Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History

by Bucholz, Robert

  In order to provide a text which is both reader-friendly and interesting, we have tried to deliver it in prose which is clear and, where the material lends itself, not entirely lacking in drama or humor (with what success you, the readers, will judge). In particular, we have tried to provide accurate but compelling accounts of the great “set pieces” of the period; quotations which will stand the test of memory; and examples which enliven as well as inform while avoiding as much as possible the sort of jargon and minutiae that can sometimes put off otherwise enthusiastic readers. Again, this is all part of a conscious pedagogical strategy born of our experience in the classroom.

  That experience has also caused us to realize the importance of “doing history”: of students and readers discovering the richness of early modern England for themselves through contemporary sources; making their own arguments about the past based on interpreting those sources; and, thus, becoming historians (if only for a semester). For that reason, we have also assembled and written a companion to this book entitled Sources and Debates in English History, 1485–1714 (also published by Blackwell). The preface to that book indicates how its specific chapters relate to chapters in this one (see also chapter notes at the end of this book).

  A word about our title and focus. One might ask why we called our book Early Modern England, rather than Early Modern Britain? After all, one of the most useful recent trends in history has been to remind us that at least four distinct peoples share the British Isles and that the English “story” cannot be told in isolation from those of the Irish, the Scots, and the Welsh. (Not to mention continental Europeans, North Americans, Africans, and, toward the end of the story, Asians as well.) We agree. For that reason the text contains significant sections on English involvement with each of the Celtic peoples (as well as some discussion of England’s relationship to the other groups noted above) in the early modern period, all of which are vital for our overall argument. But we believe that it is the English story that will be of most relevance to Americans at the beginning of the twenty-first century. We believe this, in part, because it was most relevant to who Americans were at the beginning of their own story, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We would argue, further, that English notions of right and proper behavior, rights and responsibilities, remain central to national discourse in both Canada and the United States today. Important as have been the cultural inheritance of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales to Americans, the impetus for the inhabitants of each of these countries to cross the Atlantic was always English, albeit often oppressive. Moreover, brutal and exploitative as actual English behavior has often been toward these peoples, the ideals of representative government, rule of law, freedom of the press, religious toleration, even a measure of social mobility, meritocracy, and racial and gender equality which some early modern English men and women fought for and which the nation as a whole slowly (and often partially) came to embrace, are arguably the most important legacy to us of any European culture.

  Finally, as in our own classes, we look forward to your feedback. What (if anything!) did you enjoy? What made no sense? Where did we go on too long? Where did we tell you too little? Please feel free to let us know at earlymodernengland@ yahoo.com. In the meantime, there is an old, wry saying about the experience of “living in interesting times.” As you will soon see, the men and women of early modern England lived in very interesting times. As a result, exploring their experience may sometimes be arduous, but we anticipate that it will never be dull.

  Robert Bucholz

  Newton Key

  Acknowledgments

  No one writes a work of synthesis without contracting a great debt to the many scholars who have labored on monographs and other works. The authors are no exception; our bibliography and notes point to some of the many historians who have become our reliable friends in print if not necessarily in person. We would also like to acknowledge with thanks our own teachers (particularly Dan Baugh, the late G. V. Bennett, Colin Brooks, P. G. M. Dickson, Clive Holmes, Michael MacDonald, Alan Macfarlane, the late Frederick Marcham, and David Underdown), our colleagues, and our students (whose questions over the years have spurred us to a greater clarity than we would have achieved on our own). A special debt is owed to the anonymous readers for the press, whose care to save us from our own errors is much appreciated – even in the few cases where we have chosen to persist in them. We have also benefited greatly from our attendance at seminars and conferences, most notably the Midwest Conference on British Studies, and from hearing papers given by, among others, Lee Beier, Ethan Shagan, Hilda Smith and Retha Warnicke. For advice, assistance, and comment on specific points, we would like to thank Andrew Barclay, Fr. Robert Bireley, SJ, Barrett Beer, Mary Boyd, Regina Buccola, Eric Carlson, Erin Crawley, Brendan Daly, Carolyn Edie, Gary DeKrey, David Dennis, Alan Gitelson, Bridget Godwin, Michael Graham, Mark Fissel, Jo Hays, Roz Hays, Caroline Hibbard, Theodore Karamanski, Carole Levin, Kathleen Manning, Eileen McMahon, Gerard McDonald, Marcy Millar, Paul Monod, Philip Morgan, Matthew Peebles, Jeannette Pierce, James Rosenheim, Barbara Rosenwein, James Sack, Lesley Skousen, Johann Sommerville, Robert Tittler, Joe Ward, Patrick Woodland, Mike Young, Melinda Zook, and the members of H-Albion. We are grateful for the support, advice, and efficiency of Tessa Harvey, Brigitte Lee, Angela Cohen, Janey Fisher, and all the staff at Wiley-Blackwell. We have also received valuable feedback from students across the country and, in particular at Dominican University, Eastern Illinois University, Loyola University, the University of Nebraska, and the Newberry Library Undergraduate Seminar. Our immediate family members have been particularly patient and accommodating. We would especially like to thank Laurie Bucholz for keeping this marriage (not Bob and Laurie but Bob and Newton) together. For this, and much more besides, we thank them all.

  Conventions and Abbreviations

  Citations Spelling and punctuation modernized for early modern quotations, except in titles cited.

  Currency Though we refer mainly to pounds and shillings in the text, English currency included guineas (one pound and one shilling) and pennies (12 pence made one shilling). One pound (£) = 20 shillings (s.) = 240 pence (d.).

  Dates Throughout the early modern period the English were still using the Julian calendar, which was 10–11 days behind the more accurate Gregorian calendar in use on the continent from 1582. The British would not adopt the Gregorian calendar until the middle of the eighteenth century. Further, the year began on March 25. We give dates according to the Julian calendar, but assume the year to begin on January 1.

  Where possible, we provide the birth and death dates of individuals when first mentioned in the text. In the case of monarchs, we also provide regnal dates for their first mention as monarchs.

  BCE Before the common era (equivalent to the older and now viewed as more narrowly ethnocentric designation BC, i.e., Before Christ).

  BL British Library.

  CE Common era (equivalent to AD).

  Fr Father (Catholic priest).

  JP Justice of the peace (see Glossary).

  MP Member of Parliament, usually members of the House of Commons.

  Introduction: England and its People, ca. 1485

  Long before the events described in this book, long before there was an English people, state, or crown, the land they would call home had taken shape. Its terrain would mold them, as they would mold it. And so, to understand the people of early modern England and their experience, it is first necessary to know the geographical, topographical, and material reality of their world. Geography is, to a great extent, Destiny.

  This Sceptered Isle

  The first thing that most non-British people think that they know about England is that it is an island. In fact, this is not strictly true. England is, rather, the southern and eastern portion of a group of islands (an archipelago) in the North Sea known as the British Isles (see map 1). While the whole of the archipelago would be ruled from London by the end of the period covered by this book, and while the
terms “Great Britain” and “British” have, at times, been applied to that whole, it should never be forgotten that the archipelago is home to four distinct peoples, each with their own national histories and customs: the English, the Irish, the Scots, and the Welsh.1 This book will concentrate on the experience of the first of these peoples. But because that experience intertwines with that of the other three, the following pages address their histories as well.

  While the English may share their island, they have always defined themselves as an “island people.” That fact is crucial to understanding them, for an “island people” are bound to embrace an “island mentality.” One place to begin to understand what this means is with a famous passage by England’s greatest poet, William Shakespeare (1564–1616):

  This royal throne of kings, this sceptr’d isle,

  This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

  This other Eden, demi-paradise:

  This fortress built by Nature for herself

  Against infection and the hand of war;

  This happy breed of men, this little world,

  This precious stone set in the silver sea,

  Which serves it in the office of a wall,

  Or as a moat defensive to a house,

  Against the envy of less happier lands:

  This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. (Richard II 2.1)

  Map 1 The British Isles (physical) today.

  John of Gaunt’s dying speech from The Tragedy of King Richard II is justly famous, not least because it says a great deal about how the English view their land. The most obvious point to make about these words (apart from their overt patriotism) is that they portray the water surrounding the British Isles as a barrier. Specifically, England is separated from the mainland of Europe (and France, in particular) by the English Channel, a strait about 21 miles wide at its narrowest (see map 1). This is the “moat defensive” which “serves it [England] in the office of a wall.”

  The Channel has, indeed, served England as a moat defensive against foreign invaders on a number of occasions in its history. As we shall see in chapter 5, in 1588 it prevented invasion by the armies of Philip II, who were to have been transported by the Spanish Armada. In 1805, after the period of time covered by this book, it would block a similar attempt by the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte. And in 1940, within the living memory of some readers, it would frustrate “Operation Sealion,” Hitler’s plan for invasion and occupation by the forces of Nazi Germany. Thus, the English Channel and Great Britain’s island status have been crucial to the preservation of England (and, later, Britain) as a sovereign country, with its own distinct traditions of government and social customs.

  Less tangibly, the English have sometimes thought that the English Channel shielded them from continental ways and ideas. One of the most obvious facts about the English is that they are not the French or the Dutch. Their political, social, and cultural institutions developed along different lines from those of their continental neighbors. This has sometimes led the English to believe that they are set apart from those neighbors, a “little world,” protected by their watery moat from “infection and the hand of war.” To believe that one is set apart, that one’s situation is unlike others, is very close to believing that one is unique. This is, in turn, just a step away from believing that one is somehow superior to others, “the envy of less happier lands.” Perhaps as a result of this feeling, English governments have sometimes acted, first toward the other inhabitants of the British Isles, and later toward the subjects of a worldwide British Empire, as if “God was an Englishman” and that the remaining inhabitants of the planet had been given by Him to be conquered, exploited, even enslaved, by His chosen people. But, for the most part, the “island mentality” is not so much hostile or aggressive as it is indifferent, even mildly condescending, toward Europe. Hence a famous, if apocryphal, nineteenth-century headline: “Fog in Channel; Continent Cut Off.”

  But in fact, most of the time, there is no fog in the Channel and England and the continent are not cut off from each other. This brings us to the other side of the watery coin: the “island mentality” is, to a great extent, a sham, for the English Channel has more often acted as much as a highway or a bridge to Europe than as a barrier. For most of human history, before the invention of the airplane or the automobile, the easiest and safest way to get from place to place was by water. It is true that the Channel, and England’s control of it, prevented the invasions of 1588, 1805, and 1940. But England faced many other invasions in its history, most of which the Channel facilitated. In fact, the people and polity of early modern England were products of successful migrations, indeed invasions, by the Celts from 800 to 200 BCE (before the common era, see Conventions and Abbreviations), the Romans in the first century CE (during the common era, see Conventions and Abbreviations), the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in the fifth and sixth centuries, the Danes in the ninth and tenth centuries, the Normans in 1066, and, within the time frame of this book, the Dutch in 1688.

  Since all of these people decided to settle in England, the notion of English uniqueness must be qualified by the realization that they were and are, like contemporary Americans, a mixture of many different ethnic groups and cultures: those noted above; Welsh, Scots, and Huguenots during the period of this book; and, more recently, Irish, West Indians, Indians, Pakistanis, and others. The people, the culture, even the language of England were forged in a melting pot. Take, for example, the English language. Today, one will occasionally hear commentators complain of the infusion of new words and phrases, slang or sloppiness of speech emanating from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or even parts of Britain itself which are distant in space and attitude from Oxford or London. In their view, these emanations corrupt the “purity” of the Queen’s English. The trouble with this view is that the Queen’s English was never pure. It is, rather, a mongrel born of and enriched by Celtic, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Danish, French, and Dutch influences. Moreover, even within England itself (and certainly within the British Isles), it has always been spoken with a wide variety of regional accents, vocabulary, and syntax. In short, the English language was, and is, a living, evolving construct.

  Migrations and invasions are not the only way in which new cultural influences have come to England. Because water surrounds the British Isles and water serves as a highway as well as a moat, it was probably inevitable that, in order to defend their country and buy and sell their goods, the English would become seafarers. (Obviously, many had to be seafarers to get there in the first place.) This implies a naval tradition in order to protect the islands: this book will return again and again to the admittedly unsteady rise of English naval power. But it also implies a tradition of peaceful overseas trade and the domestic industries that go with it (shipbuilding, carpentry, and cartography, for example). By 1714 the English would be the greatest shipbuilding and trading nation on earth, with London rivaling Amsterdam as its greatest money market. Though they have since relinquished those distinctions, trade and tourism, facilitated by the Channel Tunnel and membership in the European Union, continue to flow freely between England and the continent, and London remains one of the world’s leading financial capitals.

  The wealth from trade and high finance would, in the eighteenth century, lead to military and naval dominance overseas and industrial growth at home. Another theme of this book is how England rose from being a puny and relatively poor little country in the fifteenth century to the dominant kingdom in a state, Great Britain, on the verge of superpower status, in the eighteenth. By the end of the era covered by this book, Great Britain (created when England and Scotland united in 1707) would be the most powerful state in Europe; it would rule an extensive overseas empire; and it would possess the economic base to launch the industrial revolution. In the nineteenth century, after the period covered by this book, that combination of military, naval, and industrial might would make Britain the center of an empire that would cover one-f
ifth of the globe and rule one-quarter of its people. The legacy of that empire is ever-present and controversial for the descendants of those who ruled it and those who were ruled by it. So a very great deal came of England’s being part of an island.

  As this implies, if the “island people” have had a profound impact upon other peoples, so has contact with those peoples and cultures had a profound influence upon them. English people share with Americans the conviction that “imported” often means “better,” whether the item in question is French wine, German automobiles, or Italian art. Indeed, it could be argued that part of the friction that existed between England and France for so much of the period covered by this book was born, on the English side, not of blind hatred or haughty disdain, but of a sometimes sneaking admiration, even envy, for the achievements of French culture.