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II. The Gentry of Kent in 1640

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

Peter Laslett
Peter Laslett
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Fellow of St John's College
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Extract

Students of history are liable to assume that the entity ‘England’ has existed at all points in her past in roughly the same way as she exists in their present–not the same England of course, but the same sort of phenomenon, corresponding to a strictly similar social and political reality, apprehended in the same sort of way by contemporaries. When they read statements about any period, they tend to feel confident that the word ‘England’ is one that can be taken for granted, as representing something self-evident or something which can easily be explained in terms of geography and political history.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , 1948 , pp. 148 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1948

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References

1 Fuller, Thomas, Worthies of England (ed. Nichols, , 1811),Google Scholar esp. Introduction, ch. xix. He claims (p. 51) that ‘this method of marshalling them is new, but the early county historians used it’ (e.g. Lambard, , Perambulation, 1576, p. 58).Google Scholar John Walker in arranging his Sufferings of the Clergy (1714)Google Scholar sorted the names first under colleges in the universities, and then alphabetically, but by county under each letter. Scholarships linked with counties may have represented local intellectual tradition, as1 well as pride of birthplace in their founders.

2 This phrase comes from Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha. It is interesting to realize that the political thinkers of the seventeenth century, when they referred to the ‘people’, often intended only this sort of citizen. For the subject of patriarchalism in the seventeenth century, see Patriarcha, and the other political writings of Sir Robert Filmer, edited by the author of the present article (Oxford, 1948).Google Scholar A fully detailed account of the life of this writer and of the part he played in the intellectual, political and social life of the county community of Kent will be found in a forthcoming number of [The] W[illia]m & Mary Coll[ege] Q[uarter]ly (Williamsburg, Va.).

3 Its first result was the foundation of exactly similar county communities in Virginia. The picture drawn by Bruce, P. A. in Social Life of Virginia in the 17th Century (2nd edition; Lynchburg, Va., 1927)Google Scholar is of a local community with lineaments even more strongly marked than in England, perhaps because there were then no towns of any consequence.

4 Comparison between the political speculation of the generation of Long Parliament and the generation of 1688 shows, however, that surprisingly little progress seems to have been made even over such a prolonged period. See, for example, the article by MacLean, A. H. on ‘George Lawson and John Locke’ in this Journal for 1947,Google Scholar which shows that the whole of Locke's political thought had been anticipated a generation earlier; and compare the case of Filmer (loc. cit.) who wrote in 1638-42 a work which was not read until 1680 but which was then treated as if the writer were still active.

5 Taylor, John, the Poet, Water, The… Cities, Townes, Castles…of Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, etc. (1636)Google Scholar.

6 See Thomson, G. Scott, The Twysden Lieutenancy Papers, 1583-1668 (Ashford, 1926)Google Scholar.

7 Gardiner, S. R., History of England, 1603-1743 (London, 1884), x, 182:Google Scholar ‘If any one moment can be selected as that in which the Civil War became inevitable it is that of the vote of March 28 by which the Kentish petitioners were treated as criminals.’

8 Whitelocke, Bulstrode, Memorials (Oxford, 1853), 11, 324,Google Scholar says of the decisive action in Fairfax's campaign against the Kentish rebels at Maidstone in June 1648: ‘Both sides did their part with much valour, and there was scarce any action in the former war more desperate and hazardous and better performed than this.’

9 Lambard, William, A Perambulation of Kent (1576).Google Scholar The writing of this book belongs to the year 1570 or a little later.

10 See the Victoria County History of Kent (1926), vol. II, passim, especially pp. 112 ff.Google Scholar The monastic foundations of Kent were small in proportion to the institutions of the secular clergy, who had two cathedrals within this one county. But their lands were important and the great mass of evidence presented in Hasted's, History of Kent (4 folio vols.; Canterbury, 1778–1799),Google Scholar makes it possible to trace them from one speculative owner to another, until they reach the hands of a newly established family, or the old family on its way up in the world. The landless parvenu seldom seems to have set himself up once and for all with the monastic property which he bought.

11 Tate, W. E., Enclosures in Kent, Arch[aeologia] Cant[iana], LVII (1943)Google Scholar.

12 For the lawyers, see Foss, E., ‘Legal Celebrities of Kent’, Arch. Cant, v (1863).Google Scholar The prudent policy of Sir Robert Filmer's father in providing for the five of his nine sons who came t o manhood is a good example of the way in which this movement from Kentish manor house to the London social, business and professional world was set in motion. His heir was educated as a lawyer and a gentleman, his second son was sent to Court as a Gentleman of His Majesty's Body, the third was set up in overseas trade in the city and financed with the family's capital t o the tune of £550. But the fourth, though destined for the Church, emigrated to Virginia. See Wm. & Mary Coll. Qly, loc. cit., and the Filmer papers at the Archives office of the Kent County Council at Maidstone.

13 Fuller, Thomas, op. cit. 1, 477–80,Google Scholar under ‘Kent’. He is wrong about the age of the cherry in England. Fisher, F. J., Econ[omic] Hist[ory] Rev[iew], v. 1934-1935,Google Scholar ‘The Growth of the London Food Market, 1540–1640’, contains some remarkable figures on the expansion of supplies, especially from Kent, which had three-quarters of the market in cereals alone.

14 Nef, J. U., Econ. Hist. Rev. v (1934); VII (1936)Google Scholar.

15 A similar coincidence, though then it was a case of coal and iron, founded the technological supremacy of Northern England in the eighteenth-century economy. The rise and achievements of the Wealden iron industry were quite as rapid and as startling in their small way under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts. The area of this industry lay more in Sussex than in Kent, however; see Straker, E., Wealden Iron (1931)Google Scholar.

16 This was certainly true of the Filmers, whose rise to prosperity is a pattern of these developments. They were one-manor minor gentry until a Robert Filmer went to Court and got into legal big business under Elizabeth. He invested his capital in small parcels of land in the wooded areas and in Romney Marsh, and he bought an iron forge in the Kentish Weald. Much of his estate was left in liquid form. In the Filmer family papers, as also in the Twysden papers and others of the time, most of the transactions recorded relate to woodlands and woodland products; see also Lodge, E. C., The Account Book of a Kentish Estate (1927)Google Scholar.

17 The well-known jingle:

A Knight of Wales

A Yeoman of Kent

A gentleman of Cales [Calais]

With his yearly rent

A laird of the North Countree

Will buy them out all three.

is quoted in Campbell, Mildred, The English Yeoman (New Haven, 1942), fromGoogle ScholarVaynes, J. H. L. de, The Kentish Garland (2 vols.; Hertford, 1881)Google Scholar.

18 Nichols, John, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth (3 vols., 1823) andGoogle ScholarProgresses of James I (4 vols., 1828).Google Scholar Again the Filmer family is typical: Filmer's brother was in the household of Charles I, his son in those of Charles I and II.

19 For this and for the general history of the English gentry in the two generations up to 1640 see Tawney, R. H., Earn. Hist. Rev. XI (1941),Google Scholar ‘The Rise of the Gentry’. For their growing wealth, Clark, G. N., The Wealth of England, 1496-1760 (1946), pp. 112, etcGoogle Scholar.

20 The difference between this area and the rest of the country is a commonplace amongst writers of that time and of our own. But the exact variation in the texture of social life near the capital and far away from it has never been worked out.

21 See, for example, The Oxinden and Peyton Letters, ed. Gardiner, D. (1933 and 1937).Google Scholar John Evelyn's sophisticated Diary obviously began as a report on his travels abroad. Shorter and less accomplished essays like this were common in the manor houses of the home counties. The Filmers seemed to have regarded travel in France as a normal part of a man's education.

22 E.g. Sir Robert Filmer, who rented ‘The Porters Lodge in the Bowling Alley’ from the chapter of Westminster: or Sir Roger Twysden, who had a house in Red Cross Street.

23 This was exactly the situation with the Oxindens—see n. 21 above. For a description of the attitude of those in the country to those in the town at a later date see The Journeys of Celia Fiennes, ed. Morris, C. (1947). Her London relatives were Filmers, whose relationship to the main stock has not been determinedGoogle Scholar.

24 Sir Robert Filmer's name first appears in the Maidstone Quarter Sessions Books in 1636. His immediate companions on the bench were two antiquarians with national reputations, an Egyptologist and an economic theorist. Some thirty-five odd surnames appearing between 1635 and 1643 in this book, which is preserved at Maidstone, have been investigated. Of these no less than fifteen belonged to families noticed for literary achievement in the Dictionary of National Biography. (See Wm. & Mary Coll. Qly, loc. cit.)

25 Arch. Cant. 1, 52.

26 Both Filmer and Twysden were amongst them. The former is known to have written four theological tracts, including a complete system of theology. Only one was published, the Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. The latter wrote extensively on ecclesiastical history and produced a treatise named Theologica.

27 See the Proceedings in Kent 1640, edited by Larking, L. B. for the Camden Society in 1862Google Scholar.

28 For Sir Roger Twysden, see Douglas, D. C. in English Scholars (London, 1939)Google Scholar; Sir J. R. Twisden, completed by Ward, C. H. Dudley, The Family of Twisden and Twysden (London, 1939)Google Scholar and Kemble's Introduction to his Government of England (Camden Society, 1849)Google ScholarPubMed.

29 He lists an Anthony Sandes, who is not in the genealogies.

30 Reginald Scott was a distant relative of Sir Robert Filmer, who was himself converted to scepticism on the subject of witchcraft and also wrote a rationalistic pamphlet on the subject, again as a result of experience as a Kentish magistrate. Scott's, Reginald other work, A Perfect Platforme of a Hoppe Garden (1574, 1576, 1578)Google Scholar also fits well into the pattern of the life of the county: it was the first treatise of its kind in English. See Scott's, J. R. Memorials of the Scott Family of Scotts Hall, Kent (1874) andGoogle ScholarNicholson's, Brinsley edition of the Discoverie (1886)Google Scholar.

31 The main authority for this and for other genealogies quoted is Berry, William, Pedigrees of Families of the County of Kent (London, 1830). See alsoGoogle ScholarGenealogical Memoranda relating to the Lambard Family (privately printed, 1869)Google Scholar.

32 Eirenarcha; or of the office of Justice of the Peace…gathered 1579 [the year Lambard joined the bench] (London, 1581, 1582, 1588, 1594, 1500. 1602, 1607, 1610, etc.).Google Scholar He wrote an almost equally popular work on the minor officials of the local administration, Duties of Constables, Borsholders, Tithingmen…Churchwardens (1583, 1584, 1594, 1599, 1602, 1606, 1610, etc.)Google Scholar.

33 Kilburne, Richard, Brief Survey of the County of Kent (1657),Google ScholarPhilipot, Thomas, Villare Cantianum (1659)Google Scholar.

34 The subject of the origins of an interest in constitutional history is only now beginning to attract the attention of historians. There have been several British Academy lectures on individual scholars, e.g. Powicke, F. M. on Spelman, 1930,Google Scholar but the only general treatment the subject has received is in Douglas, D. C., English Scholars (1939).Google Scholar This book deals with a later generation and tends to ignore the atmosphere in which the earlier pioneers began the task.

35 ‘That man of yeares,

Grave Mr. Seldon, who doth now repent

Hee ever searched the Antiquities of Kent.’

Mercurius Elenticus for 19 Ap. 1648,Google Scholar Brit. Mus. E 436 (9).

36 Especially for his formal works on Anglo-Saxon institutions, Apxaionomia (1568)Google Scholar; Archion (1635)Google Scholar.

37 See the Introduction to Sir Filmer's, RobertQuaestio Quodlibetica (1620-1630)Google Scholar written by Sir Twysden, Roger when he ‘adventured the putting of it to the press’ in 1653: alsoGoogle ScholarWm. & Mary Coll. Qly loc. cit. The manuscripts on their rounds were not all of this character. One was the unpublished form of Hooker's eighth book.

38 It is as typical in style and content of works of this type as its author of the men who wrote them. It was not the only treatment on political obligation to make its appearance as a handwritten treatise for Kentish squires: at about the same time Twysden began writing his Government of England. The three crucial themes of discussion for the ruling classes between 1600 and 1650 were usury, witchcraft and political obligation: Filmer wrote on all of them.

39 See R. B. Davis, ‘America in George Sandys’ “Ovid”', Wm. & Mary Coll. Qly, 3rd series, IV (1947); 297Google Scholar.

40 Records of the Virginia Company of London, edited Kingsbury, S. M. (Washington, 1906-1935), I, 232.Google Scholar The proposer of the motion was another important Kentish promoter of the Company, Sir Dudley Digges (vide supra).

41 See P. A. Bruce, op. cit.

42 The first of these families speaks for itself. The second quickly became one of the richest families in North America. Neither was of specifically Kentish origin, though there was at least one Washington in Maidstone in late Elizabethan times, and the Randolphs of Virginia probably did come from the Kentish branch of that extensive family. For a Kentish clergyman whose sons did go to Virginia and prosper after he had been turned out by Parliament, see Walker, John, Sufferings of the Clergy (London, 1714), Part 11, p. 267, subGoogle ScholarHorsemonden, Daniel; and compare Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, XV, 181–2Google Scholar.

43 Clarendon's, History of the Rebellion (Macray's edition, 1888), v, 263.Google Scholar A list of such cavalier soldier settlers is given in Wm. & Mary Coll. Qly, 2nd series, VI, 89.

44 The evidence for the Virginia connexions of the Kentish gentry is scattered through the files of historical journals published in the southern states of the U.S.A., especially The William and Mary Quarterly (Williamsburg, Virginia, 1st, 2nd and 3rd series, 1892.), andGoogle ScholarThe Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (Richmond, Virginia, 1893.).Google Scholar The material is not arranged to correspond with English county division, of course, and the lack of references to the date makes it rather difficult to handle. The two volumes of Brown's, AlexanderThe Genesis of the United States (London, 1890)Google Scholar remains the most reliable source: their scope and usefulness are remarkable. More modern works are those of Wertenbaker, T. J., especially his Planters of Colonial Virginia (Princeton, N.J., 1922) andGoogle ScholarWright's, Louis B.The First Gentlemen of Virginia (San Marino, Calif. 1940).Google Scholar A single instance of a complex of Kentish families and how it became intertwined with the early life of Virginia tells the whole story. The families of Digges, Chicheley, Wyatt, Call, Skipwith, Argall, Filmer, Randolph, Bathurst, were all connected by about 1650, the original link being the ancient Kentish family of Kemp. Up to that year they produced three governors of the colony (Digges, Chicheley, Wyatt), two important pioneers (Sir Dudley Digges and Sir Samuel Argall), and five families of settlers (Film er, Randolph, Bathurst, Call, Skipwith) Of the thirty-five surnames of Kentish magistrates analyzed in Wm. & Mary Coll. Qly., seventeen appear in the records of the Virginia Company or the Virginia Colony.

45 See Sir Twysden's, RogerJournal, Arch. Cant. I–IV.Google Scholar The proceedings at the two Assizes of March and July of that year are a most convincing illustration of the group consciousness of the Kentish gentry. They were the first to use the Assizes as the ‘assembled body’ of the county for the purpose of petitioning.