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Seats of Honor, Seats of Power: The Symbolism of Public Seating in the English Urban Community, c. 1560-1620*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Robert Tittler
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Extract

The use of anthropological methods and models to inform the conceptualization of social history is no longer a novelty by any means. Whereas the historian has long documented and interpreted the events and sometimes the material objects of past times, and placed them in causal relationships, in recent years anthropologists have helped historians to unveil the multiplicity of meaning in a particular sets of events or material objects. Common and effective applications of such collaboration have been made with regard to such concerns as kinship and marriage, the nature of personal honor, hospitality, and the ritualized expression of group identity. Yet historians have also employed an anthropological approach to the ritualistic or semiotic aspects of whole communities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , Summer 1992 , pp. 205 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1992

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding which facilitated the research for this paper, Dr. Edwin DeWindt for encouraging me to write it, and Drs. Marjorie McIntosh, Vanessa Harding and Julia Merrit for reading it in draft.

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20 Cescinsky, Herbert, “An Oak Chair in St. Mary's Hall, Coventry,” Burlington Magazine 39 (Oct. 1921): 170–77Google Scholar, summarized in Cescinsky, and Oribble, , Early English Furniture, 2: 154–163 and figs. 204 and 220Google Scholar; Gloag, , Englishman's Chair, pp. 33–34Google Scholar; Eames, P., Furniture in England… pp. 196–97Google Scholar.

21 Ingram, R. W., ed., Records of Early English Drama, Coventry (Toronto, 1981), pp. 364–365Google Scholar.

22 Public Record Office, STAC 5/C23/37, deposition of James Cooke; STAC 5/C41/1, deposition of George Chatfield.

23 Pegden, N. A., Leicester Guildhall, a Short History and Guide (Leicester, 1981), p. 4Google Scholar; Fosbrooke, T. H. and Skillington, S. H., “The Old Town Hall of Leicester,” Trans. Leicestershire Archeol. Soc. 13 (1923-1924): 1–72Google Scholar, passim.

24 These furnishings seem first to have been noted in Tittler, Robert, Architecture and Power, the Town Hall and the English Urban Community, c. 1500–1640 (Oxford, 1991), plates 9 and 10Google Scholar. The author wishes to thank Mr. Raymond Grange and Ms. Margaretha Smith of the Borough of Beverley Tourist Office, and Mr. Arthur Coates of Beverley for access to this furniture and discussion thereof, and to Mr. Clive Wainwright of the Victoria and Albert Museum for his advice on the same.

25 Raine, A., ed., York Civic Records, 6 (Yorkshire Archeol. Soc., Rec. Sen, 112, 1948 for 1946): 55Google Scholar.

26 Raine, A., ed., York Civic Records, 7 (Yorks. Arch. Soc., Rec. Ser., 115, 1950 for 1949): 168Google Scholar. The reference also illustrates the usage “Lord Mayor,” a designation exclusive, so far as is known, to the chief officials of York and London; Oxford English Dictionary (1st ed.), vide “Lord Mayor.”

27 Department of the Environment, “List of Buildings of Historical Interest, District of S. Hams, Devon” (1978), pp. 43–44Google Scholar (notes by Michael Laithwaite).

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30 E.g., Hirst, Derek, The Representatives of the People? Voters and Voting under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 45–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark and Slack, Crisis and Order, Introduction; and Clark and Slack, English Towns in Transition, ch. 9; Hoskins, W. G., The Age of Plunder, England in the Age of Henry VIII, 1500–1547 (1976), p. 42Google Scholar. The author is currently preparing an essay on this theme, entitled “The Apotheosis of the Mayoralty, c. 1500-1640.”

31 See Tittler, Architecture and Power, chs. 3-4.

32 This point emerges from an examination of Statutes of the Realm, in which mayoral powers are frequently equated with those of the J.P., a survey of charters of incorporation as they appear in the Calendar of Patent Rolls, and in numerous town by-laws in which the blossoming of mayoral authority is almost ubiquitously reflected. Cf. also Bellamy, John G., Criminal Law and Society in Late Medieval and Tudor England (Gloucester and New York, 1984), chs. 1 and 2Google Scholar; Henderson, E. G., Foundations of English Administrative Law… (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), chs. 1 and 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sidney, and Webb, Beatrice, English Local Government, The Manor and the Borough, 2 vols. (1908), chs. 2, 3, and 6Google Scholar; and Bateson, M., ed., Borough Customs, 2 vols. (Selden Soc., 1904 and 1906)Google Scholar. The best contemporary description of the Mayor's role in a highly developed example of municipal government in this era is Hooker's, JohnDescription of the Citie of Excester, ed., Harte, W. J., Schopp, J. W. and Tapley-Soper, H., (Exeter, 1919), 3: 804–06Google Scholar.

33 Jewitt, Llewellyn and Hope, W. H. St. John, The Corporate Plate and Insignia of Office of the Cities and Towns of England and Wales, 2 vols. (1895), 1: xxiii–xlGoogle Scholar; Tweedy-Smith, R., The History, Law, Practice and Procedure Relating to Mayors, Aldermen and Councillors (1934), ch. 6Google Scholar; Tittler, , Architecture and Power, pp. 35-7, 117–18Google Scholar.

34 Aries, P. and Duby, George, eds., A History of Private Life, (New York, 1987), 1: 8Google Scholar.

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37 Grant, Michelle, “The Person of the King: Ritual and Power in a Ghanaian State,” in Cannadine, David and Price, Simon, eds., Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 298–330Google Scholar. See also Wilks, Ivor, Asante in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 110-112, 391, 430 and 661Google Scholar; and Kyerematen, A. A. Y., “The Royal Stools of Ashanti,” Africa, 38, i, 2–5Google Scholar. My thanks to Prof. J. D. Esseks for his insights into Ghanian culture.

38 Gilbert, , “The Person of the King,” pp. 318–19Google Scholar.

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40 Agius, Pauline, “Late Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Furniture at Oxford,” Furniture History 7 (1971): 72–76Google Scholar; Chinnery, , Oak Furniture, p. 19Google Scholar; Nelson, Alan, Records of Early English Drama, Cambridge, 2 vols. (Toronto and Buffalo, 1989), 1: 507–08Google Scholar. For a presentation of patriarchal authority in the family during this period, see Stone, Lawrence, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London, 1977), especially ch. 5Google Scholar. It is probably superfluous to note the importance of priority seating at court. When the Duchess of Alba, accompanying the entourage of Philip II of Spain following his marriage to Mary Tudor, came to court, both Queen and Duchess insisted on the courtesy of sitting lower than the other. In the end they both sat on the floor! Loades, David, Mary Tudor, a Life (London, 1989), p. 33Google Scholar.

41 See n. 5 above. Corpus Christi pageants have been documented in Wakefield, York, Coventry, Chester and in an unidentified city which sounds much like Lincoln, but numerous other pageants performed elsewhere undoubtedly often served a similar social function. See Nelson, Alan H., The Medieval English Stage, Corpus Christi Pageants and Plays (Chicago, 1974)Google Scholar, passim.

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46 Churchwardens' Accounts, St. Lawrence, Reading, 1498-1626, Berkshire Record Office MS. D/P 97/5/2, p. 349. I am indebted to the Records of Early English Drama project at the University of Toronto for access to microfilms of these and other Reading churchwardens' accounts noted below, and especially to Dr. Alexandra Johnston for her advice concerning these records.

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51 This and subsequent conclusions about the identity of prominent citizens rests on the correlation of the names of Reading office holders, especially its Capital and Secondary Burgesses, with those listed as renting seats in the same years. The reprinted lists of officials may be found in J.M. Guilding, Records of Reading, 4 vols. (Reading, 1897- ), 1: passim, for the appropriate years.

52 Churchwardens' Accounts, St. Lawrence's, Reading, 1498-1626, Berkshire R.O. MS. D/P 97/5/2.

53 Churchwardens' Accounts, St. Mary's, Reading, 1550-1642, Berkshire Record Office MS. D/P 98/5/1.

54 Berkshire R.O. MS. D/P 98/5/1, p. 90.

55 Such listings seem not infrequently to have been kept, though most have not survived. Berkshire R.O. MS. D/P 98/5/1, p. 92 for 1585, p. 94 for 1586 and p. 96 for 1587.

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