servants and shepherds, whereof William Wrighton, John Ethersay, and Timothy Scott had guns, and [Michael] Kent, Sir Edward's servant, held a brace of his master's greyhounds'. Peter Dayrell the elder, of Lillingstone Dayrell, and his sons Thomas and Peter, led the assault alongside the Tyrells, but the servants were as heavily armed as their masters in a party reportedly carrying `above forty guns, swords, and pikestaves' into the park. According to Temple's servants, this group `rode and hunted up and down in Sir Peter Temple's ground, beat in the furze, and hunted a deer in Stowe Furze and over Sir Peter's ground in

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Stowe Field, hunting him into College Woods in Akeley, where he was killed by Richard Symons of Wicken with a gun'. As later raids on the park would con®rm, the supporting players in these dramas were often the most forward in verbal threats and boasts. James Kiplyn of Nash, for example, a `pricker' or mounted attendant `in Sir Edward Tyrell's company, threatened to beat Edward Abbot, a servant of Sir Peter Temple', and boasted `that he would be the death of forty of Temple's deer'.78 The male heads of elite households and their sons invariably assumed the lead in these affairs of honour. As the battle of Stowe park reached its peak in the last week of May and ®rst week of June, 1642, Temples and Dayrells contended for honour in carefully choreographed scenes of violence. On 2 June, Sir Peter Temple, in the company of three of his servants, confronted and disarmed Paul Dayrell of Lamport, after Paul and his brother Edmund, their cousin Peter Farren of Northampton, and their usual confederate, Richard Scott, described as their father's servant, had spent morning and afternoon coursing Stowe Furze with greyhounds. Temple seized Dayrell's gun and challenged him to charge a felony.79 Five days later, Peter Dayrell the younger, under the approving eyes of his father and Abel Dayrell, stood over a freshly killed deer in Stowe park and, in front of Temple's servants, `having drawn his sword, said whoever should try to take away the deer, he would run through'.80 Dayrell was suf®ciently convincing to prevent Robert Collison from taking the deer on Temple's behalf, although Peter's younger brother Thomas cut a less menacing ®gure. After Thomas `saw his brother's sword drawn', he tried eight times to draw his own, failed for unspeci®ed reasons, and ®nally received help from a friend, then `shook his drawn sword in his hand, and gave many daring and boasting words'.81 Despite his technical dif®culties, Dayrell's `daring' words apparently inspired Francis Tyrell's `struggle and scuf¯e' to prevent Edward Abbot from hauling away the deer for Temple's use.82 These confrontations had their limits, de®ned in terms of both honour and law. The raids and defence of Stowe park made controlled use of force to intimidate and produced no fatalities in more than a year of armed con¯ict. A confrontation between Peter Dayrell the elder, and Arthur East, a keeper in Stowe, illustrates an awareness of the constraints of honour and law. On 24 May 1642, Dayrell led a hunting party in the vicinity of Stowe park, consisting

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of his sons, his cousin Abel of Lamport, Abel's sons, Abel's cousin Peter Farren of Northampton, and several servants of the households in Lillingstone Dayrell and Lamport.83 As the group approached Rueworth lane, near the pale of Stowe park, Peter, the elder, became enraged at the sight of East making his rounds `and broke through the mound or fence to come into the lane'. Dayrell `catched hold of East and shook him, and, holding his staff over his head, called him rogue, rascal, thief, and perjured knave, and otherwise threatened to beat him sore'.84 Dayrell's anger and weapon were such that Peter Farren, `fearing some harm might ensue', dismounted, `took Dayrell in his arms and held him'. `Cousin, let the keeper go', Farren advised, `You shall not beat him, for he gives you no bad words.' After a few moments, Dayrell calmed himself suf®ciently to reply, `Though you will not let me strike him, yet I will hold and shake him.'85 East then left the scene scared but unharmed. Farren carefully prevented the transformation of anger to murder and saved his cousin from a dishonourable assault on a servant who had offered no `bad words' or provocation. This theatre of honour, enacted on a shifting border between intimidation, riot and murder, offered numerous scenes of personal confrontation, designed to display an individual mastery of force. Yet the competition to hold the most honour required many hands, and the con¯ict endemic in the culture of gentility thus produced a diffusion of power and status among the supporting cast. Although masters generally controlled the script and the weapons, the theatre of honour offered many opportunities to secure this power, and servants were among the most vocal participants in the raids on Stowe park. The broader impact of `honour plays' on the societies clustered around noble households is best illustrated by the events surrounding Peter Dayrell the younger's impassioned defence of the deer killed on 7 June, 1642. As Dayrell stood over the deer with his drawn sword, the `servants and company' declared their support with `many bragging and daring words, some of them swearing that the deer was theirs and that they would carry him away or else they would lose their lives in the place.'86 When John Symons attempted to take the deer in the name of Sir Peter Temple, John Rands, a servant of Peter Dayrell the elder, attacked Symons and `ran him into the forehead with the pike of an halberd or bill'.87 Local reputations might be built in the competitive boasts that followed such affrays. On the `morrow' after this `great hunting', William

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Channel, a servant of Peter Dayrell the elder, bragged to Arthur East and Thomas Dancer of Syresham, northwest of Stowe that if any blows had been struck when the deer, killed the day before by his master, was in taking away, that they on his master's side would have shot their guns as fast as they could at the men on Sir Peter's side, for he knew that his master's men had twelve guns and better staffs than Sir Peter's men; and further said that if blows had been struck there would a great deal of blood have been shed, and that he himself would have shot his gun on his master's behalf as long as he could have stood. 88

The violent scenes in Stowe park furnished the means for servants and other lesser players, such as William Channel, John Rands, and James Kiplyn of Nash, to build their own local reputations for courage, for martial prowess and for the noble skills of the hunt. Although the battle of Stowe park reveals the small-scale dynamics of power in a hierarchic society, the most important evidence from this sordid affair concerns the meanings of violence in the culture of gentility. This notion of gentility is inseparable from early modern understandings of the proper exercise of law and order. Yet the imbroglio of the Temples and Dayrells evokes the violent competition for honour at the heart of orderliness and power in the seventeenth century. The ripples from this local competition reached the centres of royal power in Temple's chancery lawsuit of the late 1630s and in Dayrell's petition to parliament early in 1642, calling for the restoration of the commonweal and the destruction of `oppressive' enclosures in Stowe. Yet the actions in law and the petition did not replace or suppress violence in any meaningful sense. The extensive local use of intimidation and terror moved parallel to civil actions in the courts and in parliament. In this context, domestication of the violence of gentility meant only that martial assembly was justi®ed in terms of law and the honourable defence of the commonweal and that local intimidation tended to stop short of murder. iv The violent theatre in Stowe reveals the complex and limited diffusion of the authority of law, as expressed in the formal texts of forest discourse, to the local societies of the forest and its borders in the early seventeenth century. Moreover, of®cers of the crown showed little inclination to intervene directly in the battle, manoeuvring to accommodate and contain the violence of gentility. In

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September 1642, the assize court in Aylesbury appointed Sir Edward Tyrell, a friend of the Dayrells and sometime companion on their raids, and Sir Alexander Denton, a cousin of Sir Peter Temple, justices of the peace for Buckinghamshire, to investigate `the business' concerning Edmund Dayrell, Paul Dayrell and `other delinquents' and allowed the justices broad discretion to bind the disorderly to the peace.89 These relatives and combatants were entrusted to compose the delicate balance of honour, gentility and subordination to the crown and its law. Ultimately, the contests for the commonweal and the hunting raids in Stowe became a local prelude to civil war, as Sir Peter Temple supported the parliament after October 1642, and Peter Dayrell the elder, of Lillingstone Dayrell, defended the crown.90 Perhaps the opening scene of John Symons, John Rands and the disputed deer carcass now seems to have disappeared from view beneath a weight of analysis and interpretation. Yet the forms and uses of authority, its making and unmaking, its myriad exchanges, remain elusive if the words and deeds of such as Symons and Rands appear only in lists of examples, as empty postures separated from the places and relationships that were their substance. Because Symons and Rands stood at the intersection of a dynamic political economy, a con¯ict between two powerful households, and a vigorous martial culture of the forest and the hunt, the confrontation over the deer assumes layers of signi®cance and resists reduction to the comfortable dichotomies of elite and common interest, the economic priorities of the propertied and propertyless, or the distinct visions of order imposed by the governors on the merely governed. The drama of the hunting raid reveals a complex discourse of honour common to all the participants, both gentlemen and commoners. This discourse furnished a justi®cation for resistance to the Temples as powerful as the dynastic impulse to construct the deer park in Stowe. The daring words of two soldiers in the battle of Stowe park challenge many of the familiar distinctions between culture, politics, economy and society in early modern England, and suggest the pervasive signi®cance of cultural forms such as the hunt, often treated as the exclusive concern of an elite class.

chapter 7

Administrative performance: the representation of political authority in early modern England Michael J. Braddick

At the Easter quarter sessions in Shropshire in 1635 two justices of the peace exchanged words over a grand jury presentment. Timothy Tourneur rebuked the jurymen for being `Busie', that is of using their of®ce to intrude into areas that were not their proper concern. Sir John Corbet came to their defence, calling for the reading of the Petition of Right and accusing Tourneur of being `teachie' or `touchie' when he objected.1 There was some tartness in the exchange, but the rami®cations seem to have been out of all proportion to what was said. Corbet and one other justice were imprisoned prior to an appearance before the Privy Council. On appearance they, and the jurymen, were required to make public apologies. Corbet's refusal to do so resulted in his imprisonment in London throughout the summer, during a plague outbreak. He was subsequently dismissed from the Commission of the Peace, and his release from imprisonment was conditional upon entering a bond to answer a suit in Star Chamber. Some time later, however, Corbet had an opportunity for revenge when he was elected to parliament in 1640. He petitioned the Commons citing a number of grievances relating to the episode and met with a sympathetic reaction which led to the impeachment of the lord lieutenant and all the privy councillors who had signed warrants for his arrest. At that point, Corbet's public disagreement with Tourneur had become a matter of national political importance, and Bridgewater, the lord lieutenant in question, had to take considerable pains to present his defence. There seems, on the face of it, a large gap to be explained between the seriousness of the initial disagreement and its consequences. In part this is to do with the nature of the grievance that the grand jury presented ± that the of®ce of muster master in Shropshire was an unnecessary one and, therefore, a grievance. This was, notoriously, a contentious issue in early Stuart England and provides part of the 166

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explanation for the heat which the exchange subsequently generated. But that is not the whole story: there are other reasons why such an apparently brief and low-key exchange had such dramatic consequences, and they have a larger signi®cance in understanding the representation of governmental authority in the English localities. We need to understand not just why they were arguing, but why an argument in this (apparently trivial) form had such dramatic effects. In saying things we are also doing things: our statements carry an illocutionary force which is the result not just of what we say but how, to whom and in what context we say it. They may be considered, therefore, `speech acts'.2 In this case, the effect of the words was magni®ed by the implications they had for the representation of the political power both of the individuals concerned and of the commission and lieutenancy. In elucidating the dramatic effect of this exchange, therefore, we are explaining a rift in the normal representation of political power in the English localities. That power was asserted in unstated ways, shored up by resort to legitimating texts and depended in part on what Grif®ths has termed `selective publicity' of of®cial policy.3 Corbet's intervention rendered unstable both Tourneur's self-presentation and the meaning of a text which carried a considerable freight of symbolic ± even talismanic ± authority. At the same time he made public a disagreement which should have remained private, and he did so, moreover, in a context which was normally reserved for the smooth representation of the collective authority of the magistracy. Small insults delivered in this way had considerable effect. A sensitivity to these cultural, or performative, aspects of the exercise of power helps to elucidate the unspectacular ways in which the reactions of the governed, or concern about their potential reactions, might act as a restraint on the activities of their governors. Moreover, the recriminations that followed the argument reveal the ways in which subordinates could manipulate the legitimating texts and languages of government to protect themselves from punishment. Before going on to examine these aspects of the episode, however, we must ®rst consider what the argument was about. i The controversy arose in relation to militia reform, something that was often contentious in the English localities. One element of

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reform was the appointment of muster masters, men of military experience, to oversee the equipping and training of the county militias.4 There was controversy not only about whether or not such an of®ce was necessary but also about the legality of the rates that were imposed in order to pay their fees. Although they were appointed at the Privy Council's command by the lord lieutenant, the rates were imposed on the county ± in effect, a rate was imposed at the will of the lieutenant. This was justi®able, since the activities of the lieutenancy enjoyed statutory backing, but the rate might seem unnecessary to some and a dubious precedent for the imposition of future burdens without consultation. Attempts had been made to support a muster master in Shropshire during the 1620s which had aroused opposition. When renewed attempts were made to raise the fee in 1631, the king was suspicious that resistance in the country was encouraged by the attitude of `the Lords Lieutenants & their deputies [who] make dif®culty or (at least) dainty in setting their hands to the Assessmts'. Correspondence from 1632 and 1633 suggests that the deputy lieutenants in Shropshire, or at least some of them, were indeed slow to sign warrants for the assessments.5 In 1634 Edward Burton, the muster master, complained that, although three of the deputies had signed warrants to collect his fee for that year, they were refusing to authorise collections for the previous two years. He was told by the deputy lieutenants to forego that £100.6 Local of®ceholders were apparently not assiduous and were probably responding to an awareness of local hostility.7 In 1634 warrants were issued to collect the rate, but the response was poor and by Easter 1635 only ®ve of the ®fteen hundreds had paid. Six asked for more time and three absolutely refused.8 Legal doubts offered a legitimation for resistance to minor of®cials. In June 1635 Bridgewater was informed that John Tongue, gent, of Newton, seeing the serving of a warrant on Thomas Cotton to collect the money for the fee, said `there is noe reason nor lawe for it And I would advise that the Countrey will Joyne together & gather ®ve or 6 thousand pownds to try a suite in it'. Higher authority was invoked to justify this position, too: Joseph Heylye reported the `yong Newton toulde him (inter al[ia]) that his father had good frendes & that his M[aste]r Mr Comptroller & the Lo: Archbp. of Cant. weare made ®rme for him.'9 The justices also expressed doubts, writing to Bridgewater on 26 May that the fee was `nev[er] by the County assented unto to be payed'. Most importantly, however, `wee beleeve

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that the trayned bands of the Countie are as able . . . and that the Armes & other municons . . . are as Compleate and suf®cient as in other Counties' without the bene®t of a muster master. In other words, the of®ce was, indeed, unnecessary.10 As Richard Harris, the clerk of the peace, told Bridgewater, `for the fee it selfe it is generally distasted and my Good Lord, yr truest frends (for so I may be bould to call them, whome I knowe to be so) disgust it utterly'.11 The grand jury presentment at quarter sessions in 1635 was controversial, therefore, because it used the quarter sessions as a platform from which to oppose an important crown policy. Those present were likely to have been aware of the prior con¯ict and the public exchange of views over the rate was therefore loaded. The jury claimed to be responding to the complaints of a number of high constables. Whereas wee are Crediblie informed and are of our owne knowledges privie to the greate repyning of the Countrey generally because of the Greate and unnecessary charge of ®ftie pounds to be payed annually to a Muster Mr which is a needlesse of®ce in this County (as is conceaved) in regard his Mats Service hath not at all nor is like to be neglected by the defect of such an of®cer.

Thus, the fee was `a greate greevance and oppression'.12 Although they only questioned the need for the of®ce rather than its legality, this was nonetheless a challenge to a crown policy and to the authority of one of its principal agencies in the locality ± the lieutenancy. The implications of the presentment prompted the public disagreement about its propriety. The interest of the lieutenancy was championed by Tourneur and the grand jury was defended by John Corbet. In this exchange, Tourneur thought, Corbet's `faction prvayled'.13 Following the grand jury's presentment, `Sr Richard Newport and Mr Tourneur did take some exceptions against the said Acte, Mr Tourneur discovered some heate in taxing and telling the Jurye they weere too Busie'. In response Corbet `called for the statute booke turned to the petiticon of Right' and commanded Richard Harris, the clerk of the peace, to read it. Corbet then `spoake with some tartnes against Mr Tourneur' about his response to the jury and said `I wonder any man should be teachie or take exceptions against the Jurye that had done nothing but what they ought to doe'. Tourneur responded `that he was not soe teachie but that he might lawfully tell the Jurye they had omitted other greviances wch were a

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greater burthen to the Cuntry then that was, adding wthall that the Muster Mar: was a necessary of®cer'. However, his words did not carry the day: `Sr John and the rest of the Justices though14 tacitly opposed'. The opposition does seem to have been unspoken, however, and only Mr Charleton openly seconded Corbet, saying `that my lord Zouch in his tyme would have had the said fee of 50li for Captaine Barker, but was denyed it'.15 Much mention was subsequently made of the exchange about touchiness, which appears to have offended Tourneur because he had lost in a battle of wit. When the Statute Book was produced, `Sr John Corbett pointed his ®nger to the place Mr Tourneur told him hee need not digitate, Sr John replied, nor yu to be so toutchie.'16 What Corbet said at the Easter quarter sessions was, according to all reports, fairly mild, and the other justices had only tacitly opposed Tourneur. But the Privy Council thought it was dangerous, dismissed Corbet from the commission, imprisoned him and commenced a Star Chamber suit against him, requiring him to enter a £2,000 bond to answer the suit.17 His offence was `animateing of others to refuse the paymt'.18 ii The theatrical effect of this comparatively minor drama derived not only from what was said, but also from how and where it was said. Two elements of the drama in particular help to explain why this exchange was taken so seriously: the battle of wits between Tourneur and Corbet; and the rather staged appeal to the Petition of Right. In part, the offence related to Tourneur's public face: `I call to minde that Sr J C gave me an un®tting terme for that place and occasion'.19 Quarter sessions were very public occasions. In addition to the magistrates (six of them in this case), sessions were attended by the sheriff, the clerk of the peace, the high constables and members of the grand, petty and Hundred juries ± several dozen people in all. Prisoners, those bound to appear and those petitioning the sessions added to the crowd. The towns where sessions met `were thronged with people for several days; rumours spread, bargains were struck, decisions made or shelved, Council orders promulgated, grievances voiced.' As a result, hosting the sessions was an important commercial opportunity, and in some counties sessions may have met in a number of towns in rotation in order to spread this business

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around.20 Honour, reputation and dignity were public qualities ± asserted by personal comportment in public and respected by the reciprocal politenesses that were expected. Public insult could have a dramatic effect on reputation, and early modern people seem to have been quite willing to go to law in order to defend their public reputation.21 Corbet had challenged Tourneur's self-presentation at one of the most public events of the county year. Losing a battle of wits in front of an audience was a serious matter for a magistrate, for whom honour and reputation constituted an important part of their claim to authority.22 The unstated force of Corbet's intervention was to rob Tourneur of his dignity and, therefore, his `natural' authority. In early modern England most administrative acts took place in face-to-face contexts, which is `where most of the world's work gets done'.23 Most government policies were expressed, ultimately, in the presentation of a writ, the collection of a rate or the reading of a text by a local of®ce-holder to his neighbours. In making it clear that he was acting in a particular role, an of®ce-holder sought to de®ne the nature of the encounter and manage others' impression of him. If this was successful, the transaction would run smoothly.24 But this is a reciprocal process ± by adopting a particular social role, an individual `implicitly proffers a role to the other party which the latter may not necessarily willingly take up'.25 Early modern of®ce-holders engaged in these attempts at impression management, and their credibility depended on the reception of their performance. Most administrative tasks in early modern England were performed by of®ce-holders whose voluntary work as a representative of crown authority rested on, but also served to cement, social standing. The legitimacy of their actions rested not just on legality, therefore, but on the assertion of a wider claim to authority. Performance of the of®ce entailed the presentation of a self which con®rmed the authority of their of®ce. For example, the claim to gentility made by early modern justices rested on appeal to values of honour, degree and dignity. `The moral, civil and social qualities of the gentleman had constantly to be displayed in his adult being. They were revealed in the transactions of life in the country estate or in the city and Court, transactions in which his peers and inferiors provided the social opportunity for exchanges of honour.' When Henry, ®fth earl of Huntingdon, explained the conduct of public duties to his son, he noted that `There is nothing will more increase or lessen thy esteeme then thy carriage abroade for men that cannot

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judge of thee nor p[er]chance thou shalt ever see againe will censure of thee by thy outward behaviour'. Through this public deportment magistrates laid claim to the qualities that made their public authority `natural'. Sir Richard Grosvenor was assured by one `aspiring Puritan minister' that The fervent zeale and universall approbation of our county give witnesse to your deserts for a chief pillar in the publike affaires of this kingdome; . . . their shrill cryes prevaile without resistance, notwithstanding your modest denial of the of®ce of a father of the country.

On this view, his credentials for rule rested on a range of honourable and godly virtues, not simply on his commission.26 The appeal to these ideals legitimated acts of power and enabled of®ce-holders; to refuse to accord the polite respect to which of®ce-holders laid claim was, potentially, to refuse to acknowledge their credentials for rule. Alongside legal challenges to an of®ce and to its use in a particular circumstance, therefore, `political' resistance could take the form of an attack on personal dignity and ®tness, or refusal to accord recognition of that dignity. In early modern England attacks on of®ce-holders were frequently couched in such terms. Abuses in Ship Money assessments in Shropshire, for example, led one aggrieved party to point out that the chief offender `is the rarest Justice of peace and shirieff, for his domesticall attendance, that hath bynne known in Shropshire for these many yeeres'.27 Such resistance, although unspectacular, could be of considerable political (or administrative) signi®cance. This was also true of lowlier of®ce-holders, who were easily discouraged by `violent words', the effect of which was much increased if the words were spoken in the presence of others.28 Men seeking to serve writs for non-payment of the muster master's rate in Shropshire early in the 1630s were obstructed in this way. William Downes, a high constable, emphasised to them how dependent on local co-operation they were: `Alas poore fellow dost thow come to seeke for men thow knowest not where to ®nd wth othr abusive discourse'. The abusiveness of the discourse lay in the public disavowal of the of®cial and the implied loss of face ± these words were not actionable, but they prevented effective action. 29 We can well imagine that disrespect was frequently expressed offstage, and we have plenty of evidence for the circulation of written libels which expressed this dissidence. Confronted with a libel, the victim could make a judgement about whether dignity was better

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served by ignoring the disrespect or by trying to ®nd the perpetrator ± a course of action that risked giving greater publicity and weight to the insult and may not have succeeded in visiting punishment on its author.30 A verbal insult, delivered in public, gave no such option. The interaction order was disrupted, the public transcript rent, in a way that was impossible to ignore. Corbet's words to Tourneur at the quarter sessions undercut his attempt to manage the impressions the audience had of him, and although resistance to him was `tacit', it was effective.31 The episode reveals how ®nely tuned administrative performances were, how easily an of®ce-holder could feel that their attempts to manage others' impressions of them had failed, and how serious that could be for administrative effectiveness. In ways that Tourneur found dif®cult to document, his self-presentation had been undercut, just as William Downes had been able to obstruct the collection of the money for the fee by abusive discourse. The effect of Corbet's words to Tourneur depended on context: they were `un®tting . . . for that place and occasion'. Tourneur himself was later accused of using words inappropriate to the place and occasion, but defended himself by saying that `I am sure I gave him no un®tting language for if I had the course of honor was open for him'.32 In both cases dignity, and hence authority, rested on smooth public performance. The public disagreement affected not just Tourneur's dignity, of course. The Privy Council may also have been concerned about the collective authority of the bench. At public occasions such as the quarter sessions magistrates fostered a sense that they were the safeguard of social order. To maintain the authority of the bench was, therefore, to maintain order, and Tourneur and Corbet had entered this particular arena as members of a team. James I, in a letter to justices in 1609, argued that the danger of partial implementation of Privy Council instructions was that `the vulgar sorte of people will in tyme gett a custome of disobedience'.33 The authority of magistracy rested on their social credentials as fathers of their country, not on appeal to particular political positions. To appeal to public opinion was to `itch after popularity', and in the 1640s it seemed horrifying that the world was governed by opinion.34 Good government rested on order, not opinion, and faction and party were therefore corrosive of good government. In practice this required a united front from of®ce-holders. Suffolk magistrates, stung by a public rebuke of them and their ministers at the Assizes in 1583,

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nonetheless held their peace `lest by our severance in opinion law should be rent and Justice cut in twayne'. The ultimate danger of division on the `mynds of the people which ar so easely distracted' would be that the magistracy and ministry be `brought into open contempt'.35 The belief that disagreements should be kept offstage was re¯ected in the concern at all levels of early modern government to draw a distinction between public and private knowledge. In London `it was hoped that the discharge of of®cial information would be carefully conducted and its public entry choreographed and made to appear imposing and ®nal'. Prior to that `it was vital that the rulers of the parish, guild and city met in private; that secret matters did not become public news to be scattered across London'.36 The Swallow®eld articles, produced by the self-styled `chief inhabitants' of four villages in Wiltshire, provided a blueprint for village government and set out a number of speci®c priorities in the maintenance of local order and harmony. Among their provisions there were also rules for the conduct of meetings, in which everyone was to be heard without interruption and majority will was to prevail. But there was clearly a concern to present a united front to the other inhabitants, since the parties agreed `that what so ever shalby any of us [be] don or sayd in o[u]r meetyngs . . . shall be kept secret, & not revayled further than o[u]r owen Company'. In particular nothing was to be revealed `w[hi]ch may tend to, or p[ro]cure the discredett or disgrace of o[u]r meetyngs & good intent, or of any of oure Company'.37 It was not just Tourneur's dignity at stake at the sessions in 1635, therefore, but the representation of the seamless authority of the bench. Bridgewater, the lord lieutenant responsible for appointing the muster master and authorising the rate for his fees, also felt that his dignity was threatened. Bridgewater presumed that the dispute involved a criticism of his lieutenancy, referring to the disagreement `wherein my selfe was allso (though tacitly) concerned'.38 But an important element of his discom®ture related to his dignity ± he was upset that he was not the ®rst to hear the news of the confrontation. He complained to Tourneur that because of a delay in the delivery of a letter, `I heard a greate noyse of the Bussines about the Towne before I was able to give any answeare to such questions as (upon such an occasion) might have beene demanded of me'.39 He was clearly unnerved that he had heard of the business only by `¯ying

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reporte' and offended that Harris, Burton or his deputy lieutenants had not written to him with the news.40 Control of the news was an important part of the mystery of government, re¯ected in concerns about the protection of the arcana imperii by the king and council, and the preservation of the secrecy about proceedings in parish vestries.41 There was, it seems, both a growing appetite for and readier supply of news in early Stuart England, fed by oral, manuscript and print sources. News, gossip and rumour travelled along the coach roads to London, circulated at the Royal Exchange and St Paul's before spinning out again along the axes of London's communications with the rest of the kingdom.42 We can imagine the relish with which the story of the exchange at quarter sessions was recounted in these fora, and how Bridgewater felt his dignity threatened by these ¯ying reports. By saying what he did in the way that he said it, Corbet undercut the authority and dignity both of Tourneur and, by implication, Bridgewater. He also made public a division among the county's natural governors which should have remained secret and which might encourage similar statements by men of more humble station. Reparation was required in the form of similarly public statements. The Privy Council, informed by Bridgewater of the events at quarter sessions, responded to the lord lieutenant's discom®ture by summoning the members of the grand jury and the two justices who had openly supported them. Corbet and Charleton were committed to the Fleet on 10 June 1635. Charleton was released on 12 June, but Corbet was only released on 29 November conditional upon entering a bond to answer a suit brought against him by the attorney general in Star Chamber.43 Corbet's appearance had been to answer `for certayne Speeches by him used at a q[ua]rter Session in the County of Salop, to his Mats diservice & the Animateing of others to refuse the paymt of the muster masters fee'. It had been stipulated that his release should be conditional upon making submission to the lord lieutenant.44 Corbet was therefore imprisoned for some time and this despite the presence of the plague in London. As Sergeant Wilde put it some years later in representing Corbet's grievances to the Commons, `he remained a prisoner many months & in time of greate danger: & pestilence of the sicknesse was much at that time to the hazard of his life.'45 This long imprisonment was, therefore, a measure both of his commitment and that of the Privy Council. The price of a submission, and hence the origin of Corbet's

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reluctance, was loss of face. The ®fth earl of Huntingdon kept a note of the correct form of submission to be made by `delinquents at musters'. They were to acknowledge `my negligence and defalt in the service I ought to have performed', saying I doe in all humble manner acknowledge my foresaid Offence and am hartily sorry for having shewed such remisnes in that his Maties: soe important service; humbly praying that the punishmt: I have nowe undergone may blott out the remembrance theirof: Soe as I maye regaine the favour and good opinion of the right hoble the Lords of the counsell, the lord lieuten[a]nt and those worthy Knights the Deputie Lieuten[a]nts for wch I am an humble Sutor unto them and doe hereby promise to endevor to merrit the same by my future conformitie

They were to make the submission `upon their knees' and in writing before being released from attendance on the Privy Council.46 The force of the sanction was the public meaning attached to the gesture. We do not know what form Corbet's submission would have taken, but he could have gone through it with his ®ngers crossed, at least metaphorically ± its meaning for him would have been unimportant. But such a submission was an action with an unambiguous meaning to others ± that Corbet accepted his error. It was a speech act of considerable signi®cance, not just for what was said but for what was signi®ed. An act signifying submission, even if it was insincerely intended, had a public force despite the insincerity of the intent. The power lay in the publicly understood meaning of what was being done, as well as what was being said. The parties to the dispute clearly recognised the force of these acts. Certainly, Corbet does not seem to have made a submission and remained in prison as a consequence. Bridgewater was later to use the fact that the submission had not been enforced as evidence that he did not `violently prosecute' Corbet.47 iii In the modern French bureaucracy, according to Bourdieu, training and self-presentation `foster the impression that the licensed practitioner is someone who has been reconstituted by his learning experience and is now set apart from other men'. One is not dealing with a person, but a representative of the state. Such representatives of the state have the capacity both to create legitimating texts and to control the interpretation of existing ones. By making of®cial records

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of events and circumstances, of®cials perform `state magic' ± constituting of®cial, and binding, versions of social reality, such as the right of an individual to seek asylum or state bene®t.48 In early modern England the legitimating performances were not `bureaucratic' and there was no `rhetoric of training', but there was a repertoire of beliefs and expectations relating to social ®tness which signi®ed the capacity of an individual to represent an abstract idea ± of good government, for example. An important part of this performance was, as in modern bureaucracies, the claim to be able both to create and to understand the meaning of legitimating texts. In one sense the exchange at quarter sessions, and subsequent con¯icts, can be read as a struggle to control the use and content of such authoritative texts. Legitimating texts euphemize power but are also open to divergent readings. In response to a series of controversial measures taken to raise money and troops for war in the 1620s, the House of Commons had passed the Petition of Right in 1628. Accepted only grudgingly by the king, the petition nonetheless had a great public resonance ± there were bon®res in London following its acceptance. Whether it was relevant to the muster master's fee was, however, debatable. The issues which had led to its passage related to the raising of forced loans, arbitrary imprisonment, the billeting of soldiers and the use of martial law. The fee related to none of these very directly, but might have been covered, for example, by the complaint relating to `divers other charges laid and levied upon your people in several counties by the lord lieutenants, deputy lieutenants, Commissioners for Musters . . . and others by command or direction from your Majesty or your Privy Council against the laws and free customs of the realm'. This might have persuaded some observers that the demand that no-one should be required to yield to `any gift, loan, benevolence, tax or such like charge without common consent by Act of Parliament' might apply to the muster master's fee.49 On the other hand, the powers of the lieutenancy did have statutory backing and the fee might not be a tax `or such like charge'. More importantly, however, the jury had said that the of®ce was unnecessary rather than illegal, and so the appeal to the Petition might have been said to be irrelevant in this case. Whatever its relevance to this case, Corbet seems to have appealed to the Petition of Right for dramatic effect as much as for information. One witness remembered that when Corbet called for the

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reading of the Petition, Tourneur had replied that `they knowe what was in the Peticon of Right' but that Corbet had repeated the request that it be read.50 Tourneur objected to Corbet's appeal to the Petition not just because it was not in his view relevant, but because of this dramatic effect. The appeal to the Petition came so quickly that it seemed premeditated: as soon as Tourneur reprehended the jury for their presentment, `Sr J C instantly tooke up theire defence and said he marvayled that I was so toutchie in that Businesse, for it was a thing Complayned of in the Peticon of right'.51 Bridgewater was certainly suspicious, asking for more information about the sessions `where Sr John Corbett shewed himselfe to bee so well read in the Statute booke.'52 However, it was equally dif®cult to say that reading the Petition was a bad thing since, formally speaking, it simply declared the rights of Englishmen as they were then understood. Interpretation of how these rights might apply in particular circumstances was far from agreed, though, and such ticklish issues were best handled by experts. As Tourneur later explained, the Petition was `a thing to the People wondrous plausible' and so although `I liked it well as having my share in it' it was `to be urged wth warynesse'.53 In this case the Petition of Right clearly had a local resonance, as a text on which to draw in legitimation of a particular line of argument. There is plenty of evidence of this kind of awareness in early modern England. Rioters in the Lincolnshire fenlands, for example, seem to have been most active in resisting enclosures for which there were no parliamentary warrants, and the commoners of Haxey felt protected by the mid-fourteenth-century deed of John de Mowbray which barred his successors from making improvements on the commons. The power of the text lay not just in the words that it recorded, but in its symbolic resonance. It was preserved in the church with great formality, kept under the great window in which the Mowbray arms were represented, `enshrined' in the iron-bound chest. The keys to the chest were in the keeping of some of the chief freeholders of the manor. In London there is evidence of a similarly acute awareness of the signi®cance of such texts at the lowest levels of administration.54 Legal and of®cial texts were part of a stock of legitimations available in early modern political life, and as such they had a symbolic power as objects. Access to them and to the de®nition of their meaning, however, was controlled. The dispute was in part about the use of one authoritative text but

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it was also about the attempt to create others. So, for example, a grand jury presentment had a particular signi®cance ± acceptance would have created the social fact that the of®ce of muster master was a grievance and an oppression. In part this was a battle over the proper administrative record of the status of the demand for the muster master's fee, therefore: in a sense Corbet's view that it was a grievance was not the main issue, but whether that opinion became an of®cial fact. We saw earlier how deputy lieutenants had impeded the raising of the rate by being `dainty' in setting their hands to the relevant warrants. Of®cials can create texts which state de®nitively what is going on, or who is entitled to, or deserves, what. Many local disputes revolved around this issue ± for example resistance to the creation of precedents by turning particular agreements about levels of tax assessment or militia contributions into matters of record.55 Corbet had his own chance to perform this `state magic' when he was returned to parliament in 1640. The tables were now turned and he had the chance to de®ne what had really been going on. Corbet claimed that Burton had been unlawfully appointed, and that in seeking to collect his fee, Burton had oppressed the inhabitants of the county, justi®ed by warrants made illegally by the deputy lieutenants. The grand jury, on this account, had quite rightly represented this grievance. When they were challenged, Corbet had merely `declared that he conceaved the Petition of Right would determine the question', calling for a public reading of it by the Clerk of the Peace. Hearing about this subsequently, Bridgewater had procured Corbet's dismissal from the Commission of the Peace before he had a chance to answer for his behaviour, something leading to his disgrace in the county. He also claimed that Charleton, the grand jury and numerous high constables were summoned by messengers at Bridgewater's will. Charleton and Corbet were imprisoned without warrant, `and for his further vexation' information was exhibited against him and the foreman of the grand jury, in Star Chamber, `for pretended Combination and disaffection to his Mats service to the affront of his L[ordship]'. He had entered bond of £2,000 to answer and had immediately answered the bill of complaint, but the cause was not pursued. He was, therefore, down by £2,000. 56 According to this version, a perfectly responsible use of of®ce by Corbet and the jurors had met with an abuse of their of®ces by the lord lieutenant and the Privy Council. Corbet's history of the dispute was obviously contentious, not least

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in arguing that the legality rather than the necessity of the of®ce had been at issue in the presentment. It was quite possibly disingenuous, but it threatened nonetheless to become the of®cial version. The Commons declared the grievance against Bridgewater and against the members of the Privy Council who had signed the writs and warrants relating to the case, noting that `the same is of Dangerous example for the future'. As a result, Bridgewater and the privy councillors were impeached.57 Sergeant Wilde, in presenting the impeachment, embellished Corbet's version with some powerful rhetoric, suggesting that it amounted to `a very great oppression, and grievance of a Member of their owne, Wherein I will be bold to say, no violation of or lib[er]ties have bin like to this.' Corbet, he said, `a member of or owne, a Knight of the Shire, of eminent Worth and quality, a father of many Children', had been `p[ro]secuted and Imprisoned, and made a stranger to his owne Country and home'. This was `Not for doing that which the Law did prohibitt, But for doing that wch the Law required him to doe.' His opponents had breached both Magna Carta and the Petition of Right.58 Corbet had succeeded in using parliament as the vehicle for his self-presentation. The Commons found that the fee `is an illegal charge and against the Petition of Right, and that it is high presumption for a Subject to impose anie Tax upon the Subject, & that the takeing of it is an Extorcon and agt the right of the Subject'; that the summoning of Corbet was illegal and he deserved reparations for his vexations and imprisonment; that Bridgewater ought to make reparation along with the privy councillors; and that the information in Star Chamber should be taken from the ®le and the bond returned. 59

iv These disputes related to attempts to control the presentation of authority both in public and in authoritative texts. In a sense the struggle was to appear, plausibly, to be acting responsibly and disinterestedly. Public authority depended on the assertion of personal qualities that would ensure that this was the case. In normal circumstances the claim to be `doing one's duty' legitimated political power, eliciting consent to an action which did not derive from personal interest. Such a claim might also help to protect individuals from the consequences of political con¯ict, however. The `duty'

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attaching to a particular of®ce was, therefore, another possible focus for contention in the exercise of political power. Corbet's account of what had happened became a matter of of®cial record partly because he successfully represented himself as the disinterested party and his opponents as men acting out of personal interest. The impeachment asserted not just that the fee was illegal but also that Bridgewater had abused his of®ce in revenge for an affront. In the subsequent proceedings, the grand jurors also had a chance to draw attention to Bridgewater's role in their woes.60 Legal nicety was clearly important and Bridgewater's notes show some sharpness in separating charges against him from Corbet's more extravagant claims,61 but it was also important for Bridgewater to disavow any personal interest in the subsequent proceedings. He pointed out, for example, that he had not signed any of the relevant warrants or writs.62 The fact that Bridgewater's name was not on the writ was not the whole point, of course, and testimony from a number of people suggested that he had been involved in the issue or execution of the warrants. As with Corbet's account of himself, however, Bridgewater's appeal to formal appearance was dif®cult to gainsay, although it may have seemed obviously ingenuous to many observers.63 Tourneur took a similar position when challenged about his behaviour at quarter sessions: `I hope the p[ar]liamt will not punish a Justice of Peace for differing in opinion from another Justice upon debate of a busynes at the quarter Sesss [sic]'. 64 It was also said that he had behaved improperly in denouncing his opponents at the sessions to Bridgewater, an accusation which raised ticklish issues about the relationship between of®ce and private interest. Letters between the two frequently mixed public business with more personal concerns, and it is clear that Bridgewater was helpful to Tourneur in his professional and estate business.65 One of the crucial letters from Tourneur, which described the events at the Easter sessions, was excerpted for circulation in Bridgewater's defence. The excised section was a request from Tourneur for preferment in the Council in the Marches; its excision suggests some sensitivity on this issue. Bridgewater's response also dealt with both Tourneur's request for preferment and his championship of the cause of the lieutenancy at the sessions. 66 Whereas Bridgewater had to defend himself against charges of personal interest, Tourneur's defence was that he had been asked for information about the events at the quarter sessions

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by someone to whom he was related and personally obliged. Similarly, Harris defended himself against charges of personal animosity, arguing that he had informed Bridgewater of events at the sessions out of duty.67 These manoeuvrings point to the ambiguous relationship between an of®ce and the qualities or personal interests of the individual who held it. Bridgewater's public support of the of®ce of muster master was tempered, for example, by his awareness that Burton was not a particularly blameless incumbent. Having opposed the establishment of the of®ce in the 1620s, Burton sought to maximise his own pro®ts by imposing an extra duty on those attending musters. Bridgewater's refusal of this request was later adduced as evidence of the pains he had taken to protect the county's interests.68 This ambiguity offered fertile ground for resistance short of open confrontation. Faced with impeachment or recrimination, these men had disavowed personal interest and claimed that they had merely been carrying out the duties of their of®ces. This was precisely the strategy that the grand jurymen and high constables had pursued in the aftermath of the controversy at the sessions. Bridgewater and Tourneur had suspected a conspiracy to use the grand jury for personal or factional reasons, hiding behind its duty to present grievances. Bridgewater wrote to the attorney general, Sir John Bankes, on 7 July 1635 that `truly I ame p[er]swaded there is somewhat more in this busines, then is yet started out, & it may be you wilbe of the same minde, when yow shall have spoken wth the Constables, & observed the difference betweene their Relations, & the af®dts:'69 In their defence the jurymen claimed simply to have reported what had been brought before them: `All af®rme high Constables, none else' were behind the presentment of the grievance and it was claimed that, faced with the initial presentment by the constables, `The Jury refused, & being pressed thereto tould them, if you will have it p[re]sented, bring it unto us, in a p[re]sentment written'.70 Eleven of the jury, apparently, were discharged on this basis, but Thomas Lochard and Roger Farmer were required to testify further about the claims of the high constables. They told the Privy Council that they could not offer any further testimony and `expressed & are hartily sorrowfull that they have displeased yor honnrs . . . & shall most willingly obey all yor honnrs future comands with all readines'. They petitioned, accordingly, that they should be discharged from further attendance.71

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A petition to the Privy Council from the grand jury as a whole claimed that they only now realised that by ®nding the presentment they had `incurred yor Lopps displeasure'. Having been summoned from the county, they were now `humblie and heartily sorrowfull' for their offence, adding `that if they have any ways erred in the said Presentmt the same was committed through ignorance'. They hoped that the Council would `accept this humble submission', promising that in future `whatsoever yor Lopp shalbe pleased to enioyne them unto they will willingly pforme' and that they did `(as in duty bound) daily pray for yor lopps eternall psperity'.72 Andrew Downes, Richard Gough and the 81-year-old Thomas Cotton pleaded ignorance when questioned by Bridgewater. They were, they said, `but of meane knowledge & quality un®tt to serve upon soe greate a service'. Having received presentments about the muster master, they thought they were bound to present it, and had taken no other part in the business. They had always paid the assessments for the muster master and promised to continue to do so ± they offered no excuse beyond ignorance and sought Bridgewater's protection.73 These individuals were, then, willing to make the public statements of submission that Corbet refused to make and that served to repair the political damage caused by their presentment. Of course, some of these performances may have been tactical. Some members of the jury may have been sympathetic to resistance to the fee, or had connections with those who were. Lochard, for example, was related to Corbet by marriage, and Farmer was said to have in his hands money due to a former muster master but would neither pay it to the current muster master nor repay it to the country. Renold Menlowe was reported to have said that the muster master had his money and did nothing for it.74 The defence that they were doing their duty, however, was dif®cult to gainsay. They had successfully taken control of that legitimating language and, by making proper public reparation for their offence, they had laid the blame effectively at the door of a number of high constables. William Downes was later unpopular for his actions as the sheriff responsible for Ship Money collection, and it was noted that in addition to his abuse of of®ce, he was the one who had `carried hymself soe dextrously before your honor this last sommer about the muster mr'.75 It was not possible to demonstrate publicly that he did not mean what he said, however: therein lay his dexterity. On the other hand, the sincerity of these declarations was not the main issue:

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having made them, the possibility of future resistance was foreclosed. Moreover, the legitimacy of the superior was reaf®rmed. So, when Cotton, Downes and Gough wrote that `they ¯ye to yor Lop for refuge & begge yor favor & helpe to them that are not able to helpe themselves', they sought to manipulate Bridgewater's self-image to their own advantage. In such an exchange the weaker party might achieve `his desired objective', but in the process he also contributes willy-nilly to the public legitimacy of the principles to which he strategically appealed. Just who is manipulating whom in this petty enterprise is no simple matter to decide. It is best seen, perhaps, as a reciprocal manipulation of the symbols of euphemization.76

Examination of the constables produced similar results. Those said to have brought the grievance to the jury were Richard Nicholls, Andrew Bright, Samuell Dagar, Edward Tompkies, Francis Lloyd (or Phloyd) and Rowland Clough.77 Nicholls, Bright, Tompkies, Lloyd and Clough all denied giving evidence to the jury or presenting the of®ce as a grievance. Several claimed that they had only heard of the issue when the presentment was read in open court, and several were cautious about admitting to a memory of what Corbet had said at the sessions. Nicholls admitted to having given written material to the jury but had not presented the of®ce as a grievance.78 Dagar did not attend, having been taken ill on his way to London and having broken his journey for fear of his life. He petitioned Bridgewater that as `a poore man & father of ®ve smalle motherles Chilldren the biggest of which is scarce able to help it selfe' he was further hampered in attendance. He had, however, `binn allwayes reddy and ever att all times payd him all moneys due to him out of his sevall allottments before hee could collecte the same, as Mr Burton hath related with his owne mouth'. Moreover, since `hee is and was alltogether ignorant what his fellowes did in the sessions till hee hearde it reade in the Courte of Sessions unto wch yor peticon neither medled nor gave Consent', he hoped that he could now be spared the journey. Tongue, the man who had threatened to organise a ®ghting fund to resist the fee in the courts, was able to get a character reference from John Newton, Clerk, three churchwardens and nine others, testifying that he was an aged man, charged with many children and much decayed in his estate `yet of very honest conv[er]sation'. They pleaded for his release from attendance on account `of his meane estate & inabillity to undergoe soe tedious a

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Jorney'. Again, the charge was speaking words out of place: `And if it be objected against him that he spake words un®tt for him to speake he doth before us acknowledge that he did the same ignorantly & not maliciously to any person wch if they be offensive to yor honrs he doth humblie Crave pardon for the same'. 79 Resistance melted away in contrition and excuse: a victory for the Privy Council and the lieutenant and a prelude to some years of successful collection. Public apologies restored the public transcript and `interaction order', as words spoken out of place were withdrawn. The fact that these statements may not have been sincerely intended was not the main point ± what was important was that they were made. Corbet recognised this in refusing publicly to acknowledge contrition. Nonetheless, there was an edge of frustration for the Privy Council here, since no one, in the end, admitted having caused any trouble. Responsibility was denied, or duty was claimed as a defence. In general, opponents of the fee opposed policy `in the guise of duty'.80 The dif®culty for the Privy Council in this case was to catch its opponents off guard, to publicly demonstrate that the appeal to duty was a `guise'. v Early modern governors played social roles in laying claim to `natural' authority. The authority of an individual performing an of®ce depended on the presentation of a self that conferred natural authority on them ± they presented a front which represented an abstract political authority rather than their individual will. This was in part a matter of dignity and personal deportment, and in part a matter of the control of the legitimating texts which gave formal sanction to their actions. These personal qualities were those that guaranteed that their use of of®ce would not re¯ect personal interests ± authority depended on personal qualities which ensured that political power would not be used for personal ends. Thus, in defending themselves from criticism, individuals claimed to have been carrying out their of®ces, not acting on the basis of an individual will. This process empowered them but also offered the means by which they could be criticised. Individuals laid claim to values current in society at large, but they did not control the generally understood meanings of the terms in which their authority was legitimated ± they could claim to act honourably or for the

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public good, but they could not control what was understood by those terms. As a result they had to present themselves in the light of those expectations and submit themselves, to some extent, to critical appraisal of their self-presentation by their audience. What mattered was not so much their sincerity as their plausibility.81 The analysis of such encounters requires detailed discussion ± it is an area of enquiry in which `thick description' illuminates, for here it really matters whether the movement of an eyelid was a twitch or a wink, or a burlesque of a wink.82 But this detailed account of the disagreement at the Shropshire sessions in 1635 and its rami®cations is intended to illustrate a much larger issue ± the projection of authority in early modern England and the negotiation of its reception. Militia reform was of central importance to Caroline government, and its effectiveness in Shropshire was seriously disrupted by a relatively low-key exchange at the quarter sessions ± minor attacks on the dignity and public image of of®ce-holders could stymie administrative action. Legitimation was also a matter of written record. Con¯ict could revolve around the invocation of such an authority, in this case the Petition of Right, or around the creation of such formal records. So, for example, Corbet sought to have the record of his conduct removed from Star Chamber, and to get his version of the dispute made a matter of record. Losing a battle of wits, before an audience of social and political inferiors, was damaging to Tourneur's authority; that he was bested in part by resort to the Petition of Right made the defeat more dramatic, and more dif®cult to answer. In conducting these battles over dignity, face and the use or meaning of legitimating texts, contemporaries had available `a series of masks, a rag-bag of legitimations and arguments amongst which [they] could rummage as they sought to justify inherently prudential political manoeuvres'.83 These masks projected authority, but they also defended individuals against recrimination. They were worn by justices and by grand jurymen; and they wore them when facing both the Privy Council and the vulgar sort: depending on the context the same of®ce-holder might be governor or governed. Con¯icts were expressed in the idiom of a stock of common legitimating resources, as a contest over the meaning of particular terms ± duty, for example ± or particular texts. Political con¯ict need not have involved direct confrontation in order to limit the activities of of®ceholders ± failing to accept a self-presentation as proffered, or

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contesting the interpretation of a key term or text, clearly affected the effectiveness of of®ce-holders. In acting out administrative roles, individuals faced the continual restraining effect of their audiences and were sensitive to any disruption of that self-presentation. Tourneur's sensitivity, for example, suggests an awareness of the importance of his public performance. The manipulation of languages and texts by parties to this dispute points to a more general indeterminacy of meaning and hence to the negotiability of the practical implications of legitimations which were agreed at an abstract level. Awareness of these things must have affected the ways in which of®ce-holders presented themselves and how they sought approbation of their performance of of®ce. The absence of confrontation or resistance does not, therefore, imply the absence of an effective restraining in¯uence of the governed over their governors. Beneath the contours of what the early modern state could or could not do lies the morphology of local values and interests. Written into the history of the state is the effect of the continual restraint on the actions of of®ce-holders exercised by their audiences.84 The administrative performance of the early modern state depended to a signi®cant degree on these fragile and contested administrative performances.

chapter 8

Negotiating order in early seventeenth-century Ireland Raymond Gillespie

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, most Englishmen believed that over the previous two hundred years England had acquired an empire. By this they meant that English men (although a few mentioned women and children) had established colonies ®rst in Ireland and then across the Atlantic world and that a process of social and economic convergence, which would be termed `Anglicisation' by later historians, was well under way.1 They gave rather less attention to the mechanics which underlay this development and in particular to what happened when English models of authority, so delicately negotiated at home, were transplanted abroad. The more perceptive among the commentators noted that despite apparent social and economic convergence there were signi®cant differences in the structures of order in the diverse parts of the `empire'. In particular, Ireland, close to home and with a long history of close contact with England, seemed to be strongly at variance with English norms of order despite almost two centuries of attempts to transplant English ideas of authority there. In the 1680s the earl of Anglesea, attempting to write a history of Ireland, drew attention to the divergent norms of order across the wide sphere of English in¯uence. `To the disgrace of Christianity, which the Roman Catholics profess', he noted and the dishonour of the English, they have succeeded better in their plantations among the heathen Indians in America than among the Irish and Old English corrupted by the Irish who after so many hundred years are not reclaimed whereas many of the Indians turn Christian and the rest brought to such order and civility that they live pleasantly by the English planters without attempt of massacre which they barbarously committed in Ireland. This must be attributed more to the want of policy and good government in the English and their neglect to execute the laws against popish recusants than to the bloody principles and practice of their superstitions.2 188

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More recently, in the context of trying to classify the Irish polity in the early modern period, John Morrill has noted the diverse responses which arose from the transplantation of English authority abroad: `whether we attempt to view the British Problem as an example of the development of ``composite monarchies'' or as an aspect of the colonial expansion of the Atlantic-seaboard powers, Ireland is a special case. It just will not ®t into any of the established patterns.'3 The inhabitants of early modern Ireland clearly negotiated a set of social arrangements different from those emerging elsewhere in spheres of English in¯uence. The details of how the diverse inhabitants of the island of Ireland responded to the attempt to transplant models of English authority into that polity known since 1541 as the `kingdom of Ireland' are frustratingly elusive. In the traditional historiography, Ireland became a colony of England by right of conquest and English structures of authority were imposed by force of arms. Thus the history of early modern Ireland is seen as the expansion of the authority of the London-dominated Dublin administration, making a reality of the 1541 act declaring Henry VIII king of all Ireland. The result was conspiracy, insurrection and warfare interspersed with phases of land con®scation, colonisation and political con¯ict. More recent historical writing has tended to down play the inevitability of violence, emphasising instead the contingent nature of the relationship between the various actors in the shaping of power structures in early modern Ireland. The result has been to characterise violence not as part of the process of the transplantation of English models of authority to Ireland but rather the result of the failure of the negotiation process whereby those models might have been accepted in the localities of Ireland. In that sense, the techniques for negotiating authority in early modern England, as opposed to the outcome of those negotiations, were applicable in an Irish case also. This essay is an attempt to chart not what happened when the local negotiations of considerable complexity over the structures of authority failed but rather how in many cases they succeeded. i In the early modern Irish localities, the process of establishing authority and creating order was more complex than is usually described. Even when the authority of Dublin Castle was intensi®ed

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in an area, the outcome remained uncertain. The nature of that new authority, and the social order it created, had to be worked out in a process of negotiation. This process may be observed in Connacht during the later sixteenth century. The intensi®cation of the authority of the Dublin government in Connacht from the later 1570s saw relations between natives and newcomers being reshaped. For example, through the introduction of a provincial presidency on the Welsh model, the nature of Connacht politics was transformed in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The functions the presidency sought to administer included defence and arbitration, and the elite of traditional Gaelic and Gaelicised lordships in the province gradually reformulated their political allegiances to take account of the changed circumstances. Over time, the provincial administration, which had been devised by Sir Henry Sidney as a mechanism for extending royal authority in the regions, was adapted by the local elites to their own ends. The interaction between the English administration in Connacht and the elites in the local lordships was not without its tensions.4 The process of negotiation can be seen at work in the fate of a series of documents which, although apparently agreed, were subsequently contested. Challenges to such agreements arose when the social order they created became a site for the renegotiation of the lines of authority. One clear example is the ®rst composition of Connacht which was introduced in 1577. The Irish lord deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, in an attempt to stabilise power relationships within the province, sought to reduce the authority of the principal native lords by entering into composition agreements with their followers. Under these agreements the traditional exactions of the native lords, usually in the form of military service from their followers, and the `cess' extracted to fund the English army in Connacht were replaced by an annual rent-charge on speci®c tracts of land. In return the provincial administration assumed responsibility for the defence of the area. The aim of the agreements was to establish a new social order by undermining the excessive power of the greater Connacht lords through reducing their control over lesser lords. 5 The way in which the native lords used that agreement was rather different. In an account of the duties payable to the MacWilliam Burkes of Mayo compiled in the late 1570s, the Seanchus Burcach, there is a passage describing, from the native side, the working of the composition. The author, commenting on the fact that MacWilliam had been unable to

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collect his exactions from the barony of Gallen `on account of . . . your great unwillingness to grant them to him', noted on that account Mac William Burk, i.e. Sean mac Olibherus, went to prefer his complaint to the house of the court against you, to Captain Malbie. And the captain and council, the archbishop of Tuam and master Bacon and Justice Dillon and Edward White made an order for him here, i.e. two beeves in lieu of every armed man and two beeves in lieu of every horse man and a beef for every kerne and that is the same as two beeves in every quarter throughout his lordship, unless it is more than that. And they had reason for that, for they allowed not power of superiority with chief command to any man whatever about that time. And they did this for his board and maintenance, i.e. of Mac William. And Mac William has this order, written in English, from the hand of the Council.6

Where the Irish account differs from the theory of composition is in its effect. While the provincial government hoped composition arrangements would weaken Mac William's power they were used by Mac William to strengthen it. What had begun as an attempt to impose authority and social order on the localities was inverted so that the provincial government became a pawn in the negotiation of social authority within the Mac William lordship. The political and social response of the inhabitants of the barony of Gallen is not known. Under the practice of Irish law the lord was entitled to utilise directly land from which no tribute could be drawn, but there are literary models which suggest that this might be open to negotiation.7 The tale Me Guidhir Fhearmanach, written in the late seventeenth century but based on earlier material, depicted one group refusing to pay their tribute unless the lord appeared in person rather than sending one of his stewards. The outcome was an arbitration.8 An earlier tale, Leighes coise Chein, still in circulation in the late sixteenth century, described another strategy for negotiating on tribute by placing one's self under the protection of a rival lord.9 This was not an unusual state of affairs. In the late sixteenthcentury Irish annals of Loch CeÂ, compiled by Brian Mac Diarmada from Roscommon, descriptions of the positions of English administrative of®cials in Connacht were continually reshaped to make them part of the existing order. The president of Connacht, for instance, was accorded the title of a native Irish lord, tigherna choiged Connacht, and the New English administration was perceived as another faction in the complex dynastic politics which continually re-ordered authority within the province.10 This continual renegotiation of

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authority was not the sole prerogative of the native Irish. In 1586, for example, the Annals of Loch Ce recorded that the MacCostello family had given the lordship, or tiarnas, of their territory to one of the collectors of the composition rent, Theobald Dillon. Within a few years Dillon changed the terms of his relationship with the MacCostello family by claiming that the agreement meant he was not a lord or protector but a landlord, a claim upheld by the court of Chancery.11 Clearly the consolidation of authority in Ireland was not simply the result of central control being imposed on localities, but rather a complex three-way negotiation involving central government, regional elites and the occupiers of land. War, apparently characteristic of sixteenth-century Ireland, was not the direct result of centralising processes but rather the result of the failure of this negotiating process over the exercise of power. Consideration of examples such as these, which could be replicated from other parts of the country, helps to explain why the new forms of social order and authority in Ireland should appear strange. Two developments in the early part of the seventeenth century, however, complicate the situation further. The ®rst was the surrender of Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, at Mellifont in 1603, thus ending the Nine Years' War and strengthening royal authority over the island of Ireland. Lord Deputy Mountjoy may have been optimistic when, in April 1603, he wrote to the newly appointed secretary of state, Robert Cecil, that Ireland was `now capable of what form the king shall give it' but he recognised that a unique opportunity for reform existed.12 The reform initiative involved the restoration of O'Neill and the principal Ulster lords to their possessions with rights of succession while undermining aspirations towards becoming overmighty subjects by increasing the effectiveness of local administration. Thus previously unshired areas such as Wicklow and Coleraine were formed into counties and areas which had previously evaded the assize system were drawn into the assize circuits. This created a new political space within which bargaining over political authority could take place. This was marked by a proclamation of 1605 that all men in Ireland were now natural subjects of the king and not local lords, with consequent access to royal justice.13 It thus became impossible to ignore the king as a ®gure in local events. In late sixteenth-century Connacht, it was possible to ignore the monarch as a distant ®gure and concentrate on dealing with local of®cials. The result was ignorance of who the monarch was and what he or she

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did.14 In Ulster, marginalisation of the crown was not an option. One might not like the new arrangements but they existed and affected daily life. At the Ulster assizes of 1615, for example, a number of actions were tried for treasonable words against the king by some at the bottom of the social hierarchy, suggesting that awareness of the monarchy had penetrated to a low social level.15 If the end of the Nine Years' War marked a signi®cant moment in the accumulation of authority by James I, the process of consolidation took longer. In one part of the country, Ulster, it was speeded up by the departure of the principal native lords who felt the new order too restrictive. The `¯ight of the earls' in September 1607 shifted the framework of Irish society by removing a regional elite who might have served as a focus for the emergence of regional power which could have supported or opposed that of Dublin. In 1603, for instance, the attorney general, Sir John Davies, had noted that many of the `better sort' in Ulster refused to accept commissions of the peace until the earl of Tyrone agreed to it, indicating powerful regional control by O'Neill.16 The resulting plantation of Ulster created a new native Irish elite who in other circumstances would not have had the social authority they received as landowners in the new order. Such men became brokers between the regional societies of Ulster and the central administration. A number occupied local of®ces such as sheriffs and justices of the peace, and a few became MPs. Over the next thirty years, local reorganisations of land ownership by plantation in Wexford, Longford and Leitrim created similar local native elites equipped with strategies for survival in a world ruled by common law.17 Observing this phenomenon some contemporaries were inclined to believe that new native elites were merging with Old English Catholics who operated within the world of common law. By 1614 Sir George Carew noted the possible subversive effects of this development, while in the 1630s the Old English priest and historian Geoffrey Keating used this fusion as the basis for his history of Ireland.18 Whatever the political implications of this development, it is clear that a new group who shared an elite status was emerging within the Catholic community in Ireland. The political culture within which this new social order took shape provided the framework for negotiations over the exercise of authority. In the wake of the Nine Years' War and the ¯ight of the earls, a political literature emerged in Ireland concerning the new order.19 The dominant rhetoric was that of `commonwealth', and a concern

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with establishing a hierarchical social order with the king at its head. As one tract of the 1620s expressed it, the result of the early seventeenth-century land settlements was that `by those means shall that people [the Irish] grow unto a body commoned and into a commonwealth whereas before they wholly consisted of poor proud gentry'. That, claimed the author, was a work for `®t men' but he did not specify who these should be.20 Among the earliest of these works was a `Discourse' presented to the king by the Old English lawyer Richard Hadsor. Hadsor's solution to the problem of the governance of Ireland was a traditional Old English one: the advancement of the common law and the underpinning of land tenure by statute. Hadsor considered such strategies would prevent rebellion in Ireland by balancing the powers of lords and followers. Central to Hadsor's scheme was a sense of social order so that `men of good quality, estate and integrity' could manage Irish business.21 This was also the view of some Dublin administrators. The Irish lord deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester, advocated a social restructuring of Irish society to create checks and balances and integrate native and newcomer landowners.22 The ¯ight of the earls and the resulting Ulster plantation changed the framework within which the commonwealth might ®t but not the model itself. Sir John Davies, in his description of the Ulster plantation, stressed it was to be `a mixt plantation of British and Irish that they might grow up together in one nation'. Inevitably this involved the removal of some Irish from their lands, so `that being removed (like wild fruit trees) they might grow the milder and bear the better and sweeter fruit'.23 In the plantations social order was regulated by conditions which stipulated the balance between the various social groups by requiring landlords to have a ®xed number of freeholders, leaseholders and cottagers.24 Surveys over the ®rst ten years of the plantation scheme revealed how far practice fell short of theory as economics threatened to destroy the original conception. Tensions were generated by the assumption that the norms of the commonwealth would include not only the common law but also religious conformity. On cultural traits there was some scope for accommodation as the removal of some of the legislation against Irish dress and customs, though not language, in the parliament of 1613±15 demonstrated.25 However, the maintenance of the social order by the interdependencies characteristic of `commonwealth' ideas remained a central way of thinking about early seventeenth-century Ireland.

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The language of commonwealth was attractive to the native Irish and Old English inhabitants of Ireland because of its stress on social order. Many contemporaries believed Ireland was undergoing a social revolution. The native Irish poets, for instance, complained that their position as members of the old political elite was fast disappearing.26 This undermining of the older order resulted in social mobility. At least some of this may be attributed to changes within Irish society, such as the growing literacy which undermined an older oral tradition, but by the later seventeenth century such mobility came to be seen as the result of colonisation.27 The Ossory poet Brian Mac Giolla PhaÂdraig, for instance, complained of beggar women's sons dressed as princes, and Geoffrey Keating spoke of the `new sort' who were `base by right' appearing in Ireland.28 The most sustained attack on this process came in the prose tract Pairlement Chloinne TomaÂis, probably written in the 1630s, which satirised those who had moved beyond their place in the social order by acquiring lands and becoming ceannuibh bailte or village headmen.29 Many Old English shared this concern about the process of social mobility. Richard Hadsor, for example, advocated the introduction of sumptuary legislation.30 From a theological perspective, Geoffrey Keating in the 1620s objected to social mobility in Ireland since it promoted morally dubious practices in land acquisition and other socially disruptive economic dealings.31 For local elites mobility presented a crisis of social and moral authority which required resolution, and they looked to central government for support. One way in which central administration could recognise social status was through the heraldic of®ce of Ulster King at Arms.32 The claims to social status which those from the Gaelic world could advance were through the old kin networks which the Dublin government wished to dismantle. The desire to establish a social order managed by a new native elite led to such concerns being smothered. During the 1630s, some forty native Irish families registered their pedigrees in Ulster's Of®ce in the form of funeral certi®cates. This was done on the basis of Gaelic Irish titles, effectively recognised by the government. Thus William O'Doyne of Park in Queen's County registered himself as son of Teige O'Doyne `chief of the sept', and David O'Cruoly of Cork was registered as son to Fyneen O'Cruoly `cheefe of his name in that country'. In one case, that of Mortagh Magawley of Williamstown, county Westmeath, a pedigree was registered going back thirty-two generations

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to `Neal Noygiallagh, being then high king of Ireland'.33 Thus accommodations were reached between the needs of local elite for social recognition and the desire of central government for social stability. If one antidote to this problem of mobility was negotiation over recognition of social standing another was the application of the commonwealth model. By the 1630s the language of commonwealth began to appear in Irish. At one point in Pairlement Chloinne TomaÂis, for instance, the phrase maitheas publighe or the `public good' appears, suggesting a borrowing from the ideas of commonwealth.34 In Geoffrey Keating's theological work TrõÂ Bior-Ghaoithe an BhaÂis, written about 1630, the phrase's meaning is explicit. A commonwealth was composed of degrees of honour progressing from the papacy to duke, marquis and earl.35 Possibly plantations in the midlands of Ireland in the 1620s generated little reaction because, as the Catholic bishop of Ossory, David Rothe, suggested, `they [the Irish] understood it was the king's pleasure (which both by his letters and also by his open proclamations he had manifest) graciously to make good the defects of old titles'.36 It may equally be because leading Irish gentlemen were to be treated favourably `that by them the clamours of the multitude may be restrained'.37 There were, nonetheless, cases of abuse such as that of Sir John McCoughlan in King's County, who accumulated the land of smaller freeholders into his estate.38 Social order needed enforcement, and while Ireland was a more militarised society than other parts of the British Isles, with a standing army and a network of provosts marshal, it still relied on the standing of of®cials in their own localities to do this. Even with the resources of a militarised state, one native justice of the peace in Donegal declared he was unable to maintain order in 1641 since `I am not strong enough.'39 Hence reputation and honour, re¯ected in appropriate conduct, were important attributes to be guarded ®ercely. As one settler declared to Richard Boyle, earl of Cork, in 1616 `my reputation is dear unto me which I must and ever will maintain'.40 Slights on honour and social standing were also taken seriously within the native community. Two participants in rebellion in seventeenth-century Ulster, Brian Maguire in 1615 and Hugh MacMahon in 1641, claimed their discontent was due to a snub at the assizes.41 Other native Irish in the 1640s protested that they had acted honourably, being `as loyal subjects as any in the king's

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dominions'.42 What this meant in practice was demonstrated at Wicklow in 1614 when an Old English justice of the peace, John Wolverston, was slandered by Nicholas Walsh, who challenged him to a ®ght. Wolverston acted with `great temperance and discretion', persuading his friends and servants to keep the peace. This was a dispute `public and committed in contempt of magistracy and justice', and only Wolverston's status and moral authority had prevented it from escalating. Social order could only be maintained by a securely-established social elite.43 The idea of commonwealth, adopted by a wide range of people in early seventeenth-century Ireland, depended for its effect on the creation of symbols which would bind that social order together. The meanings of symbols of authority were not given but had to be negotiated in speci®c contexts. Of these symbols the most important was the crown, which had been imported into the Gaelic Irish polity. Between 1603 and 1607 a number of the bardic elite utilised techniques, often employed to stitch newcomers into an existing social fabric, to incorporate James I into the Gaelic social order. The initial impetus for this was to reduce the authority of the London administration over Ireland by boosting the authority of the king. After the ¯ight of the earls the enterprise waned, but it never disappeared.44 In the 1620s, for example, some contributors to a traditional bardic dispute were happy to acknowledge James as king of Ireland.45 The work of the bardic elite is a poor guide to wider perceptions within the Gaelic Irish world. The work of the poets was highly technical and not easily understood outside that elite. A better guide to shifting attitudes is the prose tales which survive from seventeenthcentury Ireland. Such tales passed into the oral tradition and hence received a wider circulation than bardic poetry. There are problems in the interpretation of this corpus of material, not least questions of authorship and dating; however, one tale at least can be fairly securely dated. According to a colophon on the oldest manuscript of the tale Eachtra Mhacaoimh an Iolair (the `adventure of the eagle child')  CorcraÂin, who is probably the it was written by a poet, Brian O Fermanagh poet of the same name who received a grant of land in the Ulster plantation and died in 1624.46 This tale probably dates from either the end of the ®rst decade of the seventeenth century or  early in the subsequent decade. According to the scribal note, O  Corcrain `got the framework of the story from a gentleman who said he had heard it told from the French'.47

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The signi®cance of this tale lies not in the narrative but in the way in which speci®c incidents are treated in the context of negotiating political and social authority. Of particular importance in this context is the description of the coronation of the king of Sorcha. After the death of the old king, the nobility, counsellors and religious leaders gathered to choose a new king. They selected the old king's eldest son since `the glorious true God left a faithful heir to the king'. The new king was instructed in his new duties and [a]fter that there is transferred to him the elegant, artistic, ornamented gold jewelled, close clear, sparkling, all pure, royal, lovely, notable crown of a king and a mighty lord. And there was given a straight, fair coloured, lovely sceptre in his straight ®ngered, brown nailed, right hand, to sign and to testify to him and to all that he had received his kingdom according to custom and law, without crookedness or ¯aw, as straight as that sceptre; and that it was lawful to keep it thus from that out. And he was called by name king without opposition after that.48

This depiction of the selection and coronation of a king contains many traditional elements of the creation of an Irish lord, especially the practice of naming and the giving of a slat or rod.49 However, there are new ideas in this account also. Late medieval Irish lords did not have a crown, for instance, and its use here seems to be an innovation. Such symbols of kingship in Ireland were only being formulated from the late sixteenth century.50 Moreover, within the Gaelic polity the English custom of the succession of an eldest son was not a foregone conclusion, although it became a feature of early seventeenth-century prose tales.51 Episodes such as this from Eachtra Mhacaoimh an Iolair demonstrate how the idea of kingship was negotiated within Gaelic Ireland in the early seventeenth century so that ideas about government could be fused. The accommodations revealed were sometimes ambiguous. Some native Irish, early in the rising of 1641, understood the idea of kingship as an amalgamation of an older system of lordship with newer forms of kingship. Some in Cavan cried `God save king O'Reilly', and others in Tyrone declared that Sir Phelim O'Neill, the leader of the rising, would be king.52 Such ideas were generated and transmitted both through the literary medium of tales and more formal mechanisms. Such stories created a strong visual image of the king with sceptre and crown. This image was re¯ected in other iconography of Stuart kingship, such as the image of James I that appeared on the great

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seal which was attached to patents granted to the new native elite. The image was a powerful one. In 1641 when the Ulster Irish revolted against the Dublin administration, they issued a forged royal commission using a seal from a royal patent. One Tyrone woman emphasised the importance of the seal as a sign of royal approbation, describing how some insurrectionists `showed a seal which they said was the king's seal to a commission warranting them to do the same'. She was one of many for whom the seal provided visible evidence of the king's authority, and many of the Irish who participated in the rebellion claimed that their actions were authorised by the king's broad seal.53 Again in 1641, a group of O'Farrells from Longford writing to Viscount Dillon of Costello Gallen described the great seal as `being the pawn between his Majesty and his people'.54 Clearly the image of kingship on the seal was as potent as that in written documents and subject to a much deeper level of interpretation. ii Ideas of kingship and commonwealth became central to the process of negotiating order within Gaelic Irish society in the early seventeenth century. The framework of that negotiation was local government and the associated common law. Indeed, the central government in the early years of the Ulster plantation saw the institutions of the common law as the main points of contact between the various settler elements involved in the scheme, noting in 1610 that the `places of intercourse and meeting' of settlers would be markets and `the quarter sessions and assizes'. 55 From the end of the Nine Years' War there is evidence that the native Irish used the Irish common law system with considerable enthusiasm. However, not all were won over initially. In the early years of the seventeenth  DaÂlaigh lamented the century the Munster poet Aonghas Fionn O state of Ireland: `To crown her misery she has to bear with unlawful law, new manners every year. Such is her fate. She is now a wasted woman.'56 Others had rather different ideas. The restructuring of the assizes after 1603 led to a growth of business.57 It was reported from Munster in 1608 that `the common sort of people resort in great numbers to the assizes'. The attorney general, Sir John Davies, could also report that there was a `multitude of causes now depending in every court of justice'.58 That other of®cials, such as justices of the

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peace, were also active is suggested by Richard Bolton's comment in 1638 that `in all parts of Ireland the of®ce of a justice of the peace is duly regarded and his warrant in all parts of the country obeyed'.59 The loss of the assize records means that the scale of that process cannot be reconstructed. However, the surviving gaol delivery rolls for Ulster from 1613 to 1615 suggest that both native Irish and settlers were quickly drawn within the new legal structures. Not only do native Irishmen appear in legal actions, they also acted as jurors. Some even became of®cials such as sub-sheriff or sheriff 's bailiff. 60 According to one tract of 1615, there was demand by native Irish to become justices of the peace for `if any gentleman of the Irishry be of ten pounds revenues or of any manner of fashion or can speak English . . . he will use one means or other to be put into the commission of the peace'. By the 1620s a number of men with native Irish names were being considered as justices of the peace.61 How many succeeded is unclear, since no commissions of the peace have survived, but one list of justices in Clare for 1633 suggests that half were newcomers to the county while the remainder were natives.62 At more localised courts, such as the manorial courts, the native Irish were also signi®cant participants.63 One result of this integration was that legal terminology made its way into Irish. This process had begun by the late sixteenth century in the area of land law and inheritance practice,64 and by the early seventeenth century the legal vocabulary had expanded dramatically. By the 1620s terms such as ar shõÂothchaÂin an rõÂogh or `on the king's peace' or proiseas, meaning a legal process or court case, appear. By the 1630s the word suigheachaÂin (sitting) seems to mean quarter sessions while `sioson moÂr' (big session) is probably the assize. More localised courts, such as the manorial courts, appear under the term cuÂirt sheanuscaÂil (seneschal's court).65 More commonly borrowing took place in English as the normal language of legal business. By the 1650s terms such as `assize', `writ', `commission', `replevin', nisi prius and capias all appear in Irish language poetry.66 Allied to this was an awareness of the local government administrative hierarchy. Thus ceann cunntae (the head of the county) came to be used by the 1650s for the county town at which the assize was held.67 This language did not merely exist, but it became both respectable and important to be able to speak it. Thus when the  GnõÂmh praised his early seventeenth-century poet Fear Flatha O patron, Henry O'Neill, the virtues he highlighted were nobility and

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knowledge of English law and learning rather than the normal warlike motifs.68 The diffusion of the ideas of the common law throughout all the communities of Ireland meant that the law provided a common language through which social order could be negotiated and, in some cases, a venue for that negotiation in the quarter sessions or assize. That process of negotiation was a complex affair, operating on at least three levels. First, the parameters of relationships between local elites and royal authority had to be determined; second, the power of local elites over their regions had to be negotiated; and third, the power relationships within a region had to be formulated. The most effective of these local elites used their in¯uence to remove themselves from the central authority by manipulating local of®ces, such as provincial presidencies or shrievalties, into their own hands.69 In most cases the story was more complex. The threefold negotiations may be seen in the case of the earl of Antrim. Antrim, anxious to minimise intensi®cation of Dublin's authority over his affairs, inserted a clause in his leases prohibiting tenants from taking cases to the royal courts before they had appeared in his manorial courts.70 Antrim thus limited the centralising tendencies of the Dublin administration and increased his regional authority. As one contemporary complained, the use of manorial courts made `the subject almost forget that he hath a sovereign, knowing no law but of his landlord's making'.71 If Antrim also believed this then he reckoned without two factors. First, low population meant that tenants were in short supply and hence had to be protected rather than harassed. Lords thus became protectors, and in one 1629 legal dispute Antrim declared `where I have the power the tenant shall not be wronged'. Others in the native world concurred; the poet Tadhg  hUiginn saw his lord as a protector when the common law Dall O structures failed to provide redress.72 Second, the legal sophistication of the majority of the inhabitants of Ireland prevented landlords from acting in an illegal manner. Even small landholders displayed a detailed knowledge of the working of the law by moving cases between courts at opportune moments to achieve maximum effect. 73 Others had a detailed knowledge of writs and procedures. One rebel in County Down in the early 1640s, for instance, allegedly told a man that `he shall never write a mittus to send me to Down gaol again'.74 The rebel was probably illiterate, but he knew how a legal process worked and the terms associated with it. Yet another Irishman from

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Cavan, in Dublin after the outbreak of the rising in 1641, explained that he was there to get writs against debtors and that others were also in the city to transact legal business.75 Economics and knowledge of the law were the best protectors against an overweening landlord, but other strategies were also available. It was possible to enlist powerful allies among neighbouring landlords. One man asked for the support of Richard Boyle, earl of Cork, because he was `not able to wage law with his stronger adversary'.76 Landlords did use the mechanisms of the law to maintain control over their tenants. One contemporary complained of native Irish landlords `there is indeed almost no landlord, but even at his pleasure with the help of his priest, ®nd matter enough to bring any tenant to his trial and truss him up'.77 Legal knowledge could also help to negotiate power relations within local society. One commentator on the state of county Kerry noted in the 1680s `those that are loath to be called the inferior sort are generally very litigious among one another and they will go to law about the least tri¯e'.78 Law could regulate local power relations, being pursued in the manner of a feud. In a case in 1616, Lord Roche wrote to Richard Boyle in Cork that one of his relations had murdered a man in a quarrel. `How far the law will stretch the offence I cannot yet ascertain', he wrote, but he feared that the power and malice of his neighbours would precipitate matters.79 Such recourse to the law was limited by the presence of mediators within the community, such as clergy, landlords or neighbours, who might be prepared to arbitrate, and the commencement of a legal action might only be a device to speed up the arbitration process.80 Ideas of kingship and commonwealth, made manifest in the common law, ¯ourished because of the ability of the actors in that world to negotiate different meanings from the same ideas and institutions. There were, however, points at which this stability threatened to fracture because suitable accommodations could not be negotiated. While the authority of the king could create social order, royal authority also had the potential to disrupt that order. If the king turned from regulating the realm to regulating the liturgical practices of his subjects, dif®culties presented themselves. While many Irish Catholics maintained secular social order by presenting those they perceived to be malefactors at the assize, they were less enthusiastic about presenting individuals on the grounds of religious af®liation. The result was that juries who refused to present recusants

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became the victims of central authority, summoned to appear in the Court of Castle Chamber.81 Enforcement on this scale could only be maintained sporadically, and local accommodations might be made to suit religious sensibilities. It was even alleged in 1631 that the sheriff of county Londonderry heard an action in his court by a Catholic priest against parishioners for withholding payments for saying mass.82 Other possibilities of negotiating one's way around the legal disabilities set out by proclamation existed. It might be possible to invert the normal solemnity of the reading of the proclamation into a carnivalesque experience. The lord deputy, Lord Falkland suspected some such strategy when he complained to the archbishop of Armagh in 1629 that the publication of a proclamation at Drogheda had been done in an `unreverend manner'. `It was done in scornful and contemptuous sort', he objected, `a drunken soldier being ®rst sent up to read it and then a drunken sergeant of the town, both being made by too much drink incapable of that task, and perhaps purposely put to it, made the same seem like a May game'.83 In more serious situations, stories of martyrdom of Catholics inverted the normal interpretation of execution as the result of wrongdoing and added post-mortem wonders and miracle stories to underline the fact.84 Such local negotiations served to relieve temporarily religious tensions within Irish society. However, the inability to apply the techniques of the negotiation of social authority to supernatural power, de®ned by contemporaries as the providence of God at work in the world, ensured that religion would remain a continuing problem.85 In the early 1640s it combined with other problems, including economic crisis, fear, rumour and political instability, to make these problems unnegotiable. The result, as at the end of the sixteenth century, was war. The character of the war of the 1640s was shaped by the sort of social negotiation that had gone on in the early seventeenth century. As the native Irish Catholic peer, Lord Muskerry, described it, the insurrectionists wished no harm to the king of England nor any English or whatsoever but that apprehension [of ] a general fear of persecution, ruin and destruction to religion, king and country [they are] fearful and sensible thereof that they hold it more safe and honourable for them to expose their lives and fortunes to all hazard for justi®cation of these three than to be in the happiest condition without assurance of enjoying them.

Muskerry followed the insurrectionists, `maintaining the Catholic

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religion, his Majesties prerogative, and royal attributes to the government and ancient privileges of the poor kingdom of Ireland established and allowed by the common law of England'.86 War, however, brought its own social disorder. Within days of the outbreak of hostilities, the O'Reillys from Cavan apologised to the lord deputy and council for `the mischiefs and inconveniences that have already happened through the disorder of the common sort of people', and Lord Muskerry was appalled at the `burning and killing of men and women and children without regard of age or quality'.87 Social order needed to be restored. Within a few months it was reported from Leitrim that the rebels were creating their own justices of the peace and sheriffs and summoning juries.88 Some months later the Confederated Catholics were founded in Kilkenny, creating an organisation with its own judicial functions based on the pre-1640s structures of local administration. This was testimony to the success of the framework of king and commonwealth in negotiating social order in early seventeenth-century Ireland. War, however, was a reminder that any successful negotiations on social order left unresolved the problem of supernatural authority. iii The shaping of ideas of kingship, commonwealth and law to suit Irish circumstances means that Ireland cannot be easily classi®ed within the normal paradigms. How one views early modern Irish society depends, to some extent, on the perspective one takes. In 1689, an Englishman in England trying to understand Ireland observed that it was a fractured world, `these gentlemen being composed or rather compacted of such variety I do not wonder, as most do, that they are so disjointed in the affections and representations of each other'.89 From another perspective, that of the Old English in Ireland, the picture was different. In 1674 Richard Bellings observed that the various elements within Irish society (setting aside their different tenets in matters of religion) were as perfectly incorporated, and as ®rmly knit together, as frequent marriages, daily ties of hospitality, and the mutual bond between lord and tenant, could unite any people.90

The difference results from a shift in perspective. An outside view of early modern Ireland emphasised division. Those within that

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world realised the importance of negotiations at a regional level which created the social order and cohesion which made that society work on a day-to-day basis. The success of native Irish and settlers in consolidating regional power limited the scope of the Dublin government to intensify royal authority in the localities. As a result, Ireland seemed an exceptional place to outsiders. As Lord Deputy Wentworth explained in 1633, `I ®nd myself in a society of strange people, their own privates altogether their study without any regard at all to the public.'91 Paradoxically, it was the structures of kingship and the common law that had permitted this outcome. The early seventeenth-century Irish experience was not the result of the transplantation of models of authority from a central source to a newly acquired colony. It was the product of a three-way negotiation process, as techniques for the negotiation of authority forged elsewhere were utilised to consolidate positions at national, regional and local level. The resultant underpinning of the social order, demanded by both native and newcomer, was speci®c to Ireland and of considerable complexity. The process of transplanting English ideas of authority in the early modern world resulted not in neat packages of typologies of `colony' or `kingdoms' which the historian can describe, but in complex entities which were the product as much of local negotiations of authority as of the imposition of outside models. In that sense, Ireland was neither kingdom nor colony, but a mid-Atlantic polity.92

chapter 9

Order, orthodoxy and resistance: the ambiguous legacy of English puritanism or just how moderate was Stephen Denison? Peter Lake Over the last thirty or so years the ideological valence of English puritanism, particularly under the early Stuarts, has been subject to a number of wildly divergent and mutually exclusive interpretations. Once characterised by Michael Walzer and Christopher Hill as inherently anti-hierarchical, corrosive of the ideological assumptions and structures of a fading `feudal' order, it was seen as a precursor of modern revolutionary movements or the means to impose the discipline of an emergent capitalism.1 More recently, it has been characterised, by historians wary of anachronism, as the cutting edge of a consensual religion of protestants embodying beliefs about social order which were, in Patrick Collinson's famous phrase, `about as revolutionary as the homily of obedience'.2 Meanwhile, social historians have emphasised how godliness gave force to a desire for social order around which the interests of the middling sort and their gentry betters could coalesce. It was this social compact, reinforced by the presumptions of puritanism, which ensured the preservation of local social and political orders during the crises of the 1640s.3 But even this account of the signi®cance of puritanism has been criticised by historians who see these impulses as a species of `voluntary religion', and the measures of social control and discipline as a natural re¯ex response to population growth and trade crisis which would, according to Professor McIntosh, `have happened anyway'.4 The relationship between puritanism and the outbreak of civil war has been equally controversial. Revisionists, while anxious to discount the revolutionary intent of puritans, still ®nd in religion a compelling reason for the breakdown of political order: in one famous instance characterising the British civil war/s not as the ®rst modern revolution but as the last European war of religion.5 In such accounts the revolutionary force was an innovatory and insurgent 206

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Laudianism or Armianism, backed by Charles I and enforced by Laud, which disrupted the doctrinal consensus that had prevailed in the Elizabethan and Jacobean churches, thus creating a puritan opposition where there had previously been none.6 In these arguments there has been some anxiety to excuse individuals from blame for this disruption. As Ian Atherton has recently remarked, we are living in an odd, aggressively bland historiographical climate: `where once historians battled to proclaim their particular heroes revolutionaries, now they struggle to make them ``moderates'' '. 7 Charles and Laud have been `rescued' from attempts to `plant' a radical religious agenda upon them.8 In Sharpe's magisterial account of The Personal Rule of Charles I, both appear as members of a moderate anglican mainstream, men whose ecclesiastical regime was characterised at most by a newly urgent pursuit of order, decency and uniformity.9 The wild tergiversations in historians' estimations of the ideological, social or political valence of puritanism can in part be explained by historiographical factors, and in particular the effects of the debate about the causes of the English (or British) civil war (or wars).10 However, much of the most sophisticated work on these issues has not been concerned with the debate about the civil war at all:11 there is something genuinely elusive about the nature, and signi®cance, of puritanism. The reason for all that furious assertion and counter-assertion, I want to argue here, has more than a little to do with the ambiguous and janus-faced nature of the object of study itself, and of the documentary traces available to us when we come to try to write continuous histories of puritanism that run through the early Stuart period. Under Elizabeth there had been a puritan movement; that is to say, one can discern a concerted and more or less continuous effort or series of efforts by identi®able and more or less stable groups of people to change the government and liturgy of the English church. This has allowed historians (or rather it has allowed Patrick Collinson, in one of the great works of post-war English historical scholarship) to tell a connected story, a political narrative, about the fate of that movement. Not only that but that movement, in its presbyterian form, was the occasion for a series of set-piece debates which allow us to identify and analyse in some depth a series of issues central to the perfect protestant project and notion of order in a godly commonwealth.12

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Except at the beginning of James' reign and at the end of the Personal Rule, the same cannot really be said of the early Stuarts. It is much harder to trace a continuous history of free-standing reformist puritan activity. There was the famous and much studied rush of agitation and excitement on either side of the Hampton Court Conference and, as Nicholas Tyacke has pointed out,13 thereafter one can trace persistent parliamentary attempts to ®ddle with the ®ne print of conformity or to enforce the sabbath, and persistent free enterprise attempts by the godly to support suspended ministers or buy up and redistribute the revenues of various impropriated livings, but it is hard to discern a Collinsonian-style movement. Nor were there set-piece debates on anything like the scale or comprehensiveness of those occasioned by Elizabethan presbyterianism. The historian is left with fragments of political narrative, with short stories to tell about the godly's relations with power both at the centre and in the localities; with snatches of formal argument about conformity and, far less commonly, except in the continuing border war with separatism, about church government; with myriad case studies of puritan thought, feeling and action, in any number of locales and contexts. However, there is no ready-made big picture available to the would-be historian of what Tom Webster, in his book on Essex, persists in calling `the early Stuart puritan movement'. Rather than yielding itself to, the material positively resists any attempt to impose on it a totalising political or even ideological narrative or story.14 In part this situation is a function of the failure of the Elizabethan puritan movement, but it is also, paradoxically, a function of the success of puritanism (viewed not as a `movement' but as a distinctive nexus of concerns, a style of divinity and of affect, a set of `political' priorities) in insinuating itself, in a whole variety of ways and at a whole variety of levels, into the fabric of late Elizabethan and early Stuart life. The godly became so ubiquitous that their multifarious activities defeat the totalising narrative ambitions of the political historian. This makes an overall history of Stuart puritanism very dif®cult, if not impossible, to write, and some historians have been tempted to argue that it also means that in effect puritanism, dissolved and dissipated into wider bodies of reformed thought and feeling, all but disappeared under James I. Recently there has been something of a reaction against such claims, but some of the leading proponents of the continuity of puritanism thesis ± one thinks here of

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Jacqui Eales and Nicholas Tyacke and perhaps, but to a lesser extent, even of David Como and Tom Webster ± have tended to make their case in terms of surviving elements of presbyterian or Non-conformist belief and practice, knots of Non-conformist persons still committed to the reform of the English church, nestling in the recesses of the early Stuart church. Of course, such people existed and more of them are likely to emerge as research progresses. Moreover, as Tyacke, Eales and Webster have all shown, their presence was crucial for the re-emergence of a puritan campaign for eventual root and branch reformation during the early 1640s.15 But to rest the notion of a continuous existence or history of puritanism on such evidence or persons is unnecessarily to constrict the ®eld of enquiry and indeed to risk crucially misconstruing the entity whose continuous existence is being traced. denison on orthodoxy and order In this chapter I want to address the issues of the continuity and ideological valence of puritanism through a case study of one relatively obscure, in fact rather nondescript London minister, Stephen Denison, perpetual curate of St Katherine Creechuch in London from the late 1610s until the early 1630s. In terms of his formal opinions, Denison was a classic example of what I have termed elsewhere a moderate puritan; that is, he was a carrier of the ideology described above as puritan, denuded of any trace of either presbyterianism or non-conformity. And yet his absolute predestinarianism, his rabid anti-popery, his rigid sabbatarianism, his consequent insistent dichotomising not only of the larger political but also of his immediate social world, between not only Christ and Antichrist, but also between the godly and the ungodly, his utter certainty that the central doctrinal tenets of his own position were precisely coterminous with those espoused by the national church, and his resultant enthusiastic propagation and enforcement of those opinions as orthodox through the pulpit, the catechism class, the press and, if necessary, the courts, all marked him down, both in his own eyes and those of his contemporaries, as a puritan. Taken at face value, his career and opinions present a perfect example of the integration of that strand of puritan thought and feeling into a variety of local, parochial, metropolitan and even national establishments that is now taken (in many ways rightly) to have been typical

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of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. At ®rst sight, then, Denison looks the epitome of order and orthodoxy, hierarchy and degree.16 Denison preached twice at Paul's Cross; his ®rst sermon there was printed and dedicated to the Lord Mayor, his second was printed under the somewhat lurid title of The White Wolf and dedicated to the king himself. It is clear from his printed works, and particularly from that second sermon at the cross, that Denison regarded himself, along with the rest of the godly clergy, as an arbiter and enforcer of orthodoxy. For that sermon was a long defence of what he took to be the uncompromisingly predestinarian (`Calvinist') orthodoxy of the English church against what he presented as the heterodox, indeed frankly Arminian, assault of one John Etherington, a sometime boxmaker and constructor of water conduits whom Denison claimed was a sect master, familist and anabaptist. Denison's assault on Etherington had started in the pulpit and godly discussion group but ended in the Court of High Commission and at Paul's Cross and The White Wolf ¯oridly thanked both that court and the bishop of London and the archbishop of Canterbury, in particular, for standing four-square behind Denison in his defence of orthodoxy and order against sectarian and heterodox assault.17 In getting the sermon successfully dedicated to King Charles, Denison had been able to mobilise the support of the ecclesiastical lawyer, Henry Martin, and through him, of Sir Robert Harley, and through Harley, of Harley's father-in-law, secretary-of-state Conway.18 Small fry Denison may have been, his world limited for the most part to his parish and its immediate metropolitan and godly environs, but, for all that, he remained remarkably well connected in the contemporary establishments of city, church and state. As his assault on Etherington might lead one to expect, Denison's formal opinions in ecclesiastical affairs were authoritarianly mainstream. He professed himself a proponent of the via media, constructing the middle way of the church of England between an overtly and aggressively Antichristian popery, on the one hand, and an equally Antichristian protestant sectarian and heterodox threat (comprised of familists, anabaptists, separatists and latterly antinomians), on the other. He defended conformity to the government and to the ceremonies of the national church, in terms of the just obedience owed by all true Christians to the powers that were, which, of course, had been ordained of God to preserve order and

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orthodoxy in church, state and commonwealth. Thus, he denounced ministers who, having been suspended from their ministry for nonconformity, continued to exercise their calling as pastors illegally. But if he defended the current liturgical and political arrangements of the English church, he did not, with many an avant-garde conformist or proto-Laudian, seek to infuse them with any glow of speci®cally religious or spiritual signi®cance or ef®cacy. On the contrary, they remained for him things strictly indifferent, to be accepted only because just and legitimate authority justly and legitimately enjoined them.19 What one might term his social views were equally conventional. With the vast majority of his articulate contemporaries, Denison subscribed to the doctrine of callings, which held that all ought to discharge, cheerfully and without complaint or envy, the social and economic roles in which God had placed them. Order was best guaranteed through the obedience of inferiors to superiors and through the discharge of patriarchal duty towards inferiors by superiors. These nostrums he transferred from the gender and class relations of the household to the wider social body of the Christian commonwealth. He was stentorian in his denunciation of the usual run of sins ± drunkenness, swearing, blasphemy, breach of the sabbath, greed, ambition, and the conspicuous consumption and sartorial display that went with them ± which ministers like Denison claimed alone disrupted the calm workings of what they presented as an otherwise wholly static and stable social order and which, accordingly, were most likely to bring down upon the heads of the English nation the providential judgements of a just God. While he was sharply critical of substantial citizens who refused to extend their charitable impulses beyond the souls to the bodies and purses of their poor neighbours, he was equally acerbic in his denunciation of idleness in both rich and poor alike. All in all, to appropriate Collinson's famous phrase, Denison's formal opinions on a variety of subjects really do appear to have been about as subversive as the homily of obedience. order's disorderly consequences All, however, was not altogether as it seemed. Throughout his career many of the `oughts' central to Denison's view of the world continually chaffed against, indeed at times collided head on with, a

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variety of decidedly recalcitrant `is's', brute facts rooted in his position within `the church' that no amount of sermonised wishing and hoping could remove or change. By `church' in this context I mean the nexus of ®nancial and spiritual rights, powers and privileges available to him both in his general role as an ordained minister and powerful preacher in the English church and in his particular position as the perpetual curate of St Katherine Cree. Denison's attempts to justify and exercise those rights and claims in turn set up complex and ambiguous power relations between Denison and his parishioners, on the one hand, and his ecclesiastical superiors, on the other. The resulting collisions between is and ought, and between theory and practise, in their turn, served both to highlight and exacerbate what I shall argue below were certain central tensions, even contradictions, inherent in Denison's view of the world and style of piety. There were tensions and contradictions which, on the level of theory, may have received their most coherent expression and remedy in presbyterianism, but had not dissipated or disappeared with the demise of the presbyterian movement. Clericalism and its resistances Let us start with the structural contradictions revealed by and created when Denison's self-image as a powerful preacher collided with the very real limitations and constraints on his autonomy and status imposed by his position as the perpetual curate of St Katherine Cree. The living there was owned by Magdalene College, Cambridge and leased by certain parishioners in the name of the parish, who then appointed the curate and paid him a rather limited stipend. The rest of Denison's income came from a variety of lectureships that he held both in his own parish and All Hallows the Great, from the bequests and gifts of various members of his ¯ocks, and from the perquisites of pick up preaching. In short, his living was largely dependent on the good will of the laity, and for all that he was a bene®ced clergyman, Denison's actual position bore a close resemblance to Richard Bancroft's wicked caricature of the typical puritan lecturer or trencher chaplain, desperate to get and keep the good opinion and ®nancial support of the well-heeled godly laity, and anxious, therefore, to preach precisely what his pious patrons wanted to hear.20 While Denison's career allows us to see what Bancroft was getting

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at, such a style of self-consciously self-serving and aggressively factious servility is not an adequate description of Denison's response to this situation. For all that his objective socio-economic position was relatively humble, like many another godly preacher, Denison had a very high notion of the calling, status, powers and prerogatives due to powerful preachers who, like himself, preached in season and out, sedulously and raucously applying an unvarnished scriptural message to the experience, circumstances and sins of their ¯ocks. For preaching lay at the centre of his vision of the church and of the godly community; it was preaching that spread the gospel, preaching that denounced and controlled sin, preaching that converted sinners and saved souls, preaching that called together and sustained the community of the godly. Preaching, personi®ed by the commanding ®gure of the powerful preacher, stood at the centre of a triad of divinely ordained ordinances ± the others, of course, being the sacraments and the sabbath ± by and through which Denison and his ilk saw God building and sustaining the temple, built only of lively stones, that constituted the godly community. This community represented the sustaining, beating heart of the visible church, providing fallen humanity with the clearest glimpse of the joys of heaven, of the spiritual purity and unity of the mystical body of Christ that was his elect, attainable in this world. As the central agents of edi®cation in the resulting edifying tableau, preachers deserved the highest respect. Here lay the origins of a strain of potentially strident clericalism that ran throughout the puritan tradition; a strain which, while it might have reached its apogee in the principles of ministerial parity and synodical government that were central to the presbyterian platform, scarcely disappeared with the presbyterian movement. Of course, just as under the presbyterian dispensation, Denison's vision of clerical power and charisma was modulated by and mediated through the minister's relations with the laity and in particular with the godly laity. For the ef®cacy and orthodoxy, the true power, of the powerful preacher could only be gauged through the effects of his preaching on the laity, whose duty it was to check the pronouncements, the doctrinal truth-claims of the ministers, against the ur-text of scripture and, if they proved sound, to apply them to their own experience and circumstances. From this it followed that the more powerful the preacher, the larger and more godly would be his lay following. Again, it was precisely through the

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acclamation, the respect, the emotional, social and material support of the godly laity, that ministers like Denison could hope to transcend the relatively humble socio-economic position to which their meagre livings would often, otherwise, have consigned them. If things went well and both sides did their duty by the other, the myriad exchanges of mutual support and esteem that linked the godly minister to the godly laity would work to everyone's advantage. Here the charisma and power of the powerful preacher met the charisma and power of the godly lay person and spiritual adept, in a mutually bene®cial exchange of spiritual, social, and material goods and services. The laity had their spiritual needs met, their self-image as the godly con®rmed and their souls saved, while the clergy basked in the resultant admiration and support as powerful preachers indeed. Accordingly Denison's works contain many positively panglossian accounts of how this sort of mutual admiration society and support group was supposed to work.21 Perhaps the most sustained such portrait was contained in his matching pair of funeral sermons for the merchant John Juxon and his wife Elizabeth. On his own account, Denison had lived as a lodger and, one assumes, a virtual household chaplain with the Juxons for twelve years; he certainly appears as a central ®gure in his own account of Elizabeth Juxon's spiritual and emotional life. Nor was this all pious post-death talk; judging from John Juxon's will, where he appears not only as the nominated preacher at Juxon's funeral but also as an executor and legatee, Denison really had been close to the Juxons.22 But if that was how it was supposed to work, as Denison's own career was to show, more often things fell a good way short of the ideal. For Denison's very exalted clericalism was bought at a price, and that price was a potentially very divisive repudiation of one sort or style of clergyman by another. First came non or infrequent preachers, who had, of course, put themselves entirely beyond the pale of Denison's clericalist claims. But Denison's negative clerical reference group did not stop with them. He also vigorously de®ned his notion of the powerful preacher against pusillanimous, ¯attering, weak preachers, who pandered to the vanity, love of novelty, material interests and prejudices of the laity and hoped, by leaving the sins of their ¯ocks more or less untouched (and thus their souls unsaved), to swell the size of their own lay followings and reputations. Here, of course, Denison was producing a vision of conformist clerical deviance and corruption that precisely mirrored Bancroft's satirical

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portrait of puritan pulpit malpractice. He was also conducting, sotto voce, mentioning no names, a time-honoured puritan tactic of selfpromotion, a tactic that had reached its apogee in the surveys of the ministry produced during the propaganda campaigns orchestrated by John Field on behalf of the presbyterian platform. Orthodoxy and its enemies Nor was Denison's style of puritanism likely to cause ructions and resentments only amongst the clergy. On the contrary, his aggressive style of orthodoxy made enemies within the godly community, too. Certainly, Denison's assault on poor John Etherington, conducted ®rst in the pulpit and then in the courts and ®nally in the press, does not seem to have gone down well with at least some of the London godly. When Denison attacked Etherington in 1626±27 it is by no means clear that the some-time boxmaker was the familist, anabaptist and sectary that Denison accused him of being. Rather, he presented himself as an outwardly conforming member of the English national church, a known anti-separatist and anti-familist, and a familiar ®gure on the fringes of the London puritan scene. So much seems con®rmed even by some asides strewn throughout Denison's own text. But Etherington was also, almost certainly, a man with a familist and sectarian past, now blessed with a set of distinctly eccentric doctrinal opinions, which he was more than anxious to impart to anyone who would listen. For all that, as Denison himself informs us in The White Wolf, despite the ferocity of Denison's attacks on him, Etherington seems to have remained persona grata with at least some of the London godly. Indeed, Denison lamented, his pulpit denunciations and of®cial complaints against poor Etherington had gone down with `the forward men of our time' like a lead balloon. For what was at stake in Denison's showdown with Etherington was not only the purity or otherwise of the boxmaker's doctrine but also the right of the puritan clergy to draw the line that divided orthodoxy from heresy or, more accurately, to decide where forgivable singularity of opinion, allowable doctrinal eccentricity and experimentation, ended and soul-threatening error began. For if, as Denison claimed, Etherington were indeed a familist, an anabaptist and an Arminian to boot, then denouncing him from the pulpit and to the authorities was fair enough. But if he was only an annoyingly

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pertinacious barrack room lawyer, an essentially godly, if irritating and eccentric, lay gad¯y anxious to debate with ministers like Denison about a variety of controversial or pastorally sensitive doctrines, then such a course of action was entirely out of order. For if that was all Etherington was doing, he was doing no more than godly ministers like Denison often encouraged their ¯ocks to do ± search the scriptures for God's truth and test what their ministers told them against the word of God. Under such circumstances, Denison's pursuit of Etherington through the courts became not a discharge of Denison's pastoral duty to protect his ¯ock and the cause of the gospel from heretical assault, but a self-serving and tyrannical attempt to enhance the standing and reputation of Stephen Denison at the expense of the spiritual liberties and consciences of the laity.23 Here, too, we can see long-standing tensions and contradictions within the puritan tradition ± this time between the powers and prerogatives claimed by the educated clergy and the spiritual liberty and autonomy, the claims to scriptural insight and spiritual charisma, of the godly laity ± coming home to roost. While they were inherent in the ideology of perfect protestantism, these tensions and dif®culties had reached their highest form of expression in the presbyterian platform, which, with its popular and not so popular elections to ecclesiastical of®ce and its mixture of clerical and lay ecclesiastical of®ce-holders, had arguably been intended both to express and contain those very tensions. Devoid of such developed institutional means and mechanisms to defuse them, these tensions remained at work amongst the godly, only too likely to disrupt the smooth workings of intra-puritan social and spiritual intercourse and lay/ clerical relations. The godly and the social order: the gender order But Denison's style of piety, his modes of clericalist self-importance, were potentially disruptive and divisive in other ways, too. For many of the central characteristics which made a powerful preacher genuinely powerful ± the stentorian denunciation of the sins of his ¯ock and the propagation of an exclusivist and rigourist notion of the community of the godly ± were in themselves as likely to make the preacher enemies as to win him friends. Moreover, as those friends, with the preacher's warrant and encouragement, came to regard

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themselves as a self-selecting spiritual elite, with Mrs Juxon, as elect saints, so they came to regard those who resented either them or the lash of their powerful preacher's tongue as the ungodly. Much (but by no means all) recent scholarship has tended to assume that the resulting cultural and social divisions ran horizontally between, rather than vertically through, social groups. As we shall see, Denison's experience suggests that this was by no means always the case. In fact, the sedulous application of the basic godly/ungodly dichotomy to the social experience, categories and norms of the godly often served subtly to undercut and even, on occasion, to transform the conventionally hierarchical (`conservative') social theory to which puritans, both clerical and lay, otherwise normally subscribed. We are dealing here with the process whereby the charisma, the spiritual potency and authority, conferred on one another by the godly, was inserted or reinserted into the day-to-day workings of the social and political systems. When the presbyterian platform had tried to give institutional form to such transactions, it had been denounced as subversive. As Denison's career shows, even shorn of the institutional clout and concerted political activism that the theory and practise of the classis movement had lent them, those same exchanges and transactions still retained considerable disruptive potential.24 We can see how all this worked in and through Denison's relations, ®rst, with the Juxons and, second, with his parishioners and, in particular, with the select vestry. Let us start with the Juxons. Elizabeth Juxon emerges from Denison's account of her as a woman of an intense, melancholic piety, whose conversion from the ways of the world had been both dramatic and traumatic. Even after her initial conversion she had to struggle mightily to hang on to a settled assurance of her own salvation. This led to a number of intense relationships with ministers, Denison almost certainly chief amongst them, who, virtually until the moment of her death, lavished upon her hour upon hour of counsel and attention in order to help her overcome her persistent doubts and disappointments about her spiritual and affective condition. In this, Denison's account of his relations with Mrs Juxon was notably different from his account of his relations with her husband. His funeral sermon for John Juxon altogether lacks the aura of intense interiority, the claims to a real spiritual intimacy, that

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pervade his sermon for Mrs Juxon. On this evidence, it seems likely that Denison's most intense connection with the Juxon household was established through the wife rather than the husband. Indeed, Denison himself implied that his in¯uence with John Juxon was sometimes obtained and exercised through Elizabeth. Certainly, Denison claimed, it was through the intercession of his wife that John, who was often distracted by worldly affairs, as his calling required him to be, gave more time and money to godly causes than he otherwise might. But if her husband remained immured in the demands and cares of the world, Elizabeth remade her life according to the demands of Denison's austere style of puritan godliness. She gave over the social ties and recreations appropriate to a woman of her social standing; preferring the company of the humble godly to that of her wealthier blood relations, she turned her back on the sociabilities and recreations of her youth ± dancing, gossiping, worldly conversation. Instead she started to associate with the godly, haunting sermons, hanging on the words of ministers like Denison, keeping the sabbath as he de®ned it. For her pains, Denison reported, she suffered the derision and contempt of her old worldly acquaintances. In the interstices of Denison's conventionally stylised account of Mrs Juxon we can, I think, glimpse a woman who, through what had obviously been a hard-won and doubt-ridden mastery of the forms of puritan godliness, had found a source of considerable spiritual charisma and potency. Finding in the godly an appreciative audience for her performance of those forms, Denison presents her achieving, through the culture of puritan godliness, a realm of relative independence. For her standing amongst the godly, while enabled by her social status (and thus that of her husband), was not presented by Denison as being merely a function or product of that standing. On the contrary, through the workings of the godly community she was able to forge autonomous emotional and intellectual relationships with a range of godly persons and in particular godly ministers and, with their help, to, as it were, exert an ideologically-strengthened in¯uence on her husband's conduct of their affairs. As Patrick Collinson has remarked, this sort of relationship between a soi-disant godly woman and her ministerial mentor, or spiritual personal trainer, was anything but uncommon. On the

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present reading, it may be no accident that some of our best evidence about the interpersonal intensities at the centre of puritan religion come from such relationships. For here we see two of the most socially amphibious and ambiguous ®gures of the period ± the godly minister and the godly woman ± coming together to maximise the social and cultural purchase that their mutually reinforcing claims to godliness could exert on their circumstances as relatively low-status persons under authority. Certainly, in Denison's account of his relations with Mrs Juxon, as well as in other comparable sources, we can watch each giving the other a leg up. While Mrs Juxon gained con®rmation of her status as a genuinely godly person and support in her quest to free herself from many of the constraints and distractions of her ordinary social role or round, Denison gained much needed material and social support from both Mrs Juxon and her husband, and an enhanced reputation as a genuinely powerful doctor of the soul, as he saved Mrs Juxon from her own self doubts and the devil, and guided her to a settled sense of her own assurance and a good death. The resulting relationships and emotional connections were, of course, intense. As Collinson has pointed out, they were not (supposed to be) sexual in the conventional or obvious sense of the term,25 but it may be no accident that, when Denison's enemies were out to get him in the early 1630s, it was to allegations of improper sexual approaches made to married women in his ¯ock that they turned. Certainly, whatever the truth of those particular accusations, Denison's enemies were surely not wrong to suspect that it was precisely in and through the charismatic power generated within the godly community that even the most order-oriented and formally moderate of puritans could be prompted to collide with and often, in effect if not in theory, to challenge, conventional norms and nostrums that, at the level of theory, they would never have dreamt of doubting or contradicting. Thus, as I have argued at length elsewhere, while the formal theory of household subordination and gender relations propagated by puritans like Denison may well have been heavily patriarchal, the lived experience of puritan religion, the insertion into the formal hierarchies of marriage, family and household of the charismatic power generated within the community of the godly, may well have materially altered the workings of patriarchal subordination and gender relations in a good many godly households.26

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In Denison's case the negotiation of these relationships transcended the subtle modulation of patriarchal power and the meaning and practise of female subordination in the household, to invade the domain of, at least, parish politics. In 1622 elements within the parish applied for and were granted by the bishop of London permission to set up a select rather than a general vestry. There was nothing unusual in that; such institutional changes were common enough in early Stuart London and here, we might assume, congealing around the aggressively godly and authoritarian ministry of Stephen Denison, was a newly exclusive and de®ned godly elite determined to exert control over the parish. Not so. For in the letter establishing the vestry, the bishop expressly singled out Denison for comment and criticism. While including him, as the curate, in the group of twenty men who comprised the vestry, the bishop made Denison's active participation in parish government contingent upon his reconciling himself with those in the parish whom he had offended and warned him against trying to exert more in¯uence than his single voice would naturally allow him. Years later, Denison admitted having opposed the setting up of the select vestry from the outset and having made a formal attempt around 1624 to have its powers revoked. Finally, in the early 1630s he became embroiled in a series of manoeuvres which culminated in dual suits, brought in the courts of Chancery and Arches, designed to question and indeed to abolish the powers of the select vestry. Throughout these attempts appear to have been legitimated by a certain populist strain of argument which rooted the power of the vestry in the status of the vestrymen as lessees of the living from Magdalene, a role they played in the name and interests, and under the control of the wider will and consent, of the parish as a whole. Here, rather than the self-perpetuating and self-selecting oligarchy of parish notables established by the bishop in 1622, were merely a group of representatives for a wider parish community, whose status as such was entirely contingent upon their (inherently changeable) status as lessees of the living from Magdalene. Such a stance throws into relief and perhaps even explains a number of anti-elitist statements dotted throughout Denison's works. For there he variously lambasted established men in the parish who were too proud to be examined on their spiritual state by the minister before they

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received communion. He also attacked leading parishioners who, because they had `held all of®ces', thought themselves better than their godly neighbours. And all this despite the fact that any Christian who took the sacrament unworthily, no matter how old or distinguished he or she may have been, could and would go to hell as quickly as the most unruly apprentice. Just as it had in the instance of the internal workings of the Juxon household, although here more overtly, the impact of puritan clericalism and godliness, and of the godly/ungodly binary, can be seen working to undercut the settled hierarchies of Denison's otherwise utterly conventional vision of the social and household orders. On this view, puritanism in motion, the lived experience of puritan religion, the impact of the charisma created and unleashed by the godly community, could certainly lead to outcomes more `radical' than anything that the rather staid theoretical statements of the godly might lead one to expect. On this basis, we might surmise that, whatever trouble in the parish might have prompted the move toward a select vestry, Denison and his supporters had been in the middle of it and that, far from representing the solidifying of a puritan, parish oligarchy around Denison, the formation of the select vestry represented an attempt to contain the disruptive effects of Denison's ministry by, as it were, smothering him in a tightly de®ned, self-selecting and exclusive lay parish elite, from which many of his more humble supporters would be naturally excluded. Such surmises are, if anything, con®rmed by the subsequent history of the parish. The ®nal assault on the vestry's powers represented by the suits in Arches and Chancery in the early 1630s were themselves products of a wider set of disputes and tensions consequent upon a major refurbishing, indeed a virtual rebuilding, of the church that took place roughly between 1628 and 1630. On the one hand, as Julia Merritt's work has recently shown, there was nothing unusual or necessarily contentious about that; plenty of London churches underwent such refurbishment in the early Stuart period.27 On the other, such products cost a great deal of money, and where money was involved tempers often ran high. Moreover, by the end, at least, this particular project seems to have taken on a distinctly Laudian ideological tinge. Laud insisted on conducting a consecration service himself, and the centrepiece of the building was in many ways provided by a raised and railed-in altar, beneath a sumptuous stained glass window set high in the east wall. At the top

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was a roundel, perhaps a Katherine wheel, intended to refer to the church's patron saint, at the centre of which were the letters ihs. Beneath was a panel, now lost, depicting Abraham about to sacri®ce Isaac, an Old Testament type for the sacri®ce by God of Christ for the sins of the world, the bene®ts of which sacri®ce were, of course, regularly to be distributed to the parishioners in the sacrament now to be administered at the railed altar directly below the window. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Denison took exception to the window, which he denounced as idolatrous in a short sermon, wedged into the middle of Laud's consecration service. Over the next few months he continued to denounce the window and by implication the parishioners who had installed it. Since it would appear that some of the wealthiest and most in¯uential persons in the parish, led by the leading haberdasher Martin Bond and the future lord mayor Sir John Gayer, had been heavily involved in the rebuilding effort, this did not go down well. Indeed it would seem that under the lash of Denison's tongue both Gayer and Bond, together with at least one other parishioner, one John Dyke, retired from Katherine Cree to St Andrew Undershaft to receive communion. Presumably at the behest of such men, at about this time, the parish ceased paying Denison, who responded by withdrawing his services as curate, which in turn occasioned proceedings against him in the church courts ± he was told to do his job and sue for his missing wages through the courts. Denison's friends retaliated by presenting Bond for failing to take communion at Easter or since and then shortly afterwards for having withdrawn himself completely from services, sermons and sacraments at St Katherine Cree. They also darkly hinted, as did the complainants in Chancery, at ®nancial malfeasance in the handling of the considerable sums raised for the rebuilding project. Bond and Dyke, it was claimed, retained such money in their own hands and refused to give a proper accounting for it to the parish. It was also at about this time (1633) that various parishioners started to turn up at vestry meetings to register their dissent at the way things were going. The targets of Denison's ire retaliated ®rst by bringing suit against him in the Lord Mayor's court and then by citing him to the High Commission. The case against him there started with allegations about his conduct in the pulpit, which, it was claimed, he had used to pursue his feud against certain of his parishioners, but it then escalated to include doubts about the orthodoxy of his doctrine and

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allegations about his sexual conduct with a number of female parishioners, four of whom came forward to accuse him of attempting their virtue. The suits brought in Chancery and Arches are best seen as retaliations against these proceedings which culminated in Denison's removal from the parish. As far as we can see, none of those active in bringing the Chancery or Arches suits or in defending Denison in the High Commission were members of the vestry. This is not to claim that either the vestry or parish elite were united against Denison. Far from it. As those very different witnesses, John Etherington and the high commissioners, both claimed, Denison was only at odds with some of the leading parishioners. Indeed, it would appear that throughout Denison retained considerable support both within and without the parish. This was recognised even by the High Commission, which moved Denison's monthly lecture before the communion from St Katherine Cree to a neighbouring parish, so that those denizens of his old parish who wanted access to the continuing services of their powerful preacher could get it with as little inconvenience as possible. Again, the suits in Chancery and Arches were collectively funded by a group of parishioners anxious to breach the monopoly exercised by the select vestry and very likely to support Denison. On this basis, we can surely conclude that both the vestry and the parish were split and that a good deal of Denison's support was drawn from outside the parish elite. After all, those suits were conducted in the language of popular inclusion, and the right of the whole parish to govern its own affairs and elect its own of®cers, up to and including the curate; and they were conducted in ways that involved saying or implying some very nasty things about members of the vestry. All of which ties in neatly with the nature of Denison's support in his earlier campaign against Etherington, which, with the exception of Henry Roborough, was drawn from relatively humble laypersons.28 conclusion In Denison, then, we have an archetypal moderate puritan. Here was a man whose formal ideological position bore no trace of presbyterianism or non-conformity. Central elements in Denison's career seem to exemplify perfectly that seamless integration of a certain strand of moderate puritan divinity into a variety of local, ecclesiastical and national establishments that bulk so large in many

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recent accounts of the period. Here, operating at the puritan end of the spectrum of contemporary perfect protestant opinion, is that `Calvinist consensus' that so many scholars have seen, in Nicholas Tyacke's famous phrase, as `an ameliorating bond' linking the puritan godly to the national church. Here, too, is precisely the sort of puritan minister that many scholars have tended to associate with the formation of godly elites and oligarchies, determined to in¯ict `a reformation of manners' on the social groups immediately beneath them.29 And yet in Denison's case the outcome of all this was not the formation and stable perpetuation of such a parish elite. Nor did Denison's ministry lead, through such a process of `social control', to increased levels of consensus, agreement and order; rather it led to disagreement, con¯ict and disorder. Why? Some obvious, more or less contingent and exogenous answers suggest themselves. Of these, the ®rst is obviously Denison's shrill and combative temperament. The second is that old chestnut, the rise of Arminianism or Laudianism. After all, things only came to a real head in St Katherine Cree when the interpersonal and ®nancial tensions and divisions between Denison and his supporters and the vestry were compounded or overdetermined by ideological and political pressures imported into the parish from the national political scene by the rise of Laudianism. But such an approach will only take us so far. For as the preceding discussion has been designed to show, the division and animosities that the stained glass window affair brought into the open long predated the rise of Laudianism. Rather they represented the working out of long-term social and ideological tensions inherent in Denison's puritan view of the world and in his structural position in the church and parish; tensions which Denison's bullying, rebarbative temperament no doubt exacerbated but did not create. Indeed, one might even invert that formulation and see the extremities of Denison's speech and behaviour as having been enabled and structured by the ideology of which he was so admittedly tactless a carrier. Similarly, we need to stop invoking the impact of Laudianism on the godly as though it were some act of nature, visited on the closed and increasingly cosy and consensual ideological and political system of the so-called `Jacobethan' church by the mere whim of an incompetent and insecure monarch. Rather, as I have argued elsewhere, we should conceive of that impact as but the latest in a series of

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dialectical exchanges and collisions between emergent perfect protestant (puritan) and conformist notions of order, hierarchy and subordination. If the theory and practice of the Elizabethan puritan movement represented the puritan notion of order in its most conceptually explicit and institutionally articulated form, then Laudianism can be taken as a similarly highly-developed working out of central elements in the conformist position. The dialectical process which produced the latter, started, of course, in the production of arguments against the former.30 It is, therefore, both logically and emotionally ®tting that the triumph and then collapse of Laudianism should have led, in the early 1640s, to the recreation of presbyterianism as an active force in English politics and religion for the ®rst time since the 1580s.31 But I do not want to end with the implication that such an outcome was inevitable, or even with the smaller claim that lives and careers like Denison's always ended in tears and trouble. Clearly they did not and it would be absurd, on the basis of one very particular case study, to attempt to displace one authoritarian, ordercentred, `moderate' version of puritanism with another alternative, con¯ict-centred, `radical' model. Rather I want to end by emphasising the ideological and political multivalence of puritanism. At the level of theory, the Elizabethan puritan movement makes the point well enough. On the one hand, it was the epitome of order, offering, as it did, the enforcement of positively utopian visions of order and orthodoxy, through an all-enveloping system of spiritual discipline. On the other, with its populist political structures and methods, its attempts to give institutional form and bite to the spiritual power of the godly, and its frankly transformative effects on the current distributions of power and authority in the monarchical postreformation English state, it was anything but. Nor did puritanism lose this ambivalent, janus-faced quality with the collapse of presbyterianism, as the career of Stephen Denison amply shows. For, as John Etherington, for one, could testify, in the right circumstances, on the right issues and with the right people in power, Denison could come off as the most austere defender of order, hierarchy and subordination imaginable. Here was a natural ally for king, archbishop and High Commission in the defence of orthodoxy, order and obedience against upstart lay activism, sectarian heterodoxy and subversion. Again, the ideology being pumped out in pulpit, press and catechism class by the likes of Denison did have or

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rather could have a great deal to recommend it to parish elites anxious to cement their control over the operations of parish government and the social groups beneath them. But in his own parish, with Denison struggling for primacy with an emergent lay elite, things turned out very differently. As events turned against him, Denison activated many of the populist, anti-authoritarian contrarian elements within puritan ideology. With both national and local power in the hands, if not of his enemies, then certainly of persons unsympathetic to his values, priorities and claims to authority as a powerful preacher, and confronted with a rebuilding programme that he took to be idolatrous, but which his immediate superiors in both parish and diocese wanted to push through, Denison started to act more like the leader of a populist challenge to entrenched interests and authority than a staunch upholder of order, hierarchy and degree. Not that Denison would ever have admitted as much. He, no doubt, always saw himself as a disciple of true order in church, parish and state.32 But that, of course, was and is a very large part of the whole point.

chapter 10

Making orthodoxy in late Restoration England: the trials of Edmund Hickeringill, 1662±1710 Justin Champion and Lee McNulty

In the preface to the posthumous collection of his miscellaneous works of 1709, the Godly cleric Edmund Hickeringill (1631±1708) was described as being `averse to ceremonies and superstition; without a tincture of atheism; he was daring in the ®eld, and prudent in the cabinet. He was a scholar without affectation, a divine without pride, and a lawyer that never took fee.'1 Cambridge educated, in May 1652 he was ordained into the Baptist Church at Hexham, Northumberland. While chaplain to Robert Lilburne's regiment, a `grievous apostasy' befell him and he became a Quaker. Although described by one contemporary as a `desperate atheist', from October 1662 until his death in 1708 Hickeringill was a conforming rector of the established Church of England.2 That his reputation amongst contemporaries was controversial is indicated by two posthumous events. Henry Compton, his diocesan bishop, was reportedly responsible for erasing and defacing his funeral monument in the parish church, removing the phrase `Reverendus admodum Dominus'.3 Two years later, further aspersions were cast against his orthodoxy when his collected works were cited, in the state trial of Henry Sacheverell, as evidence of the scandalous profanity of the times.4 To some, Hickeringill was a `false brother'; to others he was a devout defender of piety and true religion. Despite his public conformity, the course of his clerical career saw him in almost constant dispute and con¯ict with ecclesiastical authority. Historiographically, Hickeringill has been described as an example of the transition from the radical puritan critique of `popery' to the deistical attack upon `priestcraft'.5 Hickeringill, it seems, challenged the authority of the established religious and political order at every opportunity. Understanding the nature and purpose of religious heterodoxy or dissidence in the early modern period has been problematic given 227

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that the dominant tone of religious culture in the period was forged in the act of heretical schism from traditional religion. The battle cry of `true and complete reformation' was refurbished periodically by competing and hostile interests. Identifying the `rags of popery', the agents of `antichrist' or the gangrene of `heresy' was the routine business of establishing an authentically Godly platform for religious order. One man or woman's heretic might well be another's true prophet or Godly bishop. The language of orthodoxy, the institutions of ecclesiastical government, the articles of true belief and the ceremonies of divine worship were all made, and revised, by the dominant politico-religious af®nities whether kings, queens, bishops, priests or gentlemen. One useful way of conceptualising the political and cultural process of making such a dominant order can be found in the work of James C. Scott. The idea of a `public transcript', whereby the effect of domination on the processes of political communication might be traced, is an important tool which early modern historians could use to un-pick the meaning of religious dissidence. Scott's understanding of a `public transcript' as something that naturalises, or makes routine, the coercive power exercised by the political and religious elites is an approach that accommodates the procedures for making claims to public religious truth. Importantly, Scott also articulates a dialectic between the public and hidden transcripts, between the routine acts of domination or conformity and the acts of transgression, subversion or non-conformity.6 Acts of inversion, insinuation, appropriation and disruption of orthodox routine were moments through which the marginal, the subordinate and the dissident might articulate their objections in a manner that the historian might capture and reconstruct. The language of `conformity', used by Scott in a marxisant sense, as an act of power and domination, was a central theme of the act of ecclesiastical dominance in the period: forms of dissidence from the politics of institution, ceremony and belief were routine and persistent in the period. The politics of conformity and strict enforcement of a national church settlement were especially problematic after the crisis of the 1640s and 1650s, which saw the infrastructure of religious domination eroded and dismantled.7 As a consequence of the turmoil of the interregnum, Scott's notions of public and hidden transcripts, as ways of seeing the con¯ict between the dominant and the dominated,

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are especially relevant after the Restoration of the 1660s: in these years, as many historians have shown, there was a concerted and converging attempt by the agencies of church and state, archbishop and monarchy, to re-establish a pre-Revolutionary order of discipline and obligation.8 The politics of religion were ®ercely contested both in the national contexts of parliament and statutes, and the provincial contexts of towns, villages and parish churches. There was an attempt to refurbish and re-invent the public transcript: a study of the life and con¯icts of Edmund Hickeringill, using Scott's approach to the questions and strategies of dissidence, allows an interesting account of the relationship between order and disorder. i By exploring the social context of his life, this chapter intends to examine the nature of Hickeringill's insubordination. The starting point for this reassessment will explore his status as a clergyman whose `orthodoxy' was contested. The commonplace narrative that suggests Hickeringill was emblematic in his shift from an early (sincere) religious position to one on the margins of heterodoxy will be challenged by exploring how `orthodoxy' was more a process of successful negotiation between nexus of priest, laity and ecclesiastical institution than a category of doctrinal authenticity. Hickeringill's signi®cance is, then, not as a representative of a cadre of ®gures who lost their `faith', but as a case study for establishing the sophisticated repertoire of tactics and strategies that could be deployed in different contexts (the parish, church courts, the way of print) to both fabricate and corrode authority. The root of Hickeringill's ambiguous status lies in his position as a conforming priest in the Church of England. By exploring, in precise detail, his pastoral conduct and self-fashioning as a sacerdotal and ecclesiastical ®gure, it is possible to indicate how Hickeringill's use of his sacerdos was janus-faced. His clerical persona was an instrument of order within the parish, at the same time as a platform for dissidence from the `orthodox' national church.9 By capturing the language of true piety, Hickeringill was able to turn sacerdotal language into political power of different forms. Returning from overseas in May 1662, he was ordained into the Church of England, ®rst as deacon then priest. In October he was instituted as rector of All Saints in Colchester, and vicar of Boxted ten miles to the north,

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by the bishop of London.10 Contrary to his claim that he sought merely `a happy retirement from the noise and turmoil of the gaudy world', he immediately courted controversy.11 In 1664 eleven of his parishioners accused him of having evaded the important ordinances which authorised a `Complete Parson'. 12 This was a direct threat to his `orthodox' status. By statute a protracted ritual of conformity was imposed upon prospective ministers, conducted under episcopal supervision. According to Canons 31 to 35 of 1604, robust tests certi®ed that ordinands were both respectable and conforming.13 Canon law required that a minister's diocesan was persuaded of his true conformity, but statute law dictated that the minister's own parishioners also were witness to his unequivocal submission. Within two months of induction to a bene®ce ministers were obliged, on a Sunday, and during divine service before their own congregation, to read out and give unfeigned assent to the 39 Articles.14 This protocol reinforced both the status of the new minister and the jurisdiction of the established church: parading the priest before the congregation made a performance that could be monitored. This act of conformity, as the case of Hickeringill indicates, might also be the moment for subtle subversion: although licensed by ecclesiastical authority, it created an independent status in the new cleric. The list of interrogatories gathered in evidence from witnesses in the Boxted congregation suggests that Hickeringill manipulated the protocols of conformity. The court was concerned with his precise adherence to the rubric: did he `publiquely declare his assent and consent' to the legally prescribed doctrinal and sacramental ceremonies `in the very words mentioned in the Act of Uniformity . . . and no other words?'15 Assent was standardised by a public reading of a printed declaration: Hickeringill, it appears, stuck to the script. The public declaration of the 39 Articles, however, constituted a more ambiguous and porous point in the procedures for making conformity. Hickeringill made his ®rst reading on 4 November; `upon that occasion he did read the 39 Articles agreed upon by the Church of England and by Law established, and of a certain Booke with Rogers his Comment, and Notes upon the said Articles in quarto with a red cover.'16 By intruding Rogers' work into the performance, Hickeringill compromised the moment. Thomas Rogers' The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England (1607) contained not only expositions of each article broken down into its constituent propositions and scriptural proofs, but also the `Errors

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and Adversaries' to each proposition. Indeed, Rogers claimed `there is not an heretick, or schismatic . . . that from the Apostles times hitherto hath discovered himself and opinions vulgarly in writing or print . . . but his heresy, fancy or frenzy may here be seen against one proposition or other', and fully half the book is devoted to cataloguing (and copiously referencing) schisms.17 The work was intended as an effort to buttress uniformity in alerting subscribers to the potentially heretical meaning of doubt, but intruded in this context ± although it is not known how Hickeringill incorporated Rogers' book into his performance ± its `meaning' became ambiguous. Any lecture to the congregation from the Preface would certainly have compromised the spectacle of conformity. Rogers argued that the Church and its enemies agreed on the broad points of theology and doctrine: there was a `unity of doctrine'. He also sought a more reasonable understanding of the mentality of dissent exploring `reasons why the Brethren will subscribe to some, but not all of the Articles'. There was no law to compel subscription, and many things in the Common Prayer Book were `not agreeable, but contrary to God's Word'.18 Signi®cantly, Boxted parishioners were asked to recall whether Hickeringill had read the articles `as the same are sette down,' raising the possibility that he, with the Prayer Book in one hand and Rogers' heterology in the other, had harnessed the body of the text to a commentary ± qualifying each article with a catalogue of variances. It was at least in his power to diminish the reception of the 39 Articles in the parish community, and to undermine or reverse the Church's intention behind their performance. In Hickeringill's hands, Rogers' book became a symbol of the Church's intolerance, allowing him to manipulate the tensions within orthodox discourse.19 When required to broadcast conformity, he tailored the Church's doctrine to his own understandings of religion. That Hickeringill challenged `orthodoxy' by introducing apparently minor variations from the precise script in his conduct can be seen in the repeated attempts to `certify' his public assent. The concern of ecclesiastical authority to establish precisely the performance can be seen in the duplicate records of certi®cation which were, uniquely, transcribed into the parish records twice, dated three weeks apart, with two different sets of witnesses.20 Local of®cials, heeding reports of his conduct in Boxted, had gone to great lengths to establish beyond doubt his public subjection to conformity

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in Colchester. When Hickeringill undertook several additional readings of the 39 Articles in Boxted, the court made queries about the performance: `whether any publique notice was given in the parish Church, or by the ringing or tolling of any Bells, or any other way . . . to assemble themselves together at that time in the said Church.'21 It seems likely that, against the spirit of the law, Hickeringill had selected a more accommodating congregation. Witnesses were asked whether Hickeringill had announced what he was about to read, and whether he had said `this is the ®rst, this is the second, and so forth throughout?' The court sought to establish whether by in¯ection in performance Hickeringill had compromised the `orthodox' meaning of the act of conformity. For similar purposes the consistory was concerned to establish that Hickeringill had acted with correct ministerial dignity. Evidence suggests that while in London for his court summons, Hickeringill had `reviled' several of his parishioners, saying to them, `Will you not go home . . . Go home and buy Ropes to hang yourselves?' Upon returning to Boxted, Hickeringill attempted to appropriate the protocols of orthodoxy to his own ends. Approaching the house of his chief antagonist, he boasted loudly that he had won the case, and `likewise caused the Bells of the parish Church to be rung for Joy, so that, as he then pretended, he had gotten the victory in his Cause . . . And . . . by his appointment the said Bells were rung from morning till night'.22 Hickeringill paid for the sounding of the bells, usually rung to denote `orthodox' ceremony, to reinforce his own status. Indeed, according to the evidence of a clearly hostile witness, the bell-ringers became so `drunke with excessive, and inebriate drinking at the expense of the said Mr Hickeringill' that they fell into disorderly quarrelling and ®ghting. This was hardly a parochial image be®tting a minister of the Church of England. According to canon law parishioners were informed of the induction of a new minister into their church when they heard the pealing of the church bells. By instigating such a clanging at this moment and in this riotous manner, Hickeringill mocked the ecclesiastical hierarchy; he had usurped their control over clerical induction. Church bells, moreover, were sounded at pre-ordained times for speci®ed events, their regular chimes epitomising the church's ubiquity in dictating the structure of daily life. Hickeringill's misappropriation of the bells was calculated to reinforce his parochial authority. Interpreting Hickeringill's motiva-

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tion is dif®cult: his dissidence might be characterised as `Puritan', rejecting a corrupt central ecclesiastical authority. The circumstances were more complex: Hickeringill's dissidence was instrumental in refurbishing and maintaining his local clerical status against rival challenges. The parishioners, by whom he was prosecuted, were themselves led by a dissident from the established order, Nathaniel Carr, who had been presented as minister to Boxted by Oliver Cromwell, and had resigned the living in 1662.23 Several others were certainly Non-conformists in a parish notable for its dissidence. 24 Subordinate as Hickeringill was to ecclesiastical authority ± a force hitherto largely alien to him ± he was at the same time employed as one of the agencies for de®ning and maintaining order in the parish. Hickeringill was not singular in attempting to capture the sounds of orthodoxy. Hearing the unauthorised tolling of church bells and investigating, Hickeringill came across `divers boys' playing inside the church, including one John Maidstone, whose father was Boxted's wealthiest parishioner and whose family were regularly presented at visitations for Non-conforming offences. What did he do `playing in the Church when he never came to pray in it?' demanded Hickeringill, identifying him as `one of the Maidstones who pissed in the Church'. In the childish frankness of the boy's reply it is possible to catch the hidden words of the home: `You `piscopall priest, I have as much to do here as you!' Thrust to the ground by the vicar, the boy again retorted, `You Bishop's bratt, I will have a course taken with you!' and was later seen `pissing off the Belfry on some Men's heads'.25 Here Hickeringill can be seen attempting to use his authority over the parish bells to reinforce his disciplinary control over the local community. Hickeringill was not then simply a ®gure of dissent, but also a ®gure of order. Conformity in the parish was a volatile and delicate procedure. In this context, Hickeringill's dissidence was not eccentric, but thoughtfully negotiated and attuned to a need for lubrication between central conformity and local dissent. He carefully compromised of®cial doctrine and used the power of his own sacerdotal of®ce in order to intrude a more ¯exible parochial religion. This was the sort of local practice, sensitive to local needs, which Richard Baxter had proposed for the nation in 1662.26 Written much later, Hickeringill's censure of needless ceremonymongers sheds light on his earlier conduct: the right to ordain a minister lay with `his own Church Members only, and by the consent

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of the rest of the Members'. The Book of Common Prayer was `a Crutch to the lame Parson,' and `Ears to the deaf Disciples'; it earned his vote only `on Condition though, that it be not cramm'd down other Men's Throats, that need not to be so fed, but can chew what they swallow.'27 At a time when many dissenters did not consider themselves wholly divorced from the Church of England, Hickeringill enacted a practical comprehension; by highlighting the divisiveness of the national church, he underscored the latitude of his own parish, in order to foster not turbulence but unity. What ensued can be described as a process of microdomination, where parishioners perceived that the instruments of ecclesiastical authority were open to in¯uence: individuals could appropriate to their own agenda the routine institutions of everyday authority. That the London Consistory Court, in collaring Hickeringill, was reliant upon informers who were themselves dissident, to activate their machinery of subordination, is extraordinary testimony of how interpersonal battles at parochial level impinged upon the wider ecclesiastical system. In 1664 Hickeringill, as rector of All Saints, presented the local schoolmaster, one Grif®ths, to the Episcopal Visitation. This was irregular; the presentation of ecclesiastically licensed of®cials was conventionally the function of the churchwarden. Bypassing the usual protocols, Hickeringill acted as both churchwarden and court notary, entering into the act book in his own hand a remarkably long account of Grif®ths' malfeasance. Such performances fostered his image of exclusive competence and independent authority. The schoolmaster, he reported, was guilty of Non-conformity: of preaching without licence, detaining his scholars from attending services at the parish church, and uttering many `opprobrious words' against Humphrey Henchman, bishop of London. Worse, Grif®ths of®ciated as rector of St James' Church in Colchester, though he had no tithe to the rectory, and where he conducted divine service without surplice, having also `refused to read the service appoynted by authority in Commemoration of the Martyrdome of King Charles the First,' on 30 January.28 The schoolman represented an alternative powerbase to conforming Colcestrian ministers, the more dangerous for being both ecclesiastically authorised and fundamentally opposed in ideology to the Church of England; this Hickeringill could not tolerate. Hickeringill also deployed his authority against other ecclesiastical of®cials in his parish, such as the churchwarden. Since the parish

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had a role in the election of at least one churchwarden, this meant that in Colchester the in¯uence of the most prominent householders often resulted in the appointment of dissenting men. In 1664 Hickeringill presented his own churchwarden at All Saints, William Abbot: `He has asserted that it is superstition to place the Communion Table at the East End of the Chancell,' and `does detayne in his owne House the Communion Table Cloth . . . asserting that he will suffer not idolls in the said Church', and that `he would suffer no superstition to please any old Dotard'.29 The of®ce was one of dignity that gave the dissenting churchwarden a platform for intruding his religious ideals into parish life, either by neutralising the clerical courts or by harnessing them to their own ends. Abbot struck back by presenting Hickeringill at the same visitation for not `¯ooring his Chancell' ± an offence of secondary importance, yet this was the stuff of domination to the clerical judiciary. Such protocols in¯icted by the dominant on the weak, as Scott points out, permitted on the one hand a practical scope for the toleration of noncompliance, but on the other (when the situation called for a display of power) a cumulative history of indictable conduct. One of the intriguing aspects of Hickeringill's situation was the ¯uidity with which he switched roles in the parish; from the dominant role his superiors expected of him, to the trimmer, who through his own status allowed Dissenters to capture the dynamic of orthodoxy. In May 1664 he personally presented to the visiting archdeacon, and saw through to excommunication, cases against twenty-®ve Boxted dissenters. Robert Maidstone was presented for asserting `that for him it is a sin to make use of the Lord's Prayer, and that there are other Churches of Christ in England besides the Church of England', for `keeping conventicles in his house and thereby detaining others from their duty in publique ordinances', for not coming to Church and for `maintaining that there are things in the Book of Common Prayer contrary to the Word of God'. During the same visitation, Hickeringill was himself presented by the conformist churchwardens for `detaining one of the kies of the Church chest so that we are debarred from the Church goodes therein', and also for detaining the Register Book of the parish.30 Hickeringill had a religious mission; he claimed to have been `persuaded into Holy Orders' by a `Presbyterian Bishop' to minister to Colchester's notorious Dissent.31 His ambiguous relationship with orthodoxy during Visitation was a symptom of this charge. Re-

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maining loyal here to the principle of uniformity ± personally serving up Dissenters for prosecution ± he was nevertheless at odds with its machinery, choosing to stand in contempt against the functionaries of parochial subordination. As intermediary between the clashing interests of Non-conformists and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, it was necessary for Hickeringill to display to all parties the personal authority derived from holy orders. Evidence of the mutability of meanings ascribed to the orthodox performance of central religious practices can be seen during 1663, when, with the help of his sexton, Hickeringill exhumed the body of a female parishioner. He refused to reinhume her, `nor suffer any other ministers to bury her', but commanded the sexton to re®ll the empty grave.32 This macabre instance became the prompt for ®erce controversy. Hickeringill had discovered a clandestine burial. The Church of England's exclusive power to administer the of®ce of burial was a powerful instrument of uniformity. To strict Calvinists the corpse was an object of horror, not worthy of the attention bestowed by Anglican funeral rites: a decent burial involved no ceremonial.33 Clandestine burials, then, were symbolic of a broader tradition which rejected the Church's eschatological authority. Rather than brush aside the implied threat to his authority in what was probably a well-attended and (deliberately?) provocative event, his dramaturgy demanded a very formal adherence to the of®cial transcript.34 It was this standpoint which would precipitate events in March 1664 at the burial of Edward Warner, where a man, `taking him by the arm and turning him about,' called him several times `Hireling', and `having a great crewe of people about him, who did with shouts and cries abet and own what he did,' bid the people `beware of that priest'.35 A week later the beleaguered cleric attempted to bury the wife of Robert Dymond, a Dissenter of Boxted. Reports of the incident, related at quarter sessions, were unanimous. As Hickeringill was about to read the of®ce of burial, witnesses saw the mourning John Wallis `throw the child of Barth Watts of Langham into the grave, and Wallis wished that ``Mr Hickeringill's Fat Guts'' were in the grave.'36 Another witness recounted a different mourner `thrust the sexton, and she believes had he not leaned upon his spade he had been shoved in the grave.' Further testimony recorded that `also the Common Prayer Book was kicked into the grave', and that his hat was made to follow it. The bereaved family, and neighbours from Dedham, then attempted `to

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put her [the corpse of Anne Dymond] into the grave before the of®ce of burial was read.' Determined in grief, they further `endeavoured violently' to `throw' in the corpse. A keening relation declared of the dead woman that `she used not to go into church when she was alive, and should not be carried into church now she was dead'.37 At different moments then, Hickeringill failed to exercise a convincing representation of authority. By his conduct he had compromised his own and the church's domination: he was hardly a proper priest. The dissenting community exploited this weakness and directed their graveside dirge at Hickeringill, announcing that `it were a good deed to bury him'. `He were', shouted a rioter, underscoring Hickeringill's sympathies towards Dissent, `a shame to the kingdom of God for doing such an action'. One woman from Dedham, he claimed, `threatened him that if the other women of Dedham would join with her, she would throw him into the grave and bury him (using the expression) ``You know what I mean'' which words she uttered twice'.38 In the ensuing days Hickeringill was engaged in a series of skirmishes with his Non-conforming parishioners. This violence signi®ed that Hickeringill had faltered in his balancing act. Maintaining orthodoxy and order was a delicate and continually revised process. A later prosecution in June 1681 at the Court of Arches in London, `upon a citation for marrying people without bannes or license', suggests how Hickeringill exploited his own status to adjust commonplace practice. In effect Hickeringill subverted episcopal jurisdiction at the parochial level by customising local marriage ceremonies. Canon law demanded the public posting of banns ± announcements of intended unions which gave a community the chance to raise objections, especially on a Non-conformist basis ± a payment of ®ve shillings for a licence from the bishop, and a fee due to the cleric for conducting the service. In All Saints Hickeringill omitted the marriage banns and ceremonial fees were waived; as he told one groom, `if he would to any other to be married the fees would be twice as much'.39 Though taking the money for licences, the documents he produced lacked the bishop's seal, and parishioners suspected their validity.40 In this way he was able to `adapt' the ceremonies of the Church of England to his own standards. Hickeringill was also prepared to assert his own power against other clerical rivals. This is most clearly seen in his dispute with Samuel Harris, vicar of Fingringhoe, that was little more than tithe poaching.

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A decision by Bishop Compton, against prevailing custom, had reawarded the tithes of the ruined Colchester church of St Botolph (that had formerly accrued to Hickeringill) to Harris. Hickeringill's response was to persuade the villagers of Fingringhoe that they were not required to pay their small tithes to Harris. He also successfully bullied those of Harris' parishioners who dwelt within Colchester, to redirect their small tithes into his own purse, threatening to `molest them' and `put them to charge'.41 This con¯ict was extended into public dispute. As Harris entered the churchyard of St Botolphs in July 1681 at the head of a funeral procession, he found that `Mr Hickeringill had got into the Churchyard before the corpse.' Their altercation over authority now took the form of a race to garble out the service: as the corpse neared the churchyard, `Mr Hickeringill, (standing at the grave) began to read the of®ce of burial,' and as it reached the grave, `Mr Harris did likewise begin to read the same.' Hickeringill would not desist, keeping Harris from `the performance of his Ministerial function', and `thereby caused a very great disturbance and laughter in the churchyard'.42 ii Throughout these parish disputes, Hickeringill was concerned to preserve his status as a sincere and `true' clergyman. It is also possible to explore his negotiations with power and contestations of authority in his textual labour and legal battles. His printed works were the most obvious forum for articulating resistance. Hickeringill was skilled in the arts of political disguise and insinuation. Articulating his polemic in dialogic form, he engaged with the dominant religious idiom, attempting to capture its emotive power to his platform. Exploiting a Protestant erastian discourse that, as Thomas Hobbes had shown, could easily be turned against any form of ecclesiological ambition, Hickeringill from the early 1680s published a series of indictments of the jurisdictional `popery' of the Church of England.43 Rebuking all de jure divino claims, Hickeringill insisted that all ecclesiastical power was de®ned by regnum. There was no ecclesiastical discipline separate from civil power: church courts and clerical excommunication were `popish' chimeras. Importantly, as we will see in his performance when indicted by church courts, Hickeringill exposed the illegality of all independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction according to common law.

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Alongside the jurisdictional condemnation of the established order were theological and dogmatic assaults upon established practise. Here again Hickeringill exploited a wide range of radical resources to deconstruct the cultural premises of sacerdotal authority: inerrant and inspired understandings of scripture, the cultural foundations of Protestant authority, were exposed as fraudulent and false. Claims to interpreting the infallible bible were denounced as the wiles of popery: scripture was corrupted by the duplicitous transmission of priests. Giving a learned account of the formation of the canon, of the variations of ancient manuscripts and debates about the status of the apocrypha, Hickeringill advanced a reasonable hermeneutic against the monopolistic claims of the church. Hickeringill exploited his status as a learned cleric. His published writings were projected as remedial rather than revolutionary: he appropriated `orthodox' discourses of true Protestantism, whether it be virulent anti-popery, or the erastianism of reformation ecclesiology, to his critique of contemporary practice. Hickeringill vindicated the naked truth against ceremony mongers, black Nonconformists, `hirelings' and `spiritual highwaymen'. Intruding his criticism in the clothes of `orthodoxy', Hickeringill claimed to be defending the true religion. Many of these strategies of exploiting the tensions within `orthodox' discourses of true religion and law were most manifest in Hickeringill's repeated legal confrontations with the religious establishment. From 1680, when he was approaching his ®ftieth year, Hickeringill was repeatedly prosecuted in both civil and church courts. These attempts to impose compliance upon a dissident ®gure were prompted both by local and national concern to reinforce hierarchy and social deference in times of religious and political crisis.44 Importantly, in his published accounts of his successive tribulations, Hickeringill attempted to exploit the fragility of established discourse by representing himself as a true priest ®ghting the iniquity of priestcraft and `popery'. As the title page of one of these accounts indicated, his story was `faithfully related' and `published to prevent false reports.'45 Given the nature of the national crisis and its infrastructure of anti-popery discourses, Hickeringill's print contributions projected his dissidence on to a sensitive and sensitised audience. Unlike the accounts of Hickeringill's local conduct, which were perceived (for the most) in the parish context, some of his behaviour, when broadcast in the medium of print, became a

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signi®cant carrier of public and national dissidence. In March 1680, Hickeringill was charged at Chelmsford assizes with barratry. In June 1681, he was prosecuted before the Doctors Commons, for failure to follow the `correct' procedure for Anglican marriages. In March 1682, again at Chelmsford assizes, Hickeringill was prosecuted under a writ of scandalum magnatum for defaming the reputation of Henry Compton and failure to use the correct forms of address in his correspondence and society with this ecclesiastical superior. Examining the details of each prosecution indicates that the indictments were for some (minor) breach of public protocol in ceremony, jurisdiction or social and ecclesiastical deference. In these accusations of barratry and a range of other misdemeanours, a common theme was that he had used his clerical position to stir up hostility towards other civil and ecclesiastical of®cers, either by encouraging parishioners to avoid tithe payment or giving free legal advice. In the second case, prompted by his eirenic attitude towards Anglican ceremonial, Hickeringill was accused of ignoring the legally established procedures for marriage, speci®cally failing to read the banns. The local evidence shows that the dynamic of con¯ict with both lay and clerical ®gures was prompted by disputes with Henry Compton, bishop of London, whom Hickeringill had repeatedly insulted. Con¯icts over tithes, or jurisdictional competence, were a manifestation of this more political dispute with the bishop. Local insubordination in the broader context of the national crisis of the early 1680s prompted the agencies of the established order to attempt to discipline such maverick churchmen. Attacks upon episcopal discipline were perceived as part of an assault that ultimately implicated the subordinationist ideologies of de jure divino monarchy.46 There was then a combination of personal, institutional and political motivations for attempting to enforce conformity on Hickeringill.47 In each case, the precise grounds for prosecution were repeated breaches of protocol rather than any speci®c act of dissidence, suggesting the importance of making compliance complete and routine. Underlying these infractions were orthodox anxieties about the impact of Hickeringill's dissident behaviour, in particular the reception of his printed attacks upon the legality of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and especially the repeated accusation that church court fees were illegal extortion.48 Over the two-year period from March 1680 to March 1682, Hickeringill confronted the episcopal might of Compton. Repeatedly

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complaining of the illegal harassment and persecution he suffered, Hickeringill emerged victorious in the ®rst two cases. His conviction in the last trial, as he claimed, was because the Essex jury had been rigged. Although here is not the place to explore the personal details of every participant in the prosecutions, it is worth noting that the legal personnel for the trials overlapped.49 Hickeringill made enemies of powerful `orthodox' lawyers such as George Jeffries and Francis Withens, men who later made their reputations as brutal conformists. The narrative of these trials gives ample evidence for examining the tensions between public and hidden transcripts. The relation of the ®rst trial at Chelmsford assizes (March 1680) exposes the complicated web of power relations in which Hickeringill was situated. Hickeringill was accused of both personal and political misconduct. A further set of charges complained that Hickeringill gave frequent legal counsel to people, in particular stirring up `contentious suits' over tithing rates between a rival cleric, Samuel Harris (Vicar of Fingringhoe) and his parishioners. The charges indicate that Hickeringill was in serious dispute with different parts of his local community: both laity and clerical. Some charges suggest he exploited his clerical status for personal advantage, others indicate he transgressed the `orthodox' decorum for priestly behaviour by compromising ceremony or ecclesiastical law. Although the records for the ®rst trial are not detailed, it is clear that Hickeringill destroyed the prosecution case, employing his legal knowledge to contradict and denounce the legality of the charges and the status of the evidence ranged against him. Even in confrontation with a powerful established order, it was possible by acute manoeuvres for the weak to trounce the strong. Hickeringill also launched a virulent print attack upon the legality of all church courts in the two parts of The Naked Truth (1680). The theatre of the consequent trial, as recounted by Hickeringill, revealed the con¯ict between cleric and church over the power of de®ning `true' religious order. Hickeringill, cited for ceremonial deviance, premised his defence upon a presentation of his authentic clerical status. This took the immediate physical form of refusing to remove his hat: `He went up to the Doctors, Habited in all their Formalities, and with their caps on, and he also put on his hat.' 50 In response to seeing an ordained cleric challenging the codes of deference with behaviour more resonant of sectarian af®nities, the judge, Sir Robert Wiseman, `no sooner espyed, but he bid Mr Hickeringill be uncov-

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ered'.51 Hickeringill's reaction was to address the court in Greek: in his view the `correct' language in which to discourse about primitive Christian practise. Confounded (and presumably confused), Wiseman `ordered, that this appearance, and Answer in Greek, only should be registered as a Nonappearance'. Reluctantly speaking (behatted) in English, Hickeringill demanded to see evidence of a regal license, without which he would not acknowledge the court's authority. Exploiting traditions of deference, he insisted his head remain covered because (apart from Sir Robert) all were `his juniors at the University, and most of them very much his Inferiors in many other respects, not suitable to his modesty there to particularise'.52 Dissidence was thus legitimated by appealing to `orthodox' ideas of clerical status manifested in his headwear. The judge, refusing to show his commission, repeated his instruction to uncover his head and instructed a sumner to remove the offending hat. In what must have been a rather undigni®ed scuf¯e, Hickeringill retrieved his hat and threw `amongst them a Protestation' in which he rebutted the `foreign' jurisdiction of the court `and therefore it is that I will not be uncovered before you, until it appear that you are his majesties Court ecclesiastical, by commission derived from him'. 53 Later Hickeringill expanded upon his motives, `it was not pride, insolence, nor any design to affront them, that made him then to be covered, but a sense of his duty'.54 Indeed, he had challenged his prosecutors to see `if they could argue his Hat off his head'.55 Although there were explicit theological grounds for Hickeringill's actions, he constructed his defence by exposing the infractions of legal process. The use of minute and forensic attention to legal protocol in his defence mirrored the strategy of the prosecution. In the legal paper, the King's arms had been omitted from the seal; only Wiseman's name, not even the archbishop of Canterbury, nor the dean of the Arches, had been used. Similarly, his citation was illegal in its imprecision: `no certain day nor time mentioned . . . no certain and particular penal crime'.56 Insisting that correct legal protocol only allowed a presbyter to be condemned by a bishop, Hickeringill, invoking praemunire, turned his trial into an indictment of the judge, informing him `that he would sue him, and prosecute him according to that statute'. Although the alarmed Wiseman indicated that proceedings would be stopped, Hickeringill exploited his position by demanding reparation for the `vexatious citation, and unwarrantable trouble and charge you have put me to'.57 Indeed in the printed

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account of the trial, Hickeringill presented his triumph as an erastian one, exposing the `illegal fees, extortions, exactions, citations, excommunications, absolutions, dispensations, commutations, procurations, visitations, sequestrations etc.' of the established episcopal order. As a process for establishing compliance, the trial was a disaster: the conduct and legitimacy of the court were exposed to ridicule and rebuttal. Hickeringill had, by the skilful deployment of his status as a learned clergyman, captured the dynamic of domination. The gesture of remaining behatted was turned from sectarian meaning to authorising or symbolising his `orthodoxy'. By maintaining correct legal procedure, the function of the trial was appropriated to Hickeringill's anti-episcopal agenda. The power of this attention to the correct formalities was underscored when Hickeringill successfully prosecuted the sumner who had attempted to remove his hat at the trial, `where he obtained a verdict, and had 20 marks damages against the of®cer'.58 The evidence of the second trial indicates how the process of establishing conformity was unstable, highlighting how the `weak' could capture or appropriate the discourses and instruments of orthodoxy to make their own `power'. The record of the third confrontation between Hickeringill and the established church provides further evidence for how, even in the act of successful compliance, the dissident might intrude tones that compromised authority. Hickeringill was charged with blackening Compton's reputation and spreading `several false news and horrible lyes'.59 Bound over by a writ supplicavit at King's Bench for his `unmannerly deportment' in the previous trial, damages of £5,000 were threatened upon conviction.60 Hickeringill's defence focused upon the precision of linguistic meaning: the words of defamation against Compton had been taken out of context. As the trial proceeded, Hickeringill showed that the prosecution witnesses (especially his old enemy and clerical rival Samuel Harris) could not consistently remember the exact words and context of their use. To establish this point, Hickeringill shocked the court by declaring that he had, at least a thousand times, said `there is no God'. His point was that although he had uttered such words this had been in the context of reading Psalm 14. 1: `the fool has said in his heart: there is no God'.61 Complaining that letters he had sent to Compton in which he had expressed his unhappiness about episcopal conduct were being used as evidence against him, Hickeringill attempted to capture the

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precedent of Charles I's disgust at the revelation of his private correspondence after the battle of Naseby.62 Again, establishing the concern with the precision of meaning and intonation, Hickeringill was outraged not only by the fact that his letters were used, but also with the way they were read out. The prosecutor, Sir Francis Withens, used gestures and `cadence' to direct the jury to a malevolent understanding: `at every period or Clause, Hah'.63 Hickeringill supplied his own counter-performance by his own intonation: in this reading the letters contained only commonplace scriptural language against pride and domination. The record of the performance of his defence is punctuated by exclamation and expostulation, intended as a mirror image of Withens' delivery: `Church and Churchmen! Ha! Do you speak against Prelacy? Say that word again, say it again before Witness Sirrah, Villain, Rogue! How dare you at this time of day, speak scripture, dangerous scripture, scripture against Statute Law'.64 The `orthodox' language of scripture, humility and godliness was in this way appropriated to Hickeringill's defence: to censor Hickeringill was to censor the bible.65 The second major charge derived from the form of address he had used in the letters to Compton: he had omitted the formal title of `The Right Reverend Father in God'. Hickeringill initially replied that since the form of address was `popish' he had avoided it, although he had used it when dedicating his Black Non-conformist to Archbishop Sancroft. Hickeringill, stressing his own `seniority' in status, age and military of®ce, suggested that if he had called `him reverend father in God, perhaps the Bishop would have thought the Defendant had jeer'd him, and then the fat had been in the ®re again, and all in a ¯ame'.66 Hickeringill attempted to turn the charge against those who made it: the form of address was an `old cogging, ¯attering, Hierarchical, and prelatical complement'. It was also meaningless, `now worn out at the elbows, and as tatter'd, trite, and Threadbare, as Your Humble servant'. To prosecute for such trivial matters exposed the malevolent motives of ambitious churchmen. This time the attempted appropriation of the platform of the trial failed. Although Hickeringill expertly censured the debatable status of the Lambeth Canons of 1640, and denounced the reputation of many of the prosecution witnesses, the jury (prompted by prosecutor Jeffries continually bringing up the dissidence of Hickeringill's publications) convicted and ®ned him £2,000. 67 Enforcing compliance involved the draconian threat of imprison-

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ment, suspension and ®nancial penalties which were, as Hickeringill pointed out, ungodly if not illegal as treatment of a clergyman. Importantly it also demanded recantation. Sir Richard Lloyd, who had imposed the articles of good behaviour in 1682, noted that he had seen Hickeringill's recantation in which he promised `to burn with mine own hands one of each of the aforesaid printed books in . . . a public place'.68 This recantation seemed to some contemporaries to be sincere; he was `truly penitent for his crimes'.69 Certainly the orthodox triumph over Hickeringill was reinforced by the printing (done by the order of Lloyd) of the `humble confession and recantation' which had been `publickly made, read, sign'd and sealed' at the Court of Arches.70 However, even in the act of compliance, Hickeringill intruded dissidence. In the aftermath of his conviction Hickeringill wrote twice to Compton (who had decided that the ®ne of £2,000 would go towards refurbishment of St Paul's) with the hope of accommodation. The tone of these texts, written in a language of mercy and hope, are readily open to a Scottian analysis. Addressing Compton correctly as `Right Reverend Father in God', Hickeringill insisted that he had learnt the way of peace: his letter was `as smooth, docile, courtly, and alamode, as the best Courtier of them all can write'.71 Explicitly underlining the deferential tone of the letter exposed the limits of its sincerity. As the letter asked for amicable settlement, mercy and submission, it denied any crime in the original charge. The abusive language of ignorance and impudence was unintentional: `All which, my Lord . . . I am so far from justifying the Irreverence and Indecency of the Expressions, (what provocations soever I might have) that I give your Lordship what Satisfaction your Lordship might reasonably require, with all humility and contrition. And I am the rather hopeful of the good success of this my Humble submission, because (I hope) your lordship intended nothing else in bringing the action, but only to bring me to Acknowledgement of the Irreverence of the expressions, and not with a design to enrich your self by money of mine, or undoing me and my family.'72 In this `humble submission' Hickeringill re-insinuated all of his original defence: the use of italicisation and parenthesis in the printed text indicates to the reader the de®ance of the language. Hickeringill, in the act of conforming, established his autonomy: `This submission proceeds from Nobler principles than Fear can suggest.' As an act of compliance, the second letter auto-destructed in the

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course of its composition.73 The inclusion of the letter into the printed version of the trial compromised the public enactment of deference. Although, again, addressed correctly to Compton, Hickeringill acknowledged that he had not wished to write: `I was not readily persuaded to write to you'.74 Since Compton had not responded to the ®rst letter he felt there was little chance of success, especially because he was unwilling to admit guilt or make a false submission of error. Even though the letter contained a veneer of deferential language (`My Lord, Your Lordship's (humble as well as) Humbled Servant, Edm: Hickeringill') it became, not a token of submission, but a bold re-statement of the grounds of his original dissidence.75 Hickeringill said boldly that he would not pay his ®ne, but made counter-proposals for settlement. Willing to pay Compton's legal costs, he made the challenge of a retrial at any time or any place.76 The rest of the `letter' consisted of lengthy rant against the clerical ambition of contemporary `Tantivees' whom derived their ambitions from the popishly affected Laudian tradition. In face of this `turning' of deference into active de®ance, the dominant power was impotent. Hickeringill was able to exploit the procedures of law and discourses of Protestant conformity by deploying his own status as a clergyman. By examining the different forms and spaces of Hickeringill's dissidence from commonplace patterns of theological orthodoxy and ecclesiastical conformity it is possible to expose the fragility of the processes of routine compliance to the re-established cultural order of the 1660s. His engagement with the protocols for establishing orthodoxy (for example, the micropolitics of local ceremonial performance, gesture and dress) is a useful resource for teasing out the meaning and strategies of non-compliance in Restoration society. Much of the approach adopted here has been derived from James C. Scott's notions of hidden and public transcripts. Although Scott's anthropological understandings were not speci®cally constructed for application to `literate' cultures, the suggestion that the `dominant discourse is the only plausible arena of struggle' is especially apt for examining Hickeringill's con¯icts.77 One of the persistent themes, not only of Hickeringill's work, but also of the broader context of theological writing in the early modern period, was the attempt to `capture' the language of `orthodoxy'.78 In examining Hickeringill in the context of local communal disputes, the idea of the naturalisation of routines of conformity again provides a very precise way of exploring how such standards were contested.

The trials of Edmund Hickeringill, 1662±1710

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The evidence of Hickeringill's life also allows some amendment of Scott's account of the function of religious dissidence. Perhaps because of his reliance upon a historiography premised upon the (admirable) work of Christopher Hill and Edward Thompson, Scott presents early modern religious dissidence as a `subterranean heterodoxy'. Lollards, ranters and `renegade lower clergy, would be prophets', carry the `hidden transcript' through the seam of orthodoxy. For Scott, then, in the early modern period `much of the resistance to the dominant culture took the form of religious heterodoxy and heresy'.79 Interestingly, this anthropological account chimes rather neatly with the recent assertions of J. C. D. Clark about the persistence of the `confessional state' into the nineteenth century, and the consequent `theological' form that much political dissidence adopted.80 Such an account of religious heterodoxy interprets it as a form of deviant doctrinal belief, rather than as a package of claims to authority and power implying a challenge to the hierarchies of normative social relations. The polarity between an orthodox religious culture and a counter-culture of heterodoxy is unsubtle and inaccurate as a model of power relations in early modern society. As the thrust of recent religious history has suggested, it is easier to write about `varieties of Protestantism' than propose a singular dominant religious culture. The aspiration to establishing an authoritative religious order was ubiquitous: the doctrinal, ceremonial and institutional products of these agendas were persistently contested. Institutional forms (for example, most obviously, Books of Common Prayers, liturgies, doctrinal articles, translations of scripture) were instruments, rather than products, of conformity and consensus. The national ecclesiastical institutions, intimate with cognate political and civil institutions, could articulate and construct a `public transcript', but the meaning of that cultural and political claim to authority was made and enacted in the local context of the parish. The `public transcript' was as much an opportunity and resource for individuals and af®nities to capture and construct their own authority, as it was a dominant, powerful agency of order. The case of Hickeringill, which could be replicated in many other comparative examples throughout the early modern period, suggests that the relationship between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and conformity and dissidence, was much more complex than current historiographical assumptions suggest. The notion of a determined,

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de®ned `dominant' religious culture imposed upon a subordinate laity, only challenged by the marginal and sectarian, is overly reductive. Religious authority was intimate with political power: it was made and negotiated in the series of transactions forged (amongst other spaces, sites and communities) between of®ce and locality, text and performance, author and reader. As the example of Hickeringill indicates, clerical of®ce was the platform for both dissent and the fabrication of order and compliance, both in the parish and in the public sphere. The relationship between an established order and cultural subversion was much more permeable and ¯uid than Scott's analysis suggests. The contested projection of a dominant religious culture was one part of a complex set of manoeuvres that distinct and competing interests articulated in ideological and sociological discourses. `Orthodoxy' was as much made as `heterodoxy'.81 The way of making such discourses authoritative was through the routinisation of (amongst many practices) ceremonial, economic, domestic and theological performances. At each performance was the opportunity for subversion, appropriation and contestation as well as compliance and domination. The political culture of early modern England was premised upon a sociological separation between `power' and `authority': the dynamic role of `religion' (and its performance) made the connections between the representation of power and its enactment frequently fragile and often fractured.

Notes

introduction. grids of power: order, hierarchy and subordination in early modern society 1 K. Wrightson's in¯uential English Society 1580±1680 (1982) serves as an elegant marker of this moment. 2 These changes were registered in a large number of ®elds, some of which, for example the history of crime, were in effect a product of this shift. For a succinct guide, see A. Macfarlane et al., Reconstructing Historical Communities (Cambridge, 1977). 3 This has been a central theme in Keith Wrightson's work, for which see English Society; `Aspects of social differentiation in rural England, c. 1580±1660', Journal of Peasant Studies, 5 (1977), 33±47; K. Wrightson and D. Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525±1700 (Oxford, 1995 edn). 4 For an incisive discussion of these and other dif®culties see B. Scribner, `Is a history of popular culture possible?', History of European Ideas, 10 (1989), 175±91. 5 K. Wrightson, `The politics of the parish in early modern England', in P. Grif®ths, A. Fox and S. Hindle (eds.), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (1996), pp. 10±46. 6 The role of the middling sort in the extension of royal authority is central to the analysis in S. Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c. 1550±1640 (2000). For a good regional study, see H. R. French, `Chief inhabitants and their areas of in¯uence: local ruling groups in Essex and Suffolk parishes, 1630±1720' (University of Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1993). 7 P. Collinson, De Republica Anglorum: or History With the Politics Put Back (Cambridge, 1989). 8 J. C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, 1976); Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985); Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990). 9 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 307. 10 Ibid., pp. 309, 310. 249

250

Notes to pages 6±15

11 Ibid., p. 337. 12 Ibid., p. 340. 13 For a recognition of this, see T. Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration to the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge, 1987). 14 However, this is not the case when at moments of revolution bodily and verbal disobedience comes to be associated with radical groups. For a stimulating discussion of the use of such `body language', see A. Davies, The Quakers in English Society 1655±1725 (Oxford, 2000), ch. 3. 15 D. Beetham, The Legitimation of Power (London, 1991), esp. ch. 1, quotation at p. 11. 16 Ibid., p. 12. 17 Hindle, this volume, p. 116. 18 Q. Skinner, `Some problems in the analysis of political thought and action' and `Language and social change', both reprinted in J. Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Princeton, 1988), pp. 97±118, 309±11; 119±32, 311±13, quotations at pp. 116, 132. 19 Scott, Domination, p. 18. 20 J. A. Jackson, Role (Cambridge, 1972), p. 1. 21 R. Ruddock, Roles and Relationships (1969), p. 82. 22 M. Banton, Roles: An Introduction to the Study of Social Relations (1965 edn), p. 2. 23 Banton, Roles, p. 150. 24 B. J. Biddle, Role Theory: Expectations, Identities and Behaviors (New York, 1979), quotation at p. 84. 25 R. Tittler, Architecture and Power: the Town Hall and the English Urban Community c. 1500±1640 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 107, 113±15; F. G. Emmison, Early Essex Town Meetings: Braintree 1619±1636, Finching®eld 1626±1634 (1970). 26 P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: the Church in English Society 1559±1625 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 142±3; J. S. Morrill, `The Northern Gentry and the Great Rebellion', Northern History, 15 (1979), 66±87, at p. 72. 27 E. Goffman, `The interaction order', American Sociological Review, 48 (1983), 1±17, quotation at p. 5. Goffman is crucial to these issues in micro-sociology. For an introduction see T. Burns, Erving Goffman (1992). 28 This volume, pp. 241±2. 29 Hindle, State and Social Change, p. 201. 30 Wrightson, `Politics of the parish', p. 32. 31 M. J. Braddick, `The early modern English state and the question of differentiation, from 1550 to 1700', Comparative Study of Society and History, 38 (1996), 92±111. 32 F. Heal and C. Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales 1500±1700 (1994), now offers the best guide to the world of the gentry. 33 For a helpful discussion of the problems of maintaining honour with

Notes to pages 18±19

34

35

36

37

38 39 40

41 42

251

peers and reputation with inferiors, see A. J. Fletcher, `Honour, reputation and local of®ceholding in Elizabethan and Stuart England', in A. Fletcher and J. Stevenson (eds.), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 92±115. For some helpful comments on the historiography of understandings of patriarchy in early modern England, see J. D. Melville, `The use and organisation of domestic space in late seventeenth-century London' (University of Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1999), whose important work helps to challenge earlier thinking on gender relations. For a general overview, see A. Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500±1800 (1995). Keith Wrightson provides a brief summary of this work in his discussion of `the politics of patriarchy' in `Politics of the parish', pp. 13±18; A. L. Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (1993). The choice of marriage partner also involved complex pressures which cannot be captured by a stark dichotomy between individual choice and familial or communal constraint. Indeed, their very complexity gave a degree of freedom to courting couples: D. O'Hara, Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England (Manchester, 2000). We are grateful to Anthony Fletcher for bringing this to our attention. S. Mendelson and P. Crawford, Women in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1998), pp. 256±344; B. Capp, `Separate Domains? Women and authority in early modern England', in Grif®ths et al. (eds.), Experience of Authority, pp. 117±145. For an important statement of this argument which should provoke a major re-think in our understanding of early modern gender, see A. J. Shepard, `Meanings of manhood in early modern England, with special reference to Cambridge' (University of Cambridge, Ph.D. thesis, 1998). M. Ingram, `Ridings, rough music and the ``reform of popular culture'' in early modern England', PP, 105 (1984), 79±113, at p. 98. L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500±1800 (1977), p. 325; Wrightson, `Politics of the parish', p. 14. Wiltshire RO, Quarter Sessions Great Roll, Easter 1618/137. (That this case involved the women resisting the men of a neighbouring community complicates the meaning of this act of resistance.) For evidence that some women supported the admittedly complex gender messages inscribed in charivari, see Ingram, `Ridings, rough music and the ``reform of popular culture'' ', p. 102. L. Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996). Gowing, Domestic Dangers, p. 43; Shepard, `Meanings of manhood'; B. Capp, `The double standard revisited: plebeian women and male sexual reputation in early modern England', PP, 162 (1999), 70±100, at pp. 71±2.

252

Notes to pages 19±25

43 M. J. Ingram, `Ecclesiastical Justice in Wiltshire 1600±1640, with special reference to cases concerning sex and marriage' (University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1976), pp. 305±6. 44 Capp, `Double standard', pp. 98±100. 45 The classic study remains N. Z. Davis, `Women on Top', in her Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, Calif., 1975), pp. 124±51. 46 T. Stretton, Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1998). 47 J. Walter, `Grain riots and popular attitudes to the law: Maldon and the crisis of 1629', in J. Brewer and J. Styles (eds.), An Ungovernable People: the English and their law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, pp. 47±84. 48 Gowing, this volume, p. 45. 49 K. Thomas, `Age and authority in early modern England', Proceedings of the British Academy, 62 (1976), 1±46. 50 Ibid., p. 12; P. Grif®ths, Youth and Authority: Formative Experiences in England 1560±1640 (Oxford, 1996). 51 M. Ingram, `Reformation of manners in early modern England', in Grif®ths et al. (eds.), Experience of Authority, pp. 47±88, at p. 81. 52 Grif®ths, Youth and Authority, p. 196. 53 J. A. Sharpe, `Disruption in the well-ordered household: age, authority, and possessed young people', in Grif®ths et al. (eds.), The Experience of Authority, pp. 187±212; R. Houlbrooke, `Death in childhood: the practice of the ``good death'' in James Janeway's A Token for Children', in A. Fletcher and S. Hussey (eds.), Childhood in Question: Children, Parents and the State (Manchester, 1999), pp. 37±56. 54 N. Z. Davis, `Some tasks and themes in the study of popular religion', in C. Trinkaus and H. A. Oberman (eds.), The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Thought, x, Leiden, 1974), pp. 307±36, quoted at p. 323. 55 K. Thomas, `Children in early modern England', in G. Avery and J. Briggs (eds.), Children and their Books: a Celebration of the Works of Iona and Peter Opie (Oxford, 1989), pp. 53±6; C. Phythian-Adams, Local History and Folklore: a New Framework (Standing Conference for Local History, 1975). See also K. Thomas, Rule and Misrule in the Schools of Early Modern England (The Stenton Lecture, University of Reading, Reading, 1976), pp. 45±77. 56 See Capp, `Double standard'; N. Z. Davis, `The reasons of misrule', in her Society and Culture, pp. 97±123. 57 For an attempt to historicise the problem, see L. A. Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge, 1983). 58 The author who uncovered this case suggests, on the basis of a number of other cases, that this may have been a common pattern: J. C. Walker, `Crime and capital punishment in Elizabethan Essex' (University of Birmingham B.A. Dissertation, 1971), pp. 31±2. 59 S. Mennell, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present (Oxford, 1985).

Notes to pages 25±31

253

60 M. E. James, `English politics and the concept of honour 1485±1642', in his Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 308±415. 61 P. Laslett, The World We Have Lost (1965), ch. 2; Heal and Holmes, The Gentry. 62 A series of articles by Keith Wrightson provide an excellent overview of the problems in assessing social structuring in early modern England: Wrightson, `The social order of early modern England: three approaches' in L. Bon®eld, R. M. Smith and K. Wrightson (eds.), The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure (Oxford, 1986), pp. 177±202; `Estates, degrees, and sorts: changing perceptions of society in Tudor and Stuart England', in P. Cor®eld (ed.), Language, History and Class (Oxford, 1991), pp. 28±51. For two recent discussions of the applicability of class analysis to early modern societies, see A. Wood, The Politics of Social Con¯ict: the Peak Country 1520±1770 (Cambridge, 1999); J. Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: the Colchester Plunderers (Cambridge, 1999), ch. 7. 63 For a masterly analysis of the structural and historical conditionings of the power of lordship, see R. M. Smith, `The English peasantry, 1250±1650', in T. Scott (ed.), The Peasantries of Europe from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries (1998), pp. 339±71. 64 P. Bourdieu, The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power, trans. L. C. Clough (Oxford, 1996), quotation at p. 376. 65 S. Hindle, `The shaming of Margaret Knowsley: gossip, gender and the experience of authority in early modern England', Continuity and Change, 9, 3 (1994), 391±419, quotation at p. 406. 66 See, for example, D. Rollison, `Property, ideology and popular culture in a Gloucestershire village 1660±1740', PP, 93 (1982), 295±322. 67 K. Thomas, `The role of laughter in Tudor and Stuart England', Times Literary Supplement, 21 January 1977, 77±81; M. Ingram, `Law, litigants and the construction of ``honour'': slander suits in early modern England', in P. Coss (ed.), The Moral World of the Law (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 134±60, quotation at p. 139. 68 J. Walter, `The impact on society: a world turned upside down', in J. Morrill (ed.), The Impact of the English Civil War (1991), pp. 104±22, at p. 115. 69 M. J. Rozbicki, The Complete Colonial Gentleman: Cultural Legitimacy in Plantation America (Charlottesville, Va., 1998), p. 4. 70 J. P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: the Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill, 1988), ch. 1. The editors regret that an essay on these issues was withdrawn at such a late stage that no replacement could be sought. For some in¯uential views on the relationship between social identities and forms in the old world and the new see: T. H. Breen, `Persistent localism: English social change and the shaping of New England institutions', William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 32 (1975), 3±28; Breen, `Creative adaptations:

254

71 72 73 74

75 76 77 78

79 80 81 82

Notes to pages 31±5

peoples and cultures', in J. Greene and J. R. Pole (eds.), Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era (Baltimore, Md. 1984), pp. 195±232; Breen (ed.), Shaping Southern Society: the Colonial Experience (New York, 1976); Breen (ed.), Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America (Oxford, 1980); I. K. Steele, The English Atlantic 1675±1740: an Exploration of Communication and Community (Oxford, 1986); M. H. Quitt, `Immigrant origins of the Virginia gentry: a study in cultural transmission and innovation', William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 45 (1988), 629±55; D. G. Allen, In English Ways: the Movement of Societies and the Transferral of English Local Law and Custom to Massachusetts Bay in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill, 1981); D. H. Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford, 1989); K. M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial America (Chapel Hill, 1996); and J. Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake (Chapel Hill, 1994). These issues are pursued more fully in M. J. Braddick, `Political Space', in D. Armitage and M. J. Braddick (eds.), The British Atlantic World, 1500±1800 (forthcoming). Hindle, this volume, p. 108. Wrightson, `Politics of the parish', pp. 31±5. The important essay by Tim Wales reveals the signi®cant differences within the ranks of the labouring poor: Wales, `Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle: some evidence from seventeenth-century Norfolk', in R. M. Smith (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-cycle (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 351±404. Emmison, Town Meetings, p. 5. S. Hindle, The Birthpangs of Welfare: Poor Relief and Parish Governance in Seventeenth-Century Warwickshire (Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, no. 40, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2000), p. 27. Hindle, Birthpangs, p. 31. P. King, `Edward Thompson's contribution to eighteenth-century studies: the patrician-plebeian model re-examined', Social History 21 (1996), 215±28; A. F. J. Brown, Prosperity and Poverty: Rural Essex, 1700±1815 (Chelmsford, 1996), pp. 160±1. P. Laslett, `Family, kinship and collectivity as systems of support in preindustrial Europe: a consideration of the ``nuclear hardship'' hypothesis', Continuity and Change, 3 (1988), 153±75. Q. Skinner, `Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas', in Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context, pp. 29±67, 291±304, quotation at p. 56. HEH, el 2506, quotation at fo. 1v. This might be, to some extent, to take issue with the conclusions of G. Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: an Introduction to English Political Thought 1600±1642 (1992), although Burgess is clear that in describing a linguistic consensus he is not denying the role of `practical' con¯icts within it.

Notes to pages 39±46

255

83 D. Rollison, The Local Origins of Modern Society: Gloucestershire 1500±1800 (1992), p. 119. 84 For an example of how secular shifts in material inequalities could recast social relationships of power, see Walter, `Social economy of dearth', esp. pp. 125±8. 85 A. Flather, The Politics of Place: a Study of Church Seating in Essex, c. 1580±1640 (Friends of the Department of English Local History, Friends' Papers, 3, Leicester, 1999). 86 For an example of this, see Walter, Understanding Popular Violence, ch. 1. 87 The case is cited in M. J. Ingram, ` ``Scolding women cucked or washed'': a crisis in gender relations in early modern England', in J. Kermode and G. Walker (eds.), Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England (1994), pp. 48±80, at p. 65. 88 See, for example, P. Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in SeventeenthCentury England (Berkeley, Calif., 1992). 89 R. Cust, `Catholicism, antiquarianism and gentry honour: the writings of Sir Thomas Shirley', Midland History, 23 (1998), 40±70; Walter, Understanding Popular Violence, ch. 6. 90 Grif®ths, Youth and Authority, pp. 374±5. 1 ordering the body: illegitimacy and female authority in seventeenth-century england

1 2 3 4

An early version of this chapter was presented at the Cambridge Early Modern Social and Economic History seminar; I would like to thank the participators for their comments, and also Trish Crawford, Tim Hitchcock, Kate Chedgzoy, Katharine Hodgkin, Sue Wiseman and the editors. Centre for Kentish Studies, qm/sb 1335 [n.d.: James I]. See for example K. Wrightson, `The politics of the parish' in P. Grif®ths, A. Fox and S. Hindle (eds.), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (1996), pp. 10±46. As Scott acknowledges: Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990), ch. 2. Borthwick Institute, cph 4315 (1692). Two other women testi®ed to Joshua Kay's attempts to ravish them (Diana Hall said he offered to `get her a ®ne boy'). These accusations emerged because the servants spoke of them publicly, prompting a defamation suit; while this may indicate that abuse was not always entirely secret or free from neighbourhood censure, it also suggests that speaking of it could lead to legal consequences. For the argument that sexual harassment was endemic to the master/servant relationship see C. Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies: Servants and their Masters in Old Regime France (Baltimore, Md. 1984), ch. 6, and T. Meldrum, `London domestic servants from depositional evidence, 1660±1750: servant-employer sexuality in the patriarchal household' in

256

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13

14

15 16

17 18

19 20

Notes to pages 46±52

T. Hitchcock, P. King and P. Sharpe (eds.), Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640±1840 (1997), pp. 47±69. Somerset Archives, d/dcd 102 fo. 132v (14 March 1687): the words were reported as defamation of her master. PRO, assi 45 7/2/117 (1665). PRO, assi 45 7/1/11 (1664). PRO, assi 45 8/1/119 (1668). Lich®eld RO, b/c/5 1688 (Imm.), Of®ce ad prom. Sheldon c. Lakin. PRO, assi 45 7/2/117, 117a (1665). PRO, assi 45 8/1/74±86 (1666). On the construction of another kind of physical expertise, searching the dead, see R. Munkhoff, `Searchers of the dead: authority, marginality, and the interpretation of plague in England, 1574±1665', Gender and History, 11/1 (1999), 1±29. On the role of married women in determining reputation, see L. Gowing, `Language, power, and the law: women's slander litigation in early modern London', in J. Kermode and G. Walker (eds.), Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England (1994), pp. 26±47; and B. Capp, `Separate domains? Women and authority in early modern England' in Grif®ths et al. (eds.), Experience of Authority, pp. 117±45. See for example A. Wilson, `The ceremony of childbirth and its interpretation', in V. Fildes (ed.), Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England (1990), pp. 68±107; and P. Crawford, `Sexual knowledge in early modern England', in R. Porter and M. Teich (eds.), Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science: the History of Attitudes to Sexuality (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 82±106. G. Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England (Ithaca, N.Y., 1993), p. 189. U. Rublack, `Policing abortion in early modern Germany', in L. Abrams and E. Harvey (eds.), Gender Relations in German History: Power, Agency and Experience from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (1996), pp. 57±79; and `Pregnancy, childbirth and the female body in early modern Germany', PP, 105 (1996), 84±110. Wrightson, `Politics of the Parish'. L. Montrose, ` ``A Midsummer Night's Dream'' and the shaping fantasies of Elizabethan culture: gender, power, form', in M. W. Ferguson, M. Quilligan and N. J. Vickers (eds.), Rewriting the Renaissance: the Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, 1986), pp. 65±87, quoted at p. 76. See also R. Wilson, `Observations on English bodies: licensing maternity in Shakespeare's late plays' in R. Burt and J. M. Archer (eds.), Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property and Culture in Early Modern England (Ithaca, 1994), pp. 121±50. K. Thomas, `The double standard', Journal of the History of Ideas, 20 (1959), 195±216. Martin Ingram notes an increase in the proportion of bastardy cases

Notes to pages 52±60

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

257

where a father was named between 1580 and 1620, from 60 per cent to 80 per cent: Church Courts, Sex and Marriage (Cambridge, 1987), p. 262. R. Adair, Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1996). Comparing quarter sessions examinations with Adair, Courtship, p. 53. Lincoln RO, cp 69/2/17. M. Dalton, The Countrey Justice (1635), pp. 37±8. Worcester RO, qs 167/44 (1693). Lich®eld RO, b/c/5 1684 (Imm.), Of®ce ad prom. Ryder c. Lander. Centre for Kentish Studies, qm/sb 427 (1602). Lich®eld RO, b/c/5 1693 (Imm.), Raines ad prom. Hinckes c. Lewis. Lewis was eventually absolved, the judge deciding the case was malicious. Somerset Archives, q/sr 87/12 (1653). Somerset Archives, q/sr 33/109v (1618). Worcester RO, q/sr 109/93 (1667). Lich®eld RO, b/c/5 1684 (Imm.), Of®ce ad prom. Richard Ryder c. James Lander. Somerset Archives, q/sr 68/12 (1633). Worcester RO, q/sr 139/74 (1681). Somerset Archives, q/sr 83/2 /38 (1651). Centre for Kentish Studies, qm/sb 717 (1606). Somerset Archives, q/sr 85/7 (2 June 1652, 24 December 1652). ERO, q/sba 2/18 (1633). Somerset Archives, q/sr 64/1/122 (1630). Nicholas Rogers has argued for eighteenth-century London that, with such high mortality rates for wet nursed children, to settle a sum on a child would often cost more than maintaining it at parish rates until it died: N. Rogers, `Carnal knowledge: illegitimacy in eighteenth-century Westminster', Journal of Social History, 23/2 (1989), 355±75. See the discussion in B. Capp, `The double standard revisited: plebeian women and male sexual reputation in early modern England', PP, 162 (1999), 70±100. Worcester RO, q/sr 58/88 (1633). His wife allegedly made the churchwarden send her out of town, saying her husband should not keep a whore so near her nose. Hereford RO, hd 4/29 (1685). Worcester RO, q/sr 126/62 (1677). ERO, q/sba 2/28 (1637). Capp, `Separate domains', p. 139. 2 child sexual abuse in early modern england I am grateful to Sir Keith Thomas, Professor Bernard Capp, Dr Ian Archer, Dr Faramerz Dabhoiwala and Dr David Turner for valuable references.

258

Notes to pages 63±4

1 ERO, d/b5 sb2/7, fos. 101v±2r. 2 L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500±1800 (1977), pp. 66±75, 105±14, 159±78, 194±5; cf. L. A. Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent±Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge, 1983); R. A. Houlbrooke, The English Family, 1450±1700 (1984), ch. 6. 3 Cf. I. W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991), p. 217; P. Grif®ths, Youth and Authority: Formative Experiences in England, 1560±1640 (Oxford, 1996), ch. 6. 4 For later periods, see G. K. Behlmer, Child Abuse and Moral Reform in England, 1870±1908 (Stanford, Calif., 1982), pp. 64±77, 88±9; A. E. Simpson, `Vulnerability and the age of female consent: legal innovation and its effect on prosecutions for rape in eighteenth-century London', in G. S. Rousseau and R. Porter (eds.), Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment (Manchester, 1987), pp. 181±205; H. Ferguson, `Cleveland in history: the abused child and child protection, 1880±1914', in R. Cooter (ed.), In the Name of the Child: Health and Welfare, 1880±1940 (1992), pp. 146±73; C.-A. Hooper, `Child sexual abuse and the regulation of women: variations on a theme', in C. Smart (ed.), Regulating Womanhood: Historical Essays on Marriage, Motherhood and Sexuality (1992), pp. 53±77; J. Gammon, ` ``A denial of innocence'': female juvenile victims of rape and the English legal system in the eighteenth century', in A. Fletcher and S. Hussey (eds.), Childhood in Question: Children, Parents and the State (Manchester, 1999), pp. 74±95; L. A. Jackson, Child Sexual Abuse in Victorian England (2000), and see also her `Family, community and the regulation of child sexual abuse: London, 1870±1914', in Fletcher and Hussey (eds.), Childhood in Question, pp. 133±51, and `The child's word in court: cases of sexual abuse in London, 1870±1914', in M. L. Arnot and C. Usborne (eds.), Gender and Crime in Modern Europe (1999), pp. 222±37. 5 I hope to discuss this topic on another occasion. 6 E.g. ERO, d/b5 sb 2/6, fos. 18v, 19r, 19v. On the concept of childhood, see P. ArieÁs, Centuries of Childhood, trans. R. Baldick (1962); cf. Pollock, Forgotten Children; K. Thomas, `Children in early modern England', in G. Avery and J. Briggs (eds.), Children and Their Books: A Celebration of the Work of Iona and Peter Opie (Oxford, 1989), pp. 45±77. 7 E.g. Guildhall, bcb 3, 182r, 199v, 201r. 8 E.g. ERO, d/b5 sb 2/5, fo. 118, d/b5 sb2/6, fo. 138r; CLRO, London Sessions Papers, December 1698±January 1699, information of Margaret Adlam; Chester City Record Of®ce [hereafter CCRO], qsf 79/1/ 39. 9 C. Bagley and W. E. Thurston (eds.), Understanding and Preventing Child Sexual Abuse: Critical Summaries of 500 Key Studies, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 1996), vol. i, pp. 5, 141. 10 The Life of Adam Martindale, Written by Himself, ed. R. Parkinson (Chetham Society 4, 1845), pp. 206±7.

Notes to pages 65±8

259

11 M. Ingram, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570±1640 (Cambridge, 1987), esp. chs. 1, 7±9, 11. 12 A. Macfarlane, `The regulation of marital and sexual relationships in seventeenth-century England, with special reference to the county of Essex' (London University M.Phil. thesis, 1968), pp. 164±79. 13 E.g. Wiltshire RO, d5/28/8, no. 137; d5/28/23, no. 34; d16/2/2, Lyme Regis, September 1636. 14 On Bridewell, see Archer, Pursuit of Stability, esp. ch. 6. 15 N. Bashar, `Rape in England between 1550 and 1700', in The London Feminist History Group, The Social Dynamics of History: Men's Power, Women's Resistance (1983), pp. 28±42, 209±11; cf. Sir M. Hale, Historia placitorum coronae. The History of the Pleas of the Crown, ed. S. Emlyn, 2 vols. (1736), vol. i, pp. 631, 635. 16 J. G. Bellamy, The Criminal Trial in Later Medieval England: Felony before the Courts from Edward I to the Sixteenth Century (Stroud, 1998), pp. 162±86. 17 M. Levine, `A more than ordinary case of ``rape'', 13 and 14 Elizabeth I', American Journal of Legal History, 7 (1963), 159±64; Simpson, `Vulnerability and the age of female consent', pp. 183±4; Sir J. Dyer, Reports of Cases in the Reigns of Hen. VIII. Edw. VI. Q. Mary, and Q. Eliz., trans. J. Vaillant, 3 pts. (1794), pt. iii, fo. 304a; An Exact Account of the Trials of the Several Persons Arraigned at the Sessions-House in the Old-Bailey . . . [11±12 December] (1678), p. 15. 18 18 Eliz. i c. 7; G. R. Elton, The Parliament of England, 1559±1581 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 63±6; BL, Harleian MS 1699, fo. 52r; cf. Levine, `A more than ordinary case of ``rape'' ', pp. 163±4. On the background to Fleetwood's concerns, see Archer, Pursuit of Stability, ch. 6. 19 Hale, Historia placitorum coronae, vol. i, pp. 630±1; Sir W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (1764±9), vol. iv, p. 212; Simpson, `Vulnerability and the age of female consent', pp. 184±7. 20 J. Sharpe, Crime in Seventeenth-Century England: A County Study (Cambridge, 1983), p. 63. My sampling of the very complete series of seventeenthcentury quarter sessions Great Rolls for the county of Wiltshire revealed very few cases. 21 J. Cockburn, `Early modern assize records as historical evidence', Journal of the Society of Archivists, 5 (1975), 215±31. 22 M. Chaytor, `Husband(ry): narratives of rape in the seventeenth century', Gender and History, 7 (1995), 378±407; cf. G. Walker, `Rereading rape and sexual violence in early modern England', Gender and History, 10 (1998), 1±25, esp. pp. 2±5. 23 E.g. Somerset RO, q/sr 9, no. 7 (alternative no. 6). 24 The Proceedings on the King's Commissions of the Peace, of Oyer and Terminer, and Gaol Delivery of Newgate, held for the City of London and County of Middlesex, at Justice-Hall in Old-Bayly . . . [hereafter POB], January 1684±December 1688; cf. Simpson, `Vulnerability and the age of female consent', pp. 188±9, and P. E. H. Hair, `Homicide, infanticide,

260

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Notes to pages 68±75

and child assault in late Tudor Middlesex', Local Population Studies, 9 (Autumn 1972), 45. Based on search of ERO, d/b5 sb 2/2±9. ERO, d/b5 sb2/9, fo. 254r; cf. POB, 1, 3, 10 September 1686, p. 3. POB, 14±15, 17±18 January 1697/8, p. 4; see also LMA, m/sp January 1698, no. 59. ERO, d/b5 sb2/7, fo. 101r. CCRO, qsf 79/1/39; ERO, d/b5 sb 2/6, fo. 136r, cf. d/b5 sb 2/9, fo. 253r; CLRO, London Sessions Papers, July 1678, Examinations of Henry Smalley and Ann Hampstall. E.g. PRO, assi 45/10/1/143. ERO, d/b5 sb2/9, fo. 177v; d/b5 sb2/9, fo. 254r. Leicestershire RO, br ii/18/14 Hall Papers, 1620±23, fos. 15, 28. ERO, d/b5 sb 2/9, fos. 177v±8r; LMA, m/sp January 1699, no. 28, cf. no. 29; CLRO, London Sessions Papers, July 1688, information of Ruth Ewbanck; POB, 14±15 January 1685/6. Somerset RO, q/sr 9, no. 7 (6). CCRO, qsf 79/1/39; A Full and True Relation of Two Very Remarkable Tryals at the Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the City and Liberty of Westminster . . . [3±11 October 1680] (1680), p. 3. ERO, d/b5 sb2/6, fos. 137v±8r; CLRO, London Sessions Papers, December 1698/January 1699. PRO, assi 45/12/2/1, 2, 4, 5 (Isabel Bradford was 16 but at least one of the other girls was younger); cf. LMA, m/sp January 1699, no. 29. PRO, assi 45/12/2/1; Wiltshire RO, g20/1/15, fo. 23v; ERO, d/b5 sb 2/ 6, fo. 136r. ERO, d/b5 sb 2/6, fo. 136v. Life of Adam Martindale, ed. Parkinson, p. 207; ERO, d/b5 sb 2/7, fo. 101r, cf. d/b5 sb 2/6, fos. 75r, 137v [food and drink]; d/b5 sb 2/9, fos. 253v, 254r; LMA, m/sp January 1699, no. 29 [coins]. Guildhall, bcb 1, fos. 38v, 39r, 39v; for another case, see ibid., fo. 106r. For possible cases (ages of the children not stated) see Guildhall, bcb 3, 5 August 1579, 12 August 1579; PRO, assi 45/5/2/12±13. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, x.1.7, fos. 29v±30r; G. R. Quaife, Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives: Peasants and Illicit Sex in Early Seventeenth Century England (1979), pp. 177±8. ERO, d/b5 sb 2/6, fo. 137v±8v; for another possible case, see assi 45/ 14/1/166. Jackson, Child Sexual Abuse, pp. 43, 46±50; Macfarlane, `Regulation of marital and sexual relationships', pp. 54±6, 64, 157±60. PRO, assi 45/12/2/1±5. CLRO, London Sessions Papers, September 1677; for further discussion of this case, see F. Dabhoiwala, `Prostitution and police in London, c. 1660±c. 1760' (Oxford University D.Phil. thesis, 1995), pp. 48±9.

Notes to pages 76±81

261

48 E.g. ERO, d/b5 sb2/3, fo. 78v; d/b5 sb2/7, fos. 317v, 320r; CCRO, qsf 73/2/64±5. 49 E.g. ERO, d/b5 sb2/3, fos. 66v±8r; d/b5 sb 2/5, fo. 168r; CCRO, qsf 79/1/39. 50 Somerset RO, q/sr 2, no. 17 (alternative no. 9). 51 Thomas, `Children in early modern England', pp. 51±2. 52 The Last Speech and Confession of Edward Altham ([1688]), p. 3; A Narrative of the Proceedings at the Sessions-House in the Old-Bailey, April 21 ([1680]), p. 1; The Confession and Execution of the Nine Prisoners that Suffered at Tyburn, on Wednesday the 28th of April, 1680 ([1680]), p. 4. 53 Berkshire RO, r/ac1/1/2, fos. 125r, 132r; Life of Adam Martindale, ed. Parkinson, pp. 206±7. 54 ERO, d/b5 sb 2/5, fo. 118; d/b5 sb 2/7, fo. 98; POB, 10±13, 17 December 1690, pp. 1±2. 55 A True Account of the Behaviour and Confession of the Criminals, Condemned on Friday the 10th. of September, 1686, at Justice-Hall in the Old-Bayly . . . ([1686]), p. 3. 56 CLRO, BCB 3, 5 August 1579; PRO, CHES 38/41 pt. 1, Examinations v. John Wolfe and Joseph Lowe; Full and True Relation of Two Very Remarkable Tryals, p. 3. 57 Simpson, `Vulnerability and the age of female consent', pp. 193±6; cf. Gammon, ` ``A denial of innocence'' ', pp. 78±9, 93 n. 18; Jackson, Child Sexual Abuse, p. 117. 58 ERO, d/b5 sb 2/7, fos. 102v, 280r; Berkshire RO, r/ac1/1/2, fo. 125r; r/ ac1/1/3, fo. 22v; POB, 10±13, 17 December 1690, p. 2, 13±14, 16±19 December 1699, p. 4; True Account of the Behaviour and Confession of the Criminals, Condemned on Friday the 10th. of September, 1686, p. 3; Life of Adam Martindale, ed. Parkinson, p. 207. 59 ERO, d/b5 sb 2/6, fo. 136r; Life of Adam Martindale, ed. Parkinson, pp. 206±7. 60 POB, 7±9 December 1687, p. 3; POB, 21 April 1680, pp. 3±4, cf. CLRO, sf 281, recognizance and indictment of Thomas Barker junior, London Sessions Papers, September 1677; B. Capp, `The double standard revisited: plebeian women and male sexual reputation in early modern England', PP, 162 (1999), pp. 70±100, esp. p. 94. See also Hale, Historia placitorum coronae, vol. i, pp. 635±6. 61 Guildhall, BCB 6, fo. 346r; MS 9189/1, fos. 119, 122v±3r, 127, 145; cf. Capp, `Double standard revisited', pp. 96±7. 62 Exact Account of the Trials of the Several Persons Arraigned at the Sessions-House in the Old-Bailey . . . [11±12 December], p. 15; POB, 14±15 January 1685/6, p. 3; POB, 1, 3, 10 September 1686, p. 3; POB, 18±20 April 1694, p. 1; POB, 14±15, 17±18 January 1697/8, p. 4. 63 Hale, Historia placitorum coronae, vol. i, p. 634; Life of Adam Martindale, ed. Parkinson, pp. 206±7.

262

Notes to pages 81±7

64 POB, 12±14 December 1683, p. 3; cf. Jackson, `The child's word in court', pp. 229±30. 65 ERO, d/b5 sb2/7, fo. 102r, d/b5 sb 2/9, fo. 178r; Berkshire RO, r/ac1/ 1/2, fo. 125r. 66 CCRO, qsf 73/2/65; Berkshire RO, r/ac1/1/2, fo. 125r; LMA, m/sp January 1698, nos. 61, 62. 67 Gammon, ` ``A denial of innocence'' '; Jackson, `The child's word in court'. 68 The case that sheds most light on this issue is detailed in Exact Account of the Trials . . . in the Old-Bailey . . . [11±12 December 1678], pp. 3, 14±16. 69 ERO, d/b5 sb 2/3, fos. 78v±9r; d/b5 sb 2/7, fo. 317v; CCRO, qsf 73/2/ 64±5 (for comments on this case, see Walker, `Rereading rape and sexual violence', pp. 12±13). 70 Bashar, `Rape in England', pp. 37±8; but cf. Sharpe, Crime in SeventeenthCentury England, pp. 65, 239, n. 65. 71 Sir George Croke, Reports, 3 pts. (3rd edn, 1683), pt. iii, p. 332; cf. Full and True Relation of Two Very Remarkable Tryals, p. 4; G. Mayhew, Tudor Rye (Falmer, 1987), p. 229. 72 Behaviour of the Condemned Criminals in Newgate, viz; Thomas Benson, pp. 2±3, 4; Guildhall, bcb 1, fo. 218v. 73 CCRO, qsf 79/1/39. 3 sex, social relations and the law in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century london

1

2

3

4

I should like to thank John Beattie for his comments on a draft of this essay. K. Thomas, `The puritans and adultery: the act of 1650 reconsidered', in D. Pennington and K. Thomas (eds.), Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays in Seventeenth-Century History Presented to Christopher Hill (Oxford, 1978), pp. 257±82; M. Ingram, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570±1640 (Cambridge, 1987); Ingram, `Reformation of manners in early modern England', in P. Grif®ths, A. Fox and S. Hindle (eds.), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (1996), pp. 47±88. V. Pearl, `Change and stability in seventeenth-century London', London Journal, 5 (1979), 3±34; J. Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society: A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1987); I. W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991); L. Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996). Archer, Pursuit of Stability, pp. 238±9; W. H. MancheÂe, The Westminster City Fathers (The Burgess Court of Westminster) 1585±1901 (1924), ch. 10; Gowing, Domestic Dangers, p. 31; Ingram, `Reformation of manners', esp. pp. 59±62. Rape: 3 Ed. i c. 13 (1275); 13 Ed. i c. 34 (1285); 18 Eliz. i c. 7 (1576).

Notes to pages 88±90

5

6 7 8

9 10 11

12 13 14 15

263

Sodomy (i.e. buggery): 25 Hen. viii c. 6 (1534); 5 Eliz. c. 17 (1562). Bigamy: 1 Jac. i c. 11 (1604). In addition, 18 Eliz. c. 3 (1576) and 7 Jac. i c. 4 (1610) empowered JPs to punish the begetters of bastards who were, or were likely to become, a charge on the parish. The main area of legal uncertainty concerned the jurisdiction over bawdry and brothelkeeping. It was sometimes argued that the former was only triable as a spiritual offence, or that the latter could only be punished by a secular court (Robert, Lord Raymond, Reports of Cases (1743), pp. 236±7, 1197; W[illiam] Nelson, The Of®ce . . . of a Justice of Peace, 2 vols. (1736 edn), vol. i, p. 107; LMA, dl/c/328, p. [253] (1680)). But in practice the two offences were dif®cult to distinguish, and neither limitation was strictly observed (see e.g. LMA, dl/c/626, pp. 275, 277, 280 (1670); dl/c/328, p. [252] (1680); mj/sr/1818, ind. 51 (1693); mj/sbb/11, p. 231, ind. 46 (1713)). LMA, dl/c/55, Act of Court re. Margaret Walker, 11 June 1672; dl/c/ 147, fo. 344[a] (1696); John Godolphin, Repertorium Canonicum (3rd edn, 1687); H[enry] C[onsett], The Practice of the Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Courts (1685); Ingram, Church Courts, esp. pp. 3, 242±5, 328. Cf. H. Roodenburg, Onder censuur: De kerkelijke tucht in de gereformeerde gemeente van Amsterdam, 1578±1700 (Hilversum, 1990), pp. 115±34. C[onsett], Practice, pp. 386, 396. Ingram, Church Courts, pp. 51±2, 248±50, 331±4. Edw[ard] Coke, The Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England (1648 edn), pp. 205±6; W[illiam] Shepherd, A Sure Guide for His Majesties Justices of Peace (1669 edn), pp. 26, 419; Henry Fielding, A Charge Delivered to the Grand Jury (1749), pp. 46±50. Committal directly by a constable was legal only in the City, but it occurred in the suburbs also: see e.g. LMA, wj/sr/1412, 1415, house of correction calendars (1671). Michael Dalton, The Countrey Justice (6th edn, 1635), p. 189 (my emphasis). Cf. E[dmund] W[ingate], Justice Revived (1661), pp. 26, 82. Dalton, Countrey Justice, p. 88. It was occasionally argued that constables and watchmen could simply commit to prison overnight anyone they found on their nightly rounds, even if `they be not suspitious': Shepherd, Sure Guide, p. 412; E[dmund] W[ingate], The Exact Constable (5th edn, 1680), pp. 161±2 (citing this as a London custom but questioning its legality). CLRO, gjr/m3, 10 May 1761. Cf. C. B. Herrup, `Law and morality in seventeenth-century England', PP, 106 (1985); J. M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England 1660±1800 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 439±49. See e.g. CLRO, City Sessions Papers, December 1700, settlement papers. See e.g. Bethlehem Royal Hospital, Beckenham, Kent: Court Books of the Governors of Bridewell and Bethlem Hospitals [hereafter BCB] xii.

264

16 17

18

19

20

21

22

Notes to pages 90±1

325±6 (1671); BCB xvi. 291, 303 (1693); Proposals for a National Reformation of Manners (1694), p. 32. Calculated from CLRO, sf 206, 207, 211, 288, 292, 347, 351; LMA, mj/ sr/1402, 1413, 1608, 1616, 1701, 1711, 1714; wj/sr/1405, 1415, 1593, 1602, 1703, 1713 (1671±1687). See e.g. CLRO, sf 394, recog. 17; sf 397, recog. 19; PRO, kb 10/7, Hilary 1694, certiorari ind. 29; Proposals for a National Reformation, p. 35 (George Peacocke); LMA, mj/sr/1808, recog. 138; mj/sr/1810, recog. 24; mj/sr/ 1815, recogs. 124, 136 (Thomas Nicholls); CLRO, L[ord] M[ayor's] C[harge] B[ooks]/2, fo. 104r; sf 397, recog. 26; sm 64, October 1693, order of court; sf 398, recogs. 15, 83, ind. Elizabeth Parrott and Aquilla Pampion; BCB xvi. 291 (Aquilla Pampion); CLRO, 32b: Minute Book of the Court of the Governors for the Poor of the City of London, fos. 224v±225r (1705); R. B. Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment: Petty Crime and the Law in London and Rural Middlesex, c. 1660±1725 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 96 (table 5.1). E.g. BCB xiv. 205 (1681); BCB xv. 265 (1687); CLRO, sf 288, recog. 8, ind. Sara Wood et al. (1681); sf 292, recogs. 24, 82, inds. John Vincely and Jane Brown, Elizabeth Seamore (1681); LMA, mj/sr/1701, recog. 105, ind. 1 (1687); mj/sr/1724, ind. 37 (1687); Middlesex County Records: Calendar of the Sessions Books 1689 to 1709, ed. W. J. Hardy (1905), pp. 29±30. Cf. B. Capp, `The double standard revisited: plebeian women and male sexual reputation in early modern England', PP, 162 (1999), pp. 70±100, esp. pp. 83±92. LMA, dl/c/55, 328±9, 625±6 (London consistory court, of®ce side, 1661±1706); T. B. Isaacs, `Moral crime, moral reform, and the state in early eighteenth-century England: a study of piety and politics' (University of Rochester Ph.D. thesis, 1979), pp. 111±14, 246±50; Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, pp. 20±1. They retained their importance as a forum for suits between parties, especially in matrimonial matters: see L. Stone, Road to Divorce: England 1530±1987 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 43±4, 428. J. Kent, `Attitudes of members of the house of commons to the regulation of ``personal conduct'' in late Elizabethan and early Stuart England', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 46 (1973), 41±71; Thomas, `Puritans and adultery'; Ingram, Church Courts, pp. 150±67. Thomas, `Puritans and adultery', pp. 258, 280; K. Wrightson, `The nadir of English illegitimacy in the seventeenth century', in P. Laslett et al. (eds.), Bastardy and its Comparative History (1980), pp. 176±91; J. Mather, `The Moral Code of the English Civil War and Interregnum', The Historian, 44 (1982), 207±28; S. K. Roberts, Recovery and Restoration in an English County: Devon Local Administration 1646±1670 (Exeter, 1995), pp. 198±208. Calculated from BCB xii. 180±366; BCB xiv. 191±272; BCB xv. 219±73; CLRO, sf 206, 207, 211, 288, 292, 347, 351; sm 36±9, 52, 58; LMA, mj/ sr/1387, 1392, 1402, 1413, 1608, 1616, 1701, 1711, 1714; wj/sr/1405, 1412,

Notes to pages 91±3

23

24 25 26

27 28

29

30

31 32

33 34 35

265

1415, 1420, 1593, 1599, 1602, 1605, 1703, 1708, 1713, 1718; mj/sbp/5±8 (1661, 1671, 1682, 1687); wj/sbp/1 (1661, 1671); mj and wj/sbb/274±85, 393±401, 427a, 443±50, 463; PRO, kb 9/887, 888, 889, 918, 919, 920; kb 10/2 (1681); kb 10/4 (1687); A Psalm of Thanksgiving, to be Sung by the Children of Christ's Hospital (edns. of 1671, 1681, 1687). Cf. F. Dabhoiwala, `The pattern of sexual immorality in seventeenthand eighteenth-century London', in P. Grif®ths and M. Jenner (eds.), Londinopolis: Essays in the Cultural and Social History of Early Modern London (Manchester, 2000), pp. 86±106. E.g. BCB. xii. 208, 225, 234, 317 (1670±71); BCB xv. 237 (1687); CLRO, lmcb/1, fo. 75v (1687). E.g. BCB xii. 215, 308, 318, 321, 330 (1670±71). Ibid., xii. 226 (1670); BCB xiv. 265 (1681). For the similar nature of hearings before the lord mayor sitting as a JP, see e.g. CLRO, Lord Mayor's `Mansion House Justice Room' Waiting Books [hereafter lmwb], iv, fo. 20v (1669). E.g. BCB xii. 242, 248, 269, 273, 277, 337 (1670±1671); BCB. xiv. 233 (1681); BCB xv. 272 (1687). Based on records of King's Bench, and of City, Westminster and Middlesex Quarter Sessions, for 1681 and 1687 (see n. 22 above). Cf. Middlesex County Records, ed. J. C. Jeaffreson, 4 vols. (1886±92), vol. iii, pp. xxii±xxiii, 207, 222, 285, 287±96, 300. Based on BCB xvi. 215±310; CLRO, sf 391±8; sm 63±4; LMA, mj/sr/ 1808, 1810, 1813, 1815, 1818, 1820, 1823, 1825; mj/sbb/502±9; mj/sbp/8, January±December 1693; wj/sr/1807, 1812, 1817, 1822, 1826; PRO, kb 10/7, Easter 1693±Trinity 1694; kb 29/352; A Psalm of Thanksgiving, to be Sung by the Children of Christ's Hospital (1694 edn). [Edward Stephens], A Plain Relation of the Late Action at Sea (1690); LPL, Ms 640, pp. 497±9 (1698); [Thomas Bray], Reasons for the Passing of the Bill for the more Effectual Suppressing Vice & Immorality (2 edns., 1699); D. Hayton, `Moral reform and country politics in the late seventeenthcentury house of commons', PP, 128 (1990), 57±60. A Help to a National Reformation (1700), sig. [C4r]. CLRO, lmcb/5, 16 September, 23 December 1730. For later attempts to revive criminal jurisdiction in this area, see L. Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750, 5 vols. (1948±86), vol. ii, p. 4; vol. iii, pp. 193±6, 199±203, 254±5; Thomas, `Puritans and adultery', p. 282; Stone, Road to Divorce, pp. 257, 287±8, 335±9. The Charge of Whitlocke Bulstrode . . . to the Grand-Jury . . . of Middlesex (1718), p. 34. By 7 Jac. i c. 4 (1610), houses of correction were deemed the appropriate receptacles of all `rogues, vagabonds, sturdy beggars, and other idle and disorderly persons'. Raymond, Reports of Cases, p. 699 (R. v. Symonds, King's Bench, 1701); The Tryals of Jeremy Tooley [et al.] . . . March 18, 1708±9 (1732), pp. 18±19.

266

Notes to pages 94±6

36 Cf. CLRO, lmcb/2 (1693), with lmwb/5 (1729±30); and the similar tenor of gjr/m1±3 (1752, 1761±2). 37 Giles Jacob, A New Law-Dictionary (7th edn, London [1756]), s.v. `Nightwalkers'; T. Henderson, Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-Century London: Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis, 1730±1830 (1999), pp. 96±7, 114±15. For the subsequent evolution of the law, and its current de®nition of prostitution, see 3 Geo. iv c. 40 (1822); 5 Geo. iv c. 83 (1824); 27 & 28 Vict. c. 85 (1864); 29 & 30 Vict. c. 96 (1866); 32 & 33 Vict. c. 86 (1869); All England Law Reports (April 1994), 283±8 (R. v. McFarlane). 38 V. Harding, `The population of London, 1550±1700: a review of the published evidence', London Journal, 15 (1990), 111±28. 39 J. Beattie, `London crime and the making of the ``bloody code'', 1689±1718', in L. Davison et al. (eds.), Stilling the Grumbling Hive: the Response to Social and Economic Problems in England, 1689±1750 (Stroud, 1992), pp. 49±76. 40 J. J. Tobias, Crime and Police in England 1700±1900 (Dublin, 1979), pp. 25±50; R. B. Shoemaker, `Crime, courts and community: the prosecution of misdemeanors in Middlesex county, 1663±1723' (Stanford University Ph.D. thesis, 1985), pp. 322±3; E. A. Reynolds, Before the Bobbies: the Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London, 1720±1830 (1998), chs. 1±3. 41 J. Beattie, `Policing the City of London, c. 1660±1750' (paper delivered at the Institute of Historical Research, London, 16 June 1999). 42 N. Landau, The Justices of the Peace, 1679±1760 (Berkeley, Calif., 1984), appendix A; Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, p. 70 n. 51; A. B. Beaven, The Aldermen of the City of London, 2 vols. (1908±13), vol. ii, p. xxxi. 43 Radzinowicz, History of English Criminal Law, vol. iii, chs. 1±2; J. H. Langbein, `Shaping the eighteenth-century criminal trial: a view from the Ryder sources', University of Chicago Law Review, 50 (1983), 55±84; Beattie, Crime and the Courts, pp. 59±67. 44 See e.g. [Edward Stephens], The Beginning and Progress of a Needful and Hopeful Reformation (1691), pp. 13±14; Henry Fielding, Amelia, ed. M. C. Battestin (Oxford, 1983), introduction and book i, ch. ii; S. and B. Webb, English Local Government: the Parish and the County (1906), pp. 325±37, 394±6, 447, 559±60; Radzinowicz, History of English Criminal Law, vol. iii, pp. 31±3; Landau, Justices of the Peace, pp. 126±7, 184±90, 200±4, 337±8. 45 E.g. John Dent (Edinburgh University Library, Ms Laing iii. 394, p. 359; Bodleian Library, Oxford, Mss Rawlinson D. 1397, 1401; CLRO, sf 441, recog. 73 (1699); Tryals of Jeremy Tooley); Saunders Welch (Saunders Welch, Observations on the Of®ce of Constable (1754), sig. [a3v]; Martin C. and Ruthe R. Battestin, Henry Fielding: a Life (1989), p. 614); Nicholas Bond (R. Paley, `Thief-takers in London in the age of the McDaniel gang, c. 1745±1754', in D. Hay and F. Snyder (eds.), Policing and Prosecution in Britain 1750±1850 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 301±43, esp. p. 337).

Notes to pages 96±100

267

46 Parallel developments can be observed in the gradual decline of the City's wardmotes and re-organization of metropolitan street-lighting: Pearl, `Change and stability', 15±27; E. S. de Beer, `The early history of London street lighting', History, 25 (1941), 311±24; M. Falkus, `Lighting in the dark ages of English economic history: town streets before the industrial revolution', in D. C. Coleman and A. H. John (eds.), Trade, Government and Economy in Pre-Industrial England: Essays Presented to F. J. Fisher (1976), pp. 248±73. 47 Henderson, Disorderly Women, pp. 110±19. 48 For the money to be made from rewards, see Radzinowicz, History of English Criminal Law, vol. ii, chs. 3±6; G. Howson, Thief-Taker General: the Rise and Fall of Jonathan Wild (1970); Beattie, Crime and the Courts, pp. 50±7. 49 See CLRO, lmwb/iii±xiv (1664±86), lmcb/1 (1686±9); lmcb/5 (1728±33); gjr/m1±3 (1752, 1761±2); BCB xi±xxii (1662±1761). 50 25 Geo. ii c. 36, made perpetual by 28 Geo. ii c. 19 (1755); Welch, Observations, pp. 29±33; Welch, An Essay on the Of®ce of Constable (1758), pp. 31±3. 51 Radzinowicz, History of English Criminal Law, vol. iii, pp. 144±6. 52 Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, pp. 292±300. 53 Welch, Essay, p. 32. 54 L. Davison, `Experiments in the social regulation of industry: gin legislation, 1729±1751', in Davison et al. (eds.), Stilling the Grumbling Hive, pp. 25±68, esp. pp. 37±9. For the general growth of informing, see Radzinowicz, History of English Criminal Law, vol. ii, pp. 139±55. 55 The Vices of the Cities of London and Westminster (Dublin, 1751), pp. 14±15. 56 See e.g. J. Sharpe, `The people and the law', in B. Reay (ed.), Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (1985), pp. 244±70, esp. pp. 262±4; C. W. Brooks, `Interpersonal con¯ict and social tension: civil litigation in England, 1640±1830', in A. L. Beier et al. (eds.), The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 357±99; W. A. Champion, `Recourse to the law and the meaning of the great litigation decline, 1650±1750', in C. Brooks and M. Lobban (eds.), Communities and Courts in Britain 1150±1900 (1997), pp. 179±98; C. Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: the Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1998), ch. 8. Despite much debate about the social and ideological signi®cance of the criminal law in the eighteenth century, this point has received little attention. See J. Innes and J. Styles, `The crime wave: recent writing on crime and criminal justice in eighteenth-century England', in A. Wilson (ed.), Rethinking Social History: English Society 1570±1920 and its Interpretation (Manchester, 1993), pp. 201±65. 57 For later developments along similar lines, see Hay and Snyder (eds.), Policing and Prosecution.

268

Notes to pages 102±6

4 exhortation and entitlement: negotiating inequality in english rural communities, 1550 ± 1650

1 2 3 4 5

6

7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15

I would like to thank Bernard Capp, Peter Marshall and (especially) the editors of this volume for their helpful criticisms of earlier drafts of this essay. John Rogers, A Treatise of Love (1632), p. 224; J. Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: the Colchester Plunderers (Cambridge, 1999), p. 252. E. Duffy, `The Godly and the Multitude in Stuart England', The Seventeenth Century, 1 (1986), 31±55, esp. p. 34. John Downame, The Plea of the Poore (1616), p. 56. S. Hindle, The Birthpangs of Welfare: Poor Relief and Parish Governance in Seventeenth-Century Warwickshire (Dugdale Society Occasional Papers no. 42, 2000), pp. 31±2. A. L. Beier, `Poverty and progress in early modern England', in Beier, D. Cannadine and J. M. Rosenheim (eds.), The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 201±39, quoted at p. 207. J. Thirsk, `Tudor enclosures', reprinted in Thirsk, The Rural Economy of England: Collected Essays (1984), pp. 65±83, esp. pp. 66±7; R. Manning, Village Revolts: Social Protest and Popular Disturbances in England, 1509±1640 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 170±8. K. Wrightson, `The politics of the parish in early modern England', in P. Grif®ths, A. Fox and S. Hindle (eds.), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (1996), pp. 10±46. J. Walter, `The social economy of dearth in early modern England', in J. Walter and R. Scho®eld (eds.), Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 75±128, esp. pp. 116±26. I. Breward, `The direction of conscience', in Breward (ed.), The Works of William Perkins (Abingdon, 1970), pp. 58±80, quoted at p. 75. This analysis owes much not only to Breward but also to J. Walter and K. Wrightson, `Dearth and the social order in early modern England', PP, 71 (1976), 22±44; Walter, `The social economy of dearth'; F. Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1990), pp. 91±140; A. McRae, God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500±1660 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 23±79; and to P. Collinson, `Puritanism and the poor', in S. Rees Jones and R. Horrox (eds.), Utopias, Ideals and Institutions, 1200±1630 (Cambridge, forthcoming). Rogers, A Treatise of Love, pp. 205, 209, 210, 211, 212. Downame, The Plea of the Poore, p. 38. Rogers, A Treatise of Love, pp. 212, 213. Samuel Gardiner, The Cognizance of a True Christian (1597), pp. 176, 177, 178, 182, 185, 188. Rogers, A Treatise of Love, p. 232.

Notes to pages 106±13 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

269

Gardiner, The Cognizance of a True Christian, p. 189. Rogers, A Treatise of Love, p. 188. For the context, see Heal, Hospitality, pp. 127±9. P. Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (1988), pp. 126±9. Cf. P. Slack, From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), pp. 5±76. An Ease for Overseers of the Poore (Cambridge, 1601), pp. 12, 22 (emphasis added). Ibid., p. 12. Rogers, A Treatise of Love, pp. 212±13, 232 (emphasis added). An Ease for Overseers of the Poore, pp. 7, 9, 14. Ibid., p. 28. Rogers, A Treatise of Love, p. 225. An Ease for Overseers of the Poore, p. 29. Downame, The Plea of the Poore, p. 41. An Ease for Overseers of the Poore, pp. 28, 29. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., pp. 7, 14, 17, 19, 22, 29. London Guildhall Library MS 9064/15, fos. 189v±90, 206v, 213; B. W. Quintrell (ed.), Maynard Lieutenancy Book, 1608±1639 (Chelmsford, 1993), p. 260; S. Hindle, `Exclusion crises: poverty, migration and parochial responsibility in English rural communities, c. 1560±1660', Rural History, 7 (1996), 125±49. Gloucester Public Library MS Smyth 16526, fo. 99. Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS English Letters c. 589, fos. 52±52v. Herefordshire RO, Hereford, W52/2; Northamptonshire RO, Northampton, 175p/28, unfol. (emphasis added). Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Tanner 73, fol. 390. S. Hindle, `A sense of place? Becoming and belonging in the rural parish, 1550±1650', in A. Shepard and P. Withington (eds.), Communities in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2000), pp. 96±114. S. Hindle, `Hierarchy and community in the Elizabethan parish: the Swallow®eld Articles of 1596', HJ, 42 (1999) 835±51, at p. 850. Cf. Wrightson, `The politics of the parish', p. 22. Ibid. For preliminary attempts, see T. Wales, `Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle: some evidence from seventeenth-century Norfolk', in R. M. Smith (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 351±404; P. Rushton, `The poor law, the parish and the community in north-east England, 1600±1800', Northern History, 25 (1989), 135±52; Hindle, `Exclusion crises'; J. Boulton, `Going on The Parish: the parish pension and its meaning in the London suburbs, 1640±1724', in T. Hitchcock, P. King and P. Sharpe (eds.), Chronicling Poverty: the Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640±1840 (1997), pp. 19±46; S. Hindle, `Power, poor relief and social relations in Holland Fen, c. 1600±1800', HJ, 41 (1998), 67±96; R. M. Smith, `Ageing and well-being in early

270

41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61

Notes to pages 114±18

modern England: Pension trends and gender preferences under the English Old Poor Law, c. 1650±1800', in P. Johnson and P. Thane (eds.), Old Age From Antiquity to Post-Modernity (1998), pp. 64±95; Hindle, The Birthpangs of Welfare. K. Wrightson, English Society, 1580±1680 (1982), p. 181. Rogers, A Treatise of Love, p. 237. Henry Arthington, Provision for the Poore, Now in Penurie (1597), p. 11. For these examples, see Hindle, The Birthpangs of Welfare, p. 24. T. Hitchcock, P. King and P. Sharpe, `Introduction: Chronicling Poverty', in Hitchcock et al. (eds.), Chronicling Poverty, pp. 1±18, esp. p. 11. Hindle, The Birthpangs of Welfare, p. 27. Cf. E. Melling (ed.), Kentish Sources, vol. iv: The Poor (Maidstone, 1964), p. 35. The following discussion is based on a reading of orders in response to petitions for relief in S. C. Ratcliff and H. C. Johnson (eds.), Warwick County Records, vols. 1±v: Quarter Sessions Order Books, 1625±1674 (Warwick, 1935±1939) [hereafter WCR]. For examples, see Hindle, The Birthpangs of Welfare, pp. 26, 28. WCR vol. i, p. 172. Doughty's case can be traced in WCR vol. i, pp. 19, 25, 60, 162; vol. ii, pp. 139, 141, 199, 251; vol. iii, p. 106. J. Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society: A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1987), p. 95. A. Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces: The Government of Stuart England (New Haven, 1986), p. 188. E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (1991), p. 66. J. C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990), pp. 202±27. Robert Wilkinson, A Sermon Preached at Northampton (1607), sigs. F2±2v. Samuel Sheppard, The Secretaries Studie Containing New Familiar Epistles (1652), pp. 127±8; Roger Crab, `The English Hermit, or the Wonder of This Age', in The Harleian Miscellany, 8 vols (1744±46), vol. iv, p. 459. R. Hoyle, `The forest under the Dynhams', in J. Broad and R. Hoyle (eds.), Bernwood: The Life and Afterlife of a Forest (Preston, 1997), pp. 35±72, esp. p. 41 n. 42. Cf. Thomas Becon, `The Fortress of the Faithful', in The Catechism of Thomas Becon, With Other Pieces Written By Him in the Reign of King Edward VI (ed. J. Ayre, Parker Society, Cambridge, 1864), pp. 598±602; BL, MS Harley 787, no. 11. Belvoir Castle, Muniment Rooms, Room i, Case 3, vol. xv, fos. 40±1. Cf. HMC, Rutland IV, p. 406. I am grateful to John Walter for kindly loaning his transcript of this important document. D. MacCulloch, Suffolk Under the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County, 1500±1600 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 311±12. S. Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c. 1550±1640 (2000), p. 219. For the clarion call to plumb the `social depth of politics', see P. Col-

Notes to pages 118±19

62

63 64 65

66

67 68

69 70 71 72 73

271

linson, `De Republica Anglorum: Or history with the politics put back', in Collinson, Elizabethan Essays (1994), pp. 1±30. For an early response, see Wrightson, `The politics of the parish'. Thompson, Customs in Common, pp. 1±184; J. M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700±1820 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 259±93; A. Wood, The Politics of Social Con¯ict: the Peak Country, 1520±1770 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 203±325. Walter, Understanding Popular Violence, pp. 235±330. Cf. D. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603±1660 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 73±239. The classic example is Thompson, Customs in Common, pp. 16±96. But similar assumptions also underpin Neeson, Commoners; and Wood, The Politics of Social Con¯ict. For the eighteenth-century perspective, see P. King, `Edward Thompson's contribution to eighteenth-century studies: the patrician-plebeian model re-examined', Social History, 21:2 (1996), 215±28. The literature on the middling sort in early modern urban society is proliferating. Useful introductions are provided by the essays in J. Barry and C. Brooks (eds.), The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550±1800 (Basingstoke, 1994). For middling groups in rural society, see J. R. Kent, `The rural ``Middling Sort'' in early modern England, circa 1640±1740: some economic, political and socio-cultural characteristics', Rural History, 10:1 (1999), 19±54; H. R. French, ` ``Ingenious & Learned Gentlemen'': social perceptions and self-fashioning among parish elites in Essex, 1680±1740', Social History, 25:1 (2000), 44±66; and Hindle, The State and Social Change, pp. 204±30. K. Wrightson, `The social order of early modern England: three approaches', in L. Bon®eld, R. M. Smith and K. E. Wrightson (eds.), The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure (Oxford, 1986), pp. 177±202, esp. pp. 190±1. K. Wrightson, `Estates, degrees and sorts: changing perceptions of society in Tudor and Stuart England', in P. J. Cor®eld (ed.), Language, History and Class (Oxford, 1991), pp. 30±52. Beier, `Poverty and progress', p. 207; W. Newman-Brown, `The receipt of poor relief and family situation: Aldenham, Hertfordshire, 1630±90', in Smith (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle, pp. 405±22, esp. p. 409; Hindle, The Birthpangs of Welfare, p. 20. Beier, `Poverty and progress', p. 207. Wales, `Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle', p. 379. Beier, `Poverty and progress', p. 207; Newman-Brown, `The receipt of poor relief and family situation', p. 409. Walter, `The social economy of dearth', p. 117. Hindle, The Birthpangs of Welfare, pp. 20, 34; W. Hunt, The Puritan Moment: the Coming of Revolution in an English County (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 43±4.

272

Notes to pages 119±24

74 Walter, `The social economy of dearth', pp. 117±18; Hindle, `Power, poor relief and social relations', p. 85. 75 F. G. Emmison, `Poor relief accounts of two rural parishes in Bedfordshire, 1563±1598', Economic History Review, 3 (1931±32), 102±16, esp. p. 114; Newman-Brown, `The Receipt of Poor Relief and Family Situation', p. 410. 76 PRO, sp 16/194/9 [Northamptonshire], 11 [Somerset], 19 [Gloucestershire]. 77 Hindle, The State and Social Change, p. 213. 78 Hindle, `Hierarchy and community', p. 851. 79 Godfrey Goodman, The Fall of Man, or the Corruption of Nature (1616), pp. 139±40. 80 East Yorkshire Archive Service, Kingston-Upon-Hull, PE 144/Acc. 1202. 81 Hindle, The Birthpangs of Welfare, pp. 27±8. 82 Walter, `The social economy of dearth', pp. 107±13. Cf. R. Porter, `The gift relation: philanthropy and provincial hospitals in eighteenthcentury England', in L. Granshaw and R. Porter (eds.), The Hospital in History (London and New York, 1989), pp. 149±78, esp. p. 150; Hindle, The Birthpangs of Welfare. 83 Even a seventeenth-century Lord Chief Justice queried whether `discretionary [was] but a softer word for arbitrary?' Holt kb 680, cited in D. E. C. Yale (ed.), Lord Nottingham's Chancery Cases, Volume i (Selden Society 73, 1954), p. xlvi. 84 Scott, Domination, pp. 19±20, 183±4, 199±201. 5 public transcripts, popular agency and the politics of subsistence in early modern england I am indebted to Keith Wrightson and my co-editor for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 1 BL, Lansdowne MS 81, fo. 76. No copy of the ballad appears to have survived. 2 On the politics of custom, see K. Wrightson, `The politics of the parish in early modern England', in P. Grif®ths, A. Fox and S. Hindle (eds.), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (1996), pp. 10±46, esp. pp. 22±5; A. Wood, `The place of custom in plebeian political culture: England 1550±1800', Social History, 22 (1997), 46±60; E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (1991), pp. 1±15, 97±184. 3 The attempt to defend a festive community, which emphasised the obligations of the wealthy to provide money, food and drink, and for which the inversionary and liminal form of the celebrations themselves could provide another potent weapon of the poor, provides one area of early modern historiography worth revisiting. For some helpful insights on the `festive community', see K. E. Wrightson, `The Puritan Reforma-

Notes to pages 124±8

4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19

273

tion of Manners with special reference to the counties of Lancashire and Essex 1640±1660' (University of Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1973), pp. 24±38; for an excellent example of the politics of this con¯ict for a later period, see R. Bushaway, By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in England 1700±1880 (1982). J. C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985), p. xv; and his Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990). P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin (eds.), Tudor Royal Proclamations (New Haven, 1964±9), 3 vols., I, pp. 464±5. Hughes and Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, iii, pp. 193±5; PRO, sp 16/541, no. 134. R. Wilkinson, A Sermon Preached at North-Hampton the 21. of June last past, before the lord lieutenant of the County, and the rest of the Commissioners there assembled upon occasion of the late Rebellion and Riots in those parts committed (1607), sig. b3v. R. H. Tawney and E. Power (eds.), Tudor Economic Documents, 3 vols. (1924), vol. iii, pp. 62±3; APC, 1597, p. 351. L. Wright, A Summons for Sleepers, Wherein most grievous and notorious offenders are cited to bring forth true frutes of repentance (1589), p. 4. A. McRae, God Speed the Plough: the Representation of Agrarian England, 1500±1660 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 58 (but cf. p. 72). J. S. Cockburn, A History of the English Assizes 1558±1714 (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 181±7; A. Hassell Smith, County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk, 1558±1603 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 91ff. C. Read (ed.), William Lambarde and Local Government (Ithaca, N.Y., 1962), pp. 163±4. BL, Lansdowne MS 90, fos. 48±9. E.g. Bodleian Lib., MS Firth c. 4, pp. 485±6; Somerset RO, dd/ph 222/ 92; ibid., Quarter Session Order Book 1646±1650, fos. 137r±v. R.P.[owell], Depopulation Arraigned, Convicted and Condemned, By the Lawes of God and Man: A TREATISE NECESSARY IN THESE TIMES (1636), p. 145; CSPD, 1649±1650, p. 121. For example, B. W. Quintrell, ed., Proceedings of the Lancashire Justices of the Peace at the Sheriff's Table during Assize Week, 1578±1694 (Lancashire and Cheshire Record Soc., cxxi, 1981), pp. 171±2. P. Slack, From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), p. 12; cf. M. E. James, `The Concept of Order and the Northern Rising of 1569', PP, 60 (1973), 49±73, quoted at pp. 61±4. I am preparing a larger study on the politics of subsistence in early modern England which will integrate a fuller analysis of `the weapons of the weak' with an analysis of the politics of the crowd. Cf. J. M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700±1820 (Cambridge, 1993), ch. 9. Neeson's discussion of

274

20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37

Notes to pages 128±32 opposition to enclosure in a later period offers many points of comparison with the analysis here. For a development of these ideas, see J. Walter, `The social economy of dearth in early modern England', in J. Walter and R. Scho®eld (eds.), Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 75±128, esp. pp. 123±8; S. Hindle, The Birthpangs of Welfare: Poor Relief and Parish Governance in Seventeenth-Century Warwickshire (Dugdale Society occas. papers, 40, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2000), pp. 27±8. Dorset RO, dc/dob/8/1, fos. 46r, 54; Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. ii, p. 189. HMC, Buccleuch MSS, iii, p. 35. J. Walter, `A ``Rising of the People''? The Oxfordshire Rising of 1596', PP, 107 (1985), 90±143, quoted at p. 97. Warwickshire RO, cr 136/c. 2614. Dorset RO, dc/dob/8/1, fos. 46r, 54, 59, 100v±101. For White, see D. Underdown, Fire From Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century (1992). H. A.[rthington], Provision for the poore, now in penurie. Out of the Store-Houes of Gods plentie . . . (1599), C2. F. G. Emmison, Early Essex Town Meetings (1970), pp. 19, 23, 96, 101; Walter, `Social economy', p. 112. Wiltshire RO, Quarter Sessions Great Roll [hereafter q/s Gt. Roll], Easter 1621, 16; ibid., Quarter Sessions Order Book, i, Hil. 1647/8 (case of Rog. Ballard); A. Jackson, A History of Retford: the Growth of a Nottinghamshire Borough (Retford, 1971), pp. 19±20. PRO, stac 8/142/16. Dorset RO, dob 8/1, fo. 78v. Walter, `Social economy', esp. pp. 105±13. York Civic Records, iv, ed. A. Raine (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, cviii, 1945), p. 2. PRO, stac 8/34/4. Walter, `Social economy', p. 111. For example, J. King, A Sermon Preached in Yorke the Seventeenth Day of November 1595 (Oxford, 1597), p. 705; A Looking glasse for Corne-hoarders, in H. E. Rollins, A Pepysian Garland: Black-Letter Broadside Ballads of the Years 1595±1639 (Cambridge, Mass., 1922), pp. 370±5; A warning-piece for engrossers of corn . . . , in Rollins (ed.), The Pack of Autolycus Or Strange and Terrible News . . . (Cambridge, Mass., 1927); The Rich Farmers Ruine, Who Murmured At the Plenty of The Seasons, Because He Could Not Sell Corn So Dear As His Covetous Heart Desired, in W. Chappell and J. W. Ebsworth (eds.), The Roxburghe Ballads, 9 vols. (1871±1897), vol. vi, pp. 535±6. Warwickshire RO, cr 136/b711 (2 Oct. 1608). On the ritual curse, see K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (1971),

Notes to pages 133±6

38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45

46 47

48 49 50

275

pp. 599±611. For examples of a belief in God's judgements on enclosers, see J. Moore, A Target for Tillage, Briefely Containing the Most Necessary Pretious, and pro®table use thereof both for King and State (1613), pp. 43±5; J. Moore, The CRYING SIN OF ENGLAND of not Caring for the Poor. Wherein Inclosure, viz. such as doth unpeople Townes, and uncorn Fields, is Arraigned, Convicted, and Condemned by the Word of God. Being the chief Heads of two SERMONS, Preached at the Lecture at Lutterworth in Leicester-shire in May last, and now published in love to CHRIST, his Country, and the POOR (1653), pp. 21±3; J. Bentham, The Christian Con¯ict: A Treatise, Shewing the Dif®culties and Duties of this Con¯ict, with the Armour, and speciall Graces to be exercised by Christian Souldiers . . . Preached in the Lecture of Kettering in the County of Northampton (1635), p. 322. W. H. Hosford, `An eye-witness account of a seventeenth-century enclosure', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. (1951), vol. iv, pp. 215±20, quotations at pp. 215±16. J. R. Ravensdale, `Landbeach in 1549: Ket's rebellion in miniature', in L. M. Mumby (ed.), East Anglian Studies (Cambridge, 1968), p. 110. PRO, stac 8/227/3; Warwickshire RO, cr 931/177±178. Ravensdale, `Landbeach', p. 110. J. H. E. Bennett and J. C. Dewhurst (eds.), Quarter Session Records with other records of the Justices of Peace for the County Palatine of Chester 1559±1760 (Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, xciv, 1940), p. 13; PRO, sp 16/187/12. PRO, stac 8/105/9. Ibid. T. I. J. Jones, `The enclosure movement in South Wales in the Tudor and early Stuart periods' (University of Wales, Cardiff, M.A. thesis, 1936), p. 364; A. Fox, `Ballads, libels and popular ridicule in Jacobean England', PP, 145 (1994), pp. 47±83; Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. iii, p. 12; Belvoir Castle MSS, Muniments Room, Room i, Case 3, vol. xv, fo. 41v. PRO, stac 8/10/18. I intend to publish a contextualised study of this episode. F. Heale and C. Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales 1500±1700 (1994), pp. 102±5. Richard Hoyle's work on landlord±tenant relations led him to conclude that moral constraints and social conventions had real force in curtailing landlord oppression: R. W. Hoyle, `Lords, tenants and tenant right in the sixteenth century: four studies', Northern History 20 (1984), pp. 44, 47. Warwickshire RO, CR 136/b.2, 136/c. 2623. The letter appears to have been written by a local gentleman. Heal and Holmes, Gentry, pp. 277, 372. For the centrality of magnanimity to the ideal of gentility, see Anna Bryson, `Concepts of Civility in England c. 1560±1685' (Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1984), p. 237. Warwickshire RO, cr 136/c. 2613, 2615.

276

Notes to pages 137±41

51 See the interesting examples discussed in A. Wood, The Politics of Social Con¯ict: The Peak Country 1520±1770 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 189 52 Sir John was a godly magistrate who argued in his commonplace book, `as obedience is due to us, so is our study, our labour and our industry, with virtuous example, due to them that be subject to our authority', and stressed in his charges to quarter sessions the JPs' duties `to our neighbour' and responsibilities to the poor, even, on one occasion, detailing the laws against forestallers and engrossers: V. M. Larminie, The Godly Magistrate: the private philosophy and public life of Sir John Newdigate 1571±1610 (Dugdale Society, occas. papers, 28, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1982), quotations at pp. 15, 17; and her Wealth, Kinship and Culture: the Seventeenth Century Newdigates of Arbury and their World (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 13±14; Warwickshire RO, CR 136/B711 (notes, dated 2 Oct. 1608, for a charge to a jury by a local JP, presumably Newdegate; this is not included in Larminie's list of charges, Wealth, p. 152n). 53 Warwickshire RO, cr 136/b557/3,136/b557/2; PRO, stac 8/15/21. 54 PRO, stac 8/142/16. 55 F. Bamford (ed.), A Royalist's Notebook: the Commonplace Book of Sir John Oglander, Kt. of Nunwell (1585±1655) (1936), p. 61; Bodleian Lib., MS Firth c. 4, p. 484. 56 Wiltshire RO, q/s Gt. Roll, Hil. 1615, 186. 57 Somerset RO, q/s Petitions, Wells, January 24 Car i. 58 Henry Brinkelow, The Co-Plaint of Roderych Mors, sometimes a gray fryre unto the parlament house of Ingland hys naturall countrey: for the redresse of certeyn wycked lawes evell custumes & cruell decrees [?1548] (Amsterdam, 1973), A8r±v. 59 PRO, sp 16/409/50. 60 Bodleian Lib., MS Firth c. 4, p. 495. 61 C. Geertz, `Centers, kings and charisma: re¯ections on the symbolics of power', in J. Ben-David, J. Clarke and T. Nichols (eds.), Culture and its Creators, Essays in Honour of Edward Shils (Chicago, 1977), pp. 150±71, quoted at p. 153; C. H. Firth (ed.), Stuart Tracts 1603±1693 (1903), p. 40; F. P. Verney, Memoirs of the Verney Family During the Civil War, 4 vols. (1892), vol. ii, p. 86. See also Wood, Politics of Social Con¯ict, pp. 236±7. 62 Dorset RO, dc/dob/8/1, fo. 46r. 63 ERO, q/sr 131/36; ERO, Colchester Branch, d/db 5 sb2/5, fo. 186v. 64 G. R. Elton, Policy and Police: the Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972), p. 143. 65 HMC, Salisbury, xiii, pp. 168±9. That much of this passage echoes word for word a passage in an Elizabethan accession day sermon, delivered in the harvest crisis of 1595 and printed in 1597, raises intriguing questions about the direction of the borrowings ± or was there a common source? ± between the public and hidden transcript: King, Sermon Preached in Yorke, p. 704. 66 Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. iii, pp. 12±13; R. B.

Notes to pages 141±6

67

68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87

277

Rose, `Coventry: the common lands', Victoria County History, Warwickshire, ed. W. B. Stephens, vol. viii (1969), pp. 199±207. PRO, stac 8/266/19; 8/265/7; Reports of Cases in the Court of Star Chamber and High Commission, ed. S. R. Gardiner (Camden Soc., 2nd ser., xxxix, 1886), pp. 509±65; J. Rushworth, Historical Collections of Private Passages of State . . . (1659±1701), vol. iii, pp. 39±40; CSPD, 1639±1640, pp. 35±6. PRO, sp 12/262/4. Wiltshire RO, q/s Gt. Roll, Hil. 1615/192; ERO, d/deb 7/4. Somerset RO q/s Petitions, Wells, January 24 Car i. ERO, q/sr 332/106. PRO, sp 14/131/4. PRO, sp 16/175/81. Kent Archives Of®ce, fa ac 3, fo. 172r±v; fa cpw 68, unno. (1 Nov., 9, 14 December 1630). P. Clark, English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution (1977), p. 232. K. Thomas, `The place of laughter in Tudor and Stuart England', Times Literary Supplement, 21 January 1977, p. 77. Walter, `Social economy', p. 106; CSPD, 1596±1597, pp. 428±9. J. Thompson, History of Leicester to the End of the Seventeenth Century (1849), pp. 300±1. Enclosure was also an issue in the 1614 election at Knaresborough: D. Hirst, The Representative of the People? Voters and Voting in England under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge, 1975), p. 142. R. L. Greaves, Society and Religion in Elizabethan England (Minneapolis, Minn., 1981), p. 626. P. A. Pettit, The Royal Forests of Northamptonshire: a Study in their Economy 1558±1714 (Northamptonshire Record Society, xxiii, 1968), p. 17; HMC, Various Collections, iii, pp. 89, 123; M. E. Finch, The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families 1540±1640 (Northamptonshire Record Society, xix, 1956), p. 89. Given that Tresham's estate policy had been to switch to sheep, which accounted for nearly half of his income in the early 1590s, such a boycott could have a major impact: Heal and Holmes, Gentry, pp. 105±6. PRO, stac 8/18/12. APC, 1615±1616, pp. 101±2. APC, 1595±1596, pp. 88±9. E. P. Thompson, `The crime of anonymity', in D. Hay et al., Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (1975), pp. 255±344, p. 279. Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, vol. iii, p. 13. Belvoir Castle MSS, Muniment Rooms, Room i, Case 3, vol. xv, fo. 41v. I am preparing a transcript and analysis of this libel for publication. For why this was so, see the discussions in J. Walter, `The geography of food riots, 1585±1649', in A. Charlesworth (ed.), An Atlas of Rural Protest in Britain 1548±1900 (1983), pp. 72±80; Walter, `Grain riots and popular

278

88 89 90 91

92 93

Notes to pages 146±50

attitudes to the law: Maldon and the crisis of 1629', in J. Brewer and J. Styles (eds.), An Ungovernable People: the English and their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1980), pp. 47±84; Walter, `Rising of the People'. Wiltshire RO, q/s Order Book 1, Mich. 1652. PRO, sp 14/34/4; 35/52. HMC, Salisbury, xx, p. 174. For further development of these ideas, see J. Walter, Understanding Popular Violence: the Colchester Plunderers (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 1±9, 348±52; and my `Crown and crowd: popular culture and popular protest in early modern England (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries)', Sotsial'naia istoriia: problemy sinteza (Moscow, 1994), pp. 235±48. Scott, Domination, p. 3. Ibid., p. 18.

6 `bragging and daring words': honour, property and the symbolism of the hunt in stowe, 1590 ± 1642 1 HEH, S[towe] T[emple] M[iscellaneous] L[egal] P[apers], Box 5, S[eventeenth] C[entury] U[ndated] (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Deposition of John Symons, servant to Sir Peter Temple, 22/6/1642. 2 See M. James, `English politics and the concept of honour, 1485±1642', in James (ed.), Society, Politics, and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 308±415, on the uses of violence in the sixteenth century; R. B. Manning, Hunters and Poachers: a Social and Cultural History of Unlawful Hunting in England, 1485±1640 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 36±56, offers a suggestive discussion of the martial and theatrical aspects of the hunt. 3 A distinguished literature on the symbolism and law of the forest and hunt has stressed their power to differentiate gentry and commoners and to enforce elite views of land use and work discipline, particularly in the eighteenth century. See D. Hay, `Poaching and the Game Laws on Cannock Chase', in Hay, P. Linebaugh, J. G. Rule, E. P. Thompson and C. Winslow (eds.), Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, 1975), pp. 189±253; E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (New York, 1975), pp. 27±54; B. Manning, The English People and the English Revolution (1976), pp. 207±12, 258±9; B. Sharp, In Contempt of all Authority: Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586±1660 (Berkeley, Calif., 1980), pp. 4±5, 82±125. 4 See the essays and references in P. Grif®ths, A. Fox and S. Hindle (eds.), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (1996); and M. Braddick, `State formation and social change in early modern England: a problem stated and approaches suggested', Social History, 16 (1991), 1±17. 5 See E. P. Thompson, `The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century', PP, 50 (1971), 76±136; and J. C. Scott, Domination and

Notes to pages 150±1

6

7

8

9 10

11

12 13 14

279

the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990), pp. 45±69, 108±35, for the `public transcripts' of domination and the `hidden transcripts' of dissident subcultures. Manning, Hunters and Poachers, pp. 232±3. See A. Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces: the Government of Stuart England (New Haven, 1986), pp. 39±83, on the authority of law and expansion of the dynastic state in the seventeenth century. This accommodation of local violence in early modern England provides a useful contrast to the `simpli®cation' of local societies recently observed in the formation of modern bureaucratic states. See J. C. Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998), pp. 1±8. As a discourse of honour, this forest discourse had a greater in¯uence on the Temples and the Dayrells than did technical matters of forest law. See John Manwood, A Treatise of the Laws of the Forest (1598, 1615), fos. *ir±v, 69v±70v, for the relative marginality of forest law in the 1590s and early 1600s. W. Page (ed.), V[ictoria] C[ounty] H[istory of ] Buckingham (1927, 1969), vol. iv, pp. 145, 154, 188, 192. See William Harrison, The Description of England (New York, 1994 edn), pp. 253±4, 259; and Manwood, Laws of the Forest, fos. ivr, 24r±v, 26r, 36v±38r, for the connotations of a park, being `next in degree to a frank chase' in a venerable hierarchy of properties related to forests. A park differed from a chase only in being enclosed; both lacked in theory the forms of law, the hierarchy of courts, and the of®cers characteristic of a forest. G. Lipscomb, The History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham, 3 vols. (1847), vol. iii, p. 37. In Lillingstone Dayrell, the Dayrells held hunting privileges and served as rangers in the tracts of Whittlewood forest that extended into the parish. In the 1880s, the family owned a horn known as the `purlieu horn', dated 1692. See Page, VCH Buckingham, vol. iv, p. 188. Page, VCH Buckingham, vol. iv, pp. 234±5; W. H. Rylands (ed.), The Visitation of the County of Buckingham, 1634 (1909), pp. 36±7. The most ambitious statement of the forest as an expression of the royal sensibility and prerogative is Manwood, Laws of the Forest, fos. ivr±v, 18r±v, 20r±v, 33v±34r. Page, VCH Buckingham, vol. iv, pp. 232±3; HEH, ST Manorial Papers, Box 3, ®le 12: Petition to Bishop of Lincoln from Westbury, 10/5/1625. This petition described the advanced state of work on Stowe park in 1625 and implied a substantial population of deer. According to law, a free warren applied only to beasts and fowls of warren, a ¯exible category in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that nevertheless tended to exclude beasts of forest and chase or park, such as species of deer, except perhaps the roe. In practice or custom, it is not clear that

280

15 16

17 18

19 20 21 22 23

24

25 26

Notes to pages 152±3

holders of free warren would have required an additional franchise prior to building a park, and the term `warren' was sometimes used to describe a general liberty of the hunt. In the 1510s, Robert Fabyan de®ned a royal grant of warren to the citizens of London `to mean that the citizens have free liberty of hunting certain circuit about London'. See Sir W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford, 1765±1769), vol. ii, pp. 38±9; Robert Fabyan, Chronicle, 4th edn (1559), vol. vii, p. 43. I plan to discuss forest discourse at greater length in a book on the culture of forests and notions of gentility in the early seventeenth century. Manwood, Laws of the Forest, fos. 19r, 20v; Harrison, Description, p. 256. Harrison, a critic of the `curse' of emparkment among the nobility, estimated in the 1580s that `the twentieth part of the realm is given over to deer and conies.' See D. Beaver, `The great deer massacre: animals, honour, and communication in early modern England', JBS, 38 (1999), 189±96, for cultural aspects of the hunt. See [George Gascoigne], The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting (1575), pp. 1±4; Sir Thomas Cockayne, A Short Treatise of Hunting (1591); Gervase Markham, Country Contentments (1615); Manning, Hunters and Poachers, pp. 5±17. Authorities differed on these distinctions, and gentility might require moderate study. See Harrison, Description, pp. 259±60; Manwood, Laws of the Forest, fos. 19r±20v. Harrison, Description, p. 255. HEH, S[towe] T[emple] L[egal] P[apers], Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Answer of Abel Dayrell, gentleman, to Sir Peter Temple's Bill of Complaint in Chancery, 16/2/1640. Ibid. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Notes on Lawsuits against the Dayrells, 1641±1642. The ®rst note listed possible actions in law against the Dayrells after their assault on the park in August, 1641, and was probably the work of John Nicholls, Sir Peter Temple's law clerk. The second note listed actions under way following a second attack on the park in December and may have been the work of Temple himself. The myriad meanings of `estate' and `ancient lands' are suggested in HEH, STT 564, Edmund Dayrell to Sir Peter Temple, c. 1630; STLP, Case 248, Sir Richard Temple v. Abel Dayrell and Edmund Dayrell: Answer of Abel and Edmund Dayrell to Bill of Complaint in Chancery, c. 1653±1655. Page, VCH Buckingham, vol. iv, pp. 229, 232±6. Temple acquired Dadford in 1587 and Stowe in 1590, shortly after their inclusion in crown grants. In addition, Temple held a manor known as

Notes to pages 153±5

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39

40 41

281

Lamport, unrelated to the Dayrells' lordship, that had become part of Stowe after the dissolution. To avoid confusion, this land is treated in this essay as parcel of Stowe manor. See Page, VCH Buckingham, vol. iv, pp. 232±4; HEH, S[towe] T[emple] M[anorial] A[ccounts], Box 3, ®le 25: Survey of Stowe and Lamport, 1591, 1631; Rylands, Visitation, pp. 211±12. Page, VCH Buckingham, vol. iv, pp. 234±5; Rylands, Visitation, pp. 36±7. HEH, STMA, Box 3, ®le 8: A Note of Timber in Stowe, 1623. Trees and furze in `the old park at Stowe' and in the closes belonging to the tenements were excluded from this arrangement. Timber sales to the town of Buckingham, in particular, increased from £48 in 1620 to £71 in 1621. HEH, STMA, Box 3, ®le 2: Robert Hickman's Wood Accounts, 12/12/1620, 24/2/1622. HEH, STMA, Box 3, ®le 2: Stowe and Dadford Rental, 1620. Ibid. HEH, STMA, Box 3, ®le 25: Survey of Stowe and Lamport, 1591, 1631. HEH, STMA, Box 3, ®le 2: Stowe and Dadford Rental, 1620; Michaelmas Rent Roll, 1634. HEH, STMA, Box 3, ®le 2: Stowe and Dadford Rental, 1620±1622. This observation is based on a comparison of the rent roll and a list of servants and wages in the same source. As early as 1625, the expansion of the Temples' park surfaced as a grievance in local records. See HEH, STMA, Box 3, ®le 12: Petition to Bishop of Lincoln from Westbury, 1625. Despite the expansion of Stowe park, the Dayrell estate in Lamport remained relatively constant in size between the 1620s and the 1640s. An informal `paper' assessed the estate at 146 acres in 1625. A survey in 1631 described it as 146 acres of `freehold'. Another survey in 1646 ®xed the estate at 157 acres. See HEH, STMA, Box 3, ®le 14: Paper on the Dayrell Lands, c. 1625; ®le 25: Survey of Stowe and Lamport, 1591, 1631; Box 4, Buckinghamshire, 1640±1650: Survey of Dayrell Lands in Lamport, 1646. HEH, STLP, Case 137, John Temple v. Francis Dayrell, 1590: Interrogatories; Depositions. HEH, STT 566: Francis Dayrell to John Temple, esquire, 7/5/1597. HEH, STMA, Box 3, ®le 12: Petition to Bishop of Lincoln from Westbury, 1625. The decayed park presumably refers to land previously enclosed as Temple's park, transformed in 1625 into a leasehold within the newly expanded bounds of the park. Ibid. As if the petition's inclusion among the Temple family papers is not suf®cient testimony of its failure, the endorsement reads, `no good to be done with this'. HEH, STT 564: Edmund Dayrell to Sir Peter Temple, c. 1630; STT 565: Edmund Dayrell to Sir Peter Temple, c. 1630. Temple offered land in Bycell and Lyncroft Corner, south of Lamport, in exchange for

282

42

43 44 45

46

47 48

49 50

51

Notes to pages 155±6

Dayrell's woodland and common in northeastern Stowe. Dayrell wanted to keep his estate compact, refused `to part with land lying at our gate for land lying three quarters of a mile from us', and insisted on land in Hawkwell or Stockhold Fields, adjacent to his own possessions in Windmill Field. HEH, STT 564: Edmund Dayrell to Sir Peter Temple, c. 1630. Under pressure from his son Abel, Dayrell later informed Temple that enclosers in Northamptonshire commonly offered freeholders `three acres for two in exchange for their goodwill'. HEH, STT 565: Edmund Dayrell to Sir Peter Temple, c. 1630. HEH, STT 565: Edmund Dayrell to Sir Peter Temple, c. 1630. Edmund Dayrell's burial on 1 June, 1633, is noted in HEH, STLP, Case 33, Miscellaneous Papers from Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: A Note on the Stint of Stowe and Lamport Commons, 1641. Although the evidence for this scene comes from Temple's papers, John Dayrell of Shalstone and Paul Dayrell of Thornton, Abel's brothers, were prepared to support Temple's account. See HEH, STLP, Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Interrogatories for Temple, 1641; STMA, Box 3, Buckinghamshire, 1630±1640: Notes on Sir Peter Temple's Complaint against Abel Dayrell, c. 1640. In 1632, a year before his father's death, Abel had been upset over the setting of Temple's `park pale' in Stowe Hewings, a tract of waste land used as pasture in northeastern Stowe, near Lamport. See HEH, STT 565: Edmund Dayrell to Sir Peter Temple, c. 1630; STLP, Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Draft of Temple's Bill in Chancery, 1640; STMA, Box 3, Buckinghamshire, 1630±1640: Notes on Sir Peter Temple's Complaint against Abel Dayrell, c. 1640. HEH, STMA, Box 3, Buckinghamshire, 1630±1640: Notes on Sir Peter Temple's Complaint against Abel Dayrell, c. 1640. These tenants were Henry Davy of Dadford, a tenant at will, Thomas Jeffs, either the 72-year-old copyholder or his son, Thomas, a tenant at will, and Thomas Sayer, a leaseholder. See HEH, STLP, Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Draft of Temple's Bill in Chancery, 1640; STMA, Box 3, ®le 2: Stowe and Dadford Rental, 1621; ®le 25: Survey of Stowe and Lamport, 1591, 1631; Michaelmas Rent Roll, 1634. HEH, STLP, Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Dayrell's Answer to Temple's Bill in Chancery, 16-2-1640. In his personal papers, Temple invoked his royal franchise against the Dayrells `for breach of charter in hunting and disturbing his deer in his park'. Temple's decision to stress the stint of commons and to address the issue in a chancery suit acquires signi®cance in the political circumstances of 1640. See HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Notes on Lawsuits against the Dayrells, 1641±1642. In addition, many animals had died, and local harvests suffered `for want of their sheep to foal upon their fallow ®elds'. The new stint

Notes to pages 156±8

52 53 54 55

56

57

58

59 60

283

reduced the number of cattle allowed on the commons from six to four beasts for every yardland. See HEH, STLP, Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Draft of Temple's Bill in Chancery, 6/1639; Draft of Temple's Bill in Chancery, 1640. HEH, STLP, Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Draft of Temple's Bill in Chancery, 1640. Ibid. HEH, STLP, Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Dayrell's Answer to Temple's Bill in Chancery, 16/2/1640. HEH, STLP, Case 33, Miscellaneous Papers from Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Indictment of John Pollard et al. [Sir Peter Temple's tenants and servants] for Riot and Assault, 14/12/1641; Order of Supplicavit, 7/2/1642; Order of Supersedeas, 25/4/1642. According to Dayrell, Temple had `stirred up' many tenants `to compose his own designs'. Although Temple was `at the sole charge of the suit', his tenants were listed as complainants. On the other side, Temple suggested that Dayrell, too, received support from his tenants. See HEH, STLP, Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: STMA, Box 3, Buckinghamshire, 1630±1640: Notes on Sir Peter Temple's Complaint against Abel Dayrell, c. 1640; Dayrell's Answer to Temple's Bill in Chancery, 16/2/1640; Interrogatories for Temple, 1641. HEH, STMA, Oversize Box 2, ®le 38: Petition of Inhabitants of Stowe to Parliament, 1642. This draft petition is undated, but an internal reference to an attack on the Dayrells and their friends by Sir Peter Temple's servants in Stowe park on 29 January, and the indictment of Temple's servants for riot and assault on Peter Dayrell, younger, in Lamport on 14 December, 1641, appear to place the petition in the early months of 1642. HEH, STLP, Case 33, Miscellaneous Papers from Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Indictment for Riot and Assault, 14/12/1641. In purlieu, or disafforested land on the boundaries of a forest, freeholders possessed liberties of the hunt and use of woods denied in the forest proper. See Manwood, Laws of the Forest, fos. 146r±187r. Although bits of the Dayrell estate in Lillingstone Dayrell and tracts of woodland in Akeley formed part of the purlieu of Whittlewood forest, I have found nothing to support the purlieu status of Stowe. See Page, VCH Buckingham, vol. iv, pp. 145, 154, 188, 192; Lipscomb, History and Antiquities of Buckingham, vol. iii, p. 37. Sir Peter Temple's notes on his options in law do not support this accusation. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Notes on Lawsuits against the Dayrells, 1641±1642. Moreover, the Dayrells may have intended their appeal to `liberty of purlieu' to exploit parliamentary hostility to the expansion of royal forests. In 1641, this expansion had been described as `a great grievance and vexation' and as a symptom of `arbitrary and tyrannical

284

61

62 63 64

65 66 67 68

69 70

71

Notes to pages 159±60

government', words taken from the impeachment of John Finch, lord keeper of the great seal, and from a statute designed to halt the expansion of the royal forests. See J. Rushworth (ed.), Historical Collections, 8 vols. (1721), vol. iv, pp. 136±9; 16 Car. i, c. 16, in SR, vol. v, pp. 119±20. HEH, STLP, Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Dayrell's Answer to Temple's Bill in Chancery, 16/2/1640. According to Dayrell, some of Temple's tenants had informed him that Temple alone carried the charges of the lawsuit in chancery and had included his tenants only to `compose his design'. Harrison, Description, p. 256. See James, `English politics', 343, for the interrelationship of honour and resistance to oppression. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Deposition of Richard Charters, 13/5/1642. By the time John Nicholls, Sir Peter Temple's law clerk, had made notes of potential lawsuits against the Dayrells in the autumn of 1641, unspeci®ed `others' had been added to this group of four, and the use of visors or masks had been alleged. Yet the keepers' easy identi®cation of the Dayrells, as well as the group's fear of recognition, make the use of disguises seem unlikely, an aggravating circumstance in law added to the charges against the Dayrells after the event. See HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Deposition of Arthur East, in articles of good behaviour exhibited in Chancery, 25/1/1642; Notes [of John Nicholls, clerk] on Lawsuits against the Dayrells, undated [August±December, 1641]; draft deposition of Arthur East, 24/5/1642. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Deposition of Richard Charters, 13/5/1642. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Deposition of Arthur East, in articles of good behaviour exhibited in Chancery, 25/1/1642. The clerk subsequently deleted Charters' account of the hound carrying the shoulder of venison. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Deposition of Richard Charters, 13/5/1642. HEH, STLP, Case 33, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Expenses of Commission, 11/10/1641; Case 142, Brief of Interrogatories for Commission on Behalf of Sir Peter Temple, 12/10/1641. Most of the papers in this ®le seem to be miscellaneous documents related to the chancery case. Page, VCH Buckingham, vol. iv, p. 189; Rylands, Visitation, pp. 36±7. HEH, STLP, Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Indictments of Paul Dayrell and Peter Dayrell, the younger, at Assizes, 1642. These four separate indictments all related to the violence of November and December, 1641. The events of 14 and 16 December, 1641, are sometimes con¯ated in the law documents. See HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Articles of Good Behaviour to be Exhibited in Chancery by Arthur East and

Notes to pages 161±3

72

73 74

75 76 77 78 79 80 81

82 83

84

285

Peter Harris, 25/1/1642; STLP, Case 142, Sir Peter Temple v. Abel Dayrell: Indictments of Paul Dayrell and Peter Dayrell, the younger, at Assizes, 1642. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Articles of Good Behaviour to be Exhibited in Chancery by Arthur East and Peter Harris, 25/1/ 1642. Although Temple's servants had an incentive to exaggerate reports of violence, it is signi®cant that the Dayrells and their supporters tended to justify rather than to deny the use of force. Ibid. Ibid. Harris cited threats from Abel, Edmund, and Paul Dayrell, and Richard Scott of Lamport; Peter Dayrell, the elder, Peter Dayrell, the younger, Thomas Madkins, Rowland Norman, John Rands, and John Salisbury of Lillingstone Dayrell; and Gideon Fisher, the younger, the Dayrells' friend from Bedfordshire. See J. Wilson (ed.), Buckinghamshire Contributions for Ireland (Buckinghamshire Record Society, 1983), xxi, p. 102; HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Deposition of Edward Abbot and John Symons, 7/6/1642. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Articles of Good Behaviour to be Exhibited in Chancery by Arthur East and Peter Harris, 25/1/ 1642. A genealogy of the Tyrells of Thornton is provided in Rylands, Visitation, pp. 117±19. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Note Concerning Mr. Dayrell's Hunting, c. 2/6/1642. Ibid. According to a marginal note, Kiplyn had charge of `a harboring hound' during the hunt. Ibid. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Draft Depositions, 24/3/ 1642, 7/6/1642, 7/8/1642. The ®nished deposition mentions only that Thomas drew his sword and spoke threatening words. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Notes for Depositions, 6/1642; Draft Depositions, 24/3/1642, 7/6/ 1642, 7/8/1642; Depositions of Robert Collison and John Symons, 22/ 6/1642. On the same day, 7 June, Peter Dayrell, the younger, allegedly chased Temple's servant, Peter Harris, at full gallop for `almost a mile', shaking his drawn sword, and shouting, `Now, sirrah, I have that in my hand which will serve thy turn.' HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Notes for Depositions, 6/ 1642; Draft Depositions, 24/3/1642, 7/6/1642, 7/8/1642. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Note Concerning Mr. Dayrell's Hunting, c. 2/6/1642; Draft Depositions, 24/3/1642, 7/6/ 1642, 7/8/1642. The servants included Edward Grimley, James Hobbs, John Lamley, Richard Scott and William Warr. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Note Concerning Mr. Dayrell's Hunting, c. 2/6/1642; Draft Depositions, 24/3/1642, 7/6/

286

85

86 87 88 89

90

Notes to pages 163±8

1642, 7/8/1642. The charge `perjured knave' was dropped from the ®nal draft of East's deposition, suggesting that either East or Sir Peter Temple's law clerk may have wanted to avoid attracting undue attention to East's earlier depositions. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Note Concerning Mr. Dayrell's Hunting, c. 2/6/1642. In the ®nal version of the deposition, Dayrell did not regain his composure but continued to threaten beatings. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Deposition of John Symons, 22/6/1642. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Draft Depositions, 24/3/ 1642, 7/6/1642, 7/8/1642; Deposition of John Symons, 22/6/1642. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: Notes for Depositions, 6/ 1642; Draft Depositions, 24/3/1642, 7/6/1642, 7/8/1642; Deposition of Arthur East, 22/6/1642. HEH, STMLP, Box 5, SCU (a), ®les 1, 2, 4: An Order from the Assizes Concerning the Dayrells, 5/9/1642; Rylands, Visitation, p. 38. The evidence of judicial manipulation and violence in Stowe illustrates some of the contradictions in the forms of paci®cation described in S. Hindle, `The Keeping of the Public Peace', in Grif®ths, Fox and Hindle, Experience of Authority, pp. 213±48. In 1645, Temple was noted as a `parliament man' and assessed at £200. Peter Dayrell, the elder, was present at the surrender of Oxford in June, 1646, and was ®ned £788 for `adhering to the king'. Sir Thomas Dayrell, Peter's son, also compounded for his delinquency. See M. Green (ed.), Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for Advance of Money, 1642±1656 (1888), vol. i, p. 554; M. Green (ed.), Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for Compounding, 1643±1660 (1889), vol. i, p. 67, vol. ii, pp. 1212, 1519.

7 administrative performance: the representation of political authority in early modern england

1 2 3 4

I am grateful to Erika Bsumek, Richard Cust, Karen Harvey and John Walter for their comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. For the Petition of Right see this chapter, p. 177. The implicit reference is to speech act theory. For the Ur text see J. L. Austin, How to do Things with Words (Cambridge, Mass., 1962). P. Grif®ths, `Secrecy and authority in late sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury London', HJ, 40 (1997), 925±51. For militia reform see A. Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces: the Government of Stuart England (New Haven, 1986), pp. 282±316. For the dispute in Shropshire see also E. Cope, `Politics without parliament: the dispute about muster masters' fees in Shropshire in the 1630s', HLQ , 45 (1982), 271±84. The account here differs from Prof. Cope's in emphasis. Where

Notes to pages 168±72

5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26

287

my reading of the documents differs substantially from that of Prof. Cope, this is indicated in the notes. HEH, el 7622, Privy Council to Bridgewater, 29 July 1631; Privy Council to Bridgewater, 30 June 1632, HEH, el 7621; Bridgewater to deputy lieutenants, 18 December 1633, HEH, el 7623. Burton to H. Bowes, 14 September 1634, HEH, el 7625. Cope, `Muster master', p. 273. HEH, el 7637. HEH, el 7657. HEH, el 7646. Cope seems to mis-cite this letter and summarises its tone as `conciliatory' although not `apologetic', `Muster Master', p. 277. Tourneur wrote, disavowing the sentiments that it contained: HEH, el 7647. HEH, el 7649. HEH, el 7631. Presentment of grand jury to Shropshire quarter sessions, 7 April 1635, before John Corbet, Richard Newport, Timothy Tourneur, Francis Charleton, Walter Barker and Andrew Lloyd. Signed by Thomas Lochard gent, Roger Farmer gent, Andr Cooke, Reginald Menlowe, Robertus Francis, Franc Dike, Tho: Cotton, Ricus Gough, Andr Dounds, Tho: Clea, Franc: Garland, Hen: Gough, Tho: Bowdle, Ricus Thynne, Tho: Woodcocke, Johes Newton. HEH, el 7647. This seems to have been transcribed by Cope as `coughs': `muster master', p. 275. HEH, el 7632. HEH, el 7658. HEH, el 7686. HEH, el 7676. HEH, el 7658. A. H. Smith, County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk 1558±1603 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 87±8. For the numbers of JPs and jurymen see above, n. 12. See, for example, L. Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996), esp. ch. 4; and the proceedings of the conference on `Honour and reputation in early-modern England', published in TRHS, 6th series, 6 (1996). A. J. Fletcher, `Honour, reputation and of®ceholding in Elizabethan and Stuart England', in Fletcher and J. Stevenson (eds.), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 92±115. T. Burns, Erving Goffman (1992), p. 18. Following the arguments of Erving Goffman, esp. his The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life (New York, 1959 edn). M. Banton, Roles: An Introduction to the Study of Social Relations (1965), p. 150. F. Heal and C. Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500±1700

288

27

28

29 30

31

32 33 34 35 36 37

Notes to pages 172±4

(1994), p. 276 (for ideals of governance more generally see pp. 243±7); HEH, hap 15 (8), `Certaine directions for my sonne to observe in the course of his life'; R. Cust (ed.), The Papers of Sir Richard Grosvenor, 1st Bart. (1585±1645) (Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 134, Stroud, 1996), p. x (see, more generally, pp. xxiv, 26±38). HEH, el 6976. He was also accused of favouritism, using of®ce to favour friends and pursue his enemies. For manipulations of legitimating languages see J. C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985), p. 309. For examples see M. J. Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation in SeventeenthCentury England: Local Administration and Response (Woodbridge, 1994), esp. pp. 117±24, 151±8, 163±5, 169±223, 252±66. See also K. Wrightson, `Two concepts of order: justices, constables and jurymen in seventeenth-century England', in J. Brewer and J. Styles (eds.), An Ungovernable People: the English People and their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1980), pp. 21±46; J. Kent, The English Village Constable 1580±1642: a Social and Administrative Study (Oxford, 1986), pp. 239±79. HEH, el 7657. For libels see A. Bellany, ` ``Rayling Rhymes and Vaunting Verse'': libellous politics in early Stuart England', in K. Sharpe and P. Lake (eds.), Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (1994), pp. 285±310; `A poem on the archbishop's hearse: puritanism, libel, and sedition after the Hampton Court Conference', JBS, 34, 2 (1995), 137±64; P. Croft, `Libels, popular literacy and public opinion in early modern England', Historical Research, 68 (1995), 266±85; T. Cogswell, `Underground verse and the transformation of early Stuart political culture', in S. D. Amussen and M. A. Kishlansky (eds.), Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1995), pp. 277±300. According to one set of notes on the dispute, the evidence of open sympathy for the grand jury among the justices was limited, although perhaps only Tourneur and Smalman spoke against the presentment: HEH, el 7662. HEH, el 7687. Quoted in S. Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England (2000), p. 1. D. Underdown, A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in SeventeenthCentury England (Oxford, 1996) ch. 2; D. Freist, Governed by Opinion: Politics, Religion and the Dynamics of Communication in London, 1637±1645 (1997). D. MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County 1500±1600 (Oxford, 1986), p. 343. Grif®ths, `Secrecy', quotations at pp. 927, 934. HEH, el 6162, fo. 36ar. For a transcription of the articles and the local context see S. Hindle, `Hierarchy and community in the Elizabethan parish: the Swallow®eld articles of 1596', HJ, 42 (1999), 835±51. They are discussed in P. Collinson, `The monarchical republic of Elizabeth I',

Notes to pages 174±6

38 39 40

41

42 43 44 45

46 47

289

Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 69 (1987), 394±424, esp. pp. 395±6; and M. J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550±1700 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 73±6. HEH, el 7644. HEH, el 7644. HEH, el 7638, 7640, 7641. Harris, when he did report the events at the quarter sessions, was anxious to reassure Bridgewater that `yor Lorp shall have a transcript of all that shalbe received with the best speede possible', HEH, el 7632. Andrew Corbet sought to reassure him that `I ame con®dent, that nether Justices nor Jurie did anie thing to affront yr Lpp or hinder his Maties service, but onely pursue such p[re]sidents wch in former times had taken effect and was then conceaved no way p[re]judiciall to the service.' HEH, el 7656. For concerns to control public discussion of matters of state see A. Fox, `Rumour, news and popular political opinion in Elizabethan and early Stuart England', HJ, 40 (1997), 597±620; Cogswell, `The politics of propaganda: Charles I and the people in the 1620s', JBS, 29, 3 (1990), 187±215; and Cogswell, `Underground verse'. For the legal position see Fox, `Rumour', p. 599. For the growing appetite for news see R. Cust, `News and politics in early seventeenth-century England', PP, 112 (1986), 60±90; Croft, `Libels'; Bellany, `Poem'. Fox, `Rumour'. HEH, el 7677. HEH, el 7676. HEH, el 7710. See also the Commons' declaration of Corbet's grievances: 7686. Bridgewater was himself unwilling to go to London during a plague visitation in September 1636: HEH, el 7233. In 1637 he was given permission to punish muster defaulters on his own, in the country, to avoid the cost and dif®culty of coming to London during another visitation: HEH, el 7679. For the plague in 1636 see P. Slack, The Impact of the Plague in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1985), ch. 2. HEH, ham Box 53 (6), Lieutenancy Book, 1613±1627, fo. 64r (1620). The meeting took place at Bridgewater's house in the presence of Mr Pierpoint, who testi®ed that there had been no acknowledgement offered: HEH, el 7693, fo. 1v; 7677. This raises the question of Corbet's motive in seeking this confrontation. It may have derived from personal animosity to Tourneur (or Bridgewater) or from a desire to act as a `patriot' in defending the interests of his countrymen, or both. He was certainly jealous of his own honour and was involved in an unseemly dispute over precedence with his neighbour Robert Needham, 2nd Viscount Killmorey. For this dispute and his career in the Long Parliament see R. Cust, `Sir John Corbet (1594±1662)', in The New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, forthcoming). I am grateful to Dr Cust for letting me see this article prior to publication.

290

Notes to pages 177±81

48 P. Bourdieu, The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power, trans. L. C. Clough (Oxford, 1996), esp. pp. 374±7. 49 For an account of the parliamentary politics surrounding the passage of the petition see C. Russell, Parliament and English Politics 1621±1629 (Oxford, 1979), esp. ch. 6. For the text see J. P. Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 82±5; for its publication see E. R. Foster, `Printing the Petition of Right', HLQ , 28 (1974), 81±4. Statutes were published in black letter books at the end of every session. 50 HEH, el 7668. The witness was Nicholls, one of the head constables. 51 HEH, el 7658. 52 HEH, el 7644. 53 HEH, el 7647. See also 7658. 54 C. Holmes, `Drainers and fenmen: the problem of popular political consciousness in the seventeenth century', in Fletcher and Stevenson (eds.), Order and Disorder, pp. 166±95. For the Mowbray deed see ibid., p. 192; K. Lindley, Fenland Riots and the English Revolution (1982), pp. 26±27. For Haxey, see J. Lloyd, `The communities of the manor of Epworth in the seventeenth century' (Ph.D. thesis, Shef®eld University 1999). For secrecy and the preservation of authoritative texts in London see Grif®ths, `Secrecy'. See also K. Sharpe, `The King's writ: royal authors and royal authority in early modern England', in Sharpe and Lake (eds.), Culture and Politics, pp. 117±38; J. M. Rosenheim, `Documenting authority: texts and magistracy in Restoration society', Albion, 25 (1993), 591±604. 55 M. J. Braddick, `Resistance to the Royal Aid and Further Supply in Chester, 1664±1672: relations between the centre and locality in restoration England', Northern History, 33 (1997), 108±36; and Braddick, ` ``Uppon this instant extraordinarie occasion'': military mobilisation in Yorkshire in the Armada year and after', HLQ 61 (1998), 429±55, at p. 444. 56 HEH, el 7670. The emphasis is in the original. Bridgewater questioned whether the affront to his dignity had been part of the information and said that if it had been it was not at his instigation. He also pointed out, dryly, that exclusion from the commission entailed no ®nancial loss and could not, therefore, amount to damage: HEH, el 7701. 57 HEH, el 7686. 58 HEH, el 7710. 59 HEH, el 7695. 60 Approached for help by Thomas Lochard, one of the jurors, when they were taken up by the messenger, Bridgewater had said that he `pittied them but could not help them, for if his owne sonne had done the like offense hee would have done what he did': HEH, el 7693.

Notes to pages 181±2

291

61 See for example, HEH, el 7701. In effect, he denied all the charges except that of appointing Burton, and if that was an offence then all the lords lieutenant in the country were guilty: see HEH, el 7707. Legal precision was essential, of course, and not just a tactical resource. At another point in the dispute, Richard Harris was acutely embarrassed that one of the high constables was misnamed in warrants to the messengers. This was `so grosse a mistake, that I blush for if it ly or fall on me or my Clerks negligence': Harris to Bridgewater, 28 May 1635, HEH, el 7649. 62 HEH, el 7702. See also 7705. 63 HEH, el 7693. See also 7694. The cause and Bridgewater's defence are summarised in HEH, el 7701. 64 HEH, el 7687. 65 HEH, el 7644, 7650, 7666. 66 Compare HEH, el 7659 with 7658. For Bridgewater's reply see HEH, el 7661. 67 HEH, el 7693, fo. 1v. For Tourneur's defence see also HEH, el 7687. 68 Bridgewater's response had been ®rm: `I ame soe farre off from giveinge way . . . that I would not once have it so much as menconed in that kinde': HEH, el 7675. For Burton's request see 7673. For the use of this incident in Bridgewater's defence see HEH, el 7702. The of®ce, and other of®ces in his gift as president of the Council in the Marches, were of some monetary value to the incumbents. See, for example, Bridgewater's correspondence with George Betts, who sought to be muster master in more than one county in order to make it worth his while ®nancially, and made enquiries about the perquisites owing to the Constable of Ludlow Castle: HEH, el 7081; 7082; 7094. Burton explained his apparent hypocrisy over the of®ce thus: `A strang r was then muster Mr of the sd County & not borne in the sd County, and I ame borne in the sd County or words to [tha]t effect': HEH, el 7651, depositions of Edward Burton and Richard Moore. See also HEH, el 7680. 69 HEH, el 7667, 7666. Tourneur also complained that Lochard, the foreman of the grand jury, was related to John Corbet by marriage, and held lands from him: HEH, el 7631. Tourneur defended William Downes, one of the high constables who had brought the complaint before the grand jury, from Bridgewater's wrath by saying that he was not one of the conspirators `but a tractable man'. 70 HEH, el 7645. 71 Clough had apparently collected some of the money for the muster master, but was intending to repay it rather than pass it on: HEH, el 7635. See also 7660. Lochard and Farmer also petitioned Bridgewater for his help in securing discharge from further attendance: HEH, el 7628. Bridgewater's reception of these petitions was apparently unsympathetic.

292

Notes to pages 183±90

72 HEH, el 7634. 73 HEH, el 7636. Cotton, it seems, was illiterate, making a mark rather than a signature on his deposition about the high constables: HEH, el 7654. 74 HEH, el 7645. For the accusation against Menlowe see also HEH, el 7652. 75 HEH, el 6976. 76 HEH, el 7636. Scott, Weapons, p. 309. 77 Individual members of the grand jury only named one or two constables, usually claiming failing memory of the events, or that they only knew one or two of the constables. For individual depositions and notes relating to the guilt of the constables see also HEH, el 7645, 7652, 7653, 7654. 78 HEH, el 7668. All these depositions were signed. See also HEH, el 7669, a copy of these depositions. Clough had previously been accused of holding money collected but refusing to pay it back to the country: HEH, el 7645. 79 HEH, el 7630, 7665. For the ®ghting fund see this chapter, p. 168. For another example see Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, p. 216. 80 Cope, `Muster master', p. 280. 81 Following the arguments of Quentin Skinner. See esp. `Some problems in the analysis of political thought and action', reprinted in J. Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Princeton, N.J., 1988), pp. 97±118, 309±11; and `Language and social change', ibid., pp. 119±32, 311±13. 82 C. Geertz, `Thick description: toward an interpretive theory of culture', in Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (1993 edn.), ch. 1. 83 K. Sharpe and P. Lake, `Introduction', in Sharpe and Lake (eds.), Culture and Politics, pp. 1±20, quotation at p. 16. 84 The implications of this for the success or failure of particular kinds of political activity forms one of the central themes of Braddick, State Formation. 8 negotiating order in early seventeenth-century ireland 1 N. Canny, `The origins of Empire' in Canny (ed.), The Origins of Empire (Oxford, 1998), pp. 1±33. 2 BL, Additional MS 4861, fo. 30v. 3 J. Morrill, `The British problem, c. 1534±1707' in B. Bradshaw and J. Morrill (eds.), The British Problem, c. 1534±1705: State Formation in the Atlantic Archipelago (1996), p. 14. 4 B. Cunningham, `Natives and newcomers in Mayo, 1560±1603' in R. Gillespie and G. Moran (eds.), `A Various Country': Essays in Mayo History, 1500±1900 (Westport, 1986), pp. 27±9.

Notes to pages 190±4

293

5 B. Cunningham, `The composition of Connacht in the lordships of Clanricard and Thomond', Irish Historical Studies, 24 (1984±5), 1±14, esp. pp. 1±2. 6 Trinity College, Dublin, MS 1440, fo. 5. The passage is edited and  Raghallaigh, `Seanchus Burcach', Journal of the translated in TomaÂs O Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, 13 (1927±8), 117±19. For the dating of the text, A. Cosgrove (ed.), A New History of Ireland, vol. ii, Medieval Ireland, 1169±1534 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 814±15. 7 K. W. Nicholls, Land, Law and Society in Sixteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 1976), pp. 14±15. 8 P. Ua DuinnõÂn (ed.), Me Guidhir Fhearmanach (Dublin, 1917), pp. 30, 43. 9 S. H. O'Grady (ed.), Silva Gadelica, 2 vols. (1892), vol. ii, pp. 332±3; for a seventeenth-century copy see Royal Irish Academy, MS b iv 1, fos. 180±3. 10 B. Cunningham and R. Gillespie, `Englishmen in sixteenth-century Irish annals', Irish Economic and Social History 17 (1990), 5±21. 11 For this episode, B. Cunningham, `Theobald Dillon: a newcomer in sixteenth-century Mayo', Cathair na Mart 6 (1986), 24±32. 12 C[alendar of ] S[tate] P[apers Relating to] I[reland], 1603±6, p. 26. 13 Printed in C. Maxwell (ed.), Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509±1610 (1923), pp. 208±10. 14 Cunningham and Gillespie, `Englishmen in sixteenth-century Irish annals', p. 11. 15 The actions are recorded in the gaol delivery roll printed in R. M. Young (ed.), Historical Notices of Old Belfast (Belfast: Marcus Ward, 1896), pp. 38±9. 16 CSPI, 1603±6, p. 111. 17 For example R. Gillespie, `A question of survival: the O'Farrells and Longford in the seventeenth century' in R. Gillespie and G. Moran (eds.), Longford: Essays in County History (Dublin, 1991), pp. 13±29. 18 Calendar of Carew Papers in the Lambeth Library, 1603±24, pp. 305±10; B. Cunningham, `Seventeenth-century interpretations of the past: the case of Geoffrey Keating', Irish Historical Studies 25 (1986±7), 124±8. For a bardic statement of this from the 1620s see L. McKenna (ed.), IomarbhaÂgh na bhFileadh, 2 vols. (1918), vol. ii, p. 246. 19 For examples, BL, Royal MS 16 c xx; Cotton MS Titus b x, fos. 287±8, 402±9; R. Gillespie (ed.), `Plantation and pro®t: Richard Spert's tract on Ireland, 1608', Irish Economic and Social History 20 (1993), 66±71. 20 BL, Harley MS 3292, fo. 30. 21 J. McLaughlin (ed.), `Richard Hadsor's ``Discourse'' on the Irish state', Irish Historical Studies 30 (1996±7), 350±1. 22 R. Gillespie, Colonial Ulster: the Settlement of East Ulster, 1600±41 (Cork University Press, 1985), pp. 88±9. 23 John Davies, A Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was Never Entirely Subdued (1612), pp. 281±2.

294

Notes to pages 194±7

24 Conditions to be Observed by the British Undertakers of the Escheated Lands in Ulster (1610), pp. 5±6. 25 11, 12, 13 Jas i c. 5 [Ireland]. For the thinking behind this APC, 1615±16, pp. 79±80. 26 O. Bergin (ed.), Irish Bardic Poetry (Dublin, 1970), pp. 159±60; T. Kinsella (ed.), The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse (Oxford, 1986), pp. 164±7. 27 K. Simms, `Literacy and the Irish bards' in H. Pryce (ed.), Literacy in Medieval Celtic Societies (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 235±58, esp. pp. 251±3; J. C. Mac Erlean (ed.), Duanaire DhaÂibhidh UõÂ Bhruadair, 3 vols. (1910±17), vol. i, pp. 19, 36±9. Â Tuama (ed.), An Duanaire, 1600±1900 (Dublin, 1981), pp. 86, 91. 28 S. O 29 N. Williams (ed.), Pairlement Chloinne TomaÂis (Dublin, 1981), pp. 22±3. Williams dates this tract rather earlier but the references to harvest crisis and migrations to France in the text would suggest it belongs to the harvest crisis of 1629±31. 30 G. O'Brien (ed.), Advertisements for Ireland (Dublin, 1923), pp. 54±7. For Hadsor's authorship, V. Treadwell, `Richard Hadsor and the authorship of ``Advertisements for Ireland'' ', Irish Historical Studies 30 (1996±7), 305±36, esp. pp. 331±6. 31 G. Keating, TrõÂ Bior-Ghaoithe an BhaÂis, ed. Osborn Bergin (Dublin, 1931), p. 112. 32 On the of®ce, T. McCarthy, `Ulster of®ce, 1552±1800' (Queen's University, Belfast, M.A. thesis, 1983). 33 National Library of Ireland, GO MS 69, pp. 172±3, 345; GO MS 70, p. 405. 34 Williams (ed.), Pairlement Chloinne TomaÂis, p. 31. For other examples of the phrase see G. Keating, Foras feasa ar EÂirinn, ed. D. Comyn and P. S. Â CuÂiv (ed.), Parliament na Dinneen, 4 vols. (1902±14), vol. iii, p. 10; B. O mBan (Dublin, 1977), pp. 9, 66; McKenna (ed.), IomarbhaÂgh na bhFileadh, vol. i, p. 162. The phrase an mhaith coitcheann from the 1630s also means `the common weal', N. Williams (ed.), DaÂnta Mhuiris Mhic DhaÂibhõÂ Dhuibh Mhic Gearailt (Dublin, 1979), p. 54. 35 Keating, TrõÂ Bior-Ghaoithe an BhaÂis, p. 246. 36 National Library of Ireland, MS 643, fo. 65. 37 BL, Additional MS 36775, fo. 195v. 38 B. Mac Cuarta (ed.), `Mathew de Renzy's letters on Irish affairs', Analecta Hibernica 34 (1987), 107±82, esp. p. 118. 39 CSPI, 1633±47, p. 344. 40 A. B. Grossart (ed.), Lismore Papers, 10 vols. (London: published privately, 1886±8), 2nd ser., vol. ii, p. 34; Mac Cuarta (ed.), `Mathew de Renzy's letters', pp. 112, 114. 41 CSPI, 1615±25, p. 31; Trinity College, Dublin, MS 840, fo. 1. 42 J.T. Gilbert (ed.), A Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland, 3 vols. (Dublin, 1879), vol. i, p. 367.

Notes to pages 197±200

295

43 HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont, 2 vols. (1905±9), vol. i, p. 49.  Buachalla, `Na StõÂobhartaigh agus an tAos leÂinn: Cing SeÂamas', 44 B. O Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 83, Sect. c (1983), 81±130. 45 McKenna (ed.), IomarbhaÂgh na bhFileadh, i, p. 139. 46 P. Walsh, `DaÂnta Bhriain I ChorcraÂin', Irisleabhar Mhuighe Nuadhad No. 25 (1929), 35±50; T. F. O'Rahilly, `Irish poets, historians and judges in English documents, 1538±1615', Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 36, Sect. c (1922), 86±120, esp. p. 95; G. Hill, An Historical Account of the Plantation in Ulster (Belfast, 1877), p. 333.  CorcraÂin, 47 The oldest manuscript dates from 1651 and is edited as B. O Eachtra Mhacaoimh an Iolair ed. I. de TeiltiuÂn and S. Laoide (Dublin, 1912); the colophon is on p. xix. The manuscript is also edited with translation from an eighteenth-century copy in R. A. S. Macalister (ed.), Two Irish Arthurian Romances (1908).  CorcraÂin, Eachtra Mhacaoimh an Iolair ed. de TeiltiuÂn and Laoide, 48 O pp. 5±6; Macalister, Two Arthurian Romances, p. 83. 49 K. Simms, From Kings to Warlords: the Changing Political Structures of Gaelic Ireland in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 30±1, 32±6.  Buachalla, Aisling GheÂar (Dublin, 1996), pp. 5±9. 50 B. O 51 Simms, Kings to Warlords, pp. 48±9; H. Morgan (ed.), `Lawes of Irelande: a tract by Sir John Davies' Irish Jurist ns 28±30 (1993±5), 307±13, esp. pp. 311±12. The importance of the succession is clear in P. M. MacSweeney (ed.), The Martial Career of Conghal Clairinghneach (1902), p. 24. 52 Trinity College, Dublin, MS 832, fos. 102v, 113, 118; MS 834, fos. 57v, 58, 81; MS 835, fo. 13; MS 839, fo. 6v; MS 836, fos. 57v, 72. For a link between the appointment of a seneschal and an inauguration rite, see Mac Cuarta, `Mathew de Renzy's letters', p. 116. 53 Trinity College, Dublin, MS 839, fo. 32. 54 Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, vol. i, p. 368. The late seventeenth Bruadair de®ned loyalty as bending the knee to century poet DaÂibhõ O the royal seal, Mac Erlean (ed.), Duanaire DhaÂibhidh Uõ Bhruadair, vol. iii, pp. 14, 186. 55 CSPI, 1608±10, p. 406. 56 L. Mc Kenna (ed.), DaÂnta do Chum Aonghas Fionn O DaÂlaigh (Dublin, 1919), p. 74. 57 For the restructuring process see J. McCavitt, ` ``Good planets in their several spheres'': the establishment of the assize circuits in early seventeenth-century Ireland', Irish Jurist, ns 24 (1989), 248±78. 58 CSPI, 1606±8, p. 425; J. Davies, A Report of Cases and Matters in Law Resolved and Adjudged in the Kings Courts in Ireland, 1604±12 (Dublin, 1762), p. 15. 59 R. Bolton, A Justice of the Peace for Ireland (Dublin, 1638), dedication. 60 J. F. Ferguson, `Ulster roll of gaol delivery, 1613±15', Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 1st ser., 1 (1853), 260±70, 2 (1854), 25±8; Young, Historical

296

61 62 63

64

65 66 67 68 69

70 71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78 79

Notes to pages 200±2

Notices, pp. 30±9; Trinity College, Dublin, MS 837, fo. 12; MS 835, fo. 256. HEH, el 1746, fo. 21; Trinity College, Dublin, MS 672. Shef®eld City Library, Wentworth Wodehouse Muniments, Strafford Letter books, 13 (90). Little has survived of the early seventeenth-century manorial material but for one roll with a large number of cases between native Irish, Public Record Of®ce of Northern Ireland, t475. There is a name analysis in T. G. F. Paterson, `The Armagh manor court rolls' in Seanchas Ardmhacha 2 (1956±9), 295±322. GearoÂid Mac Niocaill, `The interaction of laws' in J. F. Lydon (ed.), The English in Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1984), pp. 114±15. For evidence of common-law testamentary practice, Morgan (ed.), `Lawes of Irelande', 312. Williams (ed.), Pairlement Chloinne TomaÂis, pp. 26, 53; McKenna (ed.), IomarbhaÂgh na bhFileadh, vol. ii, p. 231; Williams (ed.), DaÂnta Mhuiris Mhic DhaÂibhõÂ Dhuibh Mhic Gearailt, p. 50. C. O'Rahilly (ed.), Five Seventeenth-Century Political Poems (Dublin, 1977), p. 73; Williams (ed.), Pairlement Chloinne TomaÂis, p. 45; Williams (ed.), DaÂnta Mhuiris Mhic DhaÂibhõÂ Dhuibh Mhic Gearailt, p. 53. Williams (ed.), Pairlement Chloinne TomaÂis, p. 43; O'Rahilly (ed.), Five Seventeenth-Century Political Poems, p. 8. Â Donnchadha (ed.), Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe (Dublin, 1931), T. O p. 170. For the spectacular examples of the earls of Clanricard and Thomond, see B. Cunningham, `Political and social change in the lordships of Clanricard and Thomond, 1569±1641' (M.A. thesis, University College, Galway, 1979), pp. 46±56. For a lesser example, Mac Cuarta, `Mathew de Renzy's letters', p. 154. Gillespie, Colonial Ulster, pp. 90±1. HEH, el 1746, fos. 18±18v. For a Chancery case in which tenants sued a landlord for harassment, see National Archives, Dublin, Chancery pleadings B229. Gillespie, Colonial Ulster, pp. 132±6, 152±7; E. Knott (ed.), The Bardic Poems of Tadhg Dall OÂ hUiginn, 2 vols. (1922±6), vol. i, pp. 156±9. For examples, see National Archives Dublin, Chancery pleadings, a241, a237, c23, m183, r38; R. Gillespie, `Lords and commons in seventeenthcentury Mayo' in Gillespie and Moran (eds.), `A Various Country', pp. 51±2. Trinity College, Dublin, MS 838, fos. 117v. Trinity College, Dublin, MS 809, fo. 17v. Grossart (ed.), Lismore Papers, 2nd ser. ii, p. 16. HEH, el 1746, fo. 18. Trinity College, Dublin, MS 883/2, fo. 14. Grossart (ed), Lismore Papers, 2nd ser. ii, p. 59. For a spectacular example

Notes to pages 202±6

80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

297

of the law used as a feud, R. Gillespie, `The trials of Bishop Spottiswood, 1620±40', Clogher Record, 12 (1986±8), pp. 320±33. For clergy as arbitrators, J. Bossy, `The Counter-Reformation and the people of Catholic Ireland', in T.D. Williams (ed.), Historical Studies viii (Dublin, 1971), pp. 158±60. For landlords, Grossart, Lismore Papers, 2nd ser. ii, pp. 2±4; Mac Cuarta, `Mathew de Renzy's letters', p. 116. HMC, Egmont, i, pp. 41±55. T. W. Moody, The Londonderry Plantation, 1609±41 (Belfast, 1939), pp. 286±7. C. R. Elrington and J. H. Todd (eds.), The whole works of . . . James Ussher, 17 vols. (Dublin, 1847±64), vol. xv, p. 438. R. Gillespie, Devoted people: religion and belief in early modern Ireland (Manchester, 1997), pp. 116±17. For this view of religion, see Gillespie, Devoted people. BL, Additional MS 25277, fo. 58. Gilbert (ed.), A Contemporary History, i, p. 365; BL, Additional MS 25277, fo. 58. Trinity College, Dublin, MS 831, fo. 6v. The Character of the Protestants of Ireland (1689), p. 2. J. T. Gilbert (ed.), History of the Irish Confederation and the War in Ireland, 7 vols. (Dublin: privately published, 1882±91), vol. i, p. 2. Shef®eld City Library, Wentworth Wodehouse papers, Strafford Letter books, 8 (11). For the development of this idea in an economic context, see R. Gillespie, `Explorers, exploiters and entrepreneurs: early modern Ireland and its contexts, 1500±1700' in B. J. Graham and L. J. Proudfoot (eds.), An Historical Geography of Ireland (1993), pp. 123±57.

9 order, orthodoxy and resistance: the ambiguous legacy of english puritanism or just how moderate was stephen denison? 1 M. Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: a Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1966); C. Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (1964). 2 P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: the Church in English Society 1559±1625 (Oxford, 1982) and the materials cited in n. 6, this chapter. 3 K. Wrightson and D. Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525±1700 (Oxford, 1995); W. Hunt, The Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County (Cambridge, Mass., 1983); D. Underdown, Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century (1992). All of which works draw on and develop, through local manuscript research, the insights in Hill, Society and Puritanism. On the political effects of the, in part, puritan sponsored or conditioned cultural alliance between the middling sort and the gentry, see J. S. Morrill and J. Walter,

298

4

5 6

7 8

9

Notes to pages 206±7

`Order and disorder in the English revolution' in J. S. Morrill, The Nature of the English Revolution (1993) pp. 359±91, and D. MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County (Oxford, 1986), part iv, `Popular politics'. Collinson, Religion of Protestants, chs. 5 and 6; P. Lake, `De®ning puritanism ± again?' in F. Bremer (ed.), Puritanism: Trans-Atlantic Perspectives on a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Faith (Boston, 1993), pp. 3±29. Also see M. McIntosh, Controlling misbehavior in England, 1370±1600 (Cambridge, 1998) and the comments thereon in P. Lake, `Periodisation, politics and ``the social'' ', JBS, 37 (1998), 279±90. J. S. Morrill, `The religious context of the English civil war', in Morrill, The Nature of the English Revolution, pp. 45±68. N. Tyacke, `Puritanism, Arminianism and counter-revolution' in C. S. R. Russell (ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War (1973), pp. 119±43. C. S. R. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621±1629 (Oxford, 1979) pp. 26±32; C. S. R. Russell, Unrevolutionary England, (1990), ch. 12, `The parliamentary career of John Pym, 1621±9', and C. S. R. Russell, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990), chs. 3, 4, 5 and appendix. J. S. Morrill, `The attack on the Church of England in the Long Parliament', in Morrill, The Nature of the English Revolution, pp. 69±90. I. Atherton, Ambition and Failure in Stuart England: the Career of John First Viscount Scudamore (Manchester, 1999), p. 6. P. White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic: Con¯ict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge, 1992) and his `The via media in the early Stuart church' in K. Fincham (ed.), The Early Stuart Church, 1603±1642 (1993), 211±30, 285±9; J. Davies, The Caroline Captivity of the Church: Charles I and the Remoulding of Anglicanism 1625±1641 (Oxford, 1992). The formulation is White's; the target, amongst others, is Nicholas Tyacke and Conrad Russell. The positions adopted by White and Davies are neither identical nor compatible. While for White there was nothing remarkable or innovatory about the policies and theological timbre of the Personal Rule, for Davies there was; it is just that Charles himself, not Laud, was to blame for that fact. Davies's central interpretative innovation is, in fact, to substitute a theologically agnostic yet still distinctive and divisive `Carolinism' (which he regards as a `bad thing' for the previously evangelically engaged and united Jacobean church ± hence the `captivity' of his book's title) for a theologically engaged (Arminian or anti-Calvinist) Laudianism. For some critical comment see N. Tyacke, `Anglican attitudes: some recent writings on English religious history from the reformation to the civil war', JBS, 35 (1996) 139±67, and P. Lake, `Predestinarian propositions', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 46 (1995), 110±23. K. Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1992), especially chs. 6 and 11, 12, 13. While he cites Davies' conclusions when they suit his overall argumentative purposes, Professor Sharpe, in fact, rejects or

Notes to pages 207±8

10 11

12

13

14

299

rather ignores the central contention of Davies' book about the ideological distinctiveness and divisiveness of `Carolinism'. In effect, Sharpe appropriates and extends Davies' `defence' of Laud as a `moderate' to include Charles I as well. The attempt to `defend' Charles I in this mode is being raised to new and heroic levels by Mark Kishlansky, who gave at the 1999 National Conference of the North American Conference on British Studies a taste of his forthcoming biography of the king in a special session. For an expansion of these remarks see my review essay of several works by Conrad Russell in HLQ , 57 (1994). Here I refer, of course, to the oeuvre of Patrick Collinson, for which see principally his The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (1967); Godly People (1982); Religion of Protestants; The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1988); Elizabethan Essays (1994). For the movement itself see Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement; for an analysis of the formal debate see P. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (1988), pp. 193±224, and `Presbyterianism, the idea of a national church and the argument from divine right' in P. Lake and M. Dowling (eds.), Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England (1988). N. Tyacke, `The rise of puritanism and the legalizing of dissent, 1571±1719', in O. P. Grell, J. Israel and N. Tyacke (eds.), From Persecution to Toleration: the Glorious Revolution and Religion in England (Oxford, 1991), pp. 17±49. For intra-puritan debates about conformity see P. Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge, 1982), ch. 3, section iii, and chs. 10 and 11; and `Moving the goal posts: modi®ed subscription and the construction of conformity in the early Stuart church' in P. Lake and M. Questier (eds.), Orthodoxy and Conformity in the English Church, 1560±1660 (forthcoming); for outstanding case studies of puritan thought, feeling and action see, for instance, J. Eales, Puritans and Roundheads: the Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990); P. Seaver, Wallington's World: a Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth-Century London (1985); N. Tyacke, The Fortunes of English Puritanism, 1603±1640 (Friends of Dr Williams Library, 44th lecture, 1990); A. Hughes, `Thomas Dugard and his circle in the 1630s: a parliamentary±puritan connection', HJ, 29 (1986), 771±93; J. Fielding, `Opposition to the personal rule of Charles I: the diary of Robert Woodford, 1637±41', HJ, 31, (1988) 769±88; and his essay `Arminianism in the localities: Peterborough diocese, 1603±1642' in Fincham (ed.), Early Stuart Church, pp. 93±113, 262±4; and his `Conformists, puritans and the church courts: the diocese of Peterborough, 1603±42' (Birmingham University Ph.D. thesis, 1989); T. Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: the Caroline Puritan Movement, c. 1620±1643 (Cambridge,

300

15

16

17 18 19

Notes to pages 209±11

1997) which, despite its title, is in reality a local study of clerical puritanism largely in Essex. For the disappearance of puritanism thesis see the material by Tyacke and Russell cited in n. 6. In certain of his more revisionist moods even Patrick Collinson has been tempted by this move: freed by the obvious existence and coherence of the Elizabethan puritan movement, his subject de®ned and his material organised for him, ®rst by the likes of John Field and then by the likes of Richard Bancroft, Collinson was able to write the de®nitive study of Elizabethan puritanism without ever formally de®ning or justifying his object of study. Subsequently, he has, on occasion, expressed agnostic scepticism about the usefulness of the term `puritan' and even the free-standing existence of the body of persons and ideas that it is usually taken to connote. For a variety of forays into the constructedness of puritan identity see P. Collinson, The Puritan Character (Clark Memorial Library, 1989); `Bartholomew Fair: theatre invents puritans', in D. L. Smith, R. Strier and D. Bevington (eds.), The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576±1649 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 157±69; `Ecclesiastical vitriol: religious satire in the 1590s and the invention of puritanism', in J. Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge, 1995, pp. 150±70). All this however, has not prevented him from continuing, intermittently, to use the word and write about the thing itself with his usual insight and learning; for the most recent instance of which see his `Elizabethan and Jacobean puritanism as forms of popular culture', and P. Lake, ` ``A charitable Christian hatred'': the godly and their enemies in the 1630s', both in C. Durston and J. Eales (eds.), The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560±1700 (1996) pp. 32±57, 280±8 and 145±83, 301±7, respectively. And yet there remains, in a good deal of his writing, clustered on either side of his Religion of Protestants, but not only there, a distinct sense that when the movement ended, the thing itself more or less disappeared. For the reaction against this tendency see Tyacke, Fortunes of English Puritanism and his ` ``The rise of puritanism'' and the legalising of dissent, 1571±1719'. For more in this mode see J. Eales, `A road to revolution: the continuity of puritanism, 1559±1642' in Durston and Eales (eds.), The Culture of Puritanism, pp. 184±209, 307±12, and Webster, Godly Clergy. This section is based on P. Lake, The Boxmaker's Revenge: `Orthodoxy', `Heterodoxy' and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (forthcoming from Manchester and Stanford University Presses). Denison's world view is analysed at length in chs. 2 and 3. S. Denison, The White Wolf or a sermon preached at Paul's Cross, February 11 . . . 1627 (1627). BL Loan 29/202, bound between fo. 211 and fo. 223, Marten to Harley, dated 11 April 1627. I owe this reference to the kindness of Jacqui Eales. Lake, Boxmaker's Revenge, ch. 3, section i.

Notes to pages 212±26

301

20 P. Lake, `Conformist clericalism? Richard Bancroft's analysis of the socio-economic roots of presbyterianism' in W. J. Sheils and D. Wood (eds.), The Church and Wealth, Studies in Church History, 24 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 219±29. 21 Lake, Boxmaker's Revenge, chapters 2 and 3. For the ministry see ch. 3 section i and for the sacraments and the sabbath see ch. 3 sections ii and iii. Lake, `Conformist clericalism?'. 22 S. Denison, The monument or tombstone, or a sermon preached at Laurence Pountnies Church in London, November 21, 1619 at the funeral of Mrs Elizabeth Juxon (1620); Another tombstone, or a sermon preached at Laurence Pountnies church, London, upon the last day of August . . . 1626 at the celebration of the funerals of Master John Juxon (1626). For Juxon's will see P[rerogative] C[ourt] of C[anterbury] 112 Hele; PRO, Prob. 11/150 fos. 22r±26v. 23 Lake, Boxmaker's Revenge, chs. 10 and 11 and ch. 9, section v. 24 Ibid., chs. 2 and 3, but see esp. ch. 2, section v. Also on the godly/ ungodly divide see Lake, `A charitable Christian hatred: the godly and their enemies in the 1630s' in Durston and Eales (eds.), Culture of English Puritanism. 25 Denison, The monument or tombstone and Another tombstone. On this subject more generally see P. Lake, `Feminine piety and personal piety: the ``emancipation'' of Mrs Jane Ratcliffe', The Seventeenth Century, 2 (1987), 143±65; D. Willen, `Godly women in early modern England: puritanism and gender', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 43 (1992), 561±80; P. Collinson, ` ``Not sexual in the ordinary sense'': women, men and religious transactions', in his Elizabethan Essays, pp. 119±50. 26 Lake, Boxmaker's Revenge, ch. 11, section ii. 27 J. Merritt, `Puritans, Laudians and the phenomenon of church-building in Jacobean London' HJ, 41 (1998), 935±60. 28 The previous discussion summarises material analysed and arguments pursued in Lake, Boxmaker's Revenge, ch. 11. 29 Both the phrase and the strongest statement of the case are to be found in Tyacke, `Puritanism, Arminianism and counter-revolution'. Also see Collinson, Religion of Protestants. 30 Lake, `De®ning puritanism again' and Anglicans and Puritans, conclusion; and `Presbyterianism and the idea of a national church'. 31 See the seminal 1999 Cambridge Ph.D. thesis by Eliot Vernon, `The Sion College conclave and London presbyterianism during the English revolution'. 32 Indeed we know that he did so from a series of sermon notes from the late 1630s in which he looked back over his earlier travails, casting his own role in precisely such a light. For the notes see American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass., Denison sermon notes. I should like to thank David Como for drawing this fascinating source to my attention. The notes are discussed at length in Lake, Boxmaker's Revenge, ch. 12, section i.

302

Notes to pages 227±32

10 making orthodoxy in late restoration england: the trials of edmund hickeringill, 1662 ± 1710 1 E. Hickeringill, The Works, 2 vols. (1709), vol. i, preface. 2 E. Underhill, Records of the Churches of Christ Gathered at Fenstanton, Warbuoys and Hexham 1644±1720 (1854), pp. 330±3. For an extended discussion of Hickeringill, see J. L. C. McNulty, `An anticlerical priest: Edmund Hickeringill (1631±1708) and the context of priestcraft' (University of Cambridge M.Phil. thesis, 1998). 3 See DNB, s.n. Edmund Hickeringill. 4 See G. Holmes, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell (1973), esp. pp. 156±78. See also The Tryal of Dr Henry Sacheverell (1710), p. 224, citing Hickeringill's Miscellaneous Tracts (1707), Part i, p. 12 5 R. L. Emerson, `Heresy, the social order and English deism', Church History, 37 (1968), 389±403, esp. 396±7. 6 See J. C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990), pp. 15, 67, 71, 87. 7 See J. Morrill, The Nature of the English Revolution (1993), `Part One: England's wars of religion', pp. 31±175; the locus classicus of revolutionary inversion is still, C. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (1972). 8 See J. Spurr, The Restoration Church of England (New Haven, 1991). See also T. Harris, P. Seaward and M. A. Goldie (eds.), The Politics of Religion in Restoration England (Oxford, 1990). 9 For an overview of the politics of the religious life of the parish see K. Wrightson `The politics of the parish in early modern England' in P. Grif®ths, A. Fox and S. Hindle (eds.), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (1996), pp. 10±46. 10 Guildhall, MS 20,868/1. 11 R. Thoresby (ed.), Letters of Eminent Men (1832), vol. ii, p. 15. 12 See S. Degge, The Parson's Counsellor (1676), p. 59. 13 For details of the canons see, F. Makower, Constitutional History of the Church of England (1895), pp. 196±9 and Appendix xii, pp. 491±2. 14 The statute was 13 Eliz. cap. 12; see J. Godolphin, Repertorium Canonicum (1678), p. 306. 15 Guildhall, MS 9182/Box 1, vi, Interrogatory 6. 16 Ibid., Interrogatory 8. 17 T. Rogers, The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England, An Exposition of the 39 Articles (®rst published 1607; this edition, Cambridge 1854), p. 31. 18 Ibid., p. 26. 19 Thomas Fuller had explained in 1655 that the (unintended) mal-effect of the book was to have created an illusion that the 39 Articles were too narrow to comprehend Dissenters; J. S. Brewer (ed.), The Church History of Britain (1970), vol. v, p. 81. 20 ERO, d/p200/1/6. 21 Guildhall, MS 9182 Box 1, vi, Interrogatory 9.

Notes to pages 232±40

303

22 Ibid., Interrogatory 14. 23 See H. Smith, Sequence of the Parochial Clergy of Essex 1640±1664 (un®nished typescript at ERO). 24 Archdeacon's Visitation records 1663, ERO, d/acv 55 ff35±40; In 1670 one-quarter of the parish were presented as Non-conformists, ERO, d/ acv 6. 25 ERO, q/sr/400/137. 26 For Baxter's Savoy Liturgy see P. Hall, Reliquiae Liturgicae (Bath, 1847), pp. 117±41. See particularly R. Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterae (1696), p. 306, for his vision of pastoral discipline centred on the authority of the priest and community. 27 E. Hickeringill, `Of Ordination' in The Ceremony-Monger his Character (1709 edition), pp. 81, 85. 28 Guildhall, MS 9583/2, Part 3, fo. 130. 29 Ibid. 30 ERO, d/acv 55 fos. 35±40. 31 Thoresby, Letters, vol. ii, pp. 14±15. 32 Guildhall, MS 9182/Box 1, vi, Interrogatory 13. 33 C. Gittings, Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England (1984), pp. 47±50. 34 Ibid., p. 56. 35 ERO, q/sr/400/135. 36 ERO, q/sr/400/133. Wallis was a local Non-conformist; Watts was an ally of Hickeringill, who probably held some local ecclesiastical of®ce. 37 ERO, q/sr/400/134, 135. 38 ERO, q/sr/400/135. 39 LPL, bbb 497, testimony 1. 40 Ibid., testimony 3. 41 Ibid., testimonies 4±6. 42 Ibid., testimonies 7 and 11. 43 The most comprehensive account of this discourse is McNulty, `Edmund Hickeringill'. 44 The nature of the crisis of succession, popery and arbitrary power between the 1670s and late 1680s is still a matter of ®erce historiographical debate: for an overview see T. Harris, Politics under the Later Stuarts: Political Con¯ict in a Divided Society 1660±1715 (1993). 45 See E. Hickeringill, Scandalum Magnatum (1682), title page. 46 See for example M. A. Goldie, `Danby, the Bishops and the Whigs' in Harris, Seaward, Goldie (eds.), Politics of Religion (1990), pp. 75±106; and Goldie, `John Locke and Anglican Royalism', Political Studies, 31 (1983), 61±85. 47 The account of these trials is drawn from Hickeringill's Works, vol. i, pp. 191 and following, and vol. ii, pp. 51 and following. 48 For an overview of the anxiety about the legality and tyrannous use of church courts in the 1680s see J. A. I. Champion, `Willing to suffer: law

304

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77

Notes to pages 241±6

and religious conscience in sevententh-century England' in J. McLaren and H. Coward (eds.), Religious Conscience, the State and the Law (Albany, N.Y., 1999), pp. 13±28. For a more detailed account see L. McNulty, `Priests, politics and power, 1660±1720' (forthcoming). See E. Hickeringill, News from the Doctors Commons (1681), p. 2. Ibid., p. 2. See P. Cor®eld, `Dress for deference and dissent: hats and the decline of hat honour', Costume: Journal of the Costume Society, 23 (1989), 64±79. News from the Doctors Commons, pp. 2±3. Ibid. Scandalum Magnatum, pp. 57±8. Ibid., p. 58. News from the Doctors Commons, pp. 3±4. Ibid., p. 5. See CSPD, 1682, p. 74. Scandalum Magnatum, p. 8. Ibid., pp. 68±9 which reproduces the articles of good behaviour. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 17. See his ironic advice that prosecution could be best avoided by making `an Index Expurgatorius, and blot out of your Bibles, Luk 22, 25, 26, 27. And 2 Pet 5. 2, 3. And 1 Tim 5.2 1': ibid., p. 30. Ibid., pp. 13±15. Ibid., pp. 14±15. Bodleian Library, Oxford; Tanner Papers 42, fo. 70. Bodleian Library, Oxford; Tanner Papers 32, fo. 77; See also N. Lutterell, Brief Relation, vol. i, pp. 162, 312. The Most Humble Confession and Recantation of Edmund Hickeringill, Clerk (Benjamin Tooke, 1684). Two copies of the recantation can be found in the British Library, call mark 515.l.2.(84). Scandalum Magnatum, p. 53; for the text of the ®rst letter see pp. 53±67. Ibid., p. 54. The text of the second letter is in Scandalum Magnatum, pp. 87±105. Ibid., pp. 88±9, records that Hickeringill was persuaded to write by the Londoner Thomas Firmin, unitarian philanthropist and friend of John Locke. It is worth noting that Hickeringill's strategy here mirrored that of the trial where his private correspondence was used as evidence. Here he used the publication of supposedly `private' letters to expose the deviant behaviour of the bishop. Scandalum Magnatum, p. 93. Scott, Domination, p. 103.

Notes to pages 246±8

305

78 See M. de Certeau, The Capture of Speech and Other Political Writings (1997), esp. p. 102. 79 Scott, Domination, pp. 121±4, 226. 80 See J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1688±1832: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice during the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, 1985); and Clark, `On hitting the buffers: the historiography of England's ancien regime. A response', Past and Present, 117 (1987), 195±207. 81 See J. G. A. Pocock, `Within the margins: de®nitions of orthodoxy' in R. Lund (ed.), The Margins of Orthodoxy (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 33±53.

Index

Abbot, Edward, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 162 Abbot, William, churchwarden, All Saints, Colchester, 234±5 abuse, sexual, 23±4, 63±84 incidence of, 64±5 abusive discourse, 172±3 Adultery Act (1650), 91, 92 age, and social order, 3±4, 22±4, 38±9, 49 Aldenham, Herts., poor rates in, 118, 119 alehouses, 128, 139±40, 145 All Hallows the Great, London, 212 All Saints, Colchester, 229±30, 234±5 Altham, Edward, of London, accused of sexual abuse, 71, 76 America, 188 social order in, 30±1 See also Chesapeake; New England An Ease for Overseers of the Poore (1601), 106±110 anabaptists, 210 215±6 Anglesea, earl of, 188 anti-catholicism, 78 See also catholicism; popery antinomians, 210 Antrim, earl of, 201±2 apothecaries, 70 appeals of the poor, 133±7 See also weapons of the weak Archer, Francis, of London, bawd, 75 Arches, Court of, 220, 221, 223, 237, 242 Armagh, bishop of, 203 arminianism, 215 See also Laudianism army, English, 190 Arrowsmith, Stephen, accused of sexual abuse, 80 Arthington, Henry, and complaints of the poor, 114, 130 Assizes, 165, 193, 239±40 rape prosecutions, 67, 68±9 Ulster, 196 See also law courts, operations of

Astbury, Christian, of Stafford, servant and mother of illegitimate child, 54 Atherton, Ian, historian, 207 Atwater, Richard, of Reading, accused of sexual abuse, 78 Aylesbury, Bucks., assizes in, 165 Aysley, James, master of Newcastle house of correction, accused of sexual abuse, 75 bakehouses, 128±9 Baker, Anthony, of Reading, accused of rape, 76 Bancroft, Richard, and caricature of puritan preacher, 212±3 Bankes, Sir John, and dispute about muster master's fee in Shrops., 182 baptists, 227 Barton, Isabel, and illegitimate pregnancy, 47 bastardy. See illegitimacy Baxter, Richard, and local conformity, 233 beards, 12 Bedfordshire, poor rates in, 119 Beetham, David, political scientist, 9 Begbroke, Oxon., enclosure in, 137 Beier, A. L., historian, 103 Bellamy, John, and accusation of paternity of illegitimate child, 56 Bellings, Richard, description of Irish society, 204 Benson, Edward, of Worcs., suspected father of illegitimate child, 56 Berkshire rape in, 76 sexual abuse in, 78, 79 Birling, Kent, illegitimacy in, 43±4, 49, 51, 61 Black Non±conformist (1682), 244 Blackman, Alice, of Reading, victim of rape, 76 Blackman, Joan, of Reading, witness in prosecution of rape, 76 Blackstone, Sir William, and law of rape, 66±7

306

Index Bond, Martin, dispute with Stephen Denison, 222 Books of Common Prayer. See Common Prayer, Books of Books of Orders. See Orders, Books of Boughton, Monchelsea, Kent, sexual abuse in, 74±5 Bourdieu, Pierre, sociologist, 16, 28±9, 176±7 Boxted, Essex, 229±38 Boyle, Richard, earl of Cork, 196, 202 Bradford, Isabel, of Newcastle upon Tyne, victim of sexual abuse, 72 Braintree, Essex, poor relief in, 33 Bridewell, 65, 69, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 83, 91, 97 Bridgewater, earl of, and muster master's fee in Shrops., 166±87 Bright, Andrew, of Shrops., high constable, and muster master's fee, 184 Brooke, Charles, servant, of Worcs., and paternity of illegitimate child, 56 brothels, 22, 82 Buckinghamshire assizes in, 165 deer parks in, 149±65 JPs in, 165 landlords hanged in ef®gy, 117 burial rites, 236±8 Burton, Edward, of Shrops., and muster master's fee, 168, 175 Caistor, Lincs., conspiracy of the poor in, 117 Cambridgeshire cursing in, 133 enclosure in, 138 parliamentary election in, 143 Cannock, Staffs., enclosure in, 133 Canterbury, archbishop of, 242 Capp, Bernard, historian, 60 Carr, Nathaniel, minister in Boxted, Essex, 233 Carter, Francis, weaver, accused of sexual abuse, 79 Castle Chamber, court of, 203 Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England, The (1607), 230±1 catholicism, 188, 193, 202±4 See also anti±catholicism; popery Catt, Mary, of London, victim of sexual abuse, 77 Cawston, Norfolk, poor rates in, 118, 119 Caythorpe, Lincs., enclosure in, 132±3 Cecil, Robert, and Ireland, 192 Chackmore, Bucks., 161 Chambers, Mr, of Halstowe, Kent, suspected father of illegitimate child, 56

307

Chancery, court of, 150, 160, 161, 192, 220, 221, 222, 223 See also law courts, operation of Channel, William, servant to Peter Dayrell, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 163±4 Chappin, Elizabeth, mother of illegitimate child, 54 charity, 104±6 Charles I, 210, 234, 243±4 and depression of the cloth industry, 138±9 religious policy, 206±7 Charleton, Francis, JP in Shrops. and muster master's fee, 170, 175, 179 Charters, Richard, keeper of the deer park in Dadford, Bucks., 159±60 Chaytor, Miranda, historian, 67±8 Chebsey, George, and Midlands Rising (1607), 135 Cheeke, Mr, and provision for poor in Dorchester, 131 Chelmsford, Essex assizes at, 239±41 dearth in, 142 Chesapeake, 30±1 See also America; New England Cheshire, 29 dearth in, 133±4 rape in, 78 sexual abuse in, 64, 73±4, 76±7, 79 Chester, sexual abuse in, 70, 72 Chichester, Sir Arthur and social conditions in Ireland, 194 child, de®nition of, 63±4 children, legal testimony of, 80±1 Chilvers Coton, War., enclosure at 135±7 church bells, 231±3 church courts, regulation of sexual behaviour, 87±9 church seating, disputes over, 39 churchwardens, 130, 185±5, 234±5 civility, and social order, 30±1 Clark, George, father of illegitimate child, 58 Clark, J. C. D., historian, 247 Clark, Thomas, of Essex, prosecution for laughing during sermon, 23 Clarke, Ellen, victim of sexual abuse, 83 class, and early modern social order, 1, 3, 7±8, 26±7 Clement, Elizabeth, of Somerset, mother of illegitimate child, 56 clericalism, 212±5 Colchester, Essex dearth in, 140

308

index

Colchester, Essex (cont.) sexual abuse in, 63, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 77, 78, 79 Coleraine, Ireland, 192 Collinson, Patrick, historian, 206, 207, 208, 211, 218±9 Collison, Robert, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 162 Common Prayer, Books of, 231, 235, 247 commons, house of, 177, 179 Como, David, historian, 208±9 Compton, Henry, bishop of London, 227, 240±6 Connacht president of, 191 social and political order, 190±2 consistory courts, 87±8 See also church courts constables, 95 constables, high, 184±5 Conway, Secretary of State, and publication of The White Wolf, 210 Cooper, Marian, of Kent, mother of illegitimate child, 56, 57 Corbet, Sir John, JP, and muster master's fee in Shrops., 28, 166±87 correction, house of. See house of correction; Bridewell Cotton, Thomas, of Shrops., and muster master's fee, 168, 183±4 Council in the Marches, 181 Courts of law. See law, courts of Covent Garden, London, regulation of prostitution in, 98±9 Coventry, libels in, 134±5, 141, 145 Crab, Roger, and poverty, 116±17 Cromwell, Oliver, 233 crowds, 7±8, 23, 34±5, 60, 123±4 cursing, 131±3 See also weapons of the weak Cutts, Sir John, and enclosure, 143 Dadford, Bucks., 153 Dagar, Samuell, of Shrops., high constable, and muster master's fee, 184 Dalton, Edward, clergyman, accused of sexual abuse, 80 Dalton, Elizabeth, wife of man accused of sexual abuse, 80 Dancer, Thomas, of Syresham, Bucks., and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 163±4 Davies, Blanch, servant, of Hereford, mother of illegitimate child, 58±9 Davies, Sir John, attorney general, and Ireland, 193, 194, 199

Davis, Mary, of Colchester, victim of sexual abuse, 71 Dayrell, Abel, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 152, 156±8, 159±61 Dayrell, Edmund, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 154, 155±6, 159±64, 165 Dayrell, Francis, of Stowe, Bucks., 151, 153, 154 Dayrell, Paul, of Lamport, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 159±60, 162±3, 165 Dayrell, Paul, of Lillingstone Dayrell, Bucks., 151 Dayrell, Peter, the elder, of Lillingstone Dayrell, Bucks., 149, 157, 160±5 Dayrell, Peter, the younger, of Lillingstone Dayrell, Bucks., 160±3 Dayrell, Sir Thomas, 158 Dayrell, Thomas, of Lillingstone Dayrell, Bucks., and attacks on deer park at Stowe 161±3 dearth, 34±5, 123±48 Dedham, Essex, 102, 236 Deloney, Thomas, balladeer, and 1596 dearth, 123 De Mowbray, John, and common rights in Haxey, Lincs., 178 Denison, Stephen, curate of St Katherine Creechurch, London, 37±8, 209±26 Denton, Sir Alexander, JP, and attacks on the deer park at Stowe, 165 Deuteronomy, 131 De Vega, William, of London, accused of sexual abuse, 75 De Veil, Thomas, magistrate in London, 96 Devizes, Wilts, sexual abuse in, 73 Dillon, Justice, and tenurial dues from barony of Gallen, 191 Dillon, Thoebald, rent collector, 192 Disorderly Houses Act (1752), 99 dissent, religious, 235±7 Donegal, JPs in, 196 Dorchester, dearth in, 129±30, 131, 139 Doughty, Margaret, widow, of Salford and appeal for poor relief, 115 Down, Ireland, rebellion in, 201 Downame, John, and poverty, 102, 104±5, 108±9 Downes, Andrew, grand juror in Shrops., 183±4 Downes, William, and muster master's fee, 172, 173, 183 Drogheda, 203 Dublin, 189, 195 Dyke, John, dispute with Stephen Denison, 222

Index Dymond, Anne, dissenter of Boxted, Essex 236±7 Dymond, Robert, dissenter of Boxted, Essex 236±7 Eachtra Mhacaoimh an Iolair (early 17th cent.), 197±8 Eades, Margery, of Worcs., mother of illegitimate child, 56 Eales, Jacqui, historian, 208±9 East, Arthur, servant of Sir Peter Temple, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 157, 159±64 Eaton Socon, Beds., poor rates in, 119 Eaton, John, minister, accused of sexual abuse, 78 elections, parliamentary, 143 enclosure, 34±5, 123±48 England, George, and accusation of paternity of illegitimate child, 59±60 Epping, Essex, 59±60 Essex church courts in, 65 dearth in, 137, 139±40, 141±2 depression of cloth industry, 138±9 illegitimacy in, 57, 59±60 incest in, 65 JPs in, 137 poverty in, 33, 102, 111, 119, 120 religious con¯ict in, 36±7 sexual abuse in, 63, 65, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 77, 78 Etherington, John, boxmaker, 210, 215±6, 223, 225 Ethersay, John, servant to Sir Edward Tyrell, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 161±2 Ewbanck, Ruth, of Old Jewry, London, victim of sexual abuse, 71 familists, 210, 215±6 family, 18±19 Fancourt, Elizabeth, of London, victim of sexual abuse, 75 Farmer, Roger, grand juror in Shrops., 182 Farren, Peter, of Northants, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 162±3 fathers of illegitimate children naming of, 52±60 ®nancial responsibilities of, 55±6 Faversham, Kent, dearth in, 143 Fenton, Marjorie, Viscountess, and marital dispute, 18±19 Fielding, Henry, magistrate in London, 96 Fielding, John, magistrate in London, 96

309

Fisher, Gideon, of Carlton, Beds. and deer park at Stowe, 159 Fitzherbert, Mr, Bristol merchant, and enclosure in Oxon., 130±1 Fleet prison, London, 175 Fleetwood, William Recorder of London, and law of rape, 66 Fletcher, John, of Colchester, accused of sexual abuse, 77 food and social distinction, 25, 152 politics of, 34±5, 40 See also dearth forest law, 151±2 Fowle, Bartholomew, of Boughton Monchelsea, Kent, accused of sexual abuse, 75 Frome, Somerset, sexual abuse in, 71 Fulham, Middx., poverty in, 111 Gardiner, Samuel, and principles of charity, 105±6 Garnett, John, of Sigglesthorne, and poverty, 120±1 Gayer, Sir John, dispute with Stephen Denison, 222 gender and social order, 3±4, 17±21, 38±9, 41 and religious authority, 216±9 Glastonbury, Somerset, sexual abuse in, 75 Gloucestershire dearth in, 142 JPs in, 142 poverty in, 111 Glyme, Mary, alias Typlady, of London, mother of illegitimate child, 74 Goffman, Erving, sociologist, 16 Golding, Mary, victim of sexual abuse, 71 Goodman, Godfrey, vicar of Stapleford Abbots, and poverty, 120 gossip, 29, 49, 61, 218. See also weapons of the weak Gouge, William, preacher, 12, 18±19 Gough, Richard, grand juror in Shrops., 183±4 Gough, Rowland, of Shrops., high constable, and muster master's fee, 184 grand juries, 130, 166, 169±70, 178±9, 182±4 Grant, John, of Essex, killing of his servant, 24 Greene, Jack, historian, 30±1 Greene, John, and paternity of illegitimate child, 59±60 Gregory, Thomas, and paternity of illegitimate child, 57

310

index

Grewelthorpe Moor, Yorks., enclosure of, 133 Grif®ths, ÐÐ, prosecuted by Edmund Hickeringill, 234 Grif®ths, Paul, historian, 167 Grosvenor, Sir Richard, JP, 172 grumbling, 128±31 See also weapons of the weak Hadlye, ÐÐ, of Colchester, accused of sexual abuse, 73 Hadsor, Richard, and social conditions in Ireland, 194, 195 Hale, Sir Matthew, legal commentary, 66, 80±1 Halford, War., poor rates in, 118, 119 Halstowe, Kent, illegitimacy in, 56 Hampton Court Conference (1604), 208 Harding, William, executed for sexual abuse, 76 Harley, Sir Robert, and publication of The White Wolf, 210 Harris, Peter, servant to Temples, and attack on deer park at Stowe, 157, 161 Harris, Richard, clerk of the peace in Shrops., and muster master's fee, 169, 175, 182 Harris, Samuel, vicar of Fingringhoe, 237±8, 241, 243 Harrison, William, and venison, 152 hat honour, 241±2 Haxey, Lincs., common rights, 178 Heath, Robert, CJ King's Bench, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 161 hegemony, 5±7, 9 Helye, Joseph, of Shrops., and muster master's fee, 168 Henchman, Humphrey, bishop of London, 234 Heneker, William, suspected father of illegitimate child, 54 Henry VIII, 189 Herefordshire illegitimacy in, 58±9 poverty in, 112 Hesketh, Margaret, of Cheshire, victim of rape, 78 Hexham, Numbld., 227 Heydon, Essex, poor rates in, 119 Hickeringill, Edmund, minister, 36±7, 227±48 High Commission, Court of, 210, 222±3, 225 Hill, Christopher, historian, 206, 247 Hobbes, Thomas, and erastianism, 238 Holder, Richard, merchant of Kensington, prosecution for fornication, 87±8 Holland, earl of, and forest eyre, 158

Holt, Sir John, and law relating to prostitution, 93 honour gentry, 25±7, 149±53, 171±6 masculine, 19±20, 25, 149±53 Hopkins, Elizabeth, victim of sexual abuse, 72 Hoskins, Sergeant, and poverty in Heref., 112 house of correction, 72, 75, 90 household, 18±19 Hudibras (1663), 99 Humfrye, John, of Colchester, accused of sexual abuse, 78 hunting, 25±6 Huntingdon, third earl of, 143 Huntingdon, ®fth earl of, 171±2, 175 Hutton, George, of London, accused of sexual abuse, 77, 78±9 Hynone, John, servant, of Colchester, accused of attempted rape, 77 iconoclasm, 221±2 illegitimacy, 19±20, 43±62, 90 illegitimate children, ®nancial support of, 55±6 Ilmington, War., poor rates in, 118, 119 impeachment, 180±1 incest, 74±5 Indians, American, 188 insubordination, 8, 13, 29±30, 117±18 See also weapons of the weak intercession 138±9 See also weapons of the weak Ireland, 188±205 assizes, 199±204 common law in, 199±204 commonwealth ideas, 194±7 ¯ight of the earls (1607), 193±4 JPs in, 196, 197, 199±200 jurors in, 200 local government in, 199±204 Nine Years' War, 192, 193±4, 199 pedigrees in, 195±6 poets, 195, 197 quarter sessions, 199±204 rebellion (1641), 199 sheriffs in, 200 social and political order in, 30±1 symbols of authority, 197±9 Jackson, Louise, historian, 75 Jacquett, Jane, and illegitimate child 43±6, 49, 51, 61 James I, 151, 173, 198±9 and enclosures, 139

Index King of Ireland, 197 religious policy, 208 James, Mervyn, historian, 25±6 Jerome, Stephen, minister, 29 Jones, John, servant, of Worcs., and paternity of illegitimate child, 56 justices of the peace, 11, 28, 132, 138, 141, 142, 165, 173±4, 181±2 and illegitimacy, 48±9, 53, 56, 57, 59±60 and poverty, 112, 114±5, 116, 117 and sexual regulation, 95±7 in Ireland, 196, 197 `trading', 22, 96 Juxon, Elizabeth, patron of Stephen Denison, 214, 216±19, 221 Juxon, John, patron of Stephen Denison, 214, 216±19, 221 Keating, Geoffrey, priest in Ireland, 193, 195, 196 Kempe, Sara, of Chester, witness in sexual abuse prosecution, 70, 72 Kendal Castle, 131 Kent dearth in, 142±3 illegitimacy in, 43±4, 49, 51, 53±4, 56±7, 61 libels in, 142±3 poor rates in, 119 sexual abuse in, 74±5 Kent, Michael, servant to Sir Edward Tyrell, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 161±2 Kings Bench, 243 See also law courts, operations of Kiplyn, James, of Nash, Bucks., and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 162, 164 Kirkby Malzeard, Yorks., enclosure in, 134 Knowsley, Margaret, of Cheshire, victim of sexual harrassment, 29 Ladbrooke, War., 135 Lambarde, William, JP in Kent, 126±7 Lambeth Canons (1640), 244 Lamport, Bucks., 151, 153±9 Landbeach, Cambs., 133 landlord±tenant relations, 42 language and political power, 35±8 and social order, 1, 3±4, 5, 8±9, 25±6 appropriation of, 9±10, 114±18, 180±5 and legitimation, 185±6, 194±7 See also speech acts; legitimation Laudianism, 37±8, 206±7, 211, 221±2, 224±5, 246 Lavenham, Suffolk, conspiracy of the poor in, 117

311

law courts operations of, 14, 22, 25±6, 41, 67±9, 79±83, 87±9, 94±9, 150±1 legitimation, 9±10 See also hegemony; language; speech acts; transcript, public; transcript, hidden Legreene, Alice, midwife in Kent, 53±4 Leicester, election in, 143 Leighes coise Chein (16th cent.), 191 Lewis, Thomas, of Stafford, master of mother of illegitimate child, 54 Lewys, Ellen, of London, victim of sexual abuse, 82 libels, 134±5, 140±3, 172±3 See also weapons of the weak lieutenant, lords. See lords lieutenant Lilburne, Robert, 227 Lillingstone Dayrell, Bucks., 157, 165 Lincolnshire enclosure in, 132±3, 178 Midlands Rising (1607) in, 145±6 Lloyd (or Phloyd), Francis, of Shrops., high constable, and muster master's fee, 184 Lloyd, Sir Richard, and Edmund Hickeringill, 245 local elites, and political power, 14±16, 27±9, 31±3 Lochard, Thomas, grand juror in Shrops., 182 lollards, 247 London bishop of, 220 brothels in, 22, 82 consistory court, 87±8 control of information in, 174±5 gaol delivery records, 67 harvest failure, 123 house of correction in, 86 illegitimacy in, 74 Lord Mayor, 210 Lord Mayor's court, 222 prosecutions for sexual misconduct, 86 prostitution in, 74 religious authority in, 37±8 religious controversy in, 209±26 rumour in, 174±5 sexual abuse in, 71, 74, 77, 78±9, 82, 83 sexual regulation in, 21±2 lordship, 26±7 lords lieutenant, 127, 168, 179 See also muster master's fee Mac Diarmada, Brian, of Roscommon, annalist, 191 Mac Giolla PhaÂdraig, Brian, poet, 195

312

index

Maccles®eld, Ches., 78 MacCostello family, Ireland, 192 Macfarlane, Alan, historian, 65, 75 MacMahon, Hugh, rebellion in Ulster, 196 MacWilliam Burkes, family, of Mayo, 190±1 Magawley, Mortagh, of Williamstown, Westmeath, Ireland, 195±6 Magdelene College, Cambridge, 212, 220 magistracy, and image of authority, 14±15 magistrates, 125 See also justices of the peace Magna Carta, 180 Maguire, Brian, rebellion in Ulster, 196 Maidstone, John, dispute with Edmund Hickeringill, 233 Maidstone, Robert, dispute with Edmund Hickeringill, 235 Malbie, captain, and tenurial dues from barony of Gallen, 191 Marches, Council in. See Council in the Marches marital status, and social order, 49 markets, 128±30, 133±4, 143±4 marriage, 18±19 banns, 237±8 Marriot, Elizabeth, of London, victim of sexual abuse, 77, 78±9 Martin, Henry, ecclesiastical lawyer, 210 Martindale, Adam, vicar of Rostherne, Ches., 64, 76±7, 79, 81 Marx, Karl, sociologist, 16 masculinity. See honour; men Mast, Anne, servant, of Kent, mother of illegitimate child, 57 May Day play, Norfolk, 140 McCoughlan, Sir John, of King's County, Ireland, 196 McIntosh, Marjorie, historian, 206 Me Guidhir Fhearmanach (late 17th cent.), 191 Mekins, John, accused of sexual abuse, 83 Mellifont, 192 men and sexual regulation, 19±20 reputation, 19±20, 58, 90 See also fathers of illegitimate children; honour; patriarchy Menlowe, Renold, grand juror in Shrops., 183 Merritt, Julia, historian, 221 Michael, Joan, servant, of Somerset, mother of illegitimate child, 58 Middlesex gaol delivery records, 67 poverty in, 111±12 Middlewich, Ches., dearth in, 133±4

middling sort, 3, 4, 31±4, 39, 118 Midlands Rising (1607), 125, 127, 134±5, 145±6 midwives, 49, 53±4, 58, 70, 79 millers, 139 mills, 130 miscarriage, 50 Monke, Jane, of Westminster, victim of sexual abuse, 70 Montrose, Louis, literary historian, 52 More, John, preacher, 12 Morrill, John, historian, 12, 189 Moulsham, Essex, dearth in, 142 Mountjoy, lord deputy of Ireland, 192 Munster, assizes in, 199 Muskerry, Lord, and Irish rebellion, 203±4 muster master's fee, 166±70 Naked Truth, The (1680), 241 Nantwich, Ches., 134 Naseby, Battle of, 243±4 Nash, Bucks., 161 New College, Oxford, 158 New England, 30±1, 129 See also America; Chesapeake Newcastle upon Tyne, sexual abuse in, 72±3, 75 Newdegate, Sir John, JP, and enclosure at Chilvers Coton, 129±30, 135±7, 135 Newgate, Ordinary of, 76, 77±8, 79 Newmarket, Cambs., 138 Newton, John, of Shrops., minister, 184 Nicholls, Richard, of Shrops., high constable, and muster master's fee, 184 Nicholson, Isabel, of Yorkshire, and illegitimate pregnancy, 48±9 Nicklin, Elizabeth, mother of illegitimate child, 53, 55 Nine Years' War. See Ireland, Nine Years' War Norfolk dearth in, 40, 140±1 libels in, 140±1 May Day in, 140 North Nibley, Glos., poor law in, 111 Northamptonshire enclosures in, 144 Midlands Rising (1607) in, 125, 146 poverty in, 112, 116 Northumberland baptists in, 227 beggars in, 130, 131±2 Norwich, 12 grumbling in, 128 libels in, 144±5

Index Nowell, Susan, of Frome, Somerset, victim of sexual abuse, 71 Â CorcraÂin, Brian, poet, 197±8 O Â DaÂlaigh, Aonghas Fionn, of Munster, poet, O 199 Â GnõÂmh, Fear Flatha, poet, 200±1 O Â hUiginn, Dall Tadhg, poet, 201 O O'Cruoly, David, of Cork, Ireland, 195 O'Doyne, William, of Park, Queen's County, Ireland, 195 O'Neill, Henry, and English law, 200±1 O'Neill, Hugh, earl of Tyrone, surrender at Mellifont, 192 O'Neill, Phelim, and rising in Tyrone, 198 O'Reilly family, Cavan, Ireland, 204 of®ceholding, 13, 27±9, 31±3 Oglander, Sir John, and dearth, 137 Okeley, Emmot, of Leicester, victim of sexual abuse, 71 Old Bailey, 66, 67, 68, 69, 79, 80, 81 Orders, Books of, 126±8, 146 Oxfordshire Rising (1596), 129 Oxfordshire dearth in, 141 enclosure in, 130±1, 137 libels in, 141 Paddington, Middx., poverty in, 111±2 Pairlement Chloinne TomaÂis (1630s?), 195, 196 Pamela (1741), 99 Pater, Gail Kern, literary critic, 50 patriarchy and regulation of the body, 44±5 and religious authority, 216±9 and women's agency, 21, 60±2 in practice, 17±21, 22±4 See also honour; men; women Paul's Cross, 210 peace, justices of. See justices of the peace; quarter sessions pension, parish, 114±5 See also poor relief Perwiche, Edmund, of Shalston, Bucks., 155 Petition of Right, 166, 170, 177±8, 179, 180, 186 petitions, 137±8 pew, disputes over, 39 See also church seating, disputes over Phepoole, Anna, victim of sexual abuse, 79 Phillips, Elinor, midwife in Worcs., 53 Phrasier, Catherine, of London, victim of sexual abuse, 71 physicians, 70 plague, 43

313

Poole, Ann, of Colchester, Essex, victim of sexual abuse, 63, 69, 78 pooremans Joye & the gentlemans plague, The (1607), 134, 145±6 poor relief overseers, 32, 106±10, 114±15, 120±1, 130 politics of, 31±4, 40 rates, 110±13, 118±21 See also poverty popery, 239±40 See also anti±catholicism; catholicism Potter, Anne, of Reading, victim of sexual abuse, 79 Potter, Robert, father of illegitimate child, 53 poverty regulation of, 31±4 de®nitions of, 103 levels of, 102±3 Powell, Edward, alias Anderson, of the Fens, and enclosure, 138 Powell, Sara, mother of illegitimate child, 57 pregnancy, physical proof of, 46±51 presbyterianism, 207±8, 213, 215, 242 Price, Grace, of St Anne's, Westminster, victim of sexual abuse, 69 privacy, 49±51 Privy Council, 11, 28, 127, 143, 144±5, 166, 168, 173, 175±6, 177, 179, 180, 182±5, 186 proclamations, royal, 125 Proctor, Sir Stephen, and enclosure at Kirkby Malzeard, 134 provosts marshal, in Ireland, 196 puritanism, 206±26 Quakers, 227 quarter sessions, 56, 166, 169±76, 181±2, 186 Rands, John, servant to Peter Dayrell, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 149, 160, 163, 164, 165 ranters, 247 rape, 24, 75, 76, 77±8, 78±9 laws relating to, 65±7 prosecutions for, 67±9 Raven, John, of London, accused of sexual abuse, 77 Ray, Margaret, of Theydon Bois, Essex, mother of illegitimate child, 59±60 Reading, Berks., sexual abuse in, 76, 78, 79 Reasons of all the Commons of Westmerland to uphold thire Custome of Tennant, 131 religion and political authority, 35±8, 40, 41 religious authority, 3 and gender relations, 216±9 reputation, 88±90

314

index

Ricard, Barbara, widow, of Colchester, witness in sexual abuse prosecution, 72 Robbins, Anne, mother of illegitimate child, 55 Roborough, Henry, supporter of Stephen Denison, 223 Roche, Lord, and murder case in Ireland, 202 Rogers, John, minister of Dedham, Essex, and poverty, 102, 104±5, 106, 107±8, 109, 114 Rogers, Thomas, and religious orthodoxy, 230±1 roles, social and social order, 11±13, 26±31, 38±9 and political authority, 185±6 Rostherne, Cheshire, sexual abuse in, 64, 76±7, 79 Rothe, David, bishop of Ossory, 196 Royal Exchange, London, 175 Rublack, Ulinka, historian, 50 rumour, 61, 174±5 Ryarsh, Kent, 43±4 Ryley, Mary, of Yorks., and illegitimate pregnancy, 47, 48 sabbath, 213 Sacheverell, Henry, trial of, 227 Salisbury, earl of, and Midlands Rising (1607), 146 Salisbury, John, servant to Dayrells, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 160 Salmon, Joan, of Essex, servant killed by her master, 24 Sancroft, Archbishop, 244 Sand Hutton, N. Yorks., poor rates in, 118 Savile, Thomas viscount, gift of hunting dog to Sir Peter Temple, 161 Scott, James C., anthropologist, 5±8, 10±11, 13±16, 35, 42, 45, 123±4, 28, 145, 146±8, 228±9, 245, 246±8 Scott, Timothy, servant to Sir Edward Tyrell, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 161±2 Seanchus Burcach (1570s), 190 sermons, 125±6 Sewell, Sigismund, of Colchester, clothier, suspected of sexual abuse, 72 Sewell, Susan, of Colchester, victim of sexual abuse, 72, 75 sexual abuse See abuse, sexual sexual behaviour law relating to regulation of, 90±4 regulation of 19±20, 21±2, 43±62 Shakespeare, William, 52

Shalston, Bucks., 155 shaming, 143±4 Sharpe, Kevin, historian, 207 Sheppard, Samuel, and poverty, 116 Shorne, Kent, poor rates in, 119 Shropshire churchwardens in, 184 grand jury in, 166, 169±70, 178±9, 182±4 high constables in, 184±5 JPs in, 28, 169±76, 181±2 lieutenancy in, 168, 179 muster master's fee, 27±9, 166±87 quarter sessions, 166, 169±76, 181±2, 186 sheriff in, 172 Sidney, Sir Henry, lord deputy of Ireland, 190 Sidney, Sir Robert, and dearth, 143±4 Sigglesthorne, E. Yorks., and poverty, 120±1 Simpson, A. E., historian, 78 Sittingbourne, Kent, illegitimacy in, 56±7 Skinner, Quentin, historian, 9±10, 35 Slack, Paul, historian, 127±8 slaveholders, 11 Social roles. See roles, social social order early modern, 38±42 early modern conceptions of, 1±5, 12±13 Somerset dearth in, 138 illegitimacy in, 52, 56, 58 JPs in, 56, 138 petitioning in, 142 sexual abuse in, 71, 75, 76 Sowerby, N. Yorks., poor rates in, 118 speech acts, 28±9, 167 See also language; legitimation Sprang, Elizabeth, mother of illegitimate child, 54±5 St Andrew Undershaft, London, 222 St James', Colchester, 234 St John, Oliver, and 1614 benevolence, 35 St Katherine Creechurch, London, 209±26 St Paul's, London, 175, 245 Stafford, mayor and recorder of, 54 Staffordshire illegitimacy in, 54, 55 enclosure in, 133 Stapleford Abbots, Essex, poverty in, 120 Stapleton, Ann, of Colchester, victim of sexual abuse, 70 Stapleton, Richard, of Colchester, and sexual abuse prosecution, 70, 73 Star Chamber, 29, 137, 143±4, 166, 180, 186 state magic, 176±7 See also Bourdieu, Pierre Stone, Lawrence, historian, 63

Index Stowe, Bucks., 25±6, 149±65 Streate, Grace, and paternity of illegitimage child, 56 Stretton, Tim, historian, 20 Suffolk, JPs in, 173±4 Swallow®eld, Wilts., 113, 120, 174 Symons, John, servant to Sir Peter Temple, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 149, 163, 165 Talman, Elizabeth, of London, prosecution for fornication, 87±8 Taylor, Josua, of Chester, accused of sexual abuse, 70 Temple, John, 153, 154 Temple, Sir Peter, and deer park at Stowe 149±65 Temple, Sir Thomas, 151, 154 texts, legitimating, 176±80 Theydon Bois, Essex, illegitimacy in, 59±60 Thirty Nine Articles, 230±2 Thomas, Keith, historian, 22, 143 Thompson, Anne, of Colchester, victim of sexual abuse, 69, 71 Thompson, E. P., historian, 145, 247 Thornton, Bucks., 161 Three Homelies to Moove Compassion Towards the Poore and Needie (1596), 106 tithes 237±8 Tompkies, Edward, of Shrops., high constable, and muster master's fee, 184 Tongue, John, gent, of Newton, Shrops., and muster master's fee, 168, 184±5 Tourneur, Timothy, JP, and muster master's fee in Shrops., 28, 166±87 transcript hidden, 5, 7, 124±5, 145, 146±8, 228±9, 246±8 public, 5±7, 124±5, 128, 144±5, 146±8, 228±9, 246±8 See also legitimation; language; Scott, James C.; speech acts; weapons of the weak treasurer, lord, 143 Tresham, Sir Thomas, and enclosure, 144 TrõÂ Bior±Ghaoithe and BhaÂis (c.1630), 196 Tuam, archbishop of, and tenurial dues from barony of Gallen, 191 Tuckesse, Anne, brothel keeper in London, 82 Tyacke, Nicholas, historian, 208±9, 224 Tyrell, Francis, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 162 Tyrell, Sir Edward, JP, and attacks on deer park at Stowe, 161, 165 Tyrone, rising in, 198

315

Ulster, Ireland 192±4 rebellion in, 196 assizes in, 193, 196 JPs in, 193 MPs in, 193 sheriffs in, 193 venison, 152 vestries, 220±3 visitation, episcopal, 234, 235±6 Vouche (or Vowtes), Mary, witness in accusation of sexual abuse, 80 Wales, social and political relations, 190 Walsh, Nicholas, dispute with JP in Wicklow, Ireland, 197 Walzer, Michael, historian, 206 Warminster, Wilts., dearth in, 138 Warwickshire enclosure in, 135±7 libels in, 135 Midlands Rising (1607) in, 146 poor rates in, 118, 119 poverty in, 114, 115 weapons of the weak, 8, 114±8, 128±46 See also appeals by the poor; cursing; gossip; grumbling; intercession; insubordination; language; legitimation; libels; Scott, James C.; transcript, hidden; transcript, public Weber, Max, sociologist, 16 Webster, Tom, historian, 208±9 Welch, Saunders, campaigner against bawdy houses, 98 Wentworth, Thomas, Lord Deputy in Ireland, 205 West, John, accused of sexual abuse, 79 Westbury, Bucks., 155 Westminster, statutes of (1275 & 1285), 65 Westminster, sexual abuse in, 70, 72 Wheeler, Mr Edward, of Worcs., and accusation of paternity of illegitimate child, 56 White Wolf, The (1627), 210, 215±6 White, Edward, and tenurial dues from barony of Gallen, 191 White, John, minister in Dorchester, 129±30, 139 Whittlewood Forest, Bucks., 25±6, 150 Wicken, Bucks., 161 Wicklow, Ireland, 192 JPs in, 197 Wilde, Sergeant, and dispute over muster master's fee in Shrops., 175, 180 Wilkinson, Robert, and poverty, 116

316

index

Williams, John, bishop of Lincoln and lord keeper of the great seal, 155 Willmott, mother of man suspected of fathering illegitimate child, 55 Wiltshire dearth in, 138, 141, 146 grand jury, 130 JPs in, 138, 141, 146 overseers of the poor, 130 poverty in, 113, 120 sexual abuse in, 73 Wiseman, Sir Robert, dispute with Edmund Hickeringill, 241±3 witchcraft, 60±1, 131 Wolverston, John, JP in Wicklow, Ireland, 197 women agency of, 17±21, 40, 44±6, 60±2 and markets, 139 and patriarchy, 44±6, 60±2 and rebellion, 199 and religious authority, 216±19 and witchcraft, 60±1 appeals against enclosure, 133 crowds, 60 political participation of, 20

pregnancy and regulation of the body, 46±51 reputation, 90 See also patriarchy Worcestershire illegitimacy in, 53, 55, 56 quarter sessions in, 56 workhouses, 128 Wrighton, William, servant to Sir Edward Tyrell, and attacks on deer park at Stowe 161±2 Wrightson, Keith, historian, 4, 114 Wye, Kent, libel in, 142±3 York complaints about enclosures made at, 139 cursing in, 131 Yorkshire enclosure in, 133, 134 harassment of servant in, 46 illegitimacy in, 47, 48±9 JPs in, 48±9 poor rates in, 118 poverty in, 120±1