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Gentry Honor and Royalism in Early Stuart England*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Jerrilyn Greene Marston
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Extract

You have the satisfaction in your conscience that you are in the right; that the King ought not to grant what is required of him …. but for my part, I do not like the quarrel and do heartily wish that the King would yield and consent to what they desire; so that my conscience is only concerned in honour and gratitude to follow my master.

In this way Sir Edmund Verney, the patriarch of an old Buckinghamshire gentry family, explained his decision to side with the King in the Civil War, a choice which cost him his life at the battle of Edgehill. In 1642, many English gentlemen were confronted with a similar choice. It is significant that Verney attributed his choice of King over Parliament to “honour and gratitude.” In Sir Edmund's explanation we may find the basis on which many English gentlemen supported the King in 1642.

The political behavior of the Royalist gentlemen in the 1640s is part of a problem which has long plagued historians of the English Civil War. The economic interpretations proposed by both R. H. Tawney and H. Trevor-Roper stimulated much interest because they seemed to provide what had long been sought — a theory that could consistently account for the political choices of upper class gentlemen in the 1640s. When tested, however, neither theory proved satisfactory. Careful studies of key institutional bodies like the Civil Service and the Long Parliament revealed no significant social or economic differences between Royalists and Parliamentarians.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , November 1973 , pp. 21 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1973

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Footnotes

*

The author is indebted to Professors Sidney A. Burrell, Richard L. Bushman, David D. Hall, and J. H. Hexter for their comments and criticism.

References

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14. Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, tr. Ostwald, Martin (Indianapolis and New York, 1962), p. 8Google Scholar. F. R. Bryson has noted the pervasiveness of the Aristotelian definition of honor in most learned treatises on the subject; see his “Honor and the Duel in Sixteenth-Century Italy: An Aspect of the Life of the Gentleman,” (Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Chicago, 1933)Google Scholar, Chapter II, “The Meaning of Honor: The Influence of Aristotle,” pp. 20-27. The best English example of a philosophical treatise on honor is Ashley, Robert, Of Honour, ed. Heltzel, V. B. [c. 1600] (San Marino, Calif., 1947)Google Scholar.

15. The works one may call “gentlemen's handbooks” were very popular and numerous during this period. Perhaps the most famous was an Italian work by Castiglione, Baldassare, The Book of the Courtier, tr. Bull, George (Middlesex, England, 1967)Google Scholar. A popular English work was Peachum, Henry, The Complete Gentleman [1622], tr. Heltzel, V. B. (Ithaca, 1962)Google Scholar. See also, Bryskett, Lodowick, A Discourse of Chill Life (London, 1606)Google Scholar and West, Richard, The Booke of Demeanour (London, 1619)Google Scholar. More specialized works were available on specific aspects of honorable behavior; SirSegar, William, Honor Military, and Ciuill (London, 1602)Google Scholar, and Selden's, John massive Titles of Honor (3rd ed.; London, 1672)Google Scholar were available on minute points of knighthood, titles, and arms. Selden, John, The Duello, or Single Combat [1610] (London, 1711?)Google Scholar, and Saviolo, Vicentio, His Practice (London, 1565)Google Scholar covered duelling. For a complete list, see Kelso, Ruth, The Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century, [Univ. of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, XIV] (Urbana, 1929), 169–277Google Scholar.

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17. Henry Oxinden to James Oxinden, April, 1640, Gardiner, Dorothy (ed.), The Oxinden Letters, 1607-1642 (London, 1933), p. 169Google Scholar; see also Stone, , Crisis, pp. 562–66Google Scholar.

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24. Breton, Nicholas, The Good and the Bad [1616]Google Scholar, in Archaica, Containing a Reprint of Scarce Old English Prose Tracts, ed. Brydges, S. (London, 1815), I, 15Google Scholar.

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26. “It matters far less to a common man if he fails to perform virtuously and well than to a nobleman,” Castiglione noted, “For if a gentleman strays from the path of his forbears he dishonors his family name,” in Book of the Courtier, p. 54. See also, Watson, , Renaissance Concept, pp. 373, 411Google Scholar; Wilson, , “Family Honour,” pp. 23–24Google Scholar; Bryson , F. R., The Point of Honor in Sixteenth Century Italy: An Aspect of the Life of the Gentleman (New York, 1935), p. 25Google Scholar.

27. Earl of Leicester to Lord Strangford, Sept. 30, 1653, in Cartwright, Julia (Mrs. Henry Ady), Sacharissa, Some Account of Dorothy Sydney, Countess of Sunderland Her Family And Friends 1617-1684 (2nd ed.; London, 1893), pp. 145–46Google Scholar; Edmund Verney to Ralph Verney, Aug. 26, 1647, Verneys, , Memoirs of Verney Family, I, 405Google Scholar.

28. A distinction must be made between families and households. As Peter Laslett has shown, the vast majority of common households were nuclear, and as Lawrence Stone has indicated, the size of aristocratic households may also have been limited. (But, as Laslett and Stone have both noted, gentry households were more likely to contain a number of relatives, residing for various amounts of time.) Though households may have been nuclear, however, families indeed were extended, and included, in Laslett's words, “the complex of blood relatives of the same lineage scattered across the face of the county, or of several counties.” It is the obligations to these extended families we are here discussing. See Laslett, , World We Have Lost, pp. 90–92, 172–73Google Scholar; Stone, , Crisis, p. 589Google Scholar.

29. Cartwright, , Sacharissa, pp. 147–48Google Scholar; Lord Burghley, , “Certain Precepts For the Well Ordering of a Man's Life,” in Advice to a Son, ed. Wright, Louis B. (Ithaca, 1962), p. 11Google Scholar; Lady Brilliana Harley to Edward Harley, Jan. 19, 1638, Lewis, T. T. (ed.), Letters of Lady Brilliana Harley [Camden Society, LVIII] (London, 1854), 21Google Scholar; Holles, Gervase, Memorials of the Holles Family, 1493-1656, ed. Wood, A. C. [Camden Society, 3rd series, LV] (London, 1937), 196Google Scholar.

30. LadyFanshawe, , Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe, ed. Marshall, B. (London, 1905), p. 115Google Scholar; Sir Ralph Verney to Sir Phillip Stapleton, June 21, 1643, Verneys, , Memoirs of Verney Family, I, 247Google Scholar.

31. Peter Laslett wrote, “the intellectual tradition of patriarchalism … can be traced in all the thinkers of this period,” in Intro, to Filmer, Patriarcha, p. 24, see also, pp. 20-33; Watson, , Renaissance Concept, pp. 367–68Google Scholar; Stone, , Crisis, pp. 591–92Google Scholar. An excellent article by Schochet , Gordon, “Patriarchalism, Politics, and Mass Attitudes in Stuart England,” The Historical Journal, XII (1969), 413–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has shown the political importance of seventeenth-century patriarchalism in inculcating loyalty to the King among the illiterate lower orders of society.

32. Barber, , Idea of Honour, p. 144Google Scholar; Schochet, , “Mass Attitudes,” H.J., XII, 429–33Google Scholar.

33. Since wives were required by biblical injunctions, as well as their marriage vows, to obey their husbands, the commandment reposed ultimate responsibility with the father, and so it was understood by most contemporaries. A more realistic translation of the commandment, therefore, would have been “Honour and obey thy father, and respect thy mother.” See, for example, Endymion Porter's reminder to his wife, “Before I gave you my hand of husband, you did engage your word to me, that in whatsoever I should advise you, nothing should hinder you from following my directions,” in Townshend, Dorothea, Life and Letters of Mr. Endymion Porter (London, 1897), pp. 74–75Google Scholar. See also, Stone, , Crisis, p. 591Google Scholar.

34. Dod, John and Cleaver, Robert, A Godly Form of Household Government [1598]Google Scholar, cited in Schochet, , “Mass Attitudes,” H.J., XII, 416Google Scholar.

35. Endymion Porter to George Porter, Sept. 28, 1640, Townshend, , Endymion Porter, p. 182Google Scholar; Cary Gardiner to Lady Verney, Sept. 5, 1642, Verneys, , Memoirs of Verney Family, I, 242Google Scholar; Dowager Countess of Denbigh to Earl of Denbigh [?1642], H.M.C., Fourth Report, Part I, Denbigh MSS, 260. The family breaches caused by differing political opinions during the Civil War were many; the Fieldings, Sydneys, and Verneys offer but a few examples. Many of these ruptures, however, were healed by the gradual return of many gentlemen to the royal side during the 1640s and 1650s. (See below, pp. 19-20, and Hardacre, , Royalist Conspiracy, pp. 3–11.Google Scholar) If political differences were irreconcilable, as was the case, for example, between Algernon Sydney and his father, the Earl of Leicester, enmity was lessened some-what by the continuing performance of honorable services to family and frieuds across the lines of war.

36. D'Ewes, Simonds, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, ed. Halliwell, J. O. (London, 1845), I, 308–09Google Scholar. See also the proud statement of the Duchess of Newcastle when she summed up her background by noting, “I have been honourably born and nobly matched,” in Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, The Life of William Cavendish Duke of Newcastle [1667], ed. Firth, C. H. (2nd ed., rev.; London and New York, n.d.), p. 174Google Scholar.

37. Osborne, Francis, “Advice to a Son,” in Wright, , Advice to a Son, p. 89Google Scholar; cited in Stone, , Crisis, p. 627Google Scholar.

38. A fair number of Stuart gentlemen seem to have found it necessary to marry outside of the gentry. In Lincoln, for example, between 1612-17, about 20-30% of the gentlemen married outside of their class, though whether or not into merchant families is unclear; see Laslett, , World We Have Lost, p. 191Google Scholar. Peers, it seems, did not marry into merchant families as frequently as the gentry seem to have done; Stone's figures show that between 1600-59, only about 5% of them did so; Crisis, p. 627. One should also remember, when considering the impact of such matches on the family honor, that the mercantile families of the cities were often branches of county gentry families (see below, n. 49.) A mercantile match was not always, therefore, a social step downward.

39. Henry Oxinden to Elizabeth Dallison, Feb. 1, 1641, Gardiner, , Oxinden Letters, p. 278Google Scholar; Holles, , Memorials of Holles Family, p. 41Google Scholar.

40. An extreme example of gentry hospitality was Sir William Holies, who always had his dinner an hour late because, “for ought he knew there might [be] a friend come twenty miles to dine with him and he would be loath he should lose his labour,” in Holles, , Memorials of Holles Family, p. 42Google Scholar. Both Castiglione and Elyot, for example, insisted that hunting was the most proper sport for a gentleman; see Book of the Courtier, p. 163; Boke Named the Gouernour, pp. 186-202. For manners, see Kelso, , Doctrine of the Gentleman, pp. 79–88Google Scholar. For a description of the “right” way to die, see the example of SirOwen, John in Clarendon, , History of the Rebellion, IV, 502–03Google Scholar; see also, Barber, , Idea of Honour, p. 143Google Scholar.

41. Wright, , Advice to a Son, p. 48Google Scholar; see, for example, William Harrison's definition in Laslett, , World We Have Lost, p. 34Google Scholar.

42. According to Segar, , “The Actions of Armes … are, and ever have been used of Noble personages, and Gentlemen of best qualitie,” Honor Military, and Ciuill, p. 49Google Scholar; Kelso, , Doctrine of the Gentleman, p. 42Google Scholar.

43. Clarendon, cited in Warburton, , Rupert, I, 192Google Scholar, n. 2; Hartmann, C. H., The Cavalier Spirit (London, 1925), p. 6Google Scholar; Holles, , Memorials of Holles Family, p. 83Google Scholar; Fanshawe, , Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe, p. 45Google Scholar.

44. Wright, , Advice to a Son, p. 11Google Scholar. The decline of the gentry's military functions has been noted by Stone, , Crisis, pp. 199–270Google Scholar, and Hexter , J. H., “Storm Over the Gentry,” pp. 142–48Google Scholar.

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48. Most gentlemen's handbooks of English origin neither condemned nor approved trade as a proper occupation for gentlemen. Instead, they remained silent on the subject, or tacitly included merchants in more general definitions of gentlemen. See, Kelso, , Doctrine of the Gentleman, pp. 61–67Google Scholar, and Simon, , Education and Society, p. 354Google Scholar. Indeed, much of the theoretical discussion that did arise concerning the honorability of trade stemmed not from the profession itself, but the training for it. The question asked by some was whether apprenticeship equalled servitude and manual labor, and did it thereby deprive the apprentice of gentility. See Edward Bolton's letter on this point in Kelso, , Doctrine of the Gentleman, p. 63Google Scholar.

49. Proverb cited in Stone, , Crisis, p. 335Google Scholar. One of the reasons trade was not considered dishonorable was that City branches of the best county families participated in it. Often younger sons of country gentlemen were bound apprentice to City kin, as was the case, for example, with Sir Thomas Gresham. The Greshams typified the close relationship between county and City families; the brilliant London family was but a branch of an ancient Norfolk gentry family; D.N.B., VIII, 582-96; Watson, Foster, The Beginnings of the Teaching of Modern Subjects in England (London, 1909), p. xxxviiiGoogle Scholar. For the number of gentlemen's sons, who entered trade, see Matthew's evidence that about 42% of the 125 apprentices bound to the company of merchant adventurers of Newcastle were of gentle birth; Matthew, David, The Social Structure of Caroline England (Oxford, 1948), p. 49Google Scholar, n. 2; see also Thomas Westcote's statement about the merchants of Devon: “Divers of them are esquires or gentlemen's younger sons” cited in Laslett, , World We Have Lost, p. 47Google Scholar; in general, see Watson, , Modern Subjects, p. xxxviiGoogle Scholar.

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52. Lewis, , Letters of Lady Harley, pp. 163–64Google Scholar; see also, James Holt to Henry Oxinden, June 15, 1631, in Gardiner, , Oxinden Letters, p. 68Google Scholar. As Castiglione noted, a gentleman should always be “lively and diligent in serving and forwarding the advantage and honor of his friends,” in Book of the Courtier, p. 139.

53. Sir Henry Sydney to Sir Philip Sydney, March 15, 1576, in Collins, Arthur (ed.), Letters and Memorials of State …. Also Memoirs of the Lives and Actions of the Sydneys, and their Noble Ancestors (London, 1746), I, 164Google Scholar.

54. Elyot, , Boke Named the Gouernour, II, 129–30Google Scholar; SirSydney, Henry to Robert Sydney, Collins, Memorials of Sydney Family, I, 271Google Scholar; Sir Edward Nicholas to John Ashburnham, endorsed, “To ye best of friends,” March 8, 1648/9, in Warner, G. F. (ed.), The Nicholas Papers [Camden Society, New Series, XL] (London, 1886), I, 114–15Google Scholar; Verneys, , Memoirs of Verney Family, I, 369Google Scholar.

55. Segar, , Honor Military and Ciuill, pp. 20, 210Google Scholar. The Duke of Newcastle opined “that subjects were so far from giving splendour to their princes, that all the honours and titles in which consists the chief splendour of a subject, were principally derived from them; for, said he, were there no princes, there would be none to confer honours,” in Newcastle, , Life of Newcastle, p. 138Google Scholar.

56. Honor's enjoinders were, of course, only a part of the whole Royalist ideology that theoretically rendered the King's position unassailable. Aside from “divine right,” a political doctrine with limited effect on contemporary opinion, the mystical and sacred qualities popularly attributed to the King triggered in superstitious minds a fear of the terrible consequences that would follow rebellion against the Lord's Anointed. “What! take up armes against your gracious King!” went one broadside, “This is a horrid and a Heathenish thing,” London's Warning-Peece (York, 1643)Google Scholar. Moreover, the monarchy had the essential advantage of political legitimacy. As Hobbes pointed out, “How the King of England came by the government … every Body can tell. But if the King … should chance … to fail, I cannot imagine what Title the Parliament of England can acquire thereby to the Government,” in Hobbes, T., Behomothe in Select Tracts Relating To The Civil Wars in England, ed. [Maseres, F.] (London, 1815), I, 521Google Scholar. For divine right, see the classic work by Figgis, J. N., The Divine Right of Kings, (Cambridge, Eng., 1914)Google Scholar. For the mystical and sacred character of medieval Kings, see Kantorowicz, E. H., The King's Two Bodies (Princeton, 1957)Google Scholar, and Bloch, Marc, Les Rois Thaumaturges (Paris, 1961)Google Scholar.

57. Charles I, , His Majesties Declaration: To All his Loving Subjects, Of the Causes which Moved him to dissolve the last Parliament (London, 1641), pp. 16–17Google Scholar; Clarendon, , History of the Rebellion, IV, 485, 502Google Scholar.

58. [Charles I, ?], Two Speeches Delivered by the Kings Most Excellent Majesty at Oxford (London, 1642), p. 4Google Scholar. Blood relationship was emphasized in the widely used “body politic” metaphor. Symmons, Edward noted, “A Prince is the breath of his peoples nostrils,” in A Loyall Subjects Beliefe (Oxford, 1643), p. 11Google Scholar.

59. Filmer, , Patriarcha, p. 63Google Scholar. Watson notes that Shakespeare habitually likened the duty owed to fathers to the duty owed to Kings, , in Renaissance Concept, p. 367Google Scholar.

60. Jordan, Thomas, Rules To Know a Royall King, From a Disloyall Subject (London, 1647), p. 2Google Scholar.

61. Mocket, Richard, God and the King [1615]Google Scholar, cited in Schochet, , “Mass Attitudes,” H.J., XII, 434Google Scholar. The King's role as “Protector” was what gave him, in theory, the right to rule, for protection and allegiance were considered reciprocal duties. Thus when Parliament issued the Militia Ordinance in 1642, it struck at the heart of the Royalist ethos, for, as one gentleman noted in his journal, there could be nothing “more against the honor and greatnesse of a Monarch than to deprive him thus of the Protection he owes hys subjects.” See Larking, L. B. (ed.), “Sir Roger Twysdon's Journal,” Archaeologia Cantiana, I (1858), 199Google Scholar.

62. Jordan, , Rules to Know a Royall King, p. 2Google Scholar.

63. Sir Thomas Peyton to Henry Oxinden, May 6, 1640, Gardiner, , Oxinden Letters, p. 172Google Scholar.

64. Cited in Schochet, , “Mass Attitutdes,” H.J., XII, 438Google Scholar.

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66. SirWarwick, Phillip, Memoires of the Reigne of King Charles I With A Continuation To The Happy Restauration Of King Charles II (London, 1701), p. 256Google Scholar; see also Warburton, , Rupert, I, p. 222Google Scholar, n. 2.

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73. Endymion Porter to his wife, Jan. 14, 1642, in Townshend, , Endymion Porter, p. 199Google Scholar; Lord Sunderland to his wife, Sept. 21, 1642, in Cartwright, , Sacharissa, pp. 88, 102Google Scholar.

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76. Holles, , Memorials of Holles Family, p. 86Google Scholar. See also the statement of Lord Amont, “that he [had] served his country to settle religion, which being done, he would now serve his King against those who would totter his crown,” cited in Thomas Webb to Sir Edward Nicholas, Sept. 27, 1641, in Nicholas Papers, I, 52Google Scholar.

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