CHAPTER FOUR

Historical Writing and Political Thought

It would be difficult to overestimate the role of historically framed communication in shaping English political culture. The English, European, Roman and scriptural pasts did much to shape early modern English political thinking, and particularly that of the educated classes. Central to the period were an emphasis on the value of reading history for governing elites, a canon of desired characteristics for historical writing and a hierarchy of values assigned to its various subgenres. Scholarly investigation of historiography has been extensive but has highlighted historiographical innovation rather than the conventional histories that were most widely read.

USES AND LESSONS OF HISTORY

History played a central part in the education of the political elite because it provided praiseworthy and reprehensible examples of past events to guide present moral judgment and political action. History provided vicarious experience resulting in the political prudence necessary to those serving the state. Historians and polemicists often invoked parallels from the past as guides to evaluating royal and other conduct. Rulers were compared to Solomon or Nimrod, Augustus or Tiberius, Edward the Confessor or Richard II, these invocations immediately conjuring positive or negative assessments.

There was little doubt about history’s capacity to teach. The Elizabethan humanist Thomas Wilson advised “Every good subject” to “compare the time past with the time present, and ever when [he] heareth Athens, or the Athenians, should remember England and Englishmen . . . that we may learn by the doings of our elders how we may deal in our own affairs, and so . . . avoid all harm that else might unawares happen to us.”¹ Thomas Blundeville’s True Order and Method of Reading and Writing (1574) taught that history should be read to gather “judgment and knowledge” in order to be better equipped “to give Counsell like a most prudent Counciller in public causes, be it in matters of war or peace.”² Similar views were expressed by Elizabethan historians William Camden and John Stowe as well as seventeenth-century historians Francis Bacon, Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Sir Robert Cotton.³ Sir Thomas North, the Elizabethan translator of Plutarch’s Lives, wrote that the reading of history augmented personal experience by allowing one to observe the “setting up of empires, the overthrow of monarchies, the rising and falling of kingdoms” without the pain or danger of actually being present. History also helped rulers become “skilful in . . . well ruling and governing.”⁴ Not only educators and historians made such claims. Henry Wotton believed that in the “reading of history . . . a politique should find the characters of personages and apply them to some of the Court he lives in.”⁵ The Elizabethan courtier-politician, the Earl of Essex, advised “above all other books be conversant in histories, for they will best instruct you in matters moral, politicke, and military.”⁶

Utilitarian sentiments continued to be expressed throughout the seventeenth century. Richard Braithwaite’s handbook for young gentlemen taught that reading history enabled them better to understand monarchy and that states might be “more weakned by civill broiles, than forraine warres.”⁷ Two of the most original political thinkers of the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes and James Harrington, despite major differences in political perspective, also emphasized the usefulness of history. Writing early in his career the absolutist Hobbes insisted that “the principall and proper worke of History” was “to instruct and enable men, by the Knowledge of actions past, to bear themselves prudently in the present, and providently towards the future.”⁸ The republican Harrington wrote:

No man can be a politician except he be first a historian or a traveler, for except he can see what must be or what may be he is no politician. Nor if he has no knowledge in history he cannot tell what is; but he that neither knows what has been nor what is can never tell what must be nor what may be.⁹

Restoration writers expressed similar views. For John Evelyn history fitted one “to serve and speak in Parliaments and in councils; give us good magistrates and justice . . . in a word qualified patriots and pillars of state.” Historian and dramatist Sir Robert Howard indicated that history “best teach[es] by what Methods Kingdoms have been preserv’d and shaken.” John Locke believed that history provided “the true foundations of politics.” The radical political thinker Henry Neville, wrote, “Whosoever sets himself to study Politics, must do so by reading history.”¹⁰

There was no question in the minds of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Englishmen that reading history fostered political judgment. It allowed readers to acquire sufficient competence to evaluate their rulers, their policies and their advisors. Belief in the capacity of historical learning to instruct current conduct thus helped both to create a critical mentality and to instill political confidence. Constant repetition made these views a key component in English political culture.

Although sometimes annoyed or angry with what a particular historian wrote, English monarchs and their advisors and officials shared the view that historical knowledge was necessary for political success. King James I advised his son to learn the craft of kingship by reading history and then applying “bypast things to the present state.”¹¹ Lord Burleigh encouraged William Camden to write a history of Elizabeth’s reign and gave him access to state correspondence and state records. Charles I urged Lord Herbert of Cherbury to write his Life and Reign of Henry the Eighth. George Morley’s sermon at the coronation of Charles II emphasized the importance of “the experience of former Ages as well as his own.” Kings therefore must “spend some time in Books as well as in business; especially in Histories, whereby he shall be truly and impartially inform’d how, and by what means some princes have made themselves happy and glorious, and others have made themselves miserable and infamous.” Especially important was the history of his own nation, from which he would lean “the particular temper and humour of his own Pople, and how he is to apply himself to them, to make himself honour’d and obeyed.¹²

England’s rulers were also concerned about the negative political potential of historical writing. Queen Elizabeth was reported to “teach her subjects in Parliament . . . [not] to make a curious inquisition among their Records, to colour any encroaching upon the sacred Circles of Monarchy.”¹³ James I’s apprehensions about the Society of Antiquaries, a group of lawyer-historians investigating England’s historical past, led to the Society’s demise despite the society’s rules forbidding members from meddling with matters of state and religion.

Historians recognized that the writing of history, especially the history of events amenable to contemporary parallels, held dangers. Although William Camden promised not to conceal things “manifest and evident,” he cautiously declared that he would interpret favorably “things doubtful” and would not pry into “things secret and abstruse.”¹⁴ Sir Walter Raleigh recognized “how dangerous it is to follow truth too near to the heel,” but nevertheless thought it “better it is that the teeth of a historian be struck out of his head for writing the truth than they remain still and rot in his jaws by feeding too much on the sweetmeats of flattery.”¹⁵ John Hayward suffered imprisonment in the Tower for his Life and Raigne of King Henrie the IIII (1599), viewed by authorities as implying criticism of Elizabeth and support for the Earl of Essex. Shortly afterward the Council ordered that “noe English histories be printed” without permission of the Privy Council. Despite Hayward’s imprisonment, his account of Henry IV was reprinted several times before the civil war, during the political turmoil of 1641 and 1642 and again in 1679 and 1681–82.¹⁶

History was popular. Large numbers of long and short histories were published.¹⁷ Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, or the Book of Martyrs, a best-seller that highlighted the Protestant martyrs of Mary’s reign, was perhaps the most widely read historical work. It treated the nation as something other than the possession of the ruler and associated English national identity with Protestantism.¹⁸ John Stow’s chronicle of London and the chronicles of Edmund Hall and Raphael Holinshed enjoyed wide circulation and were brought up to date by Stow and Richard Grafton.¹⁹ These volumes provided Shakespeare with material for his history plays. In 1608 William Fulbecke noted that “histories are now in speciall request and Accompt.”²⁰ There were abridgements and longer works, expensive folios and cheap editions. A Mirror for Magistrates, an account of several lives in poetic form, had numerous editions between 1559 and 1620.²¹ Though little respected by modern historians, Richard Baker’s Chronicle of the Kings of England had nine editions during the seventeenth century.²² The anonymous writer of A Cat May Look at a King (1652) wrote because he thought that the common people could not “attend to read Chronicles.” During the Restoration inexpensive histories were marketed for popular audiences.²³ Although some epitomes and abridgements may have provided little more than lists of rulers and the chief events of their reigns, they nevertheless made at least minimal knowledge widely available. Almanacs, too, frequently contained brief historical accounts or provided dated lists of great events.

Personal libraries were well stocked with historical publications. Even the smallest was likely to contain Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. Sir Robert Cotton’s huge history collection was used by Sir Edward Coke, Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Julius Caesar and others to produce historically based political argument for audiences both in and out of Parliament.²⁴ One example, The Forme of Government of the Kingdome of England (1642), was “published for the satisfaction of all those, that desire to know the manner and forme of the Government of the Land, and the fundamentall Lawes of the Kingdom” and to show “that the Kings of England have beene pleased usually to consult in their great Counsells . . . with their Peeres and Commons in Parliament.”²⁵ Anthony Wood’s Restoration-era library boasted over four hundred mostly English historical items.²⁶ In 1658 the Catalogue of the Most Vendible books in England listed some seven hundred history titles.²⁷ Historical publications, particularly those that emphasized the usefulness of historical knowledge for participants in public life, were tilted toward a male audience since only men had opportunities for public service, but it is clear that histories were read by popular as well as elite audiences.

GENRES OF HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHICAL NORMS

Historical writing focused on the actions of rulers and generals and the changes in political life wrought by war and peace. Antiquarian scholarship sometimes had political implications. Interest in documentary evidence gradually increased. There was a slowly growing appreciation that the actions of nonpolitical actors such as Foxe’s Protestant martyrs were worth recording. The lives of religious and other “worthies” were collected and published. In the late seventeenth century John Evelyn suggested that medals be struck to record the feats and accomplishments of sailors, inventors and scientific virtuosi, as well as the accomplishments of rulers and military heroes.²⁸

Historical writing came in a variety of forms. Some historical works were titled histories; others chronicles, annals, chorographies, memoirs or “perfect history.” Typically narratives of major events occurring over a relatively long period of time, chronicles decreased in prestige. Annals, which recorded things year by year, often included a miscellany of events, ranging from the political to storms and natural disasters. Written from a personal vantage point, memoires were sometimes not considered “histories” but often were not easily differentiated from publications carrying the word “history” in the title. Chorographies often included brief treatments of the region’s “ancient” as well as its “present state.” Blundeville’s handbook recommended that historians discuss trade, public revenues, military forces and the manner of government, topics more commonly found in chorographies, along with consideration of the beginning, augmentation, decline and end of governments. Histories were also to trace princes’ lives in order to see “how things were governed under every kind of Prince, were he good or bad.”²⁹

The most admired type, perfect history, presented an extended account of military matters and matters of state that provided lessons drawn from and explanations of the facts narrated and their causes. It was generally thought that those who had participated in events were best suited to record them. For Francis Bacon, perfect history focused on a period of time, a person worthy of mention and an “action or exploit of the nobler sort.”³⁰ Despite Bacon’s reservations about other forms of history, many treated memorials, reports, accounts of antiquities and narratives without explanations as history. Few historians, outside the classical exemplars, were thought to have achieved “perfect history.”

All agreed that historians should be truthful and impartial, though few were thought to conform to the norm. The historian was “to tell things as they were done without either augmenting or diminishing them, or swarving one iota from the truth.”³¹ The historian should reject “poetic fictions,” “mythic reports” and “bardish hymns.”³² “History without truth or with a mixture of falsehood degenerates into romance which may delight the fancy but will not much approve the understanding or conduct the reader into those practical and useful experiences so advantageous in the management of human affairs.”³³

History was, therefore, frequently contrasted to poetry. The former dealt with the real or matters of fact, the latter with the imaginative or fictional. For some, historical examples taught “with greater weight and gravities, than the inventions and devises of the Poets: because [history] helpeth not itself with any other than with the plain truth, whereas Poetry does commonly enrich things commending them above” their worth.³⁴ Others thought the reverse because historical actors and events often did not provide appropriate moral examples. In poetry, virtue could always triumph.³⁵ Although Bacon would attribute history and poetry to different parts of the mind, the demarcation was not always so clear in practice. The relationships between history and the historical drama and between history and poetry will be discussed in later chapters. Whether or not historians might invent fictional or “feigned orations” to provide verisimilitude was debated, with sixteenth-century historians more likely to permit the invented speech than their seventeenth-century successors.³⁶

Distinctions between history and other discourses of fact were particularly difficult to pin down when historians dealt with recent events. Whatever their actual practice, both news writers and historians promised to report matters of fact faithfully. Historians writing on the civil war used newsbooks as source material. Heath’s Brief Chronicles of the Late Intestine War (1681) was criticized for being “mostly compiled from the lying pamphlets, and all sorts of news-books.”³⁷

Historical writing and the work of precedent-seeking lawyers also overlapped. Searching the English past for supportive historical precedents was common for both lawyers and nonlawyers. Historical precedents were sought by those who supported monarchical authority over that of Parliament and by those seeking to show that parliaments existed prior to the Norman Conquest. Historians often distinguished themselves from the lawyers, suggesting that lawyers were necessarily advocates of a cause and a party while they were impartial. Dryden denounced historians who acted not as “historians of an Action but Lawyers of a party.” Such historians, he thought, should provide a prologue, saying, “I am for the Plaintiff, or I am for the Defendant.”³⁸

Some historians thought it necessary to deal with causation; others wished only to record “matters of fact.” Bacon, for example, thought that the “true office of History” was to “represent the events themselves . . . and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon, to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgment.”³⁹ Those who discussed causation often referred to the personal characteristics of political actors, providing a somewhat psychological account. The most frequently invoked form of causation was divine providence, it being widely believed that God intervened to reward or punish good and bad behavior of both individuals and nations. Foxe’s Acts and Monuments provided an account of God’s actions, showing “manifold examples and experiments” of his “great mercies and judgments in preserving the church, in overthrowing tyrants, in altering states and kingdoms.”⁴⁰ Edmund Bolton was not unusual in treating history as a record of God’s assistance, disappointments and overruling in human affairs.⁴¹

THE ENGLISH PAST: FROM SAXONS TO NORMANS

England’s medieval past figured largely in political discourse. Of particular importance was the concept of the “ancient constitution.” Reference to the “ancient constitution” signified the belief that the nature and character of England’s most important institutions, the monarchy, Parliament, and the common law, took shape in the past and that their past should inform current evaluations of them. Many political writers and speakers utilized the real or imagined characteristics of Saxon kingship and legal institutions and the consequences of the Norman Conquest to support views of England’s current constitution.

The concept of England’s “ancient constitution” has received a good deal of attention, first in J. G. A. Pocock’s seminal study, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, and subsequently in the investigations of Glenn Burgess, Corrine Comstock Weston, Janelle Greenberg, Johan Sommer-ville and others.⁴² Pocock described a “common law mind” epitomized by Sir Edward Coke that emphasized the continuity between Anglo-Saxon and Norman law, thus blunting the Saxon-Norman divide. English law and government were held to have existed substantially unchanged from the beginning of time. For Coke, the “ancient law of England” was independent of monarchical will.⁴³ The common law mind is characterized as conservative and smug, suspicious of other legal forms and traditions. Yet Pocock also drew attention to the new understanding of feudal tenures introduced by Henry Spelman and then Robert Brady that underlined the break between Saxon and Norman law. Glenn Burgess and others have criticized and extended Pocock’s research to show that many English lawyers were less insular than Pocock suggested and recognized change in English law including the legal repercussions of the Norman Conquest. Although Burgess suggested that Coke’s view of an unchanging immemorial law was atypical, he, like Pocock, emphasized the ways in which the “language” of the common law shaped political discourse. Janelle Greenberg and Corinne Comstock Weston have extended this line of research, pointing to the revolutionary potential of invocations of an ancient constitution. The Saxon king Edward could be portrayed as an elected king and founder of the common law who excised obsolete laws and codified the rest with the help of Parliament. Until 1688 English monarchs promised to keep the laws of Edward the Confessor.

The nature of the Norman Conquest was central to the political discussion of the time. At issue was whether the Conquest was accompanied by a complete revamping of the powers of the monarch or whether Norman practices were fused with Saxon law, providing unbroken continuity between the Saxon and Norman regimes. Did the Normans introduce a new legal regime based on feudal tenures or agree to the previous Saxon legal regime? Was William really a conqueror? If so, did William and his successors rule as conquerors, leaving later monarchs free to impose law at will? If King William agreed to accept the law of the Saxons, he and successive monarchs might be viewed as being bound by law.

Some of these politically loaded historical questions were discussed by the Society of Antiquaries. William Hakewill argued that the Normans had altered Saxon laws, and Sir Henry Spelman was among the first to note the introduction of feudal tenures at the time of the Conquest and their subsequent importance for English law. William Lambarde’s 1568 Archaionomia provided access to some aspects of Anglo-Saxon laws.

Competing views of Saxon and Norman law and polities increasingly found their way outside antiquarian circles and into the political arena. James I invoked quite a different view of the nature and evolution of English law from Coke’s vision of pre- and post-Norman continuity. James argued that England’s laws dated from the time of the Conquest and stressed that kings not judges made laws.⁴⁴ Samuel Daniel’s verse history viewed the Norman Conquest as a break with the past, signaling the introduction of Norman customs and the beginnings of the common law. Speaking in the House of Commons in 1610, Thomas Hedley argued that pre-Norman law was immutable and immemorial.⁴⁵ John Selden characterized the ancient constitution as a mixed monarchy in which monarchy, nobility, clergy and the representatives of the people had shared sovereignty from the very beginning. He acknowledged that the Norman Conquest was indeed a conquest that introduced feudal law, but argued that this feudal law had blended with Saxon customs.⁴⁶ John Hayward argued that William was not a conqueror because he had a plausible pretense of title to the Crown. By the 1620s images of the Saxon and Norman past and their relationship to the common law were closely linked to competing political views of law. During the 1628 debate on the Petition of Right one speaker announced, “There are the plain footsteps of the Laws in the Government of the Saxons” that had outlived the Conquest.⁴⁷ During the debates John Pym argued that William conquered the kingdom but not the law.⁴⁸ On the other side, Peter Heylyn, who believed that “the power of making laws . . . is properly and legally in the King alone,” insisted that William had become king by conquest. “His Sword was then the Scepter, and his will the Law.” The Crown, therefore, had no need for an act of Parliament to make law.⁴⁹

The political implications of conquest reemerged after the death of Charles I. In 1650 Mercurius Politicus argued that the chronicles showed that the power of the sword and conquest were the foundations of all titles to government,⁵⁰ a position used to support the new Commonwealth regime. The vicissitudes befalling Nathaniel Bacon’s Historical and Political Discourse of the Laws and Government of England (1647–51) suggest how easily historical writing and politics were intertwined. Bacon, a member of Parliament, referred to the debate over whether Charles I as “Successor to the Norman Conquerour” exercised “arbitrary rule” over his subject. He noted that “some mens Pens of late” were denying the “Commons ancient Right in the Legislative powers; others, even to annul the Right both of Lords and Commons therein.” A Restoration reprinting alleged that many again “endeavoured to advance the Prerogative beyond its just bounds.” Still another printing followed due to great demand, scarcity and high price. Now, however, the government prosecuted the publisher as well as seizing and burning many copies. The book was published yet again in 1682 after the licensing act had expired, and it “met with a new Persecution, . . . the Prerogative then getting above the Law.”⁵¹

The Norman Conquest was featured in Whig and Tory polemics. The Whig Argumentum Anti-Normannicum argued that William had never made “an Absolute Conquest, abolished English laws nor taken away the estates of the English.” The volume’s frontispiece depicts William accepting the scepter and the laws of St. Edward from Britannia and promising not to perform arbitrary or illegal acts “under pretense of Prerogative Royal” nor to “pretend to any Absolute or Despotical Powers over the Lives, Liberties and Estates” of his subjects.⁵²

The concept of a “Norman Yoke,” which suggested the introduction of rule by a tyrant or at least rule by will and/or the introduction of unjust laws, provided radicals of the civil war era with material to attack existing political and legal institutions. Midcentury radicals looked to an idealized Saxon past for a model of kingship limited by law and as a repository of the rights of Englishmen. John Hare’s St. Edward’s Ghost: or Anti-Normanism (1637) describes Normanism as an “alien yoke . . . unsuitable to the dignity or tolerable to sprit of this nation” and argues for the restoration of the laws of Edward the Confessor.⁵³ Levellers hoped to recover lost Saxon rights and end “Norman bondage.”⁵⁴ John Lilburne advocated eliminating the centralized justice of the Norman kings and their successors and restoring the power of local juries and local courts along Saxon lines. The radical midcentury law reform movement was fueled by anti-Normanism.⁵⁵ The radical vision of an idealized Saxon past and a malevolent Normanism was rejected both by those who insisted on continuity of law and institutions and by such figures as Colonel Ireton who insisted that there was no evidence to suggest what the ancient constitution had actually been. Radicals then seemed to shift from arguments based on history to those based on natural rights.

The implications of the Conquest continued to be studied and debated during the Restoration era by those seeking historical justification for their vision of the proper relationship between king and Parliament. Sir Matthew Hale, the most respected jurist of the Restoration era, wished to “wipe off that false Imputation upon our Laws, as if they were the Fruit or Effect of a Conquest, or carried in them the Badge of Servitude, the Will of the Conqueror.” William had not been a conqueror, having succeeded to Harold’s crown, and he did not alter or impose law “per Modum Conquestus, or Jure Belli.”⁵⁶ Norman laws were not binding until “received and authoritatively engrafted unto the Law of England.”⁵⁷

Historical argument, or what John Phillip Reid has aptly called “forensic history,” was also brought to bear on discussions of the powers of Parliament,⁵⁸ particularly the question of whether or not parliaments had existed before the Conquest. If Parliament had existed in Saxon times it was a necessary part of the constitution. If it had been created by the Normans, it might exist at the discretion of a Crown exercising the powers of a conqueror. In 1561 the House of Commons imprisoned one of its members for denying the immemorial antiquity of the House of Commons. Speaking before the House of Commons, Sir Edward Coke insisted that Parliament dated from Anglo-Saxon times. In 1641 Parliament arranged for the publication of a fourteenth-century description of the holding of a Saxon Parliament.⁵⁹ The question of when the Commons were first called to Parliament was treated in a proparliamentary work of 1642.⁶⁰ In 1658 William Prynne vociferously argued that the members of the House of Lords “sate antiently” many hundreds of years before the Conquest.” William Petyt, William Atwood and Sir Robert Atkyns were active participants on behalf of the Whigs, offering a standard litany of arguments against the “innovating” historians and writers who dated the origin of the House of Commons from the reign of Henry III.⁶¹ Tories often argued that Parliament had no legal basis independent of the Crown.⁶²

Magna Carta became an icon for those asserting that kings were bound by law.⁶³ The document, however, was variously interpreted, either as embodying Saxon liberties and the laws of Edward, which had only been confirmed by King John, or, alternatively, as Norman liberties recognized by the king. James I insisted that it had been granted by the Crown under duress in the context of an unjust rebellion.⁶⁴ Magna Carta played a central role in the 1627 case involving the imprisonment of the Five Knights. It was used by the defense to deny the legitimacy of discretionary imprisonment by the Crown. The prosecution denied that it contained guarantees against such confinement. The two sides disputed the meaning of the lex terrae clause of Magna Carta and its relationship to the concept of “due process of law.”⁶⁵ In debates leading up to the Petition of Right the following year, Magna Carta was again used to support claims of ancient liberties.⁶⁶ Feudal rights thus were transformed into a general charter of liberties.

POST-NORMAN CONQUEST HISTORY

Some reigns and periods were more relevant to political discourse and political ideology than others. The reign of Henry III became relevant during the civil war and Restoration. Sir John Cotton published A Short View Of the Reign of King Henry III in 1627, detailing Henry’s conflicts with subjects and overassertive parliaments and his vigorous reforms. While it is unclear to what extent Cotton’s account was intended as a lesson for Charles I, he was nearly prosecuted because his work was seen as “a parallel for these Times.”⁶⁷ Later editions appeared in 1641, 1642, 1679 and 1681, all politically tumultuous years. Only a year after its first publication, Cotton was urging Parliament to remedy grievances and reform the royal finances.⁶⁸ Both Royalists and parliamentarians purported to draw instruction from Henry III’s reign.⁶⁹

The deposition of Richard II and the subsequent rule of Henry IV were often deployed in political debate. Those who espoused the divine nature of kingship depicted the deposition as an execrable act because Richard had been an anointed king.⁷⁰ Those favoring a limited or contractual monarchy presented the deposition and replacement of one monarch by another as sometimes legitimate. For those who deplored the deposition, Henry was a wicked usurper responsible for the death of an anointed king. For those with a contractual or consensual view of kingship who emphasized cooperation between Crown and Parliament, Henry IV had rescued England from tyranny. Yet there remained an ambivalence about Henry IV, who was simultaneously a successful prince and a rebel against the “lord’s anointed” responsible for the civil wars that subsequently plagued the country.

John Hayward suffered as the result of his The Life and Raigne of King Henry IIII (1599) because he was thought to have equated Richard II to Elizabeth. He was examined in Star Chamber by Sir Edward Coke, who indicated that he had chosen a “story 200 years old . . . intending the application of it to this time.”⁷¹ Several treatments of Richard II appeared in the early 1640s when Parliament and king were at loggerheads.⁷² The Life and Death of Richard the Second (1642) explained that Richard had been deposed “by reason of his not regarding the councell of the sage and wise of His Kingdom but followed the advice of wicked and lewd Councell.”⁷³ A more ominous lesson was offered in 1648 when Parliament was castigated for not calling Charles to account as parliaments had Edward II and Richard II. History was said to provide ample precedents for the deposition of the current king.

Richard’s deposition became relevant again during the reign of Charles II, when worry about the Duke of York’s Catholicism gave rise to efforts to exclude him from the succession, and again at the departure of James II in 1688. Sir Robert Howard used the depositions of Edward II and Richard II to argue that their arbitrary designs and policies were being repeated during the latter part of Charles II’s and the early part of James II’s reigns. Edward II and Richard II had “forfeited the Trust” of the people and had been deposed by their representatives.⁷⁴ Knowledge that England had deposed earlier kings was widespread.

Negative treatments of Richard II and later Richard III often took the form of a dichotomized classification of the “good king” who cares about his people and “the tyrant” who does not and pursues a variety of villainous activities and policies. The habit of using parallels meant that an account of an earlier “tyrant” might easily be taken as commentary on the current ruler. It was not difficult for critics of Charles I or Oliver Cromwell to use historical references to characterize them as tyrants.⁷⁵

Richard III, the last of the Yorkist kings, was depicted as the epitome of the tyrant. Sir Thomas More’s early-sixteenth-century history of a physically and mentally deformed ruler indelibly marked him as the worst of kings. Shakespeare’s Richard III brought More’s characterization to the stage. The play was reprinted at least eight times before 1635, making the portrayal available to readers as well as playgoers. William Martyn’s portrayal of the “wicked and bloudy tyrant” reinforced More’s characterization.⁷⁶

The civil wars between Yorkists and Lancastrians became known through the popular works of Edward Hall, Raphael Holinshed and Samuel Daniels. The baleful effects of the civil wars they described helped to establish the idea of the Tudors as rescuers from civil strife.⁷⁷ Although these works expressed a positive view of the Tudors, the Privy Council required some changes in Holinshed’s chronicle before permitting its sale. These and later accounts of the late medieval civil wars were used to warn of the undesirable effects of civil war and to blame those responsible for the mid-seventeenth-century upheavals.

Historical treatments of more recent monarchs were less directly applicable to current politics. Francis Bacon’s History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh depicts a shrewd, cautious, not-much-loved monarch but did not offer specific lessons. Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Life and Raigne of Henry the Eighth, although encouraged by Charles I, did not depict Henry as a model monarch.⁷⁸ Treatments of Mary Tudor were typically accompanied by denunciations of Roman Catholicism and of Spain. Mary, Queen of Scots, who claimed to be her successor, received hostile treatment. A brief history of the life of Mary Queen of Scots appeared in 1681 when the dangers of a popish succession were again aired.⁷⁹

From Foxe onward, treatments of Elizabeth underlined the view that England was a Protestant nation under God’s protection. William Camden’s The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth was laudatory.⁸⁰ For Francis Bacon Elizabeth was “the Pattern of Princes.”⁸¹ Though frequently criticized during her lifetime, after her death Elizabeth became a heroic figure “of famous memory” whose example was frequently used to criticize her successors. Parliamentary historian Thomas May treated Queen Elizabeth as a model monarch who had maintained “The right use of her subjects’ hearts, hands and purses in a parliamentary way.” May contrasted Elizabeth with James I and Charles I, who had drawn England into a “calamitous and consuming” war.⁸² Charles I and his defenders responded by emphasizing continuity between the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline regimes. Although Elizabeth was generally ignored during the commonwealth period, Nathaniel Bacon presented her positively but suggested that Elizabeth realized that her authority depended on parliamentary support. Francis Osborne’s Cromwellian era Historical Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James contrasted her moderation and frequent parliaments with early Stuart high-handedness.⁸³

During the Restoration Elizabethan history was interpreted according to the interpreter’s political orientation. For some, Charles II was the second Elizabeth. Charles II himself viewed Elizabeth as the embodiment of absolute authority and, like his father, James I, emphasized the continuity between Elizabethan and Stuart rule. Others contrasted her moderation with the king’s overreaching. The Royalist Duke of Newcastle II viewed Elizabeth as “the beste presedent for Englandes Government” and a practical model for Charles II. He characterized her as an absolute monarch, head of state as well as of the church, the military and the law courts. She had been above the law and had retrenched parliamentary liberties—quite a different Elizabeth from that of May or Osborne. The moderate constitutional Royalist Clarendon also viewed Elizabeth as a model for the restored monarchy, but his Elizabeth, unlike Newcastle’s, was a mediator who maintained law and respected parliamentary privileges.⁸⁴ For Thomas Sprat, Elizabeth’s reign was “triumphant, peaceable at home, and glorious abroad.” In her days “the Reformation was settled, commerce was establish’d and Navigation advanc’d.”⁸⁵

Elizabeth’s image was redrawn yet again during the intensely partisan 1670s and 1680s. For those fearing popish plots and the revival of popery she became an antipapist heroine, her accession day being celebrated with antipapist speeches and pope burnings. A pope burning procession of 1679 included a statue of Elizabeth along with banners reading “Magna Carta” and “Protestant Religion.” When the town corporation ceased to be in Whig hands, Elizabeth Day pageants were forbidden.⁸⁶

Accounts of James I’s and Charles I’s reigns were also utilized by later polemicists. James was criticized for his divine right theories of kingship, his views of the law, pacific policies, lenience to papists, the Spanish match and his dealings with Parliament.⁸⁷ Some years later, however, Thomas Sprat applauded his reign, as “happy in all the benefits of peace.”⁸⁸

As Charles I and Oliver Cromwell gradually became historical figures rather than contemporaries, their images became attached to partisan ideologies and polemic. Some portrayed Charles I as a tyrant, or the subverter of English law and English Protestantism, while for others he was a martyr who valiantly stood by the English church and the constitution. Peter Heylyn’s pro-Charles Observations on the Historie of the Reign of King Charles was written to rectify misguided critical treatments of the king.⁸⁹ Cromwell was depicted as a tyrant by both disappointed republicans and apologists for the Restoration.

Explanations of the midcentury civil wars were informed by partisanship. As Thomas Fuller observed, those who “wrote in or since our civil wars are seldom apprehended truly and candidly save of such of their own persuasion.”⁹⁰ Most accounts and explanations can, without difficulty, be categorized as Royalist or parliamentarian or later, Tory or Whig.⁹¹

Most historical commentary focused on the character of the key participants. Only rarely did those seeking to explain the midcentury upheavals look back as far as the reign of Elizabeth or seek structural causes. Those with parliamentarian sympathies typically focused on Charles and his ministers or, less often, on James I or the Duke of Buckingham. The tradition of placing blame on evil advisors proved useful to those who wished to avoid putting too much blame on the king. In one account Strafford was the “arch traitor” who “had well nigh stabbed the state to the Heart.”⁹² Others placed blame on Henrietta Maria. Still others emphasized that the war had been fought to defend the law, liberties and Parliament.

Royalist accounts such as that of Sir William Dugdale frequently denounced the ambitions of individuals such as John Pym or factional groups, suggesting that they had used the “cloak of religion” to hide their selfish ambitions.⁹³ William Lilly thought the imposition of the book of Common Prayer on Scotland was the sole cause “of all the miseries and wars” in both England and Scotland.⁹⁴ Clarendon sought “the grounds, circumstances and artifices of this Rebellion” in the very recent past. He blamed both conspirators and Puritan clergymen, who spread “strange wildfire among the people.”⁹⁵ Thomas Sprat thought history would show “a full view of the miseries, that attended rebellion” and “better means to preserve . . . obedience.”⁹⁶

The most interesting explanation was that of James Harrington, who traced the causes of the civil war to the social and economic changes of the early Tudor era when a massive transformation of land ownership weakened the aristocracy and put greater political clout into the hands of the landed gentry. It was the dissolution of the government that had caused the war, “not the War the dissolution of the government.” But Harrington also pointed to a prince “stiff in disputes” who received “unhappy encouragement from his clergy.”⁹⁷

Thomas Hobbes thought the rebellion had been fostered by reading books “of Policy, and Histories of the ancient Greeks and Romans.”⁹⁸ Some years later he attributed the “core of the rebellion” to the seditious ideas taught at the universities. He also blamed parliamentarians with views on mixed government and seditious ministers.⁹⁹ Charles II attributed the “late rebellion” to “the exhorbitant Liberty of the Press.”¹⁰⁰

Intermixture of historical narrative and political polemic was common. One of the most influential was Andrew Marvell’s Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government, a pamphlet presenting a “naked narrative” of a conspiracy to turn English government into a tyranny. His account was in fact a potent attack on royal policy, an attempt to promote fear of its consequences and a defense of the tradition of mixed monarchy. ¹⁰¹ Those attempting to arouse fears of popish plots printed histories of Mary’s reign or the Gunpowder Plot. Tories argued that Whigs desired to repeat the upheavals of the civil war and Interregnum. The phrase “1641 is come again” could be found in many Restoration treatments of the civil war.

Document-oriented Restoration historians were no less enmeshed in political controversy. John Rushworth’s Historical Collections (1659) was designed to show “the true causes, the rise and growths of our late miseries.”¹⁰² The Royalist answer to Rushworth, John Nalson’s Impartial Collections of the Great Affairs of State, was intended to demonstrate

the innocence of the government and vindicate it from those notorious detractions and calumnies which some factious and turbulent spirits who have had all along designed to subvert the establishment both of Church and State persuading the nation of strange designs to introduce arbitrary government and re-establish popery. . . . [T]he truth is . . . that these popular bugbears were only the contrivance of the antimonarchical and schismatical faction to draw in a party, to enable them to carry on their own wicked designs, and of at least reducing the monarchy to an impotent Venetian seigniory, and utterly to extirpate the most apostolical government of episcopacy and set up the anarchy of Toleration and Liberty of Conscience.¹⁰³

Nalson believed that nothing had harmed Charles I more than “the paper bullets of the Press” and that those currently sloganizing on behalf of Parliament were the same people who in the past had “betrayed us into the most deplorable shipwreck that ever England saw.” The documents he provided would counter such “pretences to maintain Liberty, Property, Protestant religion, and Privileges of Parliament.”¹⁰⁴

Reprinting of older works was also put to political use. Both Catholic works such as the Jesuit Robert Parson’s A Conference about the next Succession to the Crown of England (1598) and earlier anti-Catholic works were reprinted between 1678 and 1682 to underline the anti-Catholic themes in Whig polemics during the Popish Plot and Exclusion era.

The English past, distant and recent, was a politicized past, a past deployed to defend preferred constitutional arrangements and conceptions of English law and to assign responsibility for the disasters of civil war and rebellion.

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

The history of the Church of England was closely tied to the history of the nation and the English sense of identity and, like civil history, was politically engaged.¹⁰⁵ Largely written by Anglicans, it was used to justify the break from Rome, to defend the church from the charge of novelty and to affirm the close relationship between church and state. It leaned in the direction of Erastianism, justifying the role of king as head of the church. Especially prominent were efforts to show that the church had had an independent existence before Augustine came to England. It was the Roman, not the English, church that had departed from the path of primitive Christianity. Differing views of what the character of the English church should be were often reflected in the way its past was presented. Anglicans and Puritans, high churchmen, latitudinarians and dissenters produced recognizably different histories.

Ecclesiastical history and anti–Roman Catholic polemic were inextricably intertwined. The separation from Rome itself was supported by history. In 1534 the Act in Restraint of Appeals justified its action by “divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles.”¹⁰⁶ Most influential in shaping the English sense of itself as a Protestant people was Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563). His account of the “the renewing of the old aucient Church of Christ,” the sufferings of persecuted Protestants and Elizabeth as a divine instrument to further the reformation of the church could be found in most churches and many homes.¹⁰⁷ Archbishop Parker encouraged “diligent search for such writings of historye, and other monuments of antiqities, as might reveale unto us what hath ben the state of our church in England.”¹⁰⁸ For Parker the Elizabethan church settlement was a return to the original English church.

Among the best known histories were James Ussher’s erudite Britannicarum ecclesiarum antiquitates (1637), which attempted to find a primitive Protestant episcopal church independent from Rome, and Thomas Fuller’s The Church History of Britain (1655). Fuller’s history was attacked by Peter Heylyn, who found the account too favorable to Puritan nonconformists. Heylyn’s Ecclesia Restaurata or The History of the Reformation of the Church of England emphasized the divine origin of episcopacy and argued for an enhanced role of Convocation.¹⁰⁹ This account was in turn challenged by Gilbert Burnet’s History of the Reformation, most of which was published during the Popish Plot and Exclusion era. The latitudinarian Burnet highlighted the Royal Supremacy and the role of Parliament in shaping England’s ecclesiastical polity.¹¹⁰ Antipapist sentiment fueled several latitudinarian, apologetic histories. William Lloyd’s Historical Account of Church Government vindicated an English church independent from Rome governed by bishops, while Edward Stillingfleet’s Origines Britannicae, which defended Lloyd’s account, traced the English church to the conversion of the Saxons.¹¹¹

John Selden’s politically engaged History of Tithes (1618) provided a refutation of the contentious claim that the payments that supported the clergy were of divine right. It was designed not to “shew barely what hath been . . . but to give other light to the Practice and doubts of the present.” Selden’s study was sufficiently inflammatory for the king to forbid Selden to answer his many critics.¹¹²

THE ROMAN PAST

The history of Rome played a significant role in shaping English political thinking throughout the early modern era. While educating boys in the Latin language and classical texts, humanist grammar school teachers inculcated the values of a politically active life. The humanist curriculum that helped to shift the universities from a largely clerical orientation to one also dedicated to educating young gentlemen gave history and especially Roman history an important place. The educated classes, both lay and clerical, thus became familiar with Caesar and company, emperors admirable and despicable. They learned of the expulsion of the Tarquins, the establishment of the Roman republic, republican institutions such as the Senate and the Tribunes, Rome’s social conflicts and civil wars, its military prowess and expansion and the decline of Roman power.

Familiarity with the Roman past was enhanced by the practice of commonplacing, in which both schoolboys and adults collected information and quotations from their reading according to subject matter and topic. It was thus a simple matter to retrieve what a given Roman historian or other writer had to say about a particular subject. Commonplace books provided a readily available source of examples, quotations and allusions for student compositions, personal reflection, parliamentary speeches and polemical tracts.

Greek historians were less well known than Latin, but the much admired Thucydides and Polybius must be noted because of their political import. Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War was translated by Thomas Hobbes. Polybius was a key figure in the transmission of the Greek classification of good and bad versions of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy and the theory of mixed government. Applied to England, this theory was treated as calling for a combination of monarch, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The theory was often utilized by those opposed to absolute monarchy and was criticized by absolutists and by Hobbes. Polybius was also important for transmitting the idea of historical cycles in which states had a beginning, a prime and a decay.

The first chairs of history at Oxford and Cambridge were devoted to Roman history, which taught the evils of sedition, the poor end of rebels and the presence of God in history. Readers of history were to collect historical examples and then develop precepts from them.¹¹³ Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, founder of the Cambridge chair, expected the chairholder to focus on the Annales of Tacitus, an account sharply critical of the Roman emperors. The first lecture, delivered in 1627 by Isaac Dorislaus, was embroiled in controversy. Dorislaus emphasized limits on monarchical authority that, when exceeded, gave the people the right to resist.

The numerous translations of the Roman historians suggest a substantial audience with insufficient Latin proficiency to read them easily in the original. Despite the many translation efforts, in the middle of the seventeenth century Marchamont Nedham still stressed the need to uncover works too “long locked up” in Latin.¹¹⁴ There was a lively market in the translations of Caesar’s writings throughout the early modern era. Sallust, who focused on the Cataline conspiracy and the enervating influence of wealth and corruption and emphasized the decline from ancient Roman republican virtue and frugality, was widely read. North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives, dedicated to the queen, promised that her subjects would be taught reverence, zeal and devotion to princes.

Livy’s moralizing treatment of republican Rome, available in English from 1589, was reprinted several times. Machiavelli’s well-known commentary on Livy brought the questions of citizen armies, mixed constitutions and the preference for war over peace to widespread public attention. Gabriel Harvey read, reread and annotated his Livy over several decades as a guide to political action and frequently discussed Livy with others to better understand “the forms of state, the conditions of person, and the qualities of actions.” He read Livy in the context of the views of Aristotle, Bodin, Althusius and Lipsius because “it is fitting for prudent men to make strenuous efforts to use whatever sheds light on politics.”¹¹⁵ Like Harvey, Francis Bacon and John Locke thought Livy’s discourses were the “fittest” to instruct in politics.¹¹⁶

Tacitus was widely read. Translation began in 1591 with Sir Henry Savile, who in The Ende of Nero and Beginning of Galba, taught “in Galba” you “maiest learne, that a good Prince governed by evill ministers is as dangerous as if hee were evill himself.” Readers would learn about “the calamities that follow civil warres, where lawes lye asleepe, and all things are iudged’d by the sworde.” For Savile it was “more tolerable” to be governed by “one tyrannie then manie, and better to live where nothing then when al things were lawful.”¹¹⁷ Bacon was influenced by Tacitus, as was historian John Hayward who, like Bacon, was a member of the circle of the Earl of Essex. When Hayward was called to answer for the allegedly treasonous implications of his history of Henry IV, Bacon defended him, saying that he had simply borrowed from Tacitus. Tacitus was often cited by those who were critical of the English court and analogized the corruptions of Tiberius and his favorite Sejanus to their own era.¹¹⁸ Historian Edmund Bolton, who wished to refute Tacitus’ negative portrayal of Tiberius, complained that Tacitus had been too “vehement a lover of [the] popular partie” and “zealous for Tyrannicide.”¹¹⁹

Lucan’s Pharsalia or The Civil Warres of Rome was translated several times, first by Christopher Marlowe, again in 1614 by Sir Arthur Gorges and still again in 1627 by Thomas May. Some modern scholars have treated Lucan’s Pharsalia as favoring a republic because of its hostile treatment of the tyrant Nero and his corrupt court, but Charles I, to whom May dedicated his translation, does not appear to have raised any objections. Nevertheless, Lucan was frequently associated at the time with hostility to tyrannical government.

Given the number of translations and condensations, we are safe in assuming that moderately educated males were likely to have had at least a passing familiarity with the Roman past. Of course some figures were better known than others, and some lent themselves to contemporary political uses more easily than others. Julius Caesar was both the best known and the most controversial. Although his military accomplishments were widely admired, Caesar’s responsibility for the demise of the republic was seen differently in different quarters. Opinion was divided as to whether his assassins, Brutus and Cassius, should be viewed as republican heroes or as ambitious and jealous malcontents. The popular martial figure Prince Henry was associated with Julius Caesar in a positive way, and his father, James I, viewed Caesar as a good monarch overthrown by treacherous subjects. Bacon placed him among the founders of states, lawgivers and liberators.¹²⁰ In 1642, however, it was suggested that Caesar had introduced “a tyranny more absolute, and worse conditions” than that of the kings who had been expelled at the time of the creation of the republic.¹²¹ James Harrington saw Julius Caesar as the destroyer of liberty. ¹²² Cromwell was ridiculed as a mock-Caesar by both republicans and Royalists.¹²³ While tutor to the Duke of Gloucester, the historian Gilbert Burnet tried to make “Julius Caesar, ever odious in his eyes.”¹²⁴ Those who were attracted to the virtues of the republican era saw Caesar and imperial rule as a decline from republican virtue. Their opponents viewed the change simply as the assumption of full legislative authority by a single monarch or as a desirable end to republican rule.

Augustus Caesar was a less divisive figure often associated with the end of civil strife and with patronage of the arts. The Jacobean peace could be defended by comparison to the Augustan peace. For historian John Speed, James I was “another Octavius” who ruled “a stout stirring Nation” peacefully. William Fulbecke contrasts the corruption and disruption of the late republican era with Augustan rule.¹²⁵ In 1632 Peter Heylyn contrasted the stable Augustan regime with the earlier unstable Roman democracy. Poet Edmund Waller compared Lord Protector Cromwell to Augustus, viewing both as having calmed a divided country. When Cromwell considered taking the title of king, it was rumored that he would be given the title “Oliver Maximus Insularum Britannicarum Imperator Augustus.”¹²⁶ Charles II was also viewed as an Augustus who would provide a stable, peaceful regime after a long period of civil strife.¹²⁷

Tiberius and his corrupt favorite Sejanus received considerable attention during the reigns of James I and Charles I, when Sejanus was identified with the unpopular Duke of Buckingham. In 1626 Sir John Eliot was imprisoned for suggesting a parallel between Buckingham and Sejanus, a parallel that implied that the king was Tiberius. In 1626 there was The Powerful Favorite, the Life of Aelisu Sejanus. Sejanus was also the subject of a popular Ben Jonson play. Oliver Cromwell was treated as a Sejanus-like figure and parallels were drawn between Charles II and Tiberius.¹²⁸ Those wishing to point to the corruption of the royal court could use the Sejanus-Tiberius allusion without commenting directly on the current political scene.

While references to tyrannical Roman emperors risked royal displeasure, sometimes matters could be finessed. Although Edmund Bolton, in his Nero Caesar, concluded, as did many others, that Nero was a tyrant, he contrasted the evils of Nero with the beneficent rule of James I, concluding that those who rebelled against the emperor were worse than Nero himself.¹²⁹ The emperor Constantine, who had Christianized the Roman Empire and protected the church, was seen positively and his example was often used to provide support for the Royal Supremacy. Elizabeth was depicted in Constantinian terms.

REPUBLICANISM

Republicanism has been a topic of considerable recent interest to historians of English political thought. Although one can point to numerous instances in which writers expressed admiration for the Roman republic, republicanism, in the sense of favoring the establishment of a nonmonarchical form of government for England, seems to have been limited to a small number of writers of the civil war and Interregnum era.¹³⁰ Pre–civil war thinkers might contrast the virtuous republic with a tyrannical empire, but prior to 1642 even the most dissatisfied did not think in terms of a nonmonarchical English state or importing Roman constitutional arrangements. A dramatic change occurred in 1649, when England actually became a kingless state. Even then the declaration by Parliament of the transition from tyranny to a free state emphasized that only minor alterations of form could be expected. Even during the monarchless Commonwealth, it is difficult to find more than a handful of writers who can comfortably be labeled republican. As Blair Worden has recently shown, many of those traditionally labeled classical republicans mixed their republicanism with arguments drawn from the ancient constitution, limited monarchy and natural rights.¹³¹ Discussion of England as a “free state,” to a greater or lesser extent on the Roman model, was largely limited to the brief period in which England abolished monarchy.

Among those who drew on Roman republican traditions to one degree or another during the Interregnum were John Milton, Marchamont Nedham and James Harrington. A spokesman for the Commonwealth government who became disillusioned with the Protectorate, Milton drew his ideas from the humanist tradition, the religious ferment of the age, resistance theory and classical republicanism.¹³² Marchamont Nedham, a spokesman for the Commonwealth and later the Protectorate, used both his newspaper, Mercurius Politicus, and the pamphlet format to voice republican views. His The Case of the Commonwealth of England Stated (1650) recommended a return to the polity of republican Rome and emphasized the importance of manly virtue and a citizen militia. Rome played a substantial role again in Nedham’s The Excellencie of a Free State (1656).¹³³

James Harrington used English history to account for the collapse of English government but used the Roman past to design an “immortal commonwealth” that drew upon and improved on the Roman republican experience. The creation of the Rota club to expound and discuss Harringtonian ideas ensured that Harringtonian republicanism would continue to be discussed during the Restoration era in coffee houses and elsewhere.

Two radical Restoration political thinkers continued to draw on the Roman republican tradition. Henry Neville’s Plato Redivivus (1681), said to have made “a great noise in the world,” mixed contractual elements and ideas drawn from the ancient constitution along with an emphasis on republican Rome.¹³⁴ Algernon Sidney’s Discourse Concerning Government, published some years after his execution for treason, also combined classical republicanism, contract and natural rights.¹³⁵

Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, a work of interest to both republicans and nonrepublicans, inspired discussions of what constituted the “greatness of states,” what was responsible for their longevity and decline and a host of subsidiary questions. As we noted earlier, Giovanni Botero, also interested in the question of “greatness” and how rulers might increase the strength of their states, further stimulated English discussion of these topics.

Answers to these Machiavellian questions tended to be offered piecemeal rather than in extended treatment. Bacon’s essay “Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates” argued that nations aspiring to greatness must “profess arms as their principal honour, study and occupation” and treated strength at sea, trade and the relations between Crown, nobility and commons as relevant to assessments of English national power.¹³⁶ Following Machiavelli there were those who favored a warlike state that supported the values of masculine vigor, valor and patriotism. Others preferred the more Augustan era as a model of peace and prosperity. Yet peace and prosperity were seen by some as politically dangerous.¹³⁷ References to a cycle of war and then peace and plenty followed by moral decline eventually leading to civil war are to be found in many writers of the period.

Although the question of colonial expansion received some attention before the mid-seventeenth century, the Interregnum and Restoration paid greater attention, often with an eye to Roman practice.¹³⁸ Harrington, for example, criticized Roman-style expansion by conquest as creating hostile colonies, suggesting instead planting colonies with English people who would operate under the rule of law. Like Machiavelli, Nedham favored an expansionist policy based on a citizen army. Cromwell’s expansionist inclinations were often discussed in the context of the Roman experience. David Armitage has even characterized the Cromwellian era as an imperial moment. If earlier English support for the Dutch had been based on a common Protestantism, there was increasing feeling that the Dutch and English now competed for empire. Questions relating to empire and the best forms of colonization continued during the Restoration. Sprat admired the Roman practice of giving “the liberty of Roman Citizens to whole towns, and Countries” as a means of extending its empire “as farr as the bounds of the Civil World did reach.”¹³⁹ Roman imperial example did not determine English colonial policy, but that historical experience was very much in mind as the English empire grew.

SCRIPTURAL HISTORY

Although English and Roman history were central to the development of English political culture, it was scriptural history that had the deepest and widest impact. Scriptural history was known to all, literate and illiterate alike, child and adult, via sermons and Bible reading. Scripture was the source of the widely held view that God might intervene in human affairs, either directly or indirectly. In almost every medium there were references to God’s mercies and judgments. Political and military failures were often treated as punishments for sin or shortcomings in worship. God’s providence was seen as having been responsible for victories and defeats. God might also act through secondary causes and human agents, having purposes that humans could not fathom, a view that helped to explain how evil persons and rulers sometimes gained victory. Raleigh’s History of the World was perhaps the most influential historical work that emphasized the role of providence. Scripture also shaped the idea that history had a direction and a purpose. All events, personal and public, could find an explanation in God’s judgments. At times apocalyptical thinking would have a powerful influence on political expectations and goals. Although this strand of thought had its greatest influence during the civil war and Interregnum, it was also important in shaping earlier and later thought.

Scriptural history reinforced thinking in terms of parallels and analogy. The analogy between England and Israel was pervasive. English rulers were often compared to biblical counterparts. Elizabeth was often characterized as Deborah, Mary Queen of Scots as Jezebel, James I as Solomon and Charles I as David or Josiah. James I’s funeral sermon was published as Great Britain’s Solomon (1625), extending the king’s vision of himself as Solomon beyond his lifetime. Open analogies were drawn in such works as A parallel between the Israelites desiring of King Saul, and England’s desiring of a Parliament (1643) and Parallela dysparallela, or . . . an unparallel’d parallel between the professed murtherer of K. Saul and the horrid actual murtherers of King Charles I (1660). English colonization might be supported by “divine testimonies” showing that “the state of the Jewes was farre more glorious, by the conquests of David, and under the ample raigne of Solomon, then ever before or after.”¹⁴⁰ Rulers were often castigated by comparing them to biblical tyrants such as Nimrod.¹⁴¹ Abraham Cowley’s epic poem Davideis makes use of the conflict between David and Saul. Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel would have been incomprehensible without a knowledge of the biblical account.

New Testament history was also put to political uses. Many incidents, such as those in Romans, were used in sermons, political tracts and treatises to underline the necessity of obedience to established authority and to counter theories that justified rebellion. The sufferings of Christ were easily and quickly adapted to produce the image of Charles I as a Christian martyr. Old and New Testament accounts thus were often used to buttress desired political beliefs and to refute undesirable ones.

CONCLUSION

Political thinking in early modern England was permeated with history. History provided political and moral exemplars and precepts. Reviewing historical experience, English, Roman, foreign and biblical, it was possible to draw lessons that were useful in the present. Civil history helped train rulers and their privy councilors and ambassadors, and provided a necessary body of knowledge to gentlemen who might sit in Parliament. Knowledge of English history was essential for those wishing to understand the nature of the ancient constitution and those who would protect English laws, precedents and liberties by shaping or reshaping governmental institutions in the present. Historical understandings of the relationship between Saxon law and kingship and the subsequent Norman Conquest helped to shape and support a variety of political views. The Roman past was used to inform and support ideas relating to civic virtue and civic participation. Roman actors and institutions provided models to be imitated or avoided. The Roman experience as recorded by its historians played a role in shaping how the English viewed their government and empire and informed their views of what was responsible for a nation’s success or failure. Providence and Scripture assisted in understanding and shaping England’s role in God’s plan. Historical accounts, especially of the English past, appeared in many formats and lengths, both written and oral, and were avidly absorbed by English men and women. Perhaps most important was the invitation to readers to make use of history to evaluate past and present rulers. The past played an important role in the way the English thought about politics, political events and the state.