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Erudition and the Idea of History in Renaissance England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

D. R. Woolf
D. R. Woolf*
Affiliation:
Bishop's University (Lennoxville, Quebec)
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Extract

It has become a commonplace that Tudor and early Stuart historical authors recognized a formal distinction between “antiquities” and “history,” yet neither the grounds nor the extent of the distinction has been explored in depth. Because some Tudor historical writers could and, on occasion, did ignore it in practice, the distinction has sometimes been deemed a technicality of only minor interest. Nearly twenty-five years ago, F. Smith Fussner described what he termed an English “historical revolution” between 1580 and 1640, a revolution which witnessed the rise of historical writing in something like its modern form. From Fussner's point of view, it mattered only that men were bringing new sources and innovative, critical research methods to the study of the past; whether they called themselves historians, scholars, philologists or antiquaries was of little importance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , Spring 1987 , pp. 11 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1987

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References

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13 Examples of these different terms may be found in a wide variety of sources from actual histories to parliamentary debates: Hartley, T. E., Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, I (London, 1981), p. 28 Google Scholar; Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments (London, 1610 ed.), I, 8 Google Scholar; Pie, Thomas, An houre glasse contayning a computation from the beginning of time to Christ (London, 1597), pp. 85–86.Google Scholar

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16 Leviathan, I, ix. Similar taxonomies can be found in Grey Brydges, fifth Lord Chandos (attribution questionable), Horae subsecivae: observations and discourses (London, 1620), pp. 194-95; Heylyn, Peter, Microcosmus, or a little description of the great world (Oxford, 1621)Google Scholar; and Whear, Degory, Relectiones hyemales de ratione et methodo legendi utrasque Historias civiles et ecclesiasticas (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1637; trans. Bohun, Edmund, London, 1685).Google Scholar

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18 On the artes historicae, contemporary manuals on history-writing, see Beatrice Reynolds, “Shifting Currents of Historical Criticism, “Journal of the History of Ideas, 14 (1953), 471-92 and, more recently, Girolamo Cotroneo, I trattatisti del “Ars Historica” (Naples, 1971).

19 E.g. Machin, Lewis and Markham, Gervase, The dumbe knight (London, 1608)Google Scholar, an “historicall comedy” which involves fictional personages; or Ford, John, The chronicle historic of Perkin Warbeck (London, 1634)Google Scholar which concerns real ones. Shakespeare's “histories” also provide an excellent example.

20 Daniel, Samuel, The Civil Wars (London, 1595-1609), ed. Michel, Laurence (New Haven, 1958), I, 6 Google Scholar and introduction. Other examples include Francis Hubert's verse Historic of Edward the second (London, 1629) and the many historical poems of Michael Drayton and Thomas May. Cf. Benjamin, E. B., “Fame, Poetry and the Order of History in the Literature of the English Renaissance,” Studies in the Renaissance, 6 (1959), 64–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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26 Hearne, Thomas, A Collection of Curious Discourses (revised ed., ed. Ayloffe, Joseph, 2 vols.; London, 1771)Google Scholar; on the society itself, see Linda Van Norden, “The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries” (Ph.D. thesis, University of California at Los Angeles, 1946), and “Sir Henry Spelman on the Chronology of the Elizabethan College of Antiquaries,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 13 (1949-50), 131-60; McKisack, May, Medieval History in the Tudor Age (Oxford, 1972), pp. 85–93 Google Scholar; Evans, Joan, A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956), pp. 7–13 Google Scholar; Levine, Joseph M., “Tudor Antiquaries,” History Today, 20 (April, 1970), 278-85.Google Scholar

27 Leland's Itinerary in England, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith (2nd ed.; Carbondale, Ill., 1964), I, xlii; IV, 1-35; Collectanea, ed. Thomas Hearne (3 vols, in 4 parts; Oxford, 1715); Kendrick, T. D., British Antiquity (1950; reprint London, 1970), pp. 45–64.Google Scholar

28 Sidney, , An Apology for Poetry (1st ed., London, 1595, written c. 1581-83), ed. Shepherd, Geoffrey (2nd ed.; Manchester, 1973), p. 105.Google Scholar

29 Sidney's polemic was not entirely sincere, since in a letter to his brother, Robert, he accorded history limited usefulness as a teacher of political action, though not as a teacher of morality: The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Albert Feuillerat (repr. Cambridge, 1962), III, 130-33; Levy, F. J., “Sir Philip Sidney and the Idea of History,” Bibliothèque d'humanisme et renaissance, 26 (1964), 608-17.Google Scholar

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32 Norden, John, Speculum Britanniae, Part One, Middlesex (1593).Google Scholar

33 Brooke, Ralph, A discoverie of certaine errours published in print in the much commended Britannia (London, 1596)Google Scholar, “To maister Camden”; Noble, Mark, A History of the College of Arms (London, 1804), pp. 240-45.Google Scholar

34 Camden to de Thou, 10 August, 1612: Bibliothèque National, Paris, Collection Dupuy, MS 632, fols. 103r-v (a copy of this is in Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Smith 74, fols.25-28). For the Annales, see Trevor-Roper, H. R., Queen Elizabeth's First Historian: William Camden and the Beginnings of English “Civil” History (Neale lecture, London, 1971).Google Scholar The breadth of Camden's interests are illustrated in the admirable library list compiled by DeMolen, Richard L., “The Library of William Camden,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 128, no. 4, 327–409.Google Scholar

35 Stow, John, A survay of London, ed. Kingsford, C. L. (2 vols.; Oxford, 1908), I, 3 Google Scholar; Claxton to Stow, 10 April, 1594, Brit. Lib. MS Harl. 374 (D'Ewes papers), fol. 21.

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37 A. D. B., The Court of the most illustrious James the first (London, 1619), p. 46; Peacham, Henry, The Complete Gentleman (London, 1622, 1634), ed. Heltzel, Virgil B. (Ithaca, N.Y., 1962), pp. 62–63, 117-27Google Scholar; Brathwait, Richard, The schollers medley (London, 1614), pp. 61, 80.Google Scholar

38 Coke to Greville, 15 September, 1615, printed in N. Farmer, Jr., “Fulke Greville and Sir John Coke: An Exchange of Letters on a History Lectureship and Certain Latin Verses on Sir Philip Sidney,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 33 (1969-70), 217-36.

39 Bacon, , Works, II, 334 Google Scholar; IV, 303-4.

40 Schoeck, Richard, “The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and Men of Law,” Notes and Queries, n.s. I (1954), 417-21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McKisack, , Medieval History in the Tudor Age, pp. 78–82.Google Scholar

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43 Lambarde, , The perambulation of Kent (2nd ed.; London, 1596), p. 23.Google Scholar Cf. Lambarde's Dictionarium Angliae topographicum & historicum (1st ed.; 1730). In the dedication to the Perambulation Lambirde explains that he called this work a dictionary and not a history “because it was digested into titles by order of alphabet, and concerned the description of places.”

44 Lambarde's friend, Sir Thomas Wotton, actually referred to the Perambulation as a history in his commendatory letter to the second (1596) edition—but only because it did some of the things he thought a history should do, such as recounting the deeds of the county's great men in “good words well placed, eloquently”! Ibid., epistle dedicatory; Thomas Wotton, “To his countriemen, the gentlemen of Kent,” ibid.,sigs. A3-A4v.

45 Godwin to Camden, 27 May 1608 and 9 October 1620, in Gulielmi Camdeni et illustrium virorum ad G. Camdenum epistolae, ed. Thomas Smith (London, 1691), pp. 109, 308; Merchant, W. M., “Bishop Francis Godwin, Historian and Novelist,” Journal of the Historical Society of the Church in Wales, 5 (1955), 45–51.Google Scholar

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48 Edmund Bolton, Hypercritica: or a rule of judgment for writing or reading our histories, in Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. E. Spingarn (Oxford, 1907), pp. 83, 93. 97.

49 Bolton, , Nero Caesar, or monarchie depraved (London, 1624)Google Scholar; the sources for this can be gleaned from Bolton's notes and letters in Brit. Lib. MS Harl. 6521.

50 Hearne, , Curious Discourses, II, 324 Google Scholar; on the Cottonian library, see Sharpe, Kevin, Sir Robert Cotton, 1586-1631: History and Politics in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1979), ch. iiGoogle Scholar; Fussner, Historical Revolution, ch. iii; and Wright, C. E., “The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and the Formation of the Cottonian Library,” in The English Library before 1700, ed. Wormald, Francis and Wright, C. E. (London, 1958), pp. 176–212.Google Scholar

51 Peacham, , The Complete Gentleman, pp. 62–63, 124.Google Scholar Still the most exhaustive study of Selden's early career is the regrettably unpublished study by the late Professor David S. Berkowitz, “Young Mr. Selden. Essays in Seventeenth Century Learning and Politics” (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1946).

52 Hazeltine, H. D., “Selden as Legal Historian,” in Festschrift Heinrich Brunner (Weimar, 1910), pp. 379–630 Google Scholar; Christianson, Paul, “Young John Selden and the Ancient Constitution, 1610-1618,” Proceedings ojthe American Philosophical Society, 128 (1984), 271–315 Google Scholar; Tuck, Richard, Natural Rights Theories: their Origins and Development (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 82–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 On Scaliger, perhaps the best-equipped student of antiquity of his day and a master of philological methods, see Grafton, Anthony, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, I (Oxford, 1983), 101-33, 180-226.Google Scholar

54 Selden, , Analecton Anglo-Britannicon libri duo (Frankfurt, 1615)Google Scholar, in Joannis Seldenis jurisconsulti opera omnia, ed. David Wilkins (3 vols, in 6 parts; London, 1726), II, 940 ff.; Jani Anglorum Fades Altera (London, 1610), Opera omnia, II, 974.

55 Selden, “Illustrations” to Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion (Part One, 1612), in Works of Michael Drayton, ed. J. W. Hebel (2nd ed., 5 vols.; Oxford, 1961), IV, 246, 272.

56 Selden, , Titles of Honour (1st ed.; London, 1614)Google Scholar, epistle dedicatory, sig. a3; Titles of Honour (2nd ed.; London, 1631), in Opera omnia, III, 99. The first edition includes an extensive bibliography of Selden's sources (sigs. Ddd4v-Ffiv). Further information on Selden's reading list appears in Barratt, D. M., “The Library of John Selden and Its Later History,” Bodleian Library Record, 3 (1950-51), 128-42, 208-13, 256-74Google Scholar; and in Sparrow, J., “The Earlier Owners of Books in John Selden's Library,” Bodleian Quarterly Record, 6 (1931), 263-71.Google Scholar These can be supplemented by the manuscript library list and correspondence in Bodl. Lib. MSS Selden Supra 108-109, 111 and 123.

57 For “synchronism,” see Selden's introduction to Poly-Olbion, Works of Michael Drayton, IV, viii*.

58 Scaliger, Joseph Justus, Diatriba de Decimis, Opuscula varia antehac non edita, ed. Casaubon, Isaac (Paris, 1610), pp. 61–70.Google Scholar Selden cites this in his illustrations to Poly-Olbion (Works of Michael Drayton, IV, 186), and some notes in his hand on Scaliger's essay are to be found in Bodl. MS Selden Supra 108, fols. 187-90v. The works which may have aroused Selden's interest in the issue include SirHenry Spelman, , De non temerandis Ecclesiis (London, 1613)Google Scholar and Robartes, Foulke, The Revenue of the Gospel is tythes, due to the ministerie of the word, by that word (Cambridge, 1613).Google Scholar

59 Selden, , The historie of tithes (London, 1618), facing p. 1, italicized in original.Google Scholar

60 Selden, Historie, preface, pp. vi, xvi, xx; François Baudouin, De Institutione historiae universae et ejus cum jurisprudentia conjunctione (1st ed.; Paris, 1561), repr. inArtes historicae penus, ed. J. Wolf (Basel, 1576), p. 668; cited by Kelley, , Foundations, p. 116.Google Scholar

61 Selden, Historie, sig. a2-a3.

62 In February, 1619, the bishop of London had all unsold copies of the book seized from the booksellers; but, as Selden told the French scholar, Peiresc, he had managed to save and circulate the manuscript: Selden to Peiresc, 6 February, 1618/19, Bodl. MS Smith 74, fols. 163-65.

63 SirSempill, James, Sacrilege sacredly handled (London, 1619)Google Scholar; Tillesley, Richard, Animadversions upon M. Selden's History of Tithes (London, 1619)Google Scholar; a later example, in much the same vein, is Perrot, Richard, Jacobs vowe, or the true historie of tithes (Cambridge, 1627).Google Scholar

64 Mountagu, Richard, Diatribae upon the first part of the late History of Tithes (London, 1622), p. 16.Google Scholar

65 Mountagu, , Diatribae, pp. 17, 24, 29, 73, 120, 123, 125-6, 217.Google Scholar

66 Selden, , An admonition to the reader of Sir James Sempill's Appendix, Opera omnia, III, 1349-64Google Scholar; A reply to Dr. Tillesley's animadversions upon the History of Tythes, Opera omnia, III, 1369-86.

67 Selden, , “To my singular good friend, Mr. Augustine Vincent,” in Vincent, , A discoverie of errours in the first edition of the catalogue of nobility, published by Ralph Brooke, Yorke Herald, 1619 (London, 1622)Google Scholar, sigs.a-av Selden's own annotated copy of this work is Bodl. lib. shelfmark S. 1.11 Jur. Seld.

68 D. R. Woolf, “John Selden, John Borough, and Francis Bacon's History of Henry VII, 1621,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 47 (1984-85), pp. 47-53.

69 Selden, Titles of Honour (2nd ed.), Opera omnia, III, 102 (my emphasis).

70 Ibid., III, 103.

71 Compare this title with the autograph MS, “a discourse or relation both of the auncyent and modern estate of the principality of Wales, dutchie of Cornewall, and earledom of Chester,” Inner Temple Library, London, Petyt MS 538, vol. 39, fols. 205-264v, signed and dated by Dodderidge (fol. 206), 1 Jan. 1 Jas.I (i.e., 1604

72 Heylyn, Peter, The history ofthe Sabbath (London, 1636), sig. A6.Google Scholar

73 Burton, William, The description of Leicestershire (London, 1622), pp. 8–9 Google Scholar; Bedwell, William, A briefe description of the towne of Tottenham High-Crosse in Middlesex (London, 1631), sig. E3V.Google Scholar

74 Philipot, John, Catalogue of the chancellors of England, the lord keepers of the greate seale, and the lord treasurers of England (London, 1636), sig. Bv Google Scholar; Philipot appears to have modelled his book on the Recueil des roys de France, lew couronne et maison (7th edn., 3 parts; Paris, 1607) by the French archivist, Jean du Tillet, for which see Kelley, , Foundations, pp. 222-33.Google Scholar

75 Dugdale, , The Antiquities of Warwickshire illustrated (London, 1656)Google Scholar, preface; Van Norden, “Elizabethan College of Antiquaries,” diss, cit., pp. 482-83. Against this, compare a remark by Dering, in some undated-notes, that to call St. Osmund a Norman simply because he had come over with William the Conqueror (as had, he claimed, John Bale and Francis Godwin) was “very pardonable in such an historyn, but not so in an Antiquary.” Kent Archives Office, U.133, Z.3, p. 16. I owe this reference to the kindness of Mr. Peter Salt of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

76 Shakerley Marmion, The Antiquary, Act I, p. 216, in Dramatic Works of Shakerley Marmion (Edinburgh and London, n.d.).

77 Kennett, White, Parochial Antiquities, Attempted in the History of Ambrosden, Burcester, and other adjacent parts in the counties of Oxford and Bucks, ed. Bandinel, B. (2 vols.; Oxford, 1818), I, xvii.Google Scholar Interestingly, Kennett tried to arrange his antiquities in chronological order, proceeding like an annalist, year by year from the Norman Conquest.

78 The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first use of “antiquarian” as a noun as early as 1610, though it did not enjoy much use till considerably later; the adjective, however, did not become current before the mid-eighteenth century.

79 Marmion, , The Antiquary, I, 210.Google Scholar

80 Earle, John, Micro-cosmographie or a piece of the world discovered (6th ed.; London, 1633), no. 9.Google Scholar For later examples, see A new dictionary of the canting crew (London, 1690) and Puckle, James, The Club: or a dialogue between father and son (London, 1711), pp. 10–11.Google Scholar I owe this last reference to Jane Arscott.

81 Rawlinson, Richard, A New Method of Studying History, Geography and Cosmology (2 vols.; London, 1730), II, 460-62.Google Scholar

82 Levine, Joseph M., Doctor Woodward's Shield: History, Science and Satire in Augustan England (Berkeley and London, 1977), pp. 114-29.Google Scholar

83 On Augustan scholarship, see Douglas, D. C., English Scholars, 1660-1730 (2nd ed.; London, 1951)Google Scholar; Levine, , Doctor Woodward's Shield, pp. 93–150, 291-93Google Scholar; Hunter, Michael, John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning (London, 1975).Google Scholar

84 Hay, Denys, “The Historiographers Royal in England and Scotland,” Scottish Historical Review, 30 (1951), 15–29 Google Scholar; Baker, Herschel, The Race of Time: Three Lectures on Renaissance Historiography (Toronto, 1967), p. 95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

85 Among the several friends and colleagues who have read and commented on earlier versions of this essay, I should like to thank especially Fritz Levy and Paul Christianson. A travel grant from Queen's University at Kingston allowed me to read an abridged version at the Pacific Northwest Renaissance Conference in Vancouver, 29 March, 1985. I am grateful to the conference members for their comments. None of the above is responsible for the errors that remain.