"To Sin in Loving Virtue": Angelo of Measure for Measure

Abstract

“To Sin in Loving Virtue”:Angelo of Measure for Measure Martha Widmayer Preserved in the papers of the Essex Records Office and related by JoelSamaha is the account of a dispute between Lord Morley and Mr. Leventhorpe over the parents of an illegitimate child. Backed by their liveried retainers, the two justices met on a moat side of Morley's Essex estate in 1578. Young and inexperienced in the law, Morley was descended from a long line of aristocrats and would soon assume his place as head of one of the most prominent Catholic families in the county. Leventhorpe, on the other hand, was a seasoned justice and a puritanical Protestant. Born with neither money nor title, he had achieved success by determination and hard work. Morley's tenant, a man named Smith, had fathered the child by his maidservant and sent the woman to Ashwell, a parish in Leventhorpe's jurisdiction. Knowing that, under the poor laws, they might be forced to support the child if the parents did not, the townspeople quickly sentthe woman back. Smith appealed to Morley for help, and the justice granted him a warrant to send the woman to Ashwell again. However, Mr.Leventhorpe refused to honor the warrant. He also rejected a private agreement Smith had made to support the child because the promise of payment had not been written, "as the statute doth appoint." Morley was angry that spring morning. "Why what will you make of it since it was but between a single man and a single woman?" "Sin and wickedness . . . deserve punishment and chastisement," Leventhorpe answered, "and according to law the offenders should be whipped." Morley then demanded to know by what law such cruelty should be exercised against two young people who had harmed no one. In answer, Leventhorpe revealed his convictions about respecting "the law of the prince and God's law upon which the prince's law is grounded. We also have the laws of the realm whereby to punish them, which refers it to the discretion of the judges and we think it good to whip them." Infuriated, Morley argued that such righteousness masked a policy of economic inequality espoused by judicial hypocrites: "Yeah, with like discretion you take up poor traveling men by reason that they be far from their county and friends are not able to bring back testimonial of their credit and behavior and therefore do send them back to the [End Page 155] gaol. And there, forsooth, one of their ears bored through, who often times is more honest, a great deal than the justices who sent them thither." After threatening his fellow justice, Morley put matters squarely: Smith was his tenant; he was beyond Leventhorpe's jurisdiction. Leventhorpe shot back: "Let him keep his woman then out of our county and suffer him not to lay her great belly here to be a trouble and a charge . . . for surely if he do he will be punished."1 Beginning in the late sixteenth century, Samaha writes, men likeMorley no longer held a prominent place in Essex law enforcement: "the real work was left to men of Leventhorpe's bent."2 English Catholic, Roman Catholic, or uncommitted, most Essex Justices of the Peace had studied at Cambridge, with its "extreme puritan atmosphere," and this "strong educational training in obedience" may have contributed to their dedication to the rigorous application of law. Samaha goes on to say that the transfer of power over the law in Essex from the old nobility to new men indicates a growing trend that occurred in England as the country moved toward national incorporation.3 A similar transfer of power takes place in Measure for Measure when the Duke gives place to Angelo. The Duke is no Morley, but much about him speaks of the old nobility—his paternalism, his ostentatious displays of power, his private sense of justice, his expectations of deference from the community, and their automatic impulse to seek him out for protection.4 The deputy, on the other hand, bears a striking resemblance to godly magistrates like Leventhorpe. Godly justices could be counted on to use their discretionary power to enforce personal conduct legislation as...