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“But the Shows of their Street”: Civic Pageantry and Charivari in a Somerset Town, 1607

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

David Underdown
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 4 - 23
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2011

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References

1 For 5 November, see Cressy, David, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (Berkeley, 1989)Google Scholar; and Sharpe, James, Remember, Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawkes Day (Cambridge, MA, 2005)Google Scholar. For the origins of Queen Elizabeth's Day, see Strong, Roy, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (Berkeley, 1986), chap. 4Google Scholar.

2 There is a large literature on this subject. See especially Underdown, David, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar; and Hutton, Ronald, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar.

3 For Corpus Christi, see, e.g., Phythian-Adams, Charles, “Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry, 1450–1550,” in Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500–1700, ed. Clark, Peter and Slack, Paul (London, 1972), 57–85Google Scholar; see below at n. 40 for the mocking skits.

4 Bergeron, Devid M., English Civic Pageantry, 1558–1642 (Charleston, SC, 1971)Google Scholar; see p. 100 for the queen's visit to Wells.

5 Phythian-Adams, “Ceremony and the Citizen,” 57–58. Phythian-Adams's awareness of the relevance of the anthropologists' approach is evident in notes 9 and 29, on pp. 92–93 of the essay. He developed the theme further in Phythian-Adams, Charles, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979)Google Scholar.

6 Burke, Peter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Davis, Natalie Zemon, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, CA, 1975)Google Scholar, which contains essays, “The Reasons of Misrule” and “The Rites of Violence,” originally published in Past and Present in 1971 and 1973, respectively. For Bakhtin, see Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Isvolsky (Bloomington, IN, 1984)Google Scholar.

7 Harris, Tim, ed., Popular Culture in England, c. 1550–1800 (Basingstoke, 1995)Google Scholar, introductory essay.

8 For a useful short survey of theoretical work on this subject, see Muir, Edward, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1997), 90–92Google Scholar.

9 Phythian-Adams, “Ceremony and the Citizen,” 79; Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion, 69. For a fuller discussion of a striking case at Chester, see Tittler, Robert, Townspeople and Nation: English Urban Experiences (Stanford, CA, 2001), 150–55.Google ScholarSacks, David Harris provides a good example of the transformation of urban civic culture toward one proclaiming messages of authority and order in his The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450–1700 (Berkeley, 1991), 180–92Google Scholar.

10 For city-cathedral relations in Wells during this period, see Estabrook, Carl, “In the Mist of Ceremony: Cathedral and Community in Seventeenth-Century Wells,” in Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to David Underdown, ed. Amussen, Susan D. and Kishlansky, Mark A. (Manchester, 1995), 133–61Google Scholar. Wells had a population of just under 3,000; as a regional market town, it had a number of inns and retailers; it also had some wool manufacturing. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion, 294 n. 7; Wells Convocation Acts Books, 1589–1665, pt. 1: 1589–1625, ed. Nott, Anthony and Hasler, Joan, Somerset Record Society, vol. 90 (Taunton, 2004), introduction, 30–33Google Scholar.

11 Stokes, James, ed., Records of Early English Drama: Somerset, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1996), hereinafter cited as REED. My debt to Stokes's edition will be apparent throughout this essayGoogle Scholar.

12 There is a lengthy account of the affair in Sisson, C. J., Lost Plays of Shakespeare's England (Cambridge, 1936), 162–85Google Scholar; and briefer notices in Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion, 55; and Hutton, Merry England, 158–59.

13 Charivaric outbreaks ridiculing local authority figures were not, of course, unique to Wells; for a good example, see Steve Hindle, “Custom, Festival and Protest in Early Modern England: The Little Budworth Wakes, St Peter's Day, 1596,” Rural History 6 (October 1995): 166–71, but few, if any, were on the public scale of the 1607 events in Wells. Similarly, there are cases where the elite were divided: see Patrick Collinson, “The Shearmen's Tree and the Preacher: The Strange Death of Merry England in Shrewsbury and Beyond,” in The Reformation in English Towns, 1500–1640, ed. Patrick Collinson and John Craig (Basingstoke, 1998), 205–20.

14 REED, 1:236–39; 2:830–33.

15 Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC), Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells, 2:341–42, 354; REED, 2:831–32; Estabrook, “In the Mist of Ceremony,” 144Google Scholar.

16 REED, 1:241–49; 2:834–38.

17 REED, 1:251–52; 2:480, 841.

18 Hobhouse, Bishop, ed., Church-Wardens' Accounts of Croscombe … [and other parishes] … 1349 to 1560, Somerset Record Society, vol. 4 (Taunton, 1890); REED, 1:86–90Google Scholar.

19 REED, 1:405–13; Stokes, James, “Robin Hood and the Churchwardens in Yeovil,” in Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England: An Annual Gathering of Research, Critcism and Reviews, no. 3, ed. Barroll, J. Leeds and Werstine, Paul (New York, 1986), 1–25; Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion, 98Google Scholar. See also Goodchild, J., “An Elizabethan Yeovil Festival,” Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries 17 (1921–23): 83–85Google Scholar; Trotman, E. E., “The Church Ale and the Robin Hood Legend,” Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries 28 (1961–67): 37–38Google Scholar.

20 As suggested by Hutton, Merry England, 66–67. A more likely explanation is the repressive attitude of both local and national governments, caused by their dislike of anything that romanticized disobedience to authority during a period of acute social tension: see Knight, Stephen T., Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw (Oxford, 1994), 100Google Scholar. For the Westonzoyland affair, see REED, 1:388–89.

21 For a valuable survey of this subject, see Hindle, Steve, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1640 (Basingstoke, 2000), chap. 7Google Scholar.

22 REED, 1:327, 432–33; 2:480. See also Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion, 49.

23 REED, 1:354–56; 2:954.

24 HMC, Dean and Chapter, 2:325, 345–46. How much Morgan paid for the lease of the rectory is not clear, but when Edward Bisse of Spargrove got a similar one for three lives in 1627, it was for £240, to be paid in eight annual installments.

25 My account of Hole is mainly from REED, 2:933. Other information from Wells City Charters, ed. Shilton, Dorothy O. and Holworthy, Richard, Somerset Record Society, vol. 46 (Taunton, 1932), 116–17, 191, 193; and Thomas Serel, Historical Notes on the Church of St Cuthbert, in Wells (Wells, 1875), 53Google Scholar.

26 REED, 2:720. Hole's Star Chamber case states that 29 May was Trinity Sunday, but in 1607 Trinity Sunday was actually on 31 May, and it is inconceivable that anyone, even Hole's enemies, would have been permitted to put on a play at a time conflicting with evensong on the Sabbath.

27 REED, 1:282, 300–301, 320, 331–32, 339, 347; 2:720–21. In his dispute with Watkins, Hole was presumably relying on an ambiguous royal proclamation of 1603 regarding the lawfulness, or otherwise, of Sunday pastimes; see Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. 1, Royal Proclamations of King James I, 1603–1625, ed. James F. Larkin and Paul L. Hughes (Oxford, 1973), no. 6, p. 14. The discussion of Sabbath observance occurs at the end of a proclamation largely focused on monopolies; the whole sentence reads, “For better observing of the same [the Sabbath], and avoiding of all impious prophanation of it, wee do straightly charge and command, that no Beare-bayting, Bul-bayting, Enterludes, commond Playes or other like disordered or unlawful Exercises or Pastimes be frequented, kept or used, at any time hereafter upon any Sabbath day.” Because of the vagueness of “disordered or unlawful Exercises,” during this whole period the issue of Sabbath observance was shot through with ambiguities; see Hindle, State and Social Change, 191.

28 REED, 1:351; 2:721–22.

29 REED, 1:276, 280–88; 2:722.

30 REED, 1:336, 338; 2:723.

31 REED, 1:321, 342; 2:713, 723, 949. There is a large literature on Robin Hood in early modern popular culture, which generally accepts the association with the Summer Lord. See, e.g., Knight, Robin Hood: A Complete Study; Wiles, David, The Early Plays of Robin Hood (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar; and Singman, Jeffrey L., Robin Hood: The Shaping of the Legend (Westbrook, CT, 1998)Google Scholar.

32 REED, 2:723–24.

33 REED, 1:327, 338, 355–56; 2:723–24, 727, 935, 944–45, 954.

34 For the Pinder, see Horsman, E. A., ed., The Pinder of Wakefield (Liverpool, 1956)Google Scholar; and Walker, J. W., Wakefield: Its History and People (Wakefield, 1934), 106–9Google Scholar; the version of the Pinder presented in a 1632 chapbook goes beyond jests to policing those who might violate local norms; the cloth workers do not seem to have adopted that approach; see Capp, Bernard, “English Youth Groups and The Pinder of Wakefield,” Past and Present, no. 76 (1977): 127–33Google Scholar.

35 REED, 1:338, 358; 2:724.

36 REED, 1:337, 358; 2:724–25.

37 For the multiple variations of charivari of this kind in early modern Europe, see Thompson, E. P., Customs in Common (London, 1991)Google Scholar, chap. 8. For the use of skimmington rituals in England, see Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion, 99–103, 110–11; Martin Ingram has taken a slightly different approach to skimmingtons and charivari: “Ridings, Rough Music, and Mocking Rhymes in Early Modern England,” in Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Barry Reay (New York, 1985), “Ridings, Rough Music, and the ‘Reform of Popular Culture’ in Early Modern England,” Past and Present, no. 105 (1984): 79–113, and “Juridical Folklore in England Illustrated by Rough Music,” in Communities and Courts in Britain, 1150–1900, ed. Christopher Brooks and Michael Lobban (London, 1997) 61–82.

38 The account of the Southover show in this and the following paragraph is based on REED, 1:263, 353; 2:725–26, 727–28. It is also possible that Hole was known to be a henpecked husband and that the representation of him in women's clothes was an allusion to this.

39 REED, 1:264, 328–29; 2:726, 945; Stokes, James, “Women and Mimesis in Medieval and Renaissance Somerset,” Comparative Drama 27, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 176–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 REED, 1:329–30; 2:726, 946.

41 REED, 1:265–66, 279, 345, 354; 2:726–27, 943, 950. For allegations of Puritan hypocrisy in sexual matters, see, e.g., Underdown, David, Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1992), 28–29Google Scholar.

42 REED, 1:267–69, 709–16; 2:936–37.

43 REED, 1:267, 269–70, 271, 290, 303–5, 321, 345; 2:937, 939, 950.

44 For different aspects of this, see, e.g., Bellany, Alastair, “‘Rayling Rymes and Vaunting Verse’: Libellous Politics in Early Stuart England,” in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Sharpe, Kevin and Lake, Peter (Stanford, CA, 1993), 285–310Google Scholar; Adam Fox, “Ballads, Libels and Popular Ridicule in Jacobean England,” Past and Present, no. 145 (1994): 47–83, and “Rumour, News and Popular Political Opinion in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England,” Historical Journal 40, no. 2 (June 1997): 597–620; and Ingram, “Ridings, Rough Music and Mocking Rhymes in Early Modern England”; for another case from 1607, see John Walter, “‘The Pooremans Joy and the Gentlemans Plague': A Lincolnshire Libel and the Politics of Sedition in Early Modern England,” Past and Present, no. 203 (2009): 29–67.

45 REED, 1:271, 294–95, 354; 2:932, 954. It is difficult to assess the significance of the Marlowe reference; “What holla ho? Yee pampered Asian Iades” (271, line 26) echoes Tamburlaine the Great, pt. 2, 4.3.1; the phrase that follows—“must men of note and worth be your comrades?” suggests tensions between established Wells families and the newcomers, who are—like Tamburlaine—claiming authority that was not theirs.

46 REED, 1:270, 273, 365, 433–34; Quarter Sessions Records for the County of Somerset, vol. 1: James I, 1607–1625, ed. Bates, E. H., Somerset Record Society, vol. 23 (Taunton, 1907), 7Google Scholar; Wells City Record Office, WCC/Convocation Book 3, 1553–1623, 306.

47 REED, 1:262. Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, Ellesmere Papers, EL 2773, “Causes specially appointed to be harde this settinge daie”; n.d., but endorsement indicates it is Star Chamber and gives 17 November 1609. Document is unsigned; Ellesmere’s hand adds notes in the margin. For the Midland Rising, see Manning, Roger B., Village Revolts: Social Protest and Popular Disturbances in England, 1509–1640 (Oxford, 1988), 229–52Google Scholar; Walter, “The Pooremans Joy and the Gentlemans Plague”; Hindle, Steve, “Imagining Insurrection in Seventeenth Century England; Representations of the Midland Rising of 1607,” History Workshop Journal 66 (Autumn 2008): 21–61Google Scholar.

48 REED, 1:310–13, 359, 363–67; Barnes, Thomas G., Fines in the High Court of Star Chamber, 1590–1641 (Chicago, 1971)Google Scholar.

49 The countersuit is in The National Archives (TNA): Star Chamber cases, STAC 8/145/26, Foster v. Hole, 1609. See also Wells City Record Office, WCC/Convocation Book 3, 1553–1623, 316, 321. Eight corporation members voted against bringing the countersuit, with Hole and Yarde either absent or not voting.

50 See Underdown, Fire from Heaven.

51 REED, 1:311; 2:941. For the Somerset church ales controversy in the 1630s, see Thomas G. Barnes, “County Politics and a Puritan Cause Célèbre: Somerset Churchales, 1633,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 9 (London, 1959), 103–22.

52 REED, 1:368–70; Bates, Somerset Quarter Sessions Records: James I, 76.

53 REED, 1:371–78; 2:724–25, 957–58; Stokes, “Women and Mimesis,” 177; Bergeron, English Civic Pageantry, 100; Estabrook, “In the mist of ceremony,” 150–51.

54 REED, 1:357; 2:955, 959; Wells City Record Office, WCC/Convocation Book 3, 1553–1623, 375; Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries 15 (1916–17): 204–5.

55 Frederick Arthur Crisp and Frederick Brown, Abstracts of Somersetshire wills, etc., copied from the manuscript collections of the late Rev. Frederick Brown, private printing for F. A. Crisp (London, 1887); Serel, St Cuthbert's, 33, and A Lecture on the Mayors of Wells (Wells, n.d.), 14; Underdown, David, Somerset in the Civil War and Interregnum (Newton Abbot, 1973)Google Scholar, 151, 169, 172, and for Civil War alignments, in general, see “A Case Concerning Bishops' Lands: Cornelius Burges and the Corporation of Wells,” English Historical Review 78, no. 1 (1963): 18–48, esp. 31.

56 Dunning, Robert, “Records of Early English Drama ed. James Stokes,” Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 140 (1997): 167–68, esp. 168Google Scholar.

57 Serel, Mayors, 19.