Organized Violence in the Elizabethan Monarchical Republic

Abstract

AbstractThis article argues that the Tudor concept of England as a Protestant commonwealth normally implied a belief in the legitimacy and necessity of armed violence against enemies of God and the public good. In the absence of a standing army the instruments of such violence had to be mobilized partly through the voluntary efforts of subjects who regarded warfare as a form of public service. The article goes on to explore how ideas and practices of armed violence shaped government policies in England and Ireland. In England the privy council constructed a system of county militias under the control of a cohort deemed loyal to the Protestant state, and toyed with schemes for using martial law against vagrants and other groups who threatened public order. But in the absence of a successful invasion or major rebellion, this machinery of military control was never fully mobilized and a reaction eventually set in against its potential abuse. By contrast in Ireland linguistic and cultural divisions, weaker institutions of civil government and the preponderance of Catholicism created situations in which brutal military coercion sometimes appeared the only effective method of maintaining ‘civil’ governance and Protestant control. The weakness of royal supervision over the captains who carried out government policy on the ground also enabled freelance violence. Elizabethan brutality in Ireland was not simply a product of colonial rule; it reflected the dark underside of commonwealth ideals of civility, political initiative and godly rule.