country-house radicals 1590-1660 by h. r. trevor-roper (history today, july 1953)

8/2/2019 Country-House Radicals 1590-1660 by H. R. Trevor-Roper (History Today, July 1953)

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Country-House Radicals1590-166oBy H. R. TREVOR-ROPER

Cough ron Court, Alcester, Warwickshire Photo: A. F. Kersting

Revolutionary impulses do not always originate inproletarian discontent. This article traces 17th-century radicalismto a very different social source.

FOR CENTURIES THE COUNTRY HOUSES ofEngland have been regarded as centres ofconservatism : by their solidity, theircomfort, their former traditions, their presentuninhabitability, they remind us' regularly ofthe past, and tbc past in England has, on thewhole, been, or seemed, a good past, at leastfor those who built such houses, lived in them,and, in every generation until this, signalizedtheir prosperity by improving and enlargingthem. It is therefore difficult to envisage aperiod in which this apparently comfortableand conservative class of Englishmen was in

fact, as a class, politically and socially radical.Nevertheless, in English history, tbe periodbetween 1590 and 1640 was, in my opinion,such a period. I t was a period first of gentrymutterings, then of gentry conspiracies-theplot of tbe Earl of Essex in r6or, tbe Bye Plotand tbe Main Plot in r6o3, the GunpowderPlot of r6os-ancl finally of gentry revolution- the Puritan " Great Rebellion " which waSlaunched by tbe Long Parliament in 1640 andbrought to power first a gentry republic, thena gentry dictatorship : tbe rule of OliverCromwell.


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This is not the cOnventional interpretatioilof the period. The mo.st advanced historiansinterpret it differently. But in iny opinion theyhave failed to see the underlying unity becausethey have over-emphasized superficial distinctions. Particularly they have over-emphasizedthe religiOus distinction between puritanismand popery. The little rebellions were popishrebellions, the Great Rebellion was a puritanrebellion. Further, there is a fashionable (butin my view quite erroneous) theory that thesereligious differences corresponded with differences of social status and philosophy, so that the popish rebellions are assumed to be different in origin, and character-from the puritanrebellion. Finally, because of the loudlydenounced practice of enclosure, the landedgentry of this period are widely supposed tohave been " rising " at the e x p e n ~ e oK,theirpeasantry, so that a Crisis of their class seemS .by definition absurd. In fact, of course, enclosure (since it required no capital. outlay)can be the resort of the desperate as well asthe investment of the prosperous, and thistheory of the rise of the gentry class is, in myopinion, an illusion. In my opiuion the gentry.-using the word in its exact se'nse, of n_onnoble landlords liVing mainly on agriculturalrents-were in -economic difficulties ; and compared with this uniting factor the divisionsbetween the popish and the puritan gentry areunimportant.The difficulties of the provincial gentry areobvious from the large contemporaty literatureof complaint ; nor is the teason- far to seek.First, since I 540 the value of inoney had rapidlydeclined while customary rents had only slowlyrisen ; secondly, fashions of ever":"increasingextravagance were being set by a favouredruinoritywithin the class : a minority who hadlearnt to profit, not suffer, by the changes ofthe time, and upon whose example the popularillusion of a general " rise of the gentry " hasbeen based. And who were these fortunatefew ? They can be summarized in two words :the Court and .the City. Under the Tudorsboth the Court of Westutinster and the City ofLondon had innnenselygrown-indeed "Tudordespotism ". ha


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Photo : J. Allan Cash

Ashby St . Ledgers, Northamptonshire : a draper replacedthe country gentleman

charge ? " What was such a " mere countrygentleman" to do ?First and most obviously, he would dohis best to obtain an office. But offices werefew and claimants many, and there were alwaysbound to be a host of disappointed suitors,especially when (as happened throughoutEurope in that century) competition drove upthe purchase-price of offices and the fortunatepossessors sought, and often contrived, to makethem hereditary in their families. Failing anoffice, the " mere country gentleman " had toresort to some other expedient. He might"get a ship and judiciously manage he r" -i.e., become a privateer; consequently, as thisdepended on a state of war, the " mere "gentry featured throughout this period as the

party favouring war with Spain. " Are wepoor ? Spain is rich ; there lie our Indies ! "was their cry. Or, if he stayed at home on hisestate, the " mere gentleman " might try des:p ~ r a t e l y to stave off insolvency by raising hisrents and enclosing his lands, regardless ofthose clamours from his tenants which a morecomfortable landlord would have heeded.Finally, he might emphatically reject the society into which he could not obtain admit..._,tance and, making a virtue of necessity, sigmilizehis rejection by repudiating its religion.Anglicanism, in the reign of Elizabeth, was a.new religioll : its roots seemed shallow ; - ithad not yet acquired that mystique which mustbe drawn from the catacombs in the days of .persecution ; and to many of her subjects it


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seemed merely a state-:-religion, the religi9nof the Court. Thus those who repudiated the Court could repudiate its religion as readily asthose who were admitted to the Court wouldaSsume i t ~ religion, and, repudiating it; theylooked fOr a " Purer " faith appropriate tothose who ha4 not -the wish, or the means, tocompete in that fashionable, expensive, superficial world. Some turned to Romanism,

c revived since_1580. bythe Jesuit missionaries":it was in the countrY houses of the provincialgentry or the unfashionable, unoourtly, impecunious. pf;!ers that the priest-holes were tObe found; others turned to Puritanism, whichwas by no means a commercial religion as hasso often been stated (although the City ofLondon made an opportunist alliance with itfor a brief time) but the religion, in England asin Holland, of the backward impoverished .g_entry, who despised, partly because they couldnot afford, the expensive frivolities of theRenaissance court froll) which they wereexcluded. Socially, I believe that Romanismand -Puritanism_ were not opposite but rivalideologies, appeiiling to different members ofthe same class, the declining gentry, The chiefdifference was that whereas an anti-courtfamily, if it chose Romanism (as was morenatural under the Protestant Queen Elizabeth), thereby deprived itselfof political opportunitiesand was :t;educed to d e s p ~ and conspiracy; asimilar family, i f it chose Puritanism (as wasnatural under the "'romanising" Stuarts)still had access, through Parliament, to politiCalinfluence and could therefore sqstain hope andplan more prudently for change. Thus theperiod of Romanist Opposition, from I569 toI6o5, is a period of desperate conspiracy whilethe period of puritan opposition; from I605 to1640, is a period of skilful political manreuvre.But rhe social basis ofopposition in both periodswas' he same : the crisis of the gentry . .

' Such, then, was the social background :how did it reyeal itself in political. action ? Atfirst the political skill of Queen Elizabeth andher ministers controlled the situation. Thebackward North indeed, for which TudorceiltraliZation meant an invasion of " carpetbaggers " from the South, rebelled under Roman Catholic leaders in I569 ; but thatrebellion-a rebellion against the monopoliza-

tion of patronage by the Cecil and [)udleyfamilies and their numerous clients----:w:as -crushed, and after its suppression the colonization of the North continued at an increasedpace: Then, about I 590, a second outbreakthreatened. Not only was the plight of thegentry now Worsened by war-taxation andeconomic slump, but death was beginning tomake gaps in the government-the Pudleyswere dead, Walsingham was dead,. LordBurghley was verging to the grave, and theQueen herself was old...,-and rival and younger 'politicians were ready to speculate upon impending change. This was the situation whichthe Earl of Essex sought to exploit when hechallenged Robert Cecil for Lord Burghley'sinheritance and raised against him what 'one-historian has calle'd_ a "revolt of the squires."But EsseX -was not a sufficient politician tocontend with Robert Cecil, and his sqnireswere, _in general, too provincial to compose .a:solid or .organized party. They came, ;onceagain, ftpm the backward areas, from the N o r t h , ~ s ~ i l l . inutinOus against the " Cedlian ., .carpet:..~ b a g g e r s , _ and 'from Wales, where Essex's ownpower lay. It was :q.ot in these remote, areasthat effective gentry opposition could be :organized-and indeed, after thtse failures,the gentry of the North and West, who were

,. mainly r e ~ s a n t , became quietist and were:largely royalist in the Civil War. With thedefeat of Essex and the peaceful accession of' James I the centre ofgentry radicalism changed;from- now on it was not the North or .the West,;but that other area of chronic social pressu;re :the Midlands.Since the middle of the sixteenth century atleast, the Midland counties, dependent ahnostentirely upon agriculture, had been a centre ofnnrest : . there the declining gentry, lessqualified than their more maritime brethren to" get ship and judiciously manage her," hadsought to r3ise their rents and enclose commoqs, ,and had thereby, in that area of conservativeopen.Jield farming, provoked peasant discontent ; 'and on the other hand, since the.Midlands were ne3r enough to London, therethe great nouveaux riches of Court and City hadregularly established themselves at the expenseof the resident gentry. Contemporaries con..;tinually referred to this fact. In Northampton-


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Copyright: Country LifeGayhurst, Buckinghamshire :from such houses as these the recusant gentry rose

shire, the Dukeries of the Jacobean era, "rhostof the ancient gentlemen's houses/' wrote SirEdward Montagu of Boughton, " arc eitherdivided, diminished or decayed," . . . Therehath been within these three or four years manygood lordships sold within the county, and nota gentleman of the county hath bought any,but strangers, and they no inhabitants , : InNottinghamshire, too, ''foreigners ' ' -Londonaldermen and Court grandees-were said tohave squeezed out the resident gentry ; inWorcestershire there were said to remain " fewgentlemen of antiquity." Such was the stateof the Midland counties when King James I,by increasing yet further the burdens upon thealready groaning gentry of England, gave a new

stimulu's to the organization of radical conspiracies in both the papist and; the puritancountry houses.For the orgauization already existed. The ,gentry of the Midland counties were politicallymore alert than the gentry of the North andWest, and if we study either the RecusantUnderground or the Puritan Underground inthe days of Elizabeth, we soon see how closelyboth were orgauized around a nexus of Midlandcountry houses. From Warwick Castle andKenilworth the two Dudley brothers main-tained aristecratic control over their Puritanparty, whose secret printing-press issued the.Marprelate tracts from Fawsley in Northamptonshire, the country house of the Kuightley


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family, themselves for the nex1: sixty yearspatrons of puritan gentry-opposition. On theother hand, the Jesuit John Gerard travellingin the same country also" had so many friendson my route, and soclose to one another,_ thatI hardly ever had. to put up at a tavern in ajourney of r50 miles," and near Henley ~ h e Stonors of Stonor Park harboured the onlysecret papist press O\ltside London. Thus bothp,-ries among the radical gentry had alreadyshown themselves capable of organizationwhen the failure of Essex and the accession ofKing James, pledged now not to break but tocontinue the " Cecilian " monopoly, drove_them both alike into action.How did King James exasperate the Englishgentry ? Almost eyerything he did was anoffence to them. His extrav_agance n ~ c e s s i t a t e d heavier taxfs upon them, especially the" feudal " tax of wardship which was conveniently outside Pa!liamentary control ; hisswollen court was nuiintained by'' purveyance"- that abuse which even under the frugalQueen Elizabeth had only been contained bythe skill of he even morefnigal'Lord Burghley;in his confidence that no bishop meant no king, .James I also reversed the policy of his precdecessor and defended the property of theAnglican Church against gentry encroachmerits ; and finally, he made peace with Spainand thus ended the opportunities of privateer-ing which for twenry years had provided sousefnl an outlet for gentry discontent. Theearly years of King James were the heyday ofthe Court at- Westminster, . that vast, _extravagant, costiy Court to which he welcomed. backthe peers whom Elizabeth had alienated- andinvited the .Scots peers whom Elizabeth hadnever known, and they were the heyday of theCity of London, thriving as never before in thegreat boom-time of the Spanish peace ; butthey were lean days for the " mere gentry" ofEngland, whom King James never wooed orsought to woo or even bothered to notice, andwho paid the cost of Court and City alike andresented alike the immunity of the AoglicanChurch and the immunity of the Spanishtreasurecfleets now sailing safely home.What were the radical gentry to do ? Thepuritan gentry, who had Parliament as theirengine, could ~ f f o r d to act cautiously. Through

Parliament they organized opposition andclamoured for relief : absolute relief throughthe abolition of the non-parliamentary taxeswhich they could not control-wardships andpurveyance-and relative relief through theshifting of their burdens on to other shoulders.In particular, they sought to transfer theburden to the unrepresented members of theirown class, the recusants. In other words, theydemanded the enforcement of the recusancyfines ; and the recusants, being unrepresented,and therefore unable to resist by constitutionalmeans, panicked and resorted to conspiracy.In Sherwood Forest in 1603, throughout theMidlands in 1605, the recusant gentry. rosehopelessly against the govermnent : KirbyBellers in Leicestershlre, Rushton in Northamptonshire, Hlnlip in Worcestefshire, Coughton in Warwickshire, Chastleton in Oxfordshire,Gayhurst in Buckinghamshire, Stoke Dry inRutland-these were the country houses' inwhich the plans first of the Bye Plot, then. ofthe Gilnpowder Plot, were laid-for though GuyFawkes arid a few others came from the North,survivors of Essex's party there, the majority'of the conspirators came from the Midlands,which were the. scene-of their intended tr iumphand actual rnin. Aod when the conspiratorsthemselves were ruined, what. then ? Thefamilies they had intended but failed to rescuefrom decay irresistibly declined ; some of themsought to stay the process by yet harsherexploitation of their peasantry, and therebyprovoked the Midland Peasant Rising of 16o7 ; .in the end they surrendered and a new generatiOn of courtiers and citizens moved into theirdeserted manor-houses : Erasmus de 18. Fountaine, merchant of London, replaced theMarkhams at Kirby Bellers ; Brian !anson,citizen and draper of London, replaced theCatesbies at Ashby St. Ledgers; Walter Jones,clothier of Worceste


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Photo : Reece WinstoneChastleton, Oxfordshire. Sold by Robert Catesby

to raise funds for the Gunpowder Plot

and language were so different, could afford towait. They had Parliament as their instrument,and they waited till, by skilful exploitation ofgovernment mistakes, they had found supporters both in Court and City, to weaken thegovernment and finance themselves. Theystruck, not blindly and desperately like theirrivals, but cautiously, constitutionally, politically. When the first blows failed, otherswere planned ; and with the attack on ShipMoney-devised at Fawsley in Northamptonshire, first aimed at Broughton Castle inOxfordshire, and finally delivered at GreatHampden in Buckinghamshire-they turnedthe tide in their favour. illtimately it flowedtoo fast for their courtly allies, their Cityfinanciers ; but the exasperated gentry ofEngland wonid not be halted by Court and Ciry,

who were in truth their real enemies. In theend they destroyed both, and set up in England,on their ruins, that brief, disastrous experiment:the republic of the gentry.A brief, disastrous experiment ? Some hJstorians would reject this description. Was riotthe Puritan Republic a stage in the progress ofliberty and democracy, in the emancipation Ofthe bourgeoisie, in the development of Parliament, in the adoption of religious toleration ?In my opinion it was no such thing. Beginning, so long as it was under the control of dissident but enlightened members of the Courtand the City, as a progressive niovement, itquickly became, once it had triumphed over-itsown leaders, a meaningless jacquerz"e of un..:constructive radical gentry, who knew wellenough what they hated, what they wanted to


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Copyright : Country LifeRushton Hall, Northamptonshire; a Cityalderman ousted the Treshams

destroy, but knew no more. Their slogans onthe way to power, their fumbling actions whilein power, all made that clear. Away with theCourt, they cried, with its officials, its lawyers,its pensioners, its privileged monopolist.s !Away with the peers-they hoped they would"live to see never a nobleman in :England."Away with the City, the merchants who penetrated to their counties and drove them fromtheir estates : " tbis nation,'' they complained," was falling into the rickets, the head biggerthan the body." Away with feudal taxes, wardships and purveyance ! Away with the AnglicanChurch, the Court Church, that sought to recover from them those lands and tithes withwhich t h ~ y had refreshed themselves since theDissolution ofthe Monasteries. Away with theSpanish Peace, l

country-house radicals 1590-1660 by h. r. trevor-roper (history today, july 1953)

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