‘Civilized with death’: Civility, Duelling and Honour in Elizabethan England

Abstract

David Hume wrote in 1742 that ‘the point of honour, or duelling, is a modern invention, as well as gallantry; and by some esteemed equally useful for refining of manners’.1 Many of his contemporaries agreed, but recent commentators of early modern English duelling have not taken up Hume’s suggestion. Instead, modern scholars strongly contrast duelling as a remnant from the medieval honour community, on the one hand, and the civility of manners as the early modern novelty, which quickly deplaced medieval honour culture, on the other. In his well-known essay — ‘English politics and the concept of honour, 1485–1642’ — Mervyn James argued that duelling was one of the most ‘characteristic expressions’ of medieval ‘honour violence’ — of the knightly code of honour, which early modern “civil” society’ quickly ousted.2 Similarly, for Richard McCoy, the challenges and single combats of Elizabethan aristocrats were epitomes of the chivalrous ‘rites of knighthood’.3