Early Modern England Research Articles

Nominal wage patterns, monopsony, and labour market power in early modern England

AbstractRecords of long‐eighteenth‐century English wage rates exhibit almost absolute nominal rigidity over many decades, alongside significant dispersion between the wages paid by different organizations for the same type of work in the same location. These features of preindustrial wages have been obscured by data aggregation and the construction of real wage series, which introduce variation. In this paper, we argue that the standard explanations for wage rigidity in economic history are insufficient. We show econometric evidence for monopsony power in one major organization and argue that the main historical wage series are also affected by employer power. Eighteenth‐century England had an imperfectly competitive labour market with large frictions. This gave large organizations the power to set wage policies. We discuss the implications for the eighteenth‐century British economy and research into long‐run wages more generally.

Making beds in early modern England: sleep, matter and environmental change

Abstract Bringing environmental history, the history of medicine and the history of poverty into conversation with material culture studies, this article argues that sleep management in early modern England involved environmental practices in which bodies and matter were interwoven. Using records relating to the Worshipful Company of Upholders in London as a starting point, the article uncovers for the first time the range of animal and plant matter upon which early modern people slept. In so doing it transforms our view of the sleeping conditions of the early modern poor and demonstrates the significance of place-specific, material knowledge for health care practices.

Sibling Rivalry, (Dis)Inheritance and Politics in Aphra Behn’s The Younger Brother and Susanna Centlivre’s The Artifice

Behn and Centlivre used their comedies about the rivalry between an elder and a younger brother concerning an inheritance to make a political statement. Primogeniture was customary in early-modern England, and if an estate was entailed (rather than held in fee simple), it was difficult, though not impossible, to will it away to another person. The reasons meriting disinheritance were widely discussed, but in the two plays, the Tory fathers disinherit their Whig elder sons for political reasons. As The Younger Brother was staged posthumously and altered by Charles Gildon, it is arguable what Behn’s manuscript looked like, but there are indications that the elder brother was meant to be a downright republican and that Behn saw to it that the estate would go to the Tory younger brother, whose political stance she shared. In The Artifice, the father disinherits his upright elder son because he punished a Jacobite clergyman (whom the Whigs would have considered traitorous), but Centlivre—a zealous Whig herself—engineered an ending that reinstates the elder brother but also provides the younger with a comfortable income. Both dramatists also dealt with the inheritance prospects of women and the power of disposal they have over their portions.

Eoin Bentick. Literatures of Alchemy in Medieval and Early Modern England Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2022. Pp. 228. $105.00 (cloth).

Eoin Bentick. Literatures of Alchemy in Medieval and Early Modern England Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2022. Pp. 228. $105.00 (cloth).

‘My Charges About the Highways’: Constables and Infrastructure in Seventeenth-Century Yorkshire

The processes through which northern townships, customarily governed by strong manorial institutions, came to embrace the structures and routines of vestry governance and supervision by county justices have long required further scholarly investigation. This paper presents a reassessment of the role played by the constables of the West Riding township of Sowerby, Halifax parish, in managing the highways function over the seventeenth century. This is feasible through the happy combination of contemporaneous paper records for the Wakefield court leet and of unusual and exceptionally revealing petty constables’ accounts. Sowerby’s constables creatively exploited mechanisms at the leet to enforce tenurial and township obligations for road repairs. While the appointment of surveyors is unattested before 1694 and statute duty arrangements are, at best, uncertain, a precocious policy of tax-funded maintenance became embedded in governance routines, as the township’s propertied and clothier elite responded to the mid-century political crisis and pulses of assertiveness from the Justices’ bench. Independency and improvisation are strongly supportive of change from below as the north’s distinctive contribution to state formation in early modern England.

:Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England

:<i>Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England</i>

Making Commotion: Riot and Protest in the Texts of 2 Henry VI

Abstract: This essay argues that the textual differences between the quarto and folio versions of William Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI evince the three-way ideological contestation between the aristocracy, the middling sort, and the lower classes in early modern England. Perhaps the most famous scenes from the play, those depicting Jack Cade’s rebellion, exist in both versions, but the portrayal of the uprising is very different between the two texts. The 1594 quarto gives us a vicious Cade intent on destroying businesses, raping women, and spurning well-meaning nobles; the 1623 folio version, by contrast, gives us an eloquent if imperfect Cade whose grievances are justified, reasoned, and well articulated. Political and economic power was steadily shifting during this period from the aristocracy to the middling sort, and, although the differences in Cade’s rebellion from the quarto to the folio might seem to indicate a revision in favor of the rebels, what the changes represent is the beginning of the transfer of ideological power from the aristocracy to upper-class commoners. To the nobility, the rebels are rioters, intent on causing chaos. For the middling sort, it was more advantageous to label them justified protesters, as the rebellion might remove the middling sort’s direct competition—the aristocracy. Thus, the two authoritative texts of Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI can help us understand changing perceptions of popular riot and protest in the period and their connection to dominant and emerging class ideologies.

Luther in Early Modern English

Abstract: This article surveys and examines the translations into English of Luther's works during the early modern period. Certain themes emerge, with anti-Catholicism, devotion, and consolation particularly noted as safe and unobjectionable Lutheran topics for English audiences. English reformers chose to integrate certain divines from the European mainland at certain points, with Luther playing key roles. The reign of Elizabeth (1558–1603) was a highpoint for English translations of Luther, and these coincided with other efforts by some in England as well as Germany to emphasize unity among Protestants while downplaying divisions. A flexible and contingent deployment of Luther in English continued into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when developments such as the Civil Wars, the Restoration, and German immigration provided moments of relevance for Luther. The article draws on and points to the considerable scholarship that has reshaped English Reformation studies over the past few decades, and it offers reflections on how the particularity of early modern England can be seen in relation to the heterogeneity of Reformation Europe.

‘A Pope Shut out of Heaven Gates (Thrice)’: Erasmus’ Julius as a tool of anti-Catholic propaganda in early modern England

The present article follows the editorial vicissitudes of Erasmus of Rotterdam's Julius within England's boundaries, where it was translated in 1533–34, in 1673, and in 1719. By interweaving the publishing history of these three English editions with their cultural milieu, it will appear evident that they were ideologically motivated products whose circulation directly coincided with an upheaval in Catholic matters in the country. The final purpose of this article is to demonstrate how Erasmus’ Julius, with its negative protagonist, was too compelling a weapon not to be used to stigmatise Catholicism and to prevent it from returning to the British Isles.

Performance and race: teaching Shakespeare to Saudi students using current events and popular culture

ABSTRACT This article considers the relevance of Shakespeare’s works to foreign students when taught in a non-native context, specifically, in Saudi Arabia. It argues that a student-centred approach could shed light on what is relevant to young people today, even if the texts themselves may seem anachronistic. Adopting a comparative approach that explores common factors between early modern England and contemporary Saudi Arabia, I examine the theatrical practices of both periods in relation to gender, religion, and race. I offer an historical overview of Saudi theatre, highlighting factors that played a role in delaying its development, such as women’s absence from the stage and the antitheatrical sentiments influenced by the reformist Sahwa movement. Aiming to make Shakespeare accessible through connections to current events and popular culture, I consider Saudi Arabia’s fast-changing socio-political landscape, including cultural reforms and recognition of women’s role in theatre. In particular, I focus on blackface, a theatrical trope that has traces in the early modern period and still persists in the western world. I have found that this approach has helped develop students’ ethical sensitivities to ethnic bias and religious intolerance, as well as directing them towards making appropriate choices as future playwrights, performers, and directors.

Coles, Kimberly Anne. Bad Humor: Race and Religious Essentialism in Early Modern England

Coles, Kimberly Anne. Bad Humor: Race and Religious Essentialism in Early Modern England

The plague, the skill-premium, and the road to modern economic growth

Abstract When bubonic plague arrived in Britain in the mid-14th century, it caused dramatic economic and structural change. Within 50 years, the skill-premium was reduced by half, and another 50 years on, agriculture’s share of the labor force had declined by more than 20 percentage points. This paper develops a two-sector pre-industrial growth model and draws on recent data sources covering Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain to explain these and the ensuing developments. Our main findings are that the skill-premium’s decline was related to the guild and apprenticeship system and that it and the other post-Plague adjustments were crucial determinants of the British trajectory toward industrialization. In particular, prior sectoral transformation and the skill-premium’s determination were important when the Early Modern population boom (1525–1654) threatened to reverse the adjustments caused by the Plague.

Fen Plantation: Commons, Calvinism, and the Boundaries of Belonging in Early Modern England

Abstract In the first half of the seventeenth century, several foreign plantations were established on wetlands drained during a wave of ambitious state-led projects across eastern England. The lines of solidarity and separation forged by this little-known episode in the history of migration pose important questions about how emergent notions of nationhood intersected with local and transnational, religious and economic communities. This article investigates the causes and consequences of the settlement of Calvinist refugees on drained commons in Hatfield Level. It argues that fen plantation expands understanding of the relationship between English agricultural improvement and imperial expansion in the British Atlantic, as migrant communities acted in the service of empires and states while forging transnational Protestant networks. As Calvinists and cultivators, however, the settlers were met with hostility in England. While the crown encouraged foreign plantation as a source of national prosperity, Laudian church authorities identified it as a threat to religious conformity, the state, and society, muddying depictions of English governors as guarantors of refugee rights. Local efforts to violently expel settlers from Hatfield Level, meanwhile, were rooted in fen commoners’ defense of customary rights, as parallel communities sought to enact rival environmental and economic models. The settler community interpreted these experiences through the lens of transnational Protestant adversity, entangling their quest for religious freedoms with their remit as fen improvers. Moving beyond dichotomous arguments about xenophobia, this article traces the transnational imaginaries, national visions, and emplaced processes through which collective identities and their sharp edges were constituted in early modern England.

Eat, Sleep, Lust, Repeat: Bedtime Routine, Health and Herbals in Early Modern England

ABSTRACT Getting a good night’s sleep was of great importance to early modern people because it was central to healthy routine and the practice of piety. Re-examining printed regimens and herbals reveals that lust was thought to interrupt slumber and that managing sexual impulse and activity is a hitherto unexplored aspect of sleep care. Aspects of routine had to be repeated moderately and in succession in order to prevent disease and imbalance. Feeling sleepy and feeling lustful were, this article finds, connected in complicated and often conflicting ways in bedtime routine. Printed herbals and domestic recipe books shows that soporific materials were also useful in lessening lust. Such findings point to a shared culture of herbal knowledge that centred around bedtime and beds. Early modern people grappled with social, practical, moral and medical concerns when deciding how and when to use their beds, revealing the ways in which sleep care, sexuality and the pursuit of a healthy body and soul intersected.

‘The tribunes of the people, the tongues o’ the common mouth’: parliamentarians as representatives when scrutinizing laws

ABSTRACT Shakespeare’s First Folio included publication of Coriolanus, a play that is said to be inflected by political events at the time of its writing and still so by its publication during a period the English parliament was in abeyance, having been dissolved the year before. In this paper, we take up Raffield and Watt’s (2008) invitation to consider the relationship between Shakespeare’s work and the nation-state, by considering the relationship between Coriolanus, and specifically the quasi-parliamentarian characters of the tribunes or representatives of the people, and contemporary Australian parliamentarians. We are particularly interested in how parliamentarians approach and grapple with their role as representatives of the people when undertaking human rights scrutiny of proposed laws, and explore this in relation to the tribunes’ approach to their representative role when making political decisions. We follow Raffield and Watt’s suggestion that, in early modern England, ‘government was conducted and represented as theatre’ (2008: 4) and argue that, in contemporary Australia, parliamentary work is still conducted and represented as theatre, and therefore it is necessary to adopt a theatre or performance lens when considering the ways in which parliamentarians perform their work as both representatives and legislators.

From King Lear to King James: The Problem of Ocularcentrism in Early Modern England

The present article explores how William Shakespeare’s King Lear thoughtfully challenges the primacy of sight among the senses, with implications for our understanding of the play’s relationship both to its immediate political context and to the history of ocularcentrism in early modern England. Adopting a new historicist approach, this article claims that writing King Lear in the midst of heated debates on the Anglo-Scottish Union was both a reaction to any possible ocularcentric behaviour by King James and a part of active criticism against the ocularcentrism of the period. Regardless of his personal opinion on James’s plan for the Union, Shakespeare was worried that the king would act according to his ocularcentric understanding of the two countries under his rule. Therefore, King Lear can be read as an advance warning to King James, who needs to be wary of superficial, sight-centred behaviours so as not to suffer the same fate as Lear.

Blank, Daniel. Shakespeare and University Drama in Early Modern England

Blank, Daniel. Shakespeare and University Drama in Early Modern England

McCarthy, Harry R. Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre

McCarthy, Harry R. Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre

Fictions of Consent: Slavery, Servitude, and Free Service in Early Modern England by Urvashi Chakravarty (review)

Fictions of Consent: Slavery, Servitude, and Free Service in Early Modern England by Urvashi Chakravarty (review)

"These Small Sumptomes of My Obediense": Negotiating Father-Son Conflict through Letter-Writing in Early Modern England

Abstract: This article explores the fraught relationship between an English adolescent, Edward Clarke, and his father through analysis of close to two hundred letters written between 1667 and 1672, while Edward—who would grow up to be John Locke's closest friend and a Whig MP—was a student at Oxford and the Inner Temple. I focus on money and health, the two topics that preoccupied Edward and his father the most, to show how they negotiated the terms of their relationship and grappled with issues of authority, status, duty and obligation, affection, and trust as the son's condition shifted gradually from dependence toward independence.