IDEAS OF ORDER IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

The Wars of the Roses - a series of dynastic civil wars for the throne of England, fought between supporters of two rival branches of the Royal House of Plantagenet: the houses of Lancaster and York (the "red" and the "white" rose, respectively). They were fought in several sporadic episodes between 1455 and 1485, although there was related fighting both before and after this period. The final victory went to a relatively remote Lancastrian claimant, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who married Elizabeth of York, the daughter of the late Yorkist king Edward IV, to reconcile the two factions and founded the House of Tudor, which subsequently ruled England and Wales for 117 years.

The Tudor myth claimed that Richard IIs overthrow by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke (later King Henry IV) and his subsequent murder spawned a trail of unrest, culminating with the 30-year Wars of the Roses. The wars drew to a close when the first Tudor monarch, the Lancastrian Henry VII, defeated Richard III, ascended to the throne, and united the warring houses by marrying Elizabeth of York. Henry VIII (28 June 1491 28 January 1547) was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his father, Henry VII. He was Lord of Ireland (later King of Ireland) and claimant to the Kingdom of France.

Henry VIII is known for his role in the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. Henry's struggles with Rome led to the separation of the Church of England from papal authority, the Dissolution of the Monasteries; Henry established himself as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Henry oversaw the legal union of England and Wales with the Laws in Wales Acts 15351542. His desire to provide England with a male heirwhich stemmed partly from personal vanity and partly because he believed a daughter would be unable to consolidate the Tudor Dynasty and the fragile peace that existed following the Wars of the Rosesled to the two things that Henry is remembered for today: his 6 wives (two of which he had beheaded) and the English Reformation that made England a mostly Protestant nation.

 This course means to outline some early modern ideas about: the design of the cosmos divine order the nature of mankind human fallibility the type of political government monarchic rule theorganizationofsocietyhierarchical relationships the role of women patriarchal doctrine.

 Political thought created a common language for the conduct of everyday life in Shakespeare's time people could know what the common cultural beliefs were without subscribing to them in full or practising them at all There was a consensus that monarchy was the best form of government although there were differences of opinion about the precise extent of the monarch's authority. Similarly, people who accepted a monarchic government could nonetheless challenge the existing ruler by fomenting rebellion, plotting assassination, scheming to deflect the recognized lines of royal succession, or just speaking disrespectfully of the head of state.

 the organization of private life fewer formal controversies, with the exception of some heated disagreements on the role of women in society. In Elizabethan and Jacobean England, the situation with respect to ideology was not unlike that of religion. While individuals may have held a wide variety of personal beliefs, they nonetheless knew what the authorized beliefs were. many points of connection between political thought and religion.

I.

THE RELIGIOUS CAST OF POLITICAL THOUGHT

Five reasons why politics and religion- difficult to disentangle in Shakespeares time. 1. Early modern England was a Christian country. All political arguments referred to the Christian God the divine right theory, one of the most significant Tudor ideologies of legitimization, proclaimed that the King is Gods deputy/representative on Earth. Therefore, it was widely held that resisting to or judging the king was a sin that would be severely punished by God. The fall of Lucifer from heaven and the fall of man in the Garden of Eden- politicized as allegories of

2. Much political conceptualization in the sixteenth century was occasioned by religious upheavals. People of faith were asked to adapt to the abrupt break with the Roman Catholic Church effected by Henry VIII (1534), then to a more radical Protestantism inaugurated under Edward VI (1547-53), next to the enforced restoration of Roman Catholicism by Mary I (1553-8), and finally to a moderate (Protestant) Anglicanism under Elizabeth I (15581603). Because every reorganization of religion was caused by a change of political leadership, it was often defended or attacked in terms of political loyalty or political resistance.

3. The eventual ascendancy of Protestantism in England can be correlated to a developing political consciousness, a new nationalism and a suspicion of foreigners. While there were doctrinal controversies between Catholicism and Protestantism, what sometimes seemed to matter most of all was whether the English church was headed by an English monarch or by a Roman Pope. Elizabeth's restoration of an English form of Protestantism was compatible with widespread convictions about England's political sovereignty.

4. The church became the monarchy's most effective instrument for spreading political propaganda. Literacy was far from universal in early modern England, and so royal messages were most reliably disseminated orally, through church sermons. During Elizabeth I's reign approved ideology was represented not only in the Book of Common Prayer used by parish priests but also in a collection of Homilies, or state-authored sermons, which priests were required to read to their congregants every Sunday.

An Homilie against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion, (1571) The author of the homily insists on the fact that obedience is the most important virtue that a subject should possess. Subjects must obey their King in all circumstances as the Kings will represents the will of God. Even in the case of an evil king, the homilist argues, people must be content with whatever kind of king God chooses to give them. A rebel is worse than the worst prince and rebellion is worse than the worst government of the worst prince;

 if all the subjects who dislike their prince should rebel, no realm would ever be without rebellion. But what if the prince is evil indeed and evidently so to all mens eyes? To this question the homilist answers by placing the whole matter beyond human judgement. God forbid, he says, that subjects should judge which prince is wise and godly and his government good and which prince is otherwise; that would be as though the foot must judge of the head This demand for patient endurance and passive toleration of tyranny was to be accorded only to the evil king who was Lords anointed and who had lawfully succeeded to the throne.

5. As head of the established church the king had many weapons to ensure that churchmen supported his theories.
weapons: punishing, even executing priests who made heretical statements or who enacted unauthorized forms of worship. Henry VIII and his successors- the most important ecclesiastical patrons in the country. The number of martyrs executed by Henry and 'Bloody' Mary demonstrated that there were men and women of conscience in this age, but there were also more adaptable members of the clergy who recognized that religion was sometimes a matter of politics.

II. ORDER AND DEGREE IN THE UNIVERSE

God had created the universe as a system of multiple, corresponding hierarchies. The Great Chain of Being organised the world into a fixed order, with God at the top, descending successively through angels, men, women(!),animals, birds, fishes, insects, trees and plants to stones. There were seven orders of angels, with archangels at the top. Men were organised in a fixed order from king down to serf. Such domains within the greater hierarchy meant that the structure of each class of being reflected the structure of creation as a whole.

 Even

parts of the human body corresponded to other elements in society: the head was the king, the arms warriors, the hands workers, and so on. As you went up the chain, each link had power over the link below. To disobey those in authority was to defy the divine plan: superiors had to be obeyed even when they seemed to do wrong. The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre Observe degree, priority, and place, Infixture, course, proportion, season, form, Office and custom, in all line of order. (Troilus and Cressida1.3.85-8)

 A key term was 'degree', a step or stage in the scale of order and rank. To occupy one's place in the hierarchy was to respect the mandates of degree. The various hierarchies were believed to be so closely interrelated in their analogous structures that a violation of degree in any one sphere resonated in all. The founding Christian myth of the origin of evil involved a violation of degree as well as an act of disobedience. Lucifer dared to challenge his place in the hierarchy of God's angels. In consequence, he and his compatriots were cast out from heaven. From then on, Lucifer was known by his fallen name, Satan.

III. OBEDIENCE AND THE LAW OF NATURE

Like every other object in the universe, man was believed to have his degree, or place ranked between angels and beasts. Man's earthly situation defined in the moment when Adam and Eve were seduced by Satan. 'Thus became rebellion, as you see, both the first and greatest, and the very root of all other sins, and the first and principal cause both of all worldly and bodily miseries sorrows, diseases, sicknesses, and deathsand, which is infinitely worse than all these, as is said, the very cause of death and damnation eternal also'.

 Jesus was understood to have redeemed the sin of Adam and Eve by means of a contrasting act, of an endowment from God. This gift, known as the 'law of nature' consistent with the biblical Ten Commandments. It was thought to be natural that children should honour their parents, that families should be headed by fathers, and that countries should have kings.

IV. A SOVEREIGN MONARCHY

All authorized political theory had two aspects. Political order was founded in an unequal distribution of power. In its first aspect,mainstream political theory sought to explain why it was right and necessarythat is, 'natural'for power to be concentrated in inequitable, hierarchical ways. In its second aspect, political thought exhorted obedience to all those higher in the hierarchy. Government - necessary to prevent the chaos, savagery, and cannibalism that would otherwise prevail. prevent mankind from descending on that Great Chain of Being to the level of beasts.

 the best form of government was monarchic. All the hierarchies bore out and thus 'naturalized' this conclusion: as the cosmos was commanded by God, as the church was headed by Christ, as the body was ruled by its head, as the family was led by a father, so the kingdom was governed by a king. Because the system of hierarchies was understood to have been created by God, Renaissance political theorists could argue that the king received his power from God. In other words, he did not require the consent of the people to govern. A king who did not derive power from his people was ultimately not accountable to them. He was accountable only to God.

 Only one reason for a citizen to resist his sovereign: when a royal command conflicted with God's moral law. However, even when such an eventuality was imagined, only passive disobedience could be countenanced. A subject caught in this hypothetical dilemma was authorized to resort to tears, prayer, and flight. The most frequently repeated political statement in Shakespeare's time was that force must never be used against the monarch.

V. POLITICAL DISSENT AND REBELLION there were historical events that made the discourse of authority and resistance far more complicated than these treatises indicated. The most radical manifestation of political opposition was rebellion. Each Tudor monarch survived at least one major rebellion during his or her reign. The Battle of Bosworth (1485) - the Tudor royal line was itself created by an act of rebellion. Henry Tudor seized the throne from Richard III and created himself Henry VII. Yorkist risings against Henry VII failed to displace him.

 Henry VIII and his son Edward VI , each put down two significant uprisings for economic and religious causes. Mary I s marriage to Philip II of Spain provoked the Wyatts Rebellion (1554) a vain attempt to prevent the foreign marriage. Elizabeth I confronted The Northern Rebellion (1569) when a group of earls plotted to replace her with her cousin Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. Elizabeths childlessness helped motivate the Essex Rebellion (1601) Such issues of consent and dissent were recurrently represented on the Elizabethan stage, which itself constituted an important alternative site for political discourse.

VI. THE PATRIARCHAL FAMILY

One of the conceptual challenges for orthodox political theory was that the biblical Ten Commandments, understood to summarize Gods moral laws, were largely apolitical. They required honour to God: 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me'; Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image'; Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain'. They also included prohibitions important for social order: 'Thou shalt not kill'; 'Thou shalt not commit adultery';

The fifth Commandment could be reinterpreted to take on political meanings : 'Honour thy father and thy mother'. If God had ordained that parents were to be honoured in their families, then it followed that monarchs were also to be honoured in their kingdoms. The early modern family- described as a political institution. In their Godly Form of Household Government for the Ordering of Private Families According to the Direction of God's Word (1598), John Dod and Robert Cleaver repeated a familiar conceptualization:

A household is as it were a little commonwealth, by the good government whereof, God's glory may be advanced; the commonwealth, which standeth of several families, benefited; and all that live in that family may receive much comfort and commodity [advantage] commonwealth = family self-justification: the monarchy borrowed credibility from a social institution, the family, that seemed more 'natural' than any other. As indicated, the commandment to `Honour thy father and thy mother' was taken to refer to heads of state as well as heads of household. But in early modern England the monarch had only one domestic analogue, the father.

 To advance its figurative meaning, then, the literal meaning was suppressed. Other biblical passages were cited to justify an elevation of the father over the mother. St Paul: 'Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the woman, as Christ is the head of the Church'. In a kingdom committed to the monarchic the family had to be conceived as patriarchal.

VII. CONTESTED AUTHORITY IN THE HOUSEHOLD

Aristotle in the Politics - multiple forms of government: in addition to monarchy there were democracy and aristocracy. Although the other alternatives received little attention in early modern England, despite Aristotle's enormous influence in the period. The early modern household- a social and economic institution as well as a political one. It was a centre for production and consumption, as much a small business as a commonwealth. the wife had essential responsibilities, as John Dod and Robert Cleaver recognized:

 The duty of the husband is to get goods, and of the wife to gather

them together and save them. The duty of the husband is to trave abroad [outdoors] to seek living, and the wife's duty is to keep the house The duty of the husband is to get money and provision, and of the wives not vainly to spend it.... The duty of the husband is to be Lord of all, and of the wife to give account of all. The duty of the husband is to dispatch all things without door, and of the wife to oversee and give order for al things within the house.

Even though they believed the husband should be lord of all in his household, Dod and Cleaver could not help admitting that wives frequently had to oversee and give order as well. Nevertheless, many early modern social critics lamented the number of domineering wives and contentious marriages.

 However, troubled domestic relations were not caused solely by personality conflicts and political disobedience. Larger structural problems resulted from the way the domestic sphere was conceptualized to suit political ends. The priorities of the state forced a discontinuity between ideology and social reality. Again, the stage was a social laboratory to explore some of the fault lines. There were impertinent servants in The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew, disobedient daughters in A Midsummer Night's Dream and King Lear, and assertive women in nearly all Shakespeare's plays.

VIII. THE PLACE OF WOMEN the inferiority of women could be 'proved' with passages from the Bible. St. Paul: all women deserved punishment because Eve had been the first to eat the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. the Homily on the State of Matrimony described wedlock as a penalty:
'Truth it is, that they [women] must specially feel the griefs and pains of their matrimony in that they relinquish the liberty of their own rule, in the pain of their travailing [labour in childbirth], in the bringing up of their children, in which offices they be in great perils and be grieved with great afflictions, which they might be without if they lived out of matrimony'.

women had more social, economic, and religious freedom than the ideological literature would lead us to believe yet, they also had few political and legal rights. they could be denied the ability to own property, write wills, or take part in civic government. While boys learnt to read, write, and do sums, girls were more often taught to read and sew. However, this discriminatory distinction gave many women a means to support themselves with their needle. Political ideology, being family-based, did not acknowledge that almost half the adult women in early modern England were single either unmarried or widowedand thus responsible for their own livelihood.

The famous speech that closes Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrewin which the formerly rebellious Kate declares submissively that 'Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, / Thy head, thy sovereign'conforms almost literally to Dod and Cleaver's outline of preferred gender roles. The husband 'commits his body / To painful labour both by sea and land', says Kate, 'Whilst thou', the wife, 'liest warm at home, secure and safe' (5.2.150-55). Some who read or watched the play may have observed that Kate's husband Petruccio had done no painful labour to 'maintain' his new wife; instead, he had secured her dowry to support him. Others, however, would have responded to the 'taming' of Kate less analytically and more approvingly.

The extensive popular literature on the nature of women was thoroughly contradictory. collections of misogynistic tales, defences of women's rights, advice books about proper female behaviour, and sensational pamphlets about women who dressed in men's clothes, practised witchcraft, committed adultery, and murdered their husbands and children. Plays like The Taming of the Shrew, polemics like The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Inconstant Women (1615), and pamphlets like The Women's Sharp Revenge (1640) testified to men's continuing preoccupation with the persistent and resistant power of women.

XIX. TRIUMPHS OF DISORDER

All early modern notions of cosmic order, natural law, absolute monarchy, patriarchal structure, and gender hierarchy were interrelated in an authorized political thought that purported to be comprehensive and logical. It was virtually impossible, however, for any ideological system to be both. The theory of correspondences sought to incorporate every sphere in order to be comprehensive, but there was no single logic that applied to every sphere. Inevitably, there were internal contradictions and conceptual gaps. The everyday world of early modern England seemed often to exist outside this box of established political theory.

Thus, women were told repeatedly that they were expected to be chaste, silent, and obedient. Many were nonetheless brought to trial for having committed adultery, slander and blasphemy. The various legal courts of early modern England were kept busy with widespread rebellion, crime, and disorder. Many Elizabethans clung to their own belief systems such as folk practices, inherited superstitions, astrological prognostication, and occult experimentation that coexisted more or less uneasily with orthodox Christian faith.

The priority of most early modern political thought was to naturalize and authorize the monarchy. This, too, eventually failed. In 1603, Elizabeth I was succeeded by Mary Stuart's son James, who reigned in England until 1625. James I authored such important treatises as Basilikon Doron, Or His Majesty's Instructions to His Dearest Son (1594) and The True Law of Free Monarchies, Or the Reciprock and Mutual Duty Betwixt a Free King and His Natural Subjects (1598).

In these texts, James I proved himself a more extreme absolutist than any Tudor had dared to be. His son Charles I, who similarly maintained the king's absolute prerogatives, was more bold in exacting them.

In 1642, in a development that no Elizabethan could have

imagined, Charles I was beheaded and replaced not by another king but by a Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. The monarchy was not restored until 1660, and it would never again have the power and authority it had enjoyed, by general consent, under Elizabeth and James the early modern world was never as orderly as was projected in authorized thought.

FURTHER READING
Dollimore, Jonathan. Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984). This important book emphasizes the gaps and inconsistencies in the 'Elizabethan world view' and shows how stageplays interrogated and challenged conventional ideology. Fletcher, Anthony and John Stevenson (eds.). Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Especially useful in this collection are D. E. Underdown's 'The Taming of the Scold: The Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England' (pp. 116-36) and S. M. Amussen's 'Gender, Family, and the Social Order, 15601725' (pp. 196-217). Guy, John. Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). This is a comprehensive and authoritative review of Tudor history. The book's main themes are religious and political events and changes between 1460 and 1603. Henderson, Katherine Usher and Barbara F. McManus (eds.). Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women in England, 1540-1640 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985). The excerpts and reprints in this volume are from some of the most important tracts in the so-called 'pamphlet wars' about women in early modern England. There is also a helpful introduction.

Kinney, Arthur (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1500-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). In this collection of essays, see especially Richard Helgerson's 'Writing Empire and Nation' (pp. 310-29), on the emergence of English national identity, and Lena Cowen Orlin's 'Chronicles of Private Life' (pp. 241-64), on private life and the ideologies of marriage and householding. O'Day, Rosemary. The Family and Family Relationships, 1500-1900 (London: Macmillan, 1994). This book reviews the structure and population of the early modern English household, the ideology of the family, and social conditions and kinship relations. A comparative perspective is provided with reference to the early modern family in France. Pocock, J. G. A., Gordon J. Schochet, and Lois G. Schwoerer (eds.). The Varieties of British Political Thought, 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). In active circulation in early modern England were political theories that took issue with the authorized ideas outlined in this chapter. The first three essays in this volume develop this more complicated picture of political discourse. Sommerville, J. P. Politics and Ideology in England, 1603-1640 (London: Longman, 1986). The first chapter of this book, 'The Divine Right of Kings', offers especially clear and concise accounts of natural law, patriarchalism, and absolutism. Although the focus is on the first half of the seventeenth century, political ideas are traced back to their medieval and Elizabethan roots.

Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture: A Study of the Idea of Order in the Age o Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton (New York: Vintage Books, 1959). This classic book is still the best and most concise review of topics like the Great Chain of Being and the theory of correspondences. Wells, Stanley & Orlin Lena (eds.), An Oxford Guide to Shakespeare, Oxford: OUP, 2003. Wootton, David (ed.). Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writing in Stuart England (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986). Despite the title, this collection looks back to the Elizabethan years to include excerpts from the Homily Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion and James's True Law of Free Monarchies. The guide to 'Further Reading', pp. 127-8, puts additional bibliography in historiographic perspective. http://www.luminarium.org/