‘The Man Sterne, Strong, Bould . . . The Woman Weake, Fearfull, Faire’: Sir Thomas Smith’s Account of the Patriarchal Family

<i>Lorna Hutson,</i> The Invention of Suspicion: Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama<i>The Invention of Suspicion: Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama</i>. Lorna Hutson. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. x+382.

This book examines the tensions between state and society in early modern England (1549–1640) in order to elucidate the reception of the classical commonwealth in the wake of the Reformation. It analyzes five cases: the Reforming Christian commonwealth of the counselors who surrounded Edward VI; the vision of England as a society of orders in Thomas Smith's De Republica Anglorum; the Aristotelian monarchical republic of John Case's Sphaera Civitatis; the exploration of private and public in Jacobean England, especially in the Aphorisms and Essays of Sir Francis Bacon; and the penal state and the commonwealth of conscience in Thomas Hobbes's Elements of Law. This introduction discusses the history of political thought and the early modern state in England, focusing on commonwealth as a theory of the state.

Chronicles remained the dominant form of historical writing throughout the sixteenth century, and contained much material about the relationship of parliament and the crown and the wider political community. But how coherent a view of parliament could be derived from the chronicles? That is the question addressed by this essay, primarily through Holinshed, but with reference to the other chronicles on which his account was built. Holinshed included some key texts on parliament, including William Harrison’s reworking of Sir Thomas Smith’s account in De republica Anglorum (1583), significantly enhancing parliament’s role on the succession and church reform, and John Hooker’s Order and Usage (1572), inserted into the Irish section. But Holinshed famously left his chronicles open to variant readings. There was little interest in parliament’s institutional development, or commonwealth legislation, but much more interest in parliament as the bringer of hated taxes, and in the politics of parliaments, particularly relating to monarchical succession. It is argued that readers might take away various understandings from the chronicles, but that in any case the chronicles tended to focus less on institutional structures than on the moral qualities of the country’s leaders who operated them.

Conal Condren offers a radical reappraisal of the character of moral and political theory in early modern England through an exploration of pervasive arguments about office. In this context he explores the significance of oath-taking and three of the major crises around oaths and offices in the seventeenth century. This fresh focus on office brings into serious question much of what has been taken for granted in the study of early modern political and moral theory concerning, for example, the interplay of ideologies, the emergence of a public sphere, of liberalism, reason of state, de facto theory, and perhaps even political theory and moral agency as we know it. Argument and Authority is a major new work from a senior scholar of early modern political thought, of interest to a wide range of historians, philosophers and literary scholars.

In the history of political thought, the emergence of the modern state in early modern England has usually been treated as the development of an increasingly centralizing and expansive national sovereignty. Recent work in political and social history, however, has shown that the state—at court, in the provinces, and in the parishes—depended on the authority of local magnates and the participation of what has been referred to as “the middling sort.” This poses challenges to scholars seeking to describe how the state was understood by contemporaries of the period in light of the great classical and religious textual traditions of political thought. This book presents a new theory of state and society by expanding on the usual treatment of “commonwealth” in pre-Civil War English history. Drawing on works of theology, moral philosophy, and political theory, the book argues that the commonwealth ideal was less traditional than often thought. It shows how it incorporated new ideas about self-interest and new models of social order and stratification, and how the associated ideal of distributive justice pertained as much to the honors and offices of the state as to material wealth. Broad-ranging in scope, the book provides a more complete picture of the relationship between political and social theory in early modern England.

This article argues that historians have misread Sir Thomas Smith's famous work as a narrowly factual description of English society and institutions, and Smith himself as a proto-rationalist thinker. Instead, De republica anglorum represents Smith's attempt as a citizen of the elect nation to theorize the ‘mixed monarchy’ inaugurated with Elizabeth's accession. It should thus be read as an important contribution to English Protestant apologetic of the 1560s, in conjunction with the work of men who more obviously engaged in that discourse: John Foxe, Laurence Humphrey, and John Aylmer. The article makes this case by reconstituting three cultural contexts which I argue need to be taken into account when analysing Smith's text. The first establishes Smith's ideological concerns and convictions in Edward VI's reign and in the early years of Elizabeth's. The second focuses on the immediate circumstances in which Smith wrote De republica anglorum: a polemical exchange between the Englishman Walter Haddon and the Portuguese Osorio da Fonseca concerning religious reformation and kingship. I then analyse De republica anglorum with reference to the key terms and issues identified in these contexts. The conclusion locates Smith's text in relation to one further context: Claude de Seyssel's The monarchy of France and its use by French Huguenot theorists in the 1560s. That nexus enabled Smith satisfactorily to address the central problem with which he and fellow apologists grappled throughout Elizabeth's reign: ungodly kingship in the guise of female rule.

Chains of Persuasion: A Framework for Religion in Democracy

Mastery, Authority, and Hierarchy in the “Inner Chapters” of the<i>Zhuāngzǐ</i>

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: Between Revolutions: Re‐Appraising the Restoration in Britain

Reviewed by: Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire ed. by Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind Andrew Gaiero Stern, Philip J. and Carl Wennerlind (eds.), Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 416. Mercantilism Reimagined is a masterfully written book that features a number of prominent scholars of early modern history. Editors Philip Stern and Carl Wennerlind, who also contribute specific chapters, have done a fantastic job in challenging our understanding of the concept of mercantilism, or the “mercantile system”. Through this broad framework each chapter serves to explore the most recent scholarship about the composite parts of the early modern political economy and its subsequent construction and reconstruction by economic theorists and historians since the time of Adam Smith. Stern and Wennerlind have achieved multiple objectives in their study and aspects of their approach appeal to both inductive and deductive reasoning, though favouring the former overall. Building on trends over the past couple decades, within intellectual and new imperial history, and considering the financial precariousness of the world at present, this book provides readers with an appreciation for treatises on commerce and society whose relevance endures beyond their own time. However, considering the level of engagement with the source material, Mercantilism Reimagined will likely be best valued by scholars or students who are familiar with commercial and political theorists from the late Renaissance through to the works of Adam Smith and with the emergence of classical economics. A careful and thoughtful reading of each chapter is absolutely essential in order to truly appreciate all the nuances and great level of detail each author offers of his or her specific analysis of mercantilist thought. The five thematic sections: circulation; knowledge; institutions; regulation; and conflict address crucial aspects of the many commercial and intellectual debates of the early modern period, providing useful insights even beyond their immediate contexts. Circulation deals with traditional features of mercantilism, namely the debates over population and the centrality of money, whether precious metals or emerging consumer credit. Notably, the chapter on labour by Abigail Swingen helps link scholarship on slavery with broader discussions of managing population growth, migrations, and employment in the Atlantic world. Knowledge addresses the historiographical construction of mercantilism and its descriptive inadequacy, as is illustrated with Stuart attempts to regulate the fledgling tobacco industry or when imprecisely associated with German cameralism. Institutions involves the major official and unofficial components of [End Page 833] mercantile and imperial networks. On one hand monopoly trading corporations and the Anglican Church, among other religious associations, were reflective of one set of values and identities while the supposedly unsavory pirates and smugglers served to subvert sanctioned networks and projections of power. Regulation considers the practical limitations of political involvement in the economy and in the ability of rulers to effectively control their territories. Regina Grafe’s chapter on the Spanish Empire specifically addressed important revisions in our understanding of early modern absolute rule; while more broadly, issues of political corruption and the changing demands of consumer societies revealed the interplay between the governed and governing classes. Conflict focuses on the struggles for commercial supremacy between competing individual, corporate, and national entities. In a world of finite resources and scarcity the enduring “jealousy of trade” would precipitate real battles of life and death, serving as reflections of the sunrises and sunsets of early modern empires on the high seas. However, competing cornucopian visions of shared power and plenty were evident as well, though perhaps much less appreciated in a pre-Smithian world. Victor Enthoven’s chapter on Anglo-Dutch rivalries best exemplifies the envy and admiration accompanying these two different perspectives. Though the obvious counterpoint to the win-lose paradigm is visible, in the neutrality debate, and peace was recognized as a harbinger of prosperity, there were seldom guarantees of safety and stability given such a complex geopolitical situation where shifting alliances, depravity, and desires could coalesce into an overwhelming force with the potential to wash away any pretense to morality. The suggestion that we still live in an era of mercantilism is an interesting assertion, as questions of trade balances, protectionism, monopolies...

Sir Thomas Smith (1513–1577) was a political philosopher and writer. His works Discourse of the Commonweal of This Realm of England (1549) and De Republica Anglorum (1562–65) are significant texts in early English political theory. Smith was also a colonizer and in 1572 embarked on a plantation scheme in Ulster. That year Smith’s son published a pamphlet advertising the scheme to potential investors and adventurers. Smith claimed that participants “would form an aristocratic elite” (Ellis 266), but first had to drive out the “wicked barbarous and uncivil people, some Scottish and some wild Irish” (Strype 131). The pamphlet: A Letter from I. B. Gentleman, was both controversial and influential, and described as “the first printed publicity for an English colonial project” (Quinn 551). Though I. B. Gentleman is much studied, the Gaelic Scottish influence on Smith’s plans, pamphlet and associated material has been insufficiently considered. This study seeks to address that deficiency.

Introduction

George Buchanan: Political Thought in Early Modern Britain and Europe, edited by Caroline Erskine and Roger A. Mason. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Farnham, Surrey, Ashgate Publishing, 2012. xvi, 315 pp. $125.00 US (cloth). Edited collections of essays, particularly those emerging out of earlier conferences, do not always make the most coherent finished products. This is most definitely not the case with this fine collection on George Buchanan (1506-82). Buchanan stood Scotland's most distinguished humanist, and was widely celebrated throughout Europe a Latin poet, playwright, historian, and political theorist. Thanks to this celebrity, however, and his infamy the scourge of Mary Queen of Scots and an architect of radical rebellion, Buchanan has remained famous, while also being surprisingly ill-understood and neglected. Outside of specialist scholarship on Renaissance and Reformation Scotland, he is often remembered in caricatured, two-dimensional terms, and effectively reduced to a stock hero or villain of Scottish history and lore. This collection of essays helps remedy this, and its success and coherence owes much to the theoretical work done by Erskine and Mason in their short but important introduction. Positioning this volume in the emerging field of the study of historical reputations, the editors have produced the first survey of Buchanan's through the centuries, well his contested, often shadowy (pp. 79, 288), and constantly mutating reputation (p. 306) a political thinker and cultural icon. While many of the contributors to this volume variously explore the influence of Buchanan's ideas and writings, this is generally done with caution, consciously reflecting the challenges inherent in the elusive methodological task of demonstrating how, or to what extent one thinker influences another. Instead, Erskine and Mason shrewdly emphasize the importance of usage: that is, the way Buchanan's ideas and have been used (and abused) by successive generations. Thus, this book is concerned less with Buchanan's influence, and much more with his legacy, another alternate term discussed by the editors; it is as much a celebration of Buchanan's readers and their responses to his texts it is of the man and his writings (p. 10). The result is a collection that is both stimulating and, the subtitle promises, wide-ranging in its scope. While Buchanan is obviously a central focus, it should be noted that he is also the lens through which we view the book's other main subject: exchange, interaction, and cosmopolitan engagement in early modern Europe. For instance, in his essay on Buchanan's chorography, or geographical descriptions of Scotland and the Scots, Roger Mason explores not only the impact Buchanan had on the way Scotland's distinct geographical and historical identity was understood at home. He also looks at how Buchanan's enduring scholarly legacy shaped the way Scotland was defined and understood in Europe. Mason's is the opening essay and it helps set the tone for much of the volume. Indeed, one of the book's main themes is the translation of texts and contexts, and the contributions of Astrid Stilma, Robert von Friedburg, and Allan Macinnes all shed valuable light on how the Buchanan-inspired concept of political resistance was exported and adapted linguistically and circumstantially across continental Europe. …

In 1571 Sir Humphrey Gilbert made a speech in the House of Commons that incited denunciation by his fellow MPs. He warned that Elizabeth could, if she so desired, suppress parliament and never summon it again. When this intervention is considered alongside Gilbert’s statements and alleged actions while on campaign in Ireland in the late 1560s, as well as his known activities in England in the early 1570s, it becomes clear that the speech was but one expression of a coherent absolutist political theology. This seems anomalous given our received historiographical knowledge about the range of ideas available in early Elizabethan England. This impression becomes more pointed once we realise Gilbert was taking an explicit stance against the ‘mixed monarchical’ vision of the Elizabethan Constitution proffered by his acquaintance and intellectual interlocutor Sir Thomas Smith in De Republica Anglorum. Clearly Gilbert believed that both England and Ireland were ruled under the dispensation of something akin to what Fortescue termed dominium tantum regale and Bodin would later call monarchie seigneuriale. Gilbert fused this absolutist regalian vision with Machiavellian ethics, implying consistently that a monarch’s actions, by definition, could not defy natural and divine laws: a remarkably proleptic approach to monarchical power both in English and French terms. His anticipation of developments in political thinking and thought as well as his explicit antagonism towards opinions often deemed ‘Monarchical Republican’ in provenance gives rise to questions, both historical and historiographical, about our account of Elizabethan political thinking.

Sir Thomas Smith (1513–1577) is not a household name, but in his own time he was recognized as one of Elizabethan England’s leading intellects. After a meteoric career at Cambridge, beginning as an undergraduate and progressing as a fellow of Queens’ and would-be reformer of Greek pronunciation, he was appointed vice-chancellor of his Alma Mater in 1543. This was followed by appointments as Clerk to the Privy Council, Master of Requests, Provost of Eton College, Dean of Carlisle, and a variety of other civil and ecclesiastical positions, but it was his role as a distinguished humanist that set him apart from his colleagues. Smith’s diverse œuvre includes linguistic and political tracts, his Discourse of the Commonweal (an important treatise on economics couched as a humanist dialogue), De republica Anglorum (a widely reprinted analysis of English civil and legal institutions), a proposal to colonize the Ards in northern Ireland, and, of course, On the Wages of the Roman Footsoldier, the first major numismatic treatise to be written in England. It is this last work which forms both the text and the subject of commentary for the volume under review.