Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:08:42.390Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How Information Spread Among the Gentry, 1550-1640

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

F. J. Levy
F. J. Levy*
Affiliation:
University of Washington
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During the first half of the sixteenth century, the English gentry came to realize that its continued access to the controls of power would depend less on birth and military prowess and more on literacy and learning. As a result, the sons of gentlemen flooded into the grammar schools, where they acquired a good knowledge of classical Latin and, rather less commonly, the rudiments of Greek. Together with the languages of the ancients, the schoolboys imbibed at least something of classical ideals. Principally they learned the duty of service to the common weal, a service to be expressed politically. That ideal had permeated Roman education and, through the writings of humanist educational theorists such as Erasmus, was embodied in the curricula of the English grammar schools and universities. Young men were trained in the arts of argument. They learned the trick of compiling a commonplace book, under whose artfully devised headings they entered the “flowers” of their reading. Then, when occasion demanded it, in conversation or letter, in the law courts or parliament, they could search out the appropriate topos, in their memories or in their notes, and bring to bear the weight of classical (and even modern) wisdom. So much, indeed, might be learned by all grammar school boys. Those who proceeded to the universities added further weapons to their armories. Since the universities existed principally to train theologians and preachers, a function whose importance increased as it became necessary to defend English Protestantism from the attacks of Catholics and separatists, they emphasized dialectic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , Spring 1982 , pp. 11 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

An earlier, much shorter version of this essay was read at the Past and Present Society meeting in 1979. The subsequent expansion was much assisted by a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

1 Besides the standard works of Hexter, J.H., Stone, Lawrence, Simon, Joan, Charlton, Kenneth and Kearney, H.F., see Jardine, Lisa, “Humanism and the Sixteenth Century Cambridge Arts Course,” History of Education, IV, 1 (1975), 16–31Google Scholar.

2 Cressy, David, Literacy and the Social Order (Cambridge, 1980), esp. p. 119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Cliffe, J.T., The Yorkshire Gentry (London, 1969), pp. 69, 73, 77Google Scholar. Cliffe's large numbers derive from a very broad definition of gentility: anyone with a coat of arms. The Lancashire gentry was notably less well educated than that of other counties: Blackwood, B.G., The Lancashire Gentry and the Great Rebellion, 1640-60. [Chetham Society, 3rd ser., xxv] (Manchester, 1978), 24–25Google Scholar. Gleason, J.H., The Justices of the Peace in England 1558 to 1640 (Oxford, 1969), p. 84Google Scholar.

4 While the literature on the gentry is vast, there is no consensus on any precise definition of the subject. My own usage of “gentry” is equally imprecise. Those members of the group whom I mention specifically all held substantial acreage: none were worth less than one hundred pounds a year. I have excluded members of the peerage, however recently ennobled, the principal officers of state, and the clergy. Since part of my purpose is to show what was available to an “ordinary” country gentleman, I have also excluded the great collectors like Sir Simonds D'Ewes.

5 Feather, John, “Cross-Channel Currents: Histroiical Bibliography and L'Histoire du Livre,” The Library, 6th ser., II (1980), 6–7Google Scholar, emphasizes the importance to provincial booksellers of the salt of items other than books.

6 Blagden, Cyprian, The Stationers' Company. A History, 1403-1959 (London, 1960), pp. 65ffGoogle Scholar; Gray, W.W. and Boswell, E., Records of the Court of the Stationers' Company 1576 to 1602 (London: Bibliographical Society, 1930), xxxixn, 25Google Scholar; Rude, Donald W. and Berry, Lloyd E., “Tanner Manuscript No. 33: New Light on the Stationers' Company in the Early Seventeenth Century,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, LXVI (1972), 105–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arber, E., A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1664-1640, (London, 1875–1894), II, 779–82Google Scholar. See also McKenzie, D.F., “Printers of the Mind: Some Notes on Bibliographical Theories and Printing-House Practices”, Studies in Bibliography, XXII (1969), 1–75Google Scholar.On prices, Johnson, Francis R., “Notes on English Retail Book-prices, 1550-1640,” The Library, 5th ser., V., 2 (1950), 83–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; supplemented by H.S. Bennett, “Notes on English Retail Bookprices, 1480-1560,” ibid., 5thser., V, 3 (1950), 172-78. On costs of production. McKenzie, , “Printers of the Mind,” pp. 33–34nGoogle Scholar.

7 Siebert, F.S., Freedom of the Press in England, 1476-1776 (Urbana, 1965), pp. 21–161Google Scholar; Blagden, , Stationers' Company, pp. 70-72, 118–25Google Scholar; Arber, , Transcript, III, 677Google Scholar; Greg, W. W, Some Aspects and Problems of London Publishing between 1550 and 1650 (Oxford, 1956) pp. 41–62Google Scholar. See also Loades, D.M., “The Theory and Practice of Censorship in Sixteenth-Century England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., XXIV (1974), 141–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Klotz, Edith L., “A Subject Analysis of English Imprints for Every Tenth Year from 1480 to 1640,” Huntington Library Quarterly, I, 4 (1938), 417–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While this article uses the old Short Title Catalogue, I have no reason to believe that use of the new edition (when completed) will make much difference to the proportions between years, though the total number of titles will certainly rise.

9 Simmons, Judith, “Publications of 1623,” The Library, 5th ser., XXI, 3 (1966), 207–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Capp, Bernard, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs, 1500-1800 (London, 1979)Google Scholar, appendix, s. v. Gabriel Frende, Walter Gray, Henry Hill, Thomas Johnson, Robert Watson, Robert Westhawe.

11 For books published outside London, Clough, E.A., A Short-Title Catalogue arranged geographically (London, 1969)Google Scholar and McKerrow, R.B., A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England, Scotland and Ireland, Bibliographical Society (London, 1910)Google Scholar. Some of these books were co-published by a Londoner.

12 Morgan, Paul, “The Oxford Book Trade,” in Studies in the Book Trade in Honour of Graham Pollard, Oxford Bibliographical Society (1975), pp. 71–89Google Scholar.

13 British Library, Egerton MS. 2713 (Gawdy papers), f. 175 (Bridgham, 9 April 1585.)

14 Johnson, “Notes on English Retail Book-prices.”

15 Clair, Colin, “Christopher Plantin's Trade-Connexions with England and Scotland,” The Library, 5th ser., XIV (1959), 28–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Pollard, Graham and Ehrman, Albert, The Distribution of Boohs by Catalogue, Roxburghe Club (Cambridge, 1965) pp. 85–102Google Scholar.

17 Catalogue Librorum in diversis locis Italiae emptorum, Anno 1628. Qui Londini in officina Fetherstoniana, prostant venales (London, 1628)Google Scholar; Catalogus … 1636 (London, 1637)Google Scholar.

18 Catalogus Librorum Ex praecipuis Italiae Emporiis Selectorum per Robertum Martinum. Apud quern venales habentur (London, 1639)Google Scholar; Pollard and Ehrman, Distribution of Books by Catalogue. For Barrington, see below, p..

19 Morgan, Victor, “Cambridge University and ‘The Country,’ 1560-1640,” in The University in Society, ed. Stone, Lawrence (Princeton, 1974), I, 229–233Google Scholar. Also, Lewis, Thomas Taylor (ed.) Letters of the Lady Brilliana Harley, Camden Society (London, 1854), 13-14, 16, 20, 27Google Scholar, etc.: the letters are full of references to books exchanged by Lady Brilliana and her son, Edward, a student at Oxford.

20 Arber, , Transcript, V, liiGoogle Scholar. The omission of York is suspicious. Moreover, Plomer, Henry R., “Some Elizabethan Book Sales,” The Library, 3rd ser., VII (1916), 318–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses a lawsuit involving Robert Scott, bookseller of Norwich, in 1571; Scott is not on the list.

21 McKenzie, D.F., “Apprenticeship in the Stationers' Company, 1555-1640,” The Library, 5th ser., XIII (1958), 292–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The point is elaborated in Pollard, Graham, “The English Market for Printed Books,” Publishing History, XV (1978), 7–48Google Scholar.

22 Baldwin, T.W., Shakspere's Love's Labor's Won (Carbondale, 1957)Google Scholar, prints and analyzes a binding fragment identified as part of an account book belonging to Christopher Hunt; Pollard, Graham, “The English Market,” p. 14Google Scholar, suggested that the account book was concerned with Hunt's activities at Blandford Fair.

23 Baldwin, Shakspere's Love's Labor's Won, transcription of first leaf recto; Plomer, H.R., “An Exeter Bookseller, His Friends and Contemporaries,” The Library, 3rd ser., VIII (1917), 128–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for John Gropall (ob. 1553-4); McKerrow, Dictionary; Plomer, H.R., “More Petitions to Archbishop Laud,” The Library, 3rd ser., X (1919), 135–36Google Scholar.

24 Palliser, D.M. and Selwyn, D.G., “The Stock of a York Stationer, 1538,” The Library, 5th ser., XXVII (1972), 207–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the total number of titles listed was 60+.

25 Davies, R., A Memoir of the York Press (Westminster, 1868), pp. 342–71Google Scholar. See also, Palliser, D.M., Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), pp. 170–71Google Scholar.

26 Details of Hoby's reading may be found scattered throughout Meads, Dorothy M. (ed.) The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, (London, 1930)Google Scholar; there is evidence of visits to York, but no indication of where they purchased books. Peacock, E., “Inventories made for Sir William and Sir Thomas Fairfax …,” Archaeologia, XLVIII (1884), 152–53Google Scholar; Cliffe, , Yorkshire Gentry, p. 81Google Scholar.

27 Pollard, and Ehrman, , Distribution, pp. 124–39Google Scholar.

28 Stewart-Brown, R., “A Chester Bookseller's Lawsuit of 1653,” The Library, 4th ser., IX (1928–1929), 53–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Chartres, J.A., “Road Carrying in England in the Seventeenth Century: Myth and Reality,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XXX, 1 (1977), 73–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 McClure, N.E. (ed.) The Letters of John Chamberlain, American Philosophical Society, (Philadelphia, 1939)Google Scholar; Collins, Arthur (ed.) Letters and Memorials of State, (London, 1746)Google Scholar; British Library, Add. MS. 11, 042, ff. 87-88. The word “intelligencer” first came into use in the 1590s.

30 British Library, Add. MS. 33,935. The quotations are on f.25 (4 March 1618) and f. 46 (1623); “newsletters” are on f. 308 and f. 317 (1631). Moreton was also getting copies of parliamentary speeches.

31 On the mechanisms by which news was disseminated, I have had much help from Mr. Richard Cust's admirable paper, “The Circulation of News in the 1620's.” I am most grateful to Mr. Cust for sending me a copy of his manuscript. Pory's, John letters are in The Court and Times of Charles the First, ed. Birch, Thomas (London, 1848)Google Scholar; there is an account of his career as a newswriter in Powell, William S., John Pory 1572-1636 (Chapel Hill, 1977), pp. 55–56Google Scholar.

32 The Court and Times of James the First, ed. Birch, Thomas (London, 1848), II, 110, 113Google Scholar.

33 Mead's letters are scattered through both series of The Court and Times; the quotation comes from the James the First, II, 253Google Scholar.

34 The Court and Times of Charles the First, II, 101Google Scholar.

35 Mercurius Britannicus, #28 (June 28, 1625), 5Google Scholar. For a general account, Frank, Joseph, The Beginnings of the English Newspaper 1620-1660 (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), pp. 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 The Court and Times of Charles the First, II, 186Google Scholar.

37 Notestein, Wallace and Relf, Frances H. (eds.), Commons Debates for 1629 (Minneapolis, 1921),pp. xliGoogle Scholar.

38 The Court and Times of Charles the First, I, 149Google Scholar.

39 Green, M.A.E. (ed.) Diary of John Rous, [Camden Society] (London, 1856), p. 44Google Scholar. Dr. Nicholas Tyacke kindly informed me of the details of Lushington's sermon at Oxford. There is a good account of Rous and his sources in Mr. Cust's article.

40 The Court and Times of James the First, II, 272Google Scholar. The passion for news soon became the butt for satire. Not only did Ben Jonson set a play in a news-office (The Staple of Newes, acted 1625, published 1631), but the entire first part of Alexandrinus, Clitus [Brathwaite, Richard], Whimzies (1631)Google Scholar concerned itself with almanac-makers, ballad-mongers and coranto-coiners, while the last of Donald Lupton's country characters was “Currantoes or weekly Newes” (London and the Countrey Carbonadoed [1632], 140–43)Google Scholar.

41 Bohannon, Mary Elizabeth, “A London Bookseller's Bill: 1635-1639,” The Library, 4th ser., XVIII (1938), 417–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 423, 428, 437.

42 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1637-8, pp. 444, 594; ibid., 1638-9, pp. 371, 420, 474; ibid., 1639, p. 325; ibid., 1640, p. 87; on Calley, Huxley, Gervas, Endymion Porter (London, 1959), pp. 27–31Google Scholar.

43 Sharpe, Kevin, Sir Robert Cotton 1586-1631 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 73–80Google Scholar.

44 The Parochial Libraries of the Church of England, Central Council for the Care of Churches (1959), pp. 16–17Google Scholar; Edwards, E., Memoirs of Libraries, (London, 1859), I, 757–58Google Scholar; Stephen, George A., Three Centuries of a City Library (Norwich, 1917), pp. 4–5Google Scholar.

45 Tovey, Charles, The Bristol City Library: its founders and benefactors (London and Bristol, 1853), pp. 1–13Google Scholar. The quotation is on pp. 11-12.

46 Evans, J., “Extracts from the Private Account Book of Sir William More of Loseley,” Archaeologia, XXXVI (1855), pp. 288–92Google Scholar.

47 Bohannon, “A London Bookseller's Bill”; Keeler, M.F., The Long Parliament 1640-1641. A Biographical Study of its Members, [American Philosophical Society] (Philadelphia, 1954), pp. 97–99Google Scholar.

48 The collection is P.R.O., S.P. 20/7. It has been described by Roy, Ian, “The Libraries of Edward, 2nd Viscount Conway, and others: an Inventory and Valuation of 1643,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XLI, #103 (1968), 35–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; he concentrates on Conway's books. A slightly variant copy of Sir Thomas Bludder's inventory was printed from British Library, Add. MS. 28,191 by Lievsay, J.L. and Davis, R.B., “A Cavalier Library—1643,” Studies in Bibliography, VI (1954), 141–60Google Scholar.

49 P.R.O., S.P. 20/7, ff. 35v-36r. Others of his goods and chattels were valued in B.L., Add. MS. 28, 191.

50 P.R.O., S.P. 20/7, ff. 64r-65r. Captain Brocas's more diverse collection of 125 volumes, valued at £16 0 s. 7 d. contained fewer very expensive books and sets.

51 Ibid., ff. 9v-11r. Some of the biographical detail derives from Pearl, Keeler, Long Parliament, pp. 205–6Google Scholar, and from Valerie, , London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1961), p. 101Google Scholar.

52 The percentages given here can be taken only as indicators. Not every book in a collection was listed separately—the least valuable were simply lumped together in bundles. The definition of “religious books” inevitably raises problems, e.g. whether to consider Eusebius as religion or history. Some books have resisted every effort at identification.

53 It should be noted, however, that newsbooks and corantoes would be included in the bundles of miscellaneous and unnamed pamphlets.

54 The system of distribution was lubricated by the extension of credit, not only from publisher to bookseller but from bookseller to customer. John Foster and Christopher Hunt were owed money by their customers; Hunt, indeed, was selling one book on the installment plan. See also Plomer, “Some Elizabethan Book Sales”.

55 Holdsworth, Richard, “Directions for a Student in the Universitie,” printed in Fletcher, H.F., The Intellectual Development of John Milton, II (Urbana, 1961), 623–55Google Scholar, esp. 647-48; the authorship and date have been discussed by Trentman, John A., “The authorship of Directions for a student in the Universitie,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, VII, 2 (1978), 170–83Google Scholar. See also Curtis, Mark H., Oxford and Cambridge in Transition, 1558-1642 (Oxford, 1959), pp. 131–34Google Scholar.

56 Peacham, Henry, The Compleat Gentleman (London, 1634)Google Scholar. See also Levy, F.J., “Henry Peacham and the Art of Drawing,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXXVII (1974), 174–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Houghton, Walter E. Jr., “The English Virtuoso in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of the History of Ideas, III(1942), 51-73, 190–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The only purchaser of Peacham's book about whom I know much was the second Viscount Bayning, a rich London merchant's son, who bought it in 1634, along with ten volumes of plays, Donne's poems and sermons, a life of Alfred, a history of the Bible, and Erasmus's Colloquies. But Bayning cannot be lumped with the ordinary gentry: he had been on the Grand Tour, and his household expenses include payments for singing lessons for Lady Bayning as well as for a resident French tutor at forty pounds a year. P.R.O., S.P. 46/76, f. 163; 46/77, f. 82, f. 223; Stone, L., The Crisis of the Aristocracy (Oxford, 1965), pp. 535, 659Google Scholar.

57 Clark, Peter, “Thomas Scott and the Growth of the Urban Opposition to the Early Stuart Regime,” Historical Journal, XXI, 1 (1978), 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morrill, J.S., “William Davenport and the ‘silent majority’ of early Stuart England,” Journal of the Chester Archaeological Soceity, LVIII (1975), 115–29Google Scholar, and his Cheshire, 1630-1660 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 21ff, 39ff.Google Scholar

58 Brown, R. Stewart, “The Stationers, Booksellers and Printers of Chester to about 1800,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, LXXXIII (1932 for 1931), 131Google Scholar. A list of the booksellers suspected of handling the book appears in Gardiner, S.R. (ed.) Documents relating to the Proceedings against William Prynne, in 1634 and 1637, [Camden Society], n.s., XVIII (1877), 58–60Google Scholar.

59 Holmes, Clive, “The County Community in Stuart Historiography,” Journal of British Studies, XIX, 2 (1980), 54–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Everitt, Alan, Change in the Provinces: the Seventeenth Century (Leicester, 1972)Google Scholar emphasizes the insularity of provincial life.