Marriage in Seventeenth-Century English Political Thought

Marriage in Seventeenth-Century English Political Thought Belinda Roberts Peters Marriage in Seventeenth-Century Engli...

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Marriage in Seventeenth-Century English Political Thought Belinda Roberts Peters

Marriage in Seventeenth-Century English Political Thought

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Marriage in Seventeenth-Century English Political Thought Belinda Roberts Peters

© Belinda Roberts Peters 2004 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–2036–2 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Peters, Belinda Roberts, 1952– Marriage in seventeenth-century English political thought / Belinda Roberts Peters. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–2036–2 (cloth) 1. Marriage–Political aspects–England. 2. Marriage–England–History–17th century. 3. Despotism–England–History–17th century. 4. Monarchy–England–History–17th century. 5. Great Britain–Politics and government–1603–1714. 6. Political obligation–History–17th century. 7. Social contract–History–17th century. I. Title. HQ615.P47 2004 306.81′0942′09032–dc22

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Contents Acknowledgments

viii

Introduction Part I

1

Marriage Contract as Political Contract

Chapter 1

“Union is a marriage”

11

Chapter 2

“A mutuall covenant betwixt King and people”

33

Chapter 3

“From Adam’s having bin alone”

55

Part II

Subjection in Oeconomy and Polity

Chapter 4

“Life, Liberty, and Dower”

77

Chapter 5

“All natural power is in those which obey”

98

Chapter 6

“Life, Liberty, and Estate”

Part III

123

Tyranny, Chastity and Liberty

Chapter 7

“As David’s dealing with Uriah”

141

Chapter 8

“Taking you a wife for his own lusts”

163

Chapter 9

“His Wife, said he, his Wife! O fatall sound!”

184

Conclusions

200

Notes

204

Bibliography

222

Index

232

vii

Acknowledgments My thanks to those who made this book possible must begin with the librarians. I was most fortunate, as I was finishing the dissertation on which this project is based, to work in the old British Library, where those behind the desk always made me comfortable, and the environment itself connected me to the past. And there is simply no way to fully express my gratitude to The Huntington in San Marino, California. The library assistants were unceasingly patient and helpful, the staff warm and friendly, and the gardens an endless source of calm and inspiration. In addition, the Huntington Early Modern British History Seminar, which recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary, gave those of us on the left coast of the United States access to cuttingedge research by some of the finest scholars in literature and history. How does one repay such a gift? Individual thanks begin with my dissertation chair, Lamar Hill, who gave me the freedom to make mistakes, and the dissertation committee, Ann Blair and James B. Given, who never let me get away with being vague. Richard W. F. Kroll struggled bravely through my earliest literary analysis without losing patience, and found some coherence of thesis where none yet existed. Derek Hirst not only agreed to read the finished dissertation, but provided a detailed critique and suggestions for revision, many of which are incorporated into this book. Both Rachel Weil and Victoria Kahn brought counter-arguments to my attention that forced me to rethink many aspects of my original thesis – if the final project is an improvement, it owes much to them. Finally, I am very grateful to the critical, but encouraging comments of Palgrave’s external reviewer, which gave me the inspiration to embark on the revision process; and even more to Palgrave publisher Luciana O’flaherty and editorial assistant Daniel Bunyard for their patience and advice. The long labor of research was enlivened by the presence, and assistance, of many fine scholars, especially those I met at The Huntington. Thanks go to Marilyn Corrie (I will never forget dinner at Lincoln College high table), Reid Mitchell (the synopses of medieval Chinese novels were very entertaining), Jenny Stine (thank you for the loan of your house) and Leo Mazow (for his insight into American art and friendship). Mark Valeri provided several useful references and, with viii

Acknowledgments ix

Lorna Hutson, insistently reminded me of the importance of the economy (stupid). I am especially grateful to Blair Worden, who was endlessly patient with my efforts to explain this project, and Gordon McMullan, who provided friendship, a sounding-board for my arguments, and a push through the British Library door. I was also fortunate to receive suggestions, and inspiration, from Tom Cogswell, David Cressy, Barbara Donagan, Lori Anne Ferrell, Steven Pincus, Philippe Rosenberg, and Steven Zwicker. Thanks also go to Nancy Bjorklund, Joe Block, Sears McGee, Mary Robertson, and all the regular members of the early modern British history seminar, who always brought my feet back to the ground whenever theory threatened to interfere too much with history. If this final piece of scholarship has value, it owes much to all of these people. Its errors and omissions are all my own. Some very special friendships, academic and non-, have kept me going over the last few years. Pamela Ferguson helped me get my head back in order so I could resume my research and writing. Roseanne Desilets kindly shared room and board with me in London; no one could have had a more patient roommate. Helen Mauer reminded me that historical conflicts in early modern Britain often had roots in medieval Britain, while showing me what courage in the face of adversity really meant. Anne-Marie Scholz believed in this project long before I did; her friendship is one of the greatest treasures of my life. With Susie Barrie and Peggy Coye, I have been very fortunate to share the rearing of five terrific young men and a wonderful young woman, the eternal difficulties and joys of married life, and many lovely afternoon teas. Thanks also go to my mom and dad, all my siblings, and all their families, for a lifetime full of great friendships. Last, but never least, thank you, Tom and David, for many long years of love, patience, and support. This would never have been possible without you.


Introduction

This book was originally planned as an introductory history to the development and demise of a commonplace metaphor, the marriage of monarch and kingdom. Long ago, when I began the project, I was interested a single question: what happened to this metaphor in the early seventeenth century when a married king succeeded a virgin queen? Out of that relatively simple problem grew a project much larger than the one I had envisioned. Thematically, it now encompasses not just the relationship of ruler and kingdom, but the significance of marriage to ideals of political liberty and religious unity. The time period spanned extends well beyond the early Stuarts, through the civil war to the Glorious Revolution. Nonetheless, that original idea of “marriage” as a contract between king and kingdom has remained the central problem, illuminating successive definitions of political subjection and tyranny. This marriage, destroyed when Charles I was executed in 1649, experienced only tepid revival with the return of his son, Charles II. Instead, from the 1650s, competing ideals of government that had once been reconcilable within ideals of “marriage” would solidify into the opposing political theories most historians recognize: consent theory versus absolutism, natural freedom versus natural subjection, social contract versus divine right patriarchy.1 My evidence for this transformation of political thought falls into three categories. The first, addressed in Part I, concerns marriage conceptualized as a contract, one distinct from other contractual bonds in human society. Based on mutual consent, marriage nonetheless formed a relationship absolute in both duration and rights of authority. It was a lifelong contract, instituted by God and thus unbreakable except by his hand; and it required rule by the husband of his wife as 1

2 Marriage in Seventeenth-Century English Political Thought

the foundation for all other authority relationships in society. Prior to the civil wars, this contract was an essential element for supporting the creation of absolute political bonds, whether in the Union of England with Scotland, or the union of a Scottish king with his new southern kingdom. Only after the upheavals of mid-century did this ideal for defining political government cease to appeal to men who sought to limit the power of the monarch; most of their social contracts, as Mary Lyndon Shanley argued many years ago, would be fully distinguished from marriage.2 What is more surprising, however, is that, with few exceptions, the most outspoken royalists of the Interregnum and Restoration would also abandon this absolutist argument for one that avoided all issues of “contract”: the natural bond of authority between fathers and their sons. Part II addresses the other side of government, in polity and household: obligations of subjection and obedience. Early in the century, marriage had a two-fold significance for royal subjects. Marriage marked the point of transition for most men from the household rule of a father or master into the political government of king and magistrates. Once married, a husband answered only to the monarch and his officers for the security and order of his “oeconomy,” the ancient Greek term still used at the time to describe a household. But, further, his condition within political government was comparable to his wife’s subjection within his household, not his son’s or servant’s. Thus, if obedience was expected, so was participation in governance. For, as his wife served as “help meet” in governing the household, contributing her advice in addition to following his instructions, he expected to do the same in the polity through his representatives in Parliament. This ideal of the married head of household as a political subject did not disappear, but was, instead, subtly transformed. By the late 1640’s, “fathers of families” replaced husbands as the holders of political liberties in theories ranging from divine right royalism to republicanism. Finally, within the early seventeenth-century universe of marriages uniting every level of social and political order, tyranny took a very specific form, summed up in the histories of the Roman Tarquins and the biblical King David. The subject of Part III, these histories present rulers who become tyrants by usurping the authority and rights of their subjects through the rape or seduction of one man’s wife. As a plot-line, this story would pervade Jacobean and Caroline tragedy, and dominate the political rhetoric of the early civil war. But this imagery, too, would fade almost as quickly as the ideal that had made the king a

Introduction 3

husband to his kingdom. Other elements always associated with the lustful tyrant – including murder and destruction of property – would take its place. Rape would give way to rapine in John Locke, as royalist and republican pamphleteers transformed the usurping tyrant into a licentious libertine. Marriage as an English political ideal also had significance for the nation’s religious identity, its subjects’ individual liberties, and the creation of the body politic. As an ideal of chastity and social order, marriage early in this period both expressed and supported an antiCatholicism that had developed during Elizabeth’s reign and would remain a dominant feature of English political ideology into the nineteenth century.3 God’s chosen Protestant people lived, through their godly marriages, the union of Christ and his true church; joined with their monarch in a comparable marriage at the coronation, England itself exemplified the godly political household. The “Whore of Babylon” in Rome, the Catholic monarchies of the continent, and, most disturbingly, Catholic subjects within Britain and Ireland repeatedly threatened these godly “marriages” during the first half of the century. If, at the death of Charles I, the Catholic menace to the political “marriage” of king and kingdom would fade, it would nonetheless continue to influence political thought, particularly with respect to another basic ideal of English politics – the liberties of subjects. These liberties, associated throughout the century primarily with property rights and freedom from villeinage, were also based in the household. At the beginning of the century, political writers, clerics and playwrights represented liberty as an extension of rights in marriage: free choice and consent and, for the husband, control of household property through coverture. Through the civil wars and early Interregnum, these would remain critical to ideals of legitimate political government. However, by the accession of Charles II, theorists had shifted their emphasis toward a different kind of household relationship – that between father and son – through which either authority or education and property was to be transmitted for the orderliness and benefit of all society. Liberty could still involve freedom from slavery and rights of property; but it was no longer associated with the privilege of marriage. Finally, marital imagery integrated ideals of English godliness and liberty into that familiar organic entity, the body politic.4 Marriage, confirmed by the hand of God, created a single oeconomic body from two persons, with the husband as head; the sacred coronation marriage of king to kingdom formed the body politic, with the


monarch as head. Thus, marriage represented natural and divine law as simultaneous expressions of God’s providential hand. As the marriage metaphor declined, so, too, did this connection of divine and natural law in arguments over the shape and purpose of government, particularly in more radical theories. Of course, the tendency of late seventeenth-century contract theorists to express their views in terms of natural law was not caused by the abandonment of such marital imagery. But if we look at their ideas through the prism of “marriage” and the changes in political thought associated with its decline, it becomes clear that the choice to express political liberties in terms of natural law was as much an effect of the need to distinguish household authority from political authority as it was to oppose divine right absolutism. These are, perhaps, subtle transformations, but they illuminate many problems in political theory, traditional and feminist. First of all, attending to the theoretical changes involved with “marriage” confirms the extent to which there was a large measure of continuity with regard to the basic assumptions and terminology of political thought during this period. Contract was as important before the civil wars as after, and was not monopolized by common lawyers or the “ancient constitutionalists” who survived the Restoration, and whose party affiliations would be so difficult to pin down in the 1680s and 1690s. Even a monarch like James I – who considered himself king by divine right and as “absolute” in his prerogatives as any French monarch – could speak in terms of a “contract” so long as it was the marriage contract. Furthermore, the association of political liberties with house-holding – long viewed as an innovation of civil war radicals – has a much longer history that needs to be accounted for if political theorists are to fully explain not only the views of the Levellers, but of later social contract theorists like John Locke. For, basic to the pre-civil war ideal of house-holding was not only marriage itself, but the property rights associated with it in laws concerning coverture; Locke’s definition of property as “estate” does not entirely overturn this connection, suggesting instead that family property, not individual property, was the foundation of liberties in his social contract. These shifts in ideas about the role of the household in the polity probably did not affect the situation of women in either. But given the on-going significance of family, and especially of fathers and mothers – even in the works of the most radical theorists – the problem is not so much whether women experienced expansion or contraction of their rights or potential liberty. Rather, the more nuanced question may involve

Introduction 5

interpreting how the redefinition of a wife as a mother in seventeenthcentury social contract theory influenced the approach of eighteenthcentury feminists to their declarations of rights as citizens.5 Thus, attending to marriage as an element of political thought also implies a different approach to histories of gender and of women. If there was, as some have argued, a “crisis” of masculinity in the midseventeenth century, then the political side of that crisis involved various efforts to redefine government, all of which reconfirmed the authority of husbands over their wives.6 I would not argue that this reflected conscious decisions on the part of individual male theorists, merely that – with two very notable exceptions – Interregnum and Restoration absolutists, republicans, and everyone in between constructed arguments for political government that somehow avoided connecting the rights of a wife with the rights of a male political subject. Further, such perspectives are not reflected in women’s writings. On the contrary, well into the early eighteenth century, women continued to define their social role in terms of marriage and their position as a wife; and, further, to define political subjection as legitimate only insofar as it was comparable to their own condition as household subjects.7 Recognizing the significance of marriage to political rights and authority opens up the possibility of connecting social practice with debates about politics and political culture. Studies in popular culture have long connected the orderly household with support of the king and his magistrates, and the punishment of unruly wives through the “skimmington” ritual has often been cited as an important method for ensuring social order.8 But the cultural assumption that the husband should rule his wife, children and servants also had political significance well beyond the local community during the civil war, and may illuminate earlier government choices in meting out punishment. When social and political historians examine large-scale riots that threatened royal authority, they may wish to consider, along with other connections, the marital status of those branded as leaders and punished most rigorously. Were they more likely to be householders than apprentices or servants? Theoretically, these were the men who were expected to be, by their standing as husbands, “fellow governors” under the king. Their participation in political upheavals may have signaled to king and magistrates that riot threatened rebellion, that public disorder could bring political disaster. Constructing the relationship between public and private, rather than public and political, has been an on-going labor for historians


and literary scholars over that past twenty years, and they have produced some extraordinary work for all of us working on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.9 Although I have benefitted from their work, I have nonetheless tried to avoid “public” and “private” in my analysis, primarily because I find them so very difficult to pin down. Obviously, there were areas of life that men and women in this period defined as private; but, at a time when even religious devotions and sexual intimacy could become subject to public discussion and punishment, distinguishing “public” from “private” has seemed to me an impossible enterprise. Instead, I have concentrated on oeconomy and polity, oeconomic and political, for two reasons. First of all, these terms, inherited from Aristotelian theory, were much more commonly used by contemporaries. Second, they are both easier to define and mutually supporting rather than binary opposites. The oeconomy involved primarily relationships within the household, the polity relationships between members of the household and royal government at all levels. However, throughout the century, reproduction and production within an oeconomy were assumed to enrich the polity, as the maintenance of political order ensured oeconomic security and liberty. If, in the course of my analysis, issues of “public” and “private” will occasionally be relevant, any conclusions will be tentative at best, and often responding to the insights of other scholars. A brief word about sources may be appropriate before the close of this introduction. As well as planning to concentrate my analysis on only one aspect of the marriage metaphor, I had originally thought to limit my research to three kinds of printed sources: political tracts, domestic literature, and drama. Despite occasional excursions into personal letters and state papers, and expanded reliance on secondary sources in history and literature, that initial plan remains firmly in place. Political tracts and treatises were, of course, an obvious choice, and provide the foundation texts for most chapters. But I knew that if I was to understand ideas about marriage expressed in such political material, I would need to look more closely at contemporary views of marriage and the household, standardized in household guides and marriage sermons. What these sources offered, however, was not simply information on the oeconomy, but on the polity as well. In the early decades of the seventeenth century, a household guide was as much political tract as domestic advice book; historians are as likely to uncover in the pages of these texts interpretations of the meaning of kingship as they are to find ideas about the authority of husbands.

Introduction 7

When I found that, in the late seventeenth century, such guides and sermons began to minimize these political elements, it was clear to me that a significant transition had occurred. Finally, although I have been fascinated by seventeenth-century drama since my years as a fine arts undergraduate, I chose this last category of sources only after I had taught a course in seventeenthcentury English history one summer. As an experiment – one that was not entirely successful – I assigned students a series of plays to read as a way to explore ideas about social life and cultural practice. What we all noticed as we struggled together through the comedies of Ben Jonson and James Shirley, William Congreve and George Farquhar – in addition to a rapidly modernized vocabulary – was that the marriages that always concluded the plays looked very different at the end of the century than they had at the beginning. The central question, for which we could not at the time find an answer, was why this should be so. In deciding to return to drama – not only to comedy, but to tragedy and tragicomedy as well – I have sought not so much to answer that question as to seek within this rich and vibrant cultural resource answers to two other questions: did playwrights use marriage to express the connection between household and kingdom, and, if so, why could late seventeenth-century writers no longer imagine such a marriage? The answer to the first question is, rather obviously, yes; this book is my extended response to the second.


Part I Marriage Contract as Political Contract


1 “Union is a marriage”

I am the husband, and all the whole isle is my lawfull wife; I am the head, and it is my body; I am the shepherd, and it is my flocke.1 One of the very few scholarly monarchs of history – certainly in his own opinion and, increasingly, in the view of British historians – James VI of Scotland became, in 1603, James I of England. His deepest hope and greatest project, according to one recent biographer, was a full, peaceful unification of his two kingdoms, but he also recognized that such a union was unprecedented. For centuries, independent kingdoms had been fully unified only through conquest, with the conquered peoples subsumed into the political power and culture of the conqueror. The “composite states” of contemporary Europe – in Spain and Scandinavia, for example – were only precariously united dynastically, while the recent annexation of Wales to England under the Tudors was simply the final step in a long historical process of conquest and humiliation. Fully aware of all the differences and difficulties facing him when he set out his plan, James described the Union as a marriage not simply because this was a “favorite analogy,” a comfortable, “homely image,” or even a useful polemical trope, but because it set out every ideological and practical aspect of the bond he wanted to establish – between his kingdoms, his peoples, and, especially, himself and his new, united Great Britain.2 Ideologically, consent to “marriage” would involve both kingdoms in an absolute and unbreakable contract that had very specific significance within natural and divine law. With its origins in Paradise under providential guidance, marriage created from two persons, equal before God, a 11


single body – flesh of flesh – with the husband as its head. For Scots and English, marriage was especially important as the mirror of Christ’s union with his true Protestant church, undefiled in both kingdoms despite repeated Catholic plots. For the new king of England, completing the Union would prove that James’ new subjects had consented, voluntarily, and irrevocably, to his government, establishing him as head of a single body politic. Through such a contract, he would hold his new kingdom neither by conquest nor usurpation, but by the same divinely-sanctioned, natural relationship every husband claimed over his wife. Neither James nor his supporters argued that nature and divine providence alone could effect this marriage, for God worked through the practical efforts of human initiative, past and present. Uniting the island kingdoms into one had been an enterprise of monarchs for centuries, occasionally through peaceful negotiation, more often through hostile offensives; James would repeatedly insist that, in him, marriage, not conquest, had triumphed. As all marriages were conducted according to customary practices involving declaration, discussion, and full, free, and equal consent, the binding of two kingdoms that shared a monarch, a language, and, to a lesser extent, a religious perspective, was not to be “enterprised lightly” and would require similar steps. Because England and Scotland had so often been deeply and acrimoniously divided, unification would also necessitate the passage of time for “acquaintance,” as the king and his supporters would argue. God’s providential hand might be guiding their hearts, and intermarriage between Scots and English would help to bring greater trust between peoples, but there could be no full celebration of marriage without resolving all divisions between bride and groom. And not until his kingdoms were one flesh could James ensure the stability of his own position as sponsus regni, bridegroom of the kingdom, or secure the crown and its prerogatives to himself and his successors. Thus, the debates over Union drew upon the imagery of marriage because marriage was the best human contract available through which to exemplify James’ vision for England and Scotland. The king himself established the terms of this analogical debate in his first speech to his first English Parliament; he would return to the image repeatedly, when discussing not only Union, but his own rights as monarch. James’ supporters portrayed the Union marriage in terms of a contract established by the law of nature, nearly indistinguishable from the divine law first ordained for man and woman in Eden. As the human bond that most closely resembled the relationship of Christ to

“Union is a marriage” 13

his church, marriage exemplified for them the purity of the true Protestant church and, therefore, involved an absolute and unbreakable contract. But if marriage supported these images, it also raised serious questions about authority and liberty, not just between the two realms, but between the new monarch and his subjects. First, despite repeated assurances that James’ accession, and the Union he planned, effected a marriage with, not a conquest of, England, the images and terminology of the debates suggested instead that there might be little difference between consent to one and acceptance of the other. Second, the most important material significance of marriage between man and woman involved a union of property: her property became his under coverture and, like most laws involving property, coverture in England lay within the purview of the common law. No issue associated with Union raised more concerns than the ultimate place of “English” common law within a newly formed “Britain.” Finally, any discussion of marriage automatically implied the authority relationship between husband and wife. Though a man and a woman might be equal in most ways before marriage, after consenting to that contract, all stability within the household, and by implication the polity, depended upon their inequality. He ruled, she obeyed; though contemporary marriage guides might occasionally minimize the extent of power and submission involved, the basic structure could not be changed. How this was to function in the marriage between Scotland and England was unclear enough; of even greater concern was what it would mean to the newly formed body politic of Britain under its “husband,” James, after fifty years of female rule. As recurring debates over Union coincided with contentions over royal prerogative and subjects’ liberties, the marriage contract as a basis for political order, stability, and mutual love began to suggest all the disorders and discords traditional popular culture associated with marriage itself. *** James VI and I married Scotland and England in terms that were very commonplace – terms with which his audience would have been well acquainted and which would have had specific cultural significance. The marriage of England to Scotland was, first, a manifestation of a natural unity intended originally by God: … Hath not God first united these two kingdomes both in language, religion, and similitude of manners? Yea, hath he not made us all in


one island, compassed with one sea, and of itselfe by nature so indivisible … What God hath conjoyned then, let no man separate.3 The geography of the island made Union a natural effect of providential history. As God created two persons from the natural body of Adam and reunited them into a single body through the first marriage, so he had formed two kingdoms from ancient Britain in order to reunite them as a mark of his divine wisdom. The marriage of the first man and woman created an indivisible entity, embodied in an untranslatable Hebrew word that the cleric William Gouge would attempt to explain in his marriage guide: “They which were two before mariage, by the bond of mariage are brought into one flesh … as neerely united, as the parts of the same body, and the same flesh.”4 When James and his supporters “married” England to Scotland to create Great Britain, therefore, they imagined the formation of a similarly vital and unbreakable natural entity, recreating from two equal, long estranged kingdoms the ancient island polity once associated with emperors in the title “Britannicus.” But, if marriage formed a natural body from two persons or nations, or between king and kingdom, it was also the first law God had directed solely to humankind in Paradise, distinguishing their sexual union from that of all other creatures. Consent to marriage transformed fornication, an action of unreasoning beasts in nature, into legitimate and holy worship. This first contract between humans was so pretious a flower that it would not thrive but in so pure a soyle, that God himselfe was the Authour to institute it, and the Priest to celebrate it, erre ever sinne and impurity had tainted the earth, or blemished the Angelicall beauty of either the Bride or Bridegroome.5 Thus, marrying Scotland and England was not only a confirmation of the natural condition of the island but an affirmation of the divine guidance behind James’ accession and the Union project. Once completed, the Union would reflect “the image of God,” erasing the past, in which the island had been “drawn, divided, and torne asunder” in “falshood, war, feare, dishonor, and confusion.”6 Although this “marriage” might not restore the island to the perfect purity of Eden, its proponents very clearly intended to establish peace and stability between two ancient enemies and ensure security for their future. But the most persuasive evidence for Union, from the point of view of supporters, arose from shared membership in the reformed and


“true Church”; from this perspective, England and Scotland were already joined in one body as the spouse of Christ: It hath seemed best to the godly wisedome of divine providence, first, and long since to knit all our harts in one holy religion, and in the same service, and godly worship … and of the houshold of God, renewed in Christ, and reconciled into one body.7 As in each individual marriage, of subject to subject or prince to prince, the marriage embodied in the Union recreated “the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church.” In contemporary marriage guides, such imagery was central for understanding why the contract of marriage was absolute, “sacred, spirituall, reall and inviolable.”8 If, therefore, the natural and divine origins of marriage in Paradise did not make divisions or divorce between husband and wife untenable and unnatural, then its connection with the bonds of the “true Church” had to do so. Thus, the language of marriage in connection with Union simultaneously promoted an unbreakable contract between the two kingdoms and celebrated their existing union under the religious headship of Christ.9 However, none of those supporting James’ project imagined that any of these ideological claims would be at all sufficient to bring these countries together – even their shared Protestant faith was deeply divided in terms of government and ceremony. Years of work on the part of men and women, kings and queens, had already been necessary to create the possibility of Union. More would be needed in years to come. But if, as D. R. Woolf has argued, human history was, during this period, represented as a working out of God’s purposes in a single historical truth, the long process could be neither accidental nor irrational, though not always clear to humankind.10 Defenders of Union like Sir William Cornwallis praised this providential history explicitly. “Behold how we are joyned,” he wrote, “God, Nature, and Time, have brought us together” as perfectly as were a husband and wife at “the consummation of a marriage.”11 Others represented historical “Time” more specifically in the plans and programs of the Tudor monarchs who brought England and Scotland together “through the revolutions of time” by the intermarriage of royal families: King Henry the seventh aimed at this Union, when he married his eldest daughter Margaret into Scotland. King Henry the eight and all the chiefe Nobilitie of the realme expressely desired it, when they


laboured to have a mariage knit betweene Edward and Mary, the two yong Princes of both the kingdoms … For not obtaining this mariage, they led an Armie into Scotland … These attempts not succeeding; our evill fortune having frustrated these good endevours; loe here, our felicitie now offereth us to kisse her cheeks.12 Locating the historical source of the Union in the first Tudor was fortuitous in many ways, since Henry VII was credited with having established the final bond between Wales and England, creating lasting peace between those nations. Henry’s natural ancestry connected him with both those countries, just as James was the off-spring of the royal families of England and Scotland. In both cases, therefore, marriage between nations was also a conjunction that had come to fruition in the monarch’s own natural body through the political marriage of prince to prince, the uniting of a man and woman into one flesh. Despite recurring suspicion and failed conquest, James’ natural inheritance, like his great-grandfather’s, had finally permitted all three nations “to be joyned … in the common name of Britaine,” creating a single body politic, one wife, under one head.13 James himself was one who articulated this providential history as an on-going endeavor, to be enacted by the same arrangements and ceremonies, contract and consent, typical of marriages between persons. It would not be an easy nor speedy process, but would, instead, be marked by the same concerns families and communities dealt with in joining two of their own into a new household: Union is a marriage; would hee not be thought absurd that, for furthering of a marriage betweene two friends of his, would make his first motion to have the two parties be laid in bedde together, and performe the other turnes of marriage? must there not precede, the mutuall sight and acquaintance of the parties one with another, the conditions of the contract, and joincture to be talked of and agreed upon by their friends, and such other things as in order ought to goe before the ending of such a worke?14 As James’ contemporaries argued, “the institution of Matrimonie [was] an indissoluble bond and knot … straighter then any other conjunction in the societies of mankinde,” and should not take place without careful consideration. Marriage was bound up with ceremonies of acquaintance, advisement, courtship, and consent because once confirmed before the community, it was absolute; incompatibility had


better be exposed before consummation of this contract.15 Thus, if the “marriage” of England and Scotland was to remain an eternal and unbroken union, as “indissoluble” as it was “happie,” those directing it should follow similarly careful practices. Public celebration of private marriages revealed consanguinity, prior contract, or other legal disability and thus prevented incest, polygamy, and divorce, all of which polluted the marriage bed and the wider community. Likewise, in the institution of the Union, public debate and consent would guarantee that the interests of both nations would be protected and neither hurt by “secret sponsions.”16 Most significantly, public deliberation and celebration would ensure that no one would be able to divorce the two nations that had been made one; one writer even suggested that those who were delaying Union were already interfering with the “orderly proceeding” of the marriage: Then bring the honest yong man, the modest yong maid together, let them wooe, and their frends for them; let them be made sure by a contract in forme; let the cheer bee made ready, the day appointed, friends invited, fidlers called, give and take you parents and children on both sides; eate, drink, dance, court, and make more matches, til day and half night be spent: then refuse your bridegroom, for what mariage was instituted.17 The bond already established by God’s natural order in the body of the island and the body of the king, and secured by membership in the single body of the church, should not be torn apart, for that was not only to interfere with the orderly proceeding, but to effect a divorce between the two that God had already joined. Failure to consent to the Union would bring back all the divisions and mutual suspicions that “God, Nature, and Time” had resolved, just as separation of husband and wife undermined the order of legitimate household governance and reproduction God had ordained. *** James’ “desire [for] a perfect union of lawes and persons, and such a naturalizing as may make one body of both kingdomes under mee your king” – presented through this idealized, yet practical, metaphor of marriage – still possesses a certain elegance and unity of vision. It is possible, as Lori Anne Ferrell has argued, that James used the “tensions


inherent in the meaning of the marriage service” – which balanced passion with restraint – to show his English Parliament in 1607 how “wisely” and carefully he had planned and proceeded with the project for “perfect union.”18 But his arguments could be persuasive, then as now, only to those willing to accept, overlook, or deny the patent inequality effected by that absolute contract of marriage. James, who had composed a marriage guide for his eldest son within the Basilicon Doron, was not only fully cognizant of the authority wielded by a husband, but insisted, like most of his clerical contemporaries, that this was the essential foundation for stability in society as well as marriage. Thus, while the king apparently found his imagery quite persuasive, his subjects, north and south, found it disturbing, even threatening, to their sense of national identity, particularly with regard to law and religion, and to their property and liberties. For, if England and Scotland were to unite under a contract so absolute and unbreakable, under the full sovereignty of one monarch, one kingdom would necessarily be subordinated to the other, as a wife was to her husband. Over and over again, James’ images of peace and unity reminded his subjects of the most divisive issues, large and small, associated with contracting a Union, and of the breadth and depth of the divisions between them. This was particularly true of his 1607 speech to the English Parliament. James seems to have assumed that his words would be not only persuasive, but comforting, for he made it quite clear that he considered their kingdom would be the “husband” within the planned Union: And for Scotland I avow such an union as if you had got it by conquest, but such a conquest as may be cemented by love, the onely sure bond of subjection or friendship; that as there is over both but unus rex, so there may bee in both but unus grex et una lex.19 Opponents of Union could not have raised more succinctly the very issues to which they most objected. Each kingdom had, indeed, recognized unus rex, one king, but many English and Scottish subjects insisted that this union was one of authority only, not sovereignty, because he ruled through separate parliaments and separate laws. James had, early in his reign, advised Robert Cecil of his plan to unite “the laws and parliaments of both the nations,” and his language here acknowledges his failure thus far: the Union would remain incomplete as long as England and Scotland remained two peoples, two kingdoms,


abiding by two sets of laws.20 For, if historical providence had made James their shared king, it had also led to the establishment of two fully formed, often incompatible legal systems; neither parliament displayed any interest in changing this situation. Perhaps more significantly, the “true” Protestant church that should have united the kingdoms into “one flock” actually took the form of two “reformed” churches divided by differences in clerical government, dogma and liturgy. As Brian Levack has argued, the Scots and English shared a language, but not any sense of national unity or common culture, for they had been too many times on opposite sides of a battlefield. Fully uniting these two kingdoms in marriage might have been possible, metaphorically and practically, had not such unification previously occurred – as the king himself implies here – only by conquest.21 Not surprisingly, the Scots at large, and the Scottish representatives on the Commission for Union in particular, did not take kindly to suggestions of inferiority or subordination, especially from their own monarch and countryman. During Elizabeth’s reign, after all, they had endured repeated assertions from their southern neighbor that the English monarch could claim feudal “suzerainty over Scotland” and its king. Sir Thomas Craig, a Scotsman who supported James’ dream of a united Great Britain, nonetheless spent a good portion of his Union tract specifically denying such claims. By 1608, even the smallest steps toward greater union implied Scottish subjection to England, including, at the level of insignia, almost every design for a new British flag. Among the many possibilities that quite clearly gave the St. Andrew’s cross of Scotland an inferior heraldic place was one that presented the Scottish symbol alongside the St. George’s cross, but on the fly, well recognized to be the subordinate position. A leading English commissioner thought this design to be by far “the most fittest [choice] for this is the man and wyfe wthout blemish on the other,” side by side, yet made one. Although no Scot’s specific response to the suggestion is known, this design, like most others, was rejected.22 However, if Scotland resented its national position as “wife” in the Union marriage, Englishmen feared the influx of Scottish husbands, in whom the new king very obviously rejoiced. Mixing the blood of his two peoples, creating “unus grex,” was a key goal of his Union politics, a means to join his subjects into a single natural body. Intermarriage was particularly encouraged in the Borders, newly christened the “Middle Shires”; James extended special favor to one Border gentleman, “after the engagement of his daughter to the son of the Scot, Sir William Auchterlony: ‘seeing we have no greater desire than that


the union of these kingdoms in our person be corroborate in the hearts of our subjects of either realme … to establish the same to posteritie.’”23 Although most intermarrying in the coming years would take place within the Borders, the more visible court marriages raised greater hostility, perhaps none more so than that between the Scottish nobleman, James, Lord Hay, and Honora Denny, English heiress and daughter to Sir Edward Denny. With James “presiding over the marriage in the fashion of a priest,” the wedding, celebrated in sermon and masque, offered models for courtiers and Parliament to follow in confirming the Union and creating a union of peoples.24 If, however, James hoped such marriages would establish warmer relations between his kingdoms, he was only partially correct. The spectacle of Scotsmen gaining husbandly rule over Englishwomen, establishing their surnames and authority at the heart of English government – even if an equal number of Englishmen married Scottish women – only intensified the heated opposition to the king’s Union project. Flags and intermarriage were, however, minor concerns in comparison with the divisive projects involving unification of laws and religion. James had already struggled long and hard with the presbyterian Scottish Kirk, reasserting the authority of bishops and isolating radical ministers, but without establishing royal control over the church. During his first few years in England, on the other hand, the Hampton Court conference and its religious reforms would bring the king better success, including the loyalty of his bishops, when he argued repeatedly against the introduction of presbyterian church government. James was, actually, quite comfortable with his English episcopal church; despite on-going problems with puritan ministers in England, most of his battles over religion would be fought in his northern kingdom, where Scottish liberties were often defined in relation to their independent Kirk. In England, hostility to Union also raised the specter of lost liberties; but in James’ new kingdom such liberties were associated with property rights and the common law. There was little disagreement among common and civil lawyers that the English common law, identified by some as the fundamental law protecting the property rights and liberties of subjects, was most threatened by the possibility of conquest, for the conqueror’s authority over a defeated peoples would be limited only by divine and natural law, unless or until he agreed to abide by existing customary law.25 By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, theories of legitimate rule by conquest had become particularly suspect in Protestant countries.


After years of Catholic conspiracies associated with Mary Stuart, James’ mother, and papal claims to rights of deposition against noncatholic rulers, “[c]onquest, whatever its earlier acceptability, was being viewed … as morally viable only for the purpose of deposing an acknowledged tyrant.”26 A well-educated Protestant monarch like James would never have attempted to found his new title on such slippery ground, and repeatedly emphasized that the free and mutual consent associated with his “marriage” of his two kingdoms into Great Britain, and their consent to him as “husband,” could not be equated to rule by conquest. James, unfortunately, faced two significant contradictions to this ideal. In his political writings prior to 1603, he had claimed royal authority by divine right and a prerogative power that, like the power of a conqueror, was not to be subjected to human laws. Further, the very creation of the new kingdom of Great Britain would, according to many contemporary legal scholars, “abrogate the old laws of England and Scotland”; the king would then “ipso facto rule as a conqueror.”27 Even when James defended his Union with the imagery of marriage, he raised some of the same disturbing consequences associated with conquest. Both conquest and marriage, after all, subsumed the identity of one party into the other – symbolized in common law by coverture. Although one was established by force, the other by consent, the effect was identical. Further, both necessitated the dominance or authority of one party over the other, culturally and politically, a possible effect of Union feared by both Scotland and England. Finally, the “eternall agreement” sought by James for the “reconciliation of many long bloody warres that have bene betweene these two ancient kingdomes” was exactly that. Though secured by “sweet and sure bond of love,” James’ planned “marriage” was an absolute and unbreakable contract with a Scottish monarch as the husband. Englishmen like Sir Edwin Sandys may have had good reason to feel their fundamental laws and liberties were under assault, and supporters of Union, ironically, did little to soothe any disquieting associations. The marriage Union that would “make [their] countries love one another truely” in order to “as it were beget one another, and become flesh of flesh, and bone of bone,” would require exactly what common lawyers feared: a union of “lawes and customes and evennesse in capicity of offices and dignities.”28 More disturbingly, references to bonds of love did not always set conquest in opposition to consent. In fact, portraits of the new British empire often employed classical images that seem designed to blur consent with conquest, legitimate marriage with rape.


English common law itself permitted a legal marriage, and creation of a new household government, to be made by “a voluntarie promise of marriage” following abduction and even rape.29 And though it certainly was not a popular view, theoretically, conquest – the mastering of persons, property, and law within a kingdom – could establish an equally legitimate political government with the consent of those conquered. The classical connection between conquest, marriage, and legitimate government was to be found in the Roman abduction of the Sabine women, the legendary event that gave rise to history’s greatest empire. Early seventeenth-century versions included playwright Thomas Heywood’s “translation” of Ovid in his Apology for Actors, in which the first Roman theater distracted Sabine men and seduced their daughters and sisters: Thou noble Romulus first playes contrives To get thy widdowed souldiers Sabine wives. … Now at a signe of rape given from the King, Round through the house the lusty Romans fling, Leaving no corner of the same unsought, Till every one a frighted virgin caught. … Ile be to thee, if thou thy griefe wilt smother, Such as thy father was unto thy mother. Heywood implies, perhaps with some irony, that this violent abduction was a creative act – productive of Roman drama, and, simultaneously, ensuring human procreation and the inception of a powerful new empire. Without wives, the Romans’ “immortall fame [w]ould dye, issueless with their mortall bodies.” If the conquest “frighted all … [the] ravish’d Sabines,” transforming them into a conquered peoples, the marriages that the Roman soldiers offered not only legitimized the ravishment, but incorporated the conquerors and conquered into a single body politic.30 Such connections between conquest and consent undercut most of the arguments used to support an absolute and indissoluble “marriage” of England and Scotland based on careful consideration and free contract. But given the power of this Roman legend in evoking international glory and empire for a renewed Great Britain, supporters of Union seemed unable to avoid the history of the Sabines. For Sir Francis Bacon, as for Heywood, it evoked tremendous creative force as


a procreative event that simultaneously blended language and culture into a new and greater whole: I do wish … that this happye union of your Majesties two Kindomes of England and Scotland; may bee in as good a houre; and under the like divine providence, as that was, between the Romaines and the Sabines. Though he could not deny that the Sabines’ abduction involved “enforced submission, which is Conquest,” its effect was a legitimate government and the combining of two great peoples into a single greater one.31 Others who wished to distinguish the marriage of England and Scotland from conquest nonetheless reiterated the story of the Sabines, contrasting the union of nations into Rome – based upon individual and collective ravishment – with the loving intermarriage of English and Scots to form Britain: What was it made the Romans and the Sabines friends, but the Romanes getting to wives the Sabines daughters? they tooke them by violence, these have opportunitie for love.32 Given English outrage at the influx of Scots courtiers almost immediately after James’ accession, these images, particularly as intermarriage became more visible, were far more suggestive of conquest than consent. This would have been especially true for those who, like Sir Edwin Sandys, opposed combining the two kingdoms under the name of “Britain,” concerned that any change of name “would not only abrogate existing laws, but prevent legislation by either national parliament.”33 Whatever the merits of this argument, at least one supporter of Union countered it with the story of the Sabines, bringing together all the associations of marriage and conquest most likely to solidify opposition. Those who feared the name of “Britain,” wrote the Bishop of Bristol, should recall that “it was counted in the daies of [William] the Conquerour, a reproach to be called an English man, or to joine in marriage with any of the English.” On the other hand, in the union of the Sabins and Romaines (as Eutropius reporteth) this was especially agreed upon, that the Sabins and Romaines should assume one an others name promiscuously: so that by no meanes they should bee distinguished by name.34


Thus, the success of the Roman empire had been based, not only on a “marriage” founded on abduction, but on the “promiscuous” use of the names of each to define both of the original peoples as one and bring about a powerful nation. In the history of the Sabines, every reference to marital union only raised the possibility that Union might infringe upon fundamental English laws and pervert English liberties. Thus, when James contrasted his own accession, “which is only fastened and bound up by the wedding ring of Astrea,” with that of “the Saxons, [their] kingdomes being conquered by the speare of Bellona,” his words reiterated the underlying threat posed by Union.35 For if marriage could establish in the renewed Great Britain “a friendshippe of that high nature, that God himselfe daineth to be a witnesse of,” it would be an “indissoluble knot.” Not conquest, but Astraea, the goddess of justice and law, would join his countries together; combining Scotland and England under a single surname meant binding them within a single rule of law, the fundamental law “whereby not only his regal authority but the people’s security of lands, livings and privileges … are preserved.”36 By 1607, James had made clear that these laws were to be, by and large, based on England’s common law. Supporters of Union even represented the common law as if it were the bridegroom’s wedding gift to his bride. “Why,” asked one English writer, “should we not wish them so well as our Lawes? why shuld we wish our selves so ill, as their not being one with us?” There is in this imagery the sense that the common law symbolized the combination of love and authority that was each husband’s obligation within marriage; in accepting and obeying that law, Scotland would take on the primary duty of a wife, obedience. Thus “the mindes of Scotland … neede[d] to be well prepared to perswade their mutuall consent” to the marriage, if they were to accept thereby an inferior office.37 By the early seventeenth century, most wives were taking the surname of their husbands. In James’ marriage of kingdoms, however, each was to sacrifice its name to the new surname Great Britain, under which the place of England’s fundamental law, and the authority of its new “husband” was by no means clear. *** For James VI and I, the creation of a single nation from his two independent kingdoms was woven into his effort to establish his prerogative rights as English monarch and head of the body politic. Given his predecessor’s fondness for avoiding marriage by claiming to be espoused to England, it is possible that the new king adopted her mar-


riage imagery in an attempt to echo that popular monarch. However, as in the case of Union, there were both ideological and practical reasons to define his accession in terms of marriage, even beyond the traditional association of coronation with the creation of a new sponsus regni. The idea that the monarch was the spouse of the kingdom had been fully developed by the time of James’ accession from the medieval relationship originally associated with that binding bishop and church. Among the insignias of royal office a new ruler received in the coronation ceremony was a ring that symbolized his spiritual, celibate union to the kingdom. One of the most touching scenes associated with the Virgin Queen’s deathbed was her command that the “Ring, wherewith shee had been joyned as it were in marriage to her Kingdome at her inauguration … to be filed off from her finger” – an action perceived at the time as an indication that she knew her death was near.38 During her reign, Elizabeth had shown herself more than willing to take on the role of either wife or husband; and her flexibility had made it possible for her leading subjects to see her “as satisfactorily, if mystically, ‘married’ to, and hence constrained by, her godly Protestant male subjects.” If these subjects yearned for a powerful Protestant king to succeed their queen and defend their realm and its church from the predations of papists, they had, nonetheless, developed an understanding of their “marriage” to the monarch in which they retained the appearance of priority. By the time of her death, despite her self-identification as an absolute princess, the “mystical marriage effected at [the] coronation” had come to support a “definition of the queen as a constrained or limited king.”39 When the Scottish king claimed the authority of a husband, he was, therefore, faced with a generation of Englishmen for whom marriage to the monarch did not require them to take the lesser office of wife. However, during those years of Elizabeth’s reign, French jurists had developed a very different view of the marriage contract between ruler and kingdom, one more closely resembling legal civil marriage and permitting political rule only by a male who became, with “the ring and oath,” a husband to his kingdom in an absolute sense. In terms of French natural philosophy, a king alone possessed the power to biologically generate heirs; to exercise authority in the realm; and, particularly, to hold the “inalienable dowry” that was his kingdom. By nature, women were excluded from the French throne because they could not generate heirs through “seminal transmission” of blood; a queen’s marriage would replace the blood of native kings with foreign blood. Further, because women were morally and sexually unstable, they were unfit to govern, in


a kingdom as much as within a household. Most significantly, the rule of husbands set out in theoretical form was also “socially sited in French laws that actually conveyed governing authority to male heads of political and social bodies (state and family) as king and husband (not as king and father).” The status of husband had to be registered in law, as the natural condition of fatherhood did not. Thus, “marital governing power” became the hallmark of a specifically “French” and secular system of law, in contrast to Roman civil law, based on paternal authority, and in opposition to Catholic ecclesiastical court control.40 Although it is not clear to what extent the “marital regime” system of civil law directly influenced English thought, or raised concerns for common lawyers, French conceptions of royal sovereignty in terms of an absolute marriage contract were fully compatible with those voiced by James and his supporters. Continental theorists, in fact, repeatedly argued that the monarchs of England and Scotland ruled with “absolute power”; and Jean Bodin’s Six livres de la republique was translated and published in England within three years of James’ accession.41 The most vocal supporters of such absolute power in England were clergymen, who drew upon Scripture to define not only the monarch’s present sovereign right, but the origins of government itself. For example, Godfrey Goodman located subjection to political government in the intensification of Adam’s marital authority after the “Fall of man.” (Genesis 3) Goodman, eventually bishop of Gloucester, traced rights of absolute rule in human government to this punishment of Eve, in which “the justice of God” placed her in “thraldome” and made her “captive to the will of her great Lord and master, her husband.”42 In Goodman’s text, the condition of government was both divinely ordained and contractual, a marriage made more rigorous as punishment for the first parents’ choice to act against God’s natural authority. Only obedience to the subjection enforced at the Fall would prevent a further decline into abject slavery: [A]s the wife doth first willingly undertake that state, and undergoe the yoake of her husband, (there being such a permission or rather injunction from God), it lies not in her power afterward to make the breach of her wedlocke; so certainly subjects at first, either inforced by conquest, or voluntarily of themselves submitting themselves to their Princes, and now it lies not in their power to revolt. Goodman’s argument presents consent to the contract of marriage as a foundation for absolute government more firm and unimpeachable


than any other. Because subjects, like wives, had originally consented to their own “thraldome,” they could not overturn the authority of their rulers.43 But marriage also confirmed natural rights of authority, of husband over wife, father over children, king over subjects. Even within Paradise, the first marriage had merely restored the man to his natural condition as head of the woman, who was again bound to him as his body. The punishment meted out to Eve at the Fall had increased her obligation of obedience to Adam and brought “slavery” to all humans to prevent “disorder” and “confusion.” This state had been little mitigated by succeeding law, confirmed instead by the rule that transmitted Eve’s subjection to all her natural off-spring: [T]he punishment [of subjection] is not onely to be tyed to the sex, (for it is a rule in law, partus sequitur ventrem, if our mothers be in bondage, we appearing in their wombes, must likewise acknowledge our just imprisonment). But it doth generally comprehend whole mankind.44 If, in French marital theory, rule was passed through “seminal transmission,” in England subjection was transferred from within the womb. The marriage contract that created a single natural body also established a natural authority relationship, with reasoning man as husband, father, and head. However, if consent made possible the absolute contract of rule, the authority invested in husband and king was given not by wife or subject, but by God alone. Just as God had instituted marriage and government for humankind from the moment of Eve’s creation, he had determined and proclaimed the holder of power within each relationship. As Richard Mocket put it: In the maritall conjunction of the husband and wife, there is a lively resemblance of the obligation of subjects in a civill allegiance unto their Prince: for as the coupling of the wife unto the husband in dutifull obedience, so of subjects unto their Prince in loyaltie and fidelity … as the [a] husband is the head of the wife, so is the [b] Prince of his subjects.45 In agreeing to marriage, a woman explicitly agreed to the rule of the man who was her husband; the consent of subjects to their monarch was implicit in the coronation ceremony, though not less binding.


But, like “[s]uccession and lawfull conquest,” consent was merely one of many possible “Titles whereby princes receive[d] their authoritie.” These were “not the originall, and immediate fountaine of this authoritie,” but the mechanisms by which God’s providence was seen.46 Other clerics drew upon Aristotle to prove that natural law required marriage in human society as the most stable and permanent foundation for all relations of authority. For even the “Heathen [philosopher], led by the bare Light of Nature,” had structured all government upon “the Societie of Man and Wife; the maine Root, Source and Original of all other Societies … Which of all others therefore Man is naturally most enclined unto.”47 Thus, marriage was not only the original of all forms of government, but also the basic unit of every community upon which larger and higher forms of society were built. “By the union of man and woman [was] made the lowest degree of societie,” the household; from many households grew a city, from many cities, a kingdom. Thus, household and kingdom, husband and king were unified in their origins and authority through marriage.48 Aristotle, of course, had differentiated authority in the household from that in the polity; some contemporary English theorists, and many continental Catholic theologians did the same. But those who argued most aggressively for the absolute contract of marriage as equivalent to the contract of government insisted that the authority wielded by the king was nearly indistinguishable from that of a husband. Further, as marriage gave each man authority over a wife, through that contract he gained additional power in the right of “paternitie” and, as a father of a family, a role in the formation of cities, kingdoms, and empires. Likewise, the coronation marriage transformed an heir into the spouse of the kingdom and granted him authority as pater patriae. Finally, but perhaps most significantly, Protestant ideology placed marriage at the center of social and religious life as a contrast to the celibate ideal of Roman Catholicism. English marriage guides of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries made this connection repeatedly, contrasting the order, stability, and chastity of marriage with a celibacy that produced only fornication, moral turpitude, and servility. Though this religious aspect of political thought will be more relevant to issues of subjection and tyranny – discussed in Chapters 4 and 7, respectively – it also supported the argument that God and nature bound household and kingdom together through marriage of subjects and king. ***


Ideologically, then, marriage imagery legitimized James’ rule, set the parameters of his authority, and confirmed the foundations of government itself. From a practical standpoint, creating an absolute and unbreakable contract between himself and England would assure dynastic stability for his heirs and for a kingdom where hereditary monarchy had been at risk under more than fifty years of infertile rulers. For a Scottish king who had not been assured of succession until Elizabeth’s death, there were serious practical problems to be confronted, however. The first of these was, very simply, his condition as an “alien.” He was, therefore, “incapable of inheriting English land” by common law; in this regard, his cousin, Arabella Stuart, had a somewhat better claim. As one writer put it in his private notes, though James was recognized to be the nearest “in bloud,” Stuart was “preferred by some ‘for that she is English borne (the want whereof, if our Lawyers opinions be corant is the cause of his exclusion)’.”49 Further, Henry VIII’s will had given preference to the line of his younger sister, Mary, over the heirs of his elder sister, Margaret, who had married James IV, James’ great-grandfather. James had spent years wooing various factions within the English court to support his right as primary heir to that kingdom’s crown. But even in the last months of Elizabeth’s life, his letters to Robert Cecil, her principal secretary, make clear that he still harbored concerns that there might be conspiracies against his accession, particularly incited by native or foreign Catholics. His insistence that his royal entry into London and the coronation ceremony be fully in line with traditional English practices show that James wanted, as far as possible, to understate his foreignness and “emphasize dynastic continuity.”50 By concentrating on his “marriage” to England in the coronation ceremony at his first Parliament, James could implicitly acknowledge that he had been chosen from among several possible successors by his new subjects, who had recognized his better claim, and by their consent were “taking away the name of stranger,” replacing it with the name and authority of a husband.51 Finally, as Judith Richards has argued, James could not, like his Tudor predecessors, claim a natural authority over his subjects on the basis of being native-born.52 He could, nevertheless, become by “the Law of Nature … a naturall Father to all his Lieges at his Coronation.”53 For James, therefore, the coronation “marriage” legitimized his right to govern his English subjects, as marriage established the authority of a father over his children, natural or adoptive. Further, the same providential English history which had made possible the Union confirmed through human marriages the integration of


consent and natural right in the monarch’s authority. James’ succession to the English throne originated in Henry VII, the Tudor monarch who had married his daughter to the Scottish king a hundred years before and whose own crown was acquired and confirmed by conquest and lawful consent, as well as marriage.54 Goodman portrayed Henry’s predecessor, Richard III, much as had Shakespeare and Holinshed, as the dark murderer of his nephews, the lawful heirs to the throne. But in Goodman’s hands, the crimes of an illegitimate king could be corrected by compact between a rightful king and the representatives of the people of England. In Goodman’s history, two prisoners of Richard’s tyranny, “a most reverent Bishop … together with the greatest lay subject,” acted as a representative Parliament consisting of Lords Spirituall and Temporall, Church and State together conspiring … to bring in Henry of Richmond to suppresse this tyrant.55 Through his subsequent defeat of Richard and marriage to Elizabeth of York, therefore, Henry not only ended the divisive Wars of the Roses and brought unity and peace to Wales and England, but reestablished in his monarchy a “Conquest” comparable to that of William I in 1066. This time, however, right of conquest was confirmed by consent of Parliament in the 1485 Act of Succession, in which law “ordained, established, and enacted … that the inheritances of the crowns of the realms of England and of France” were to “be, rest, remain, and abide” in Henry and the “heirs of his body lawfully coming.”56 Historically, then, the monarchical rights embodied in James had their foundations in a marriage of princes that confirmed consent to conquest and established lawful patriarchal succession. In James’ own writings, law seems not opposed to succession or conquest, but, in the imagery of marriage, simultaneously the source of prerogative and the means to affirm his governing rights. In his speeches on the Union, James had envisioned the English common law as the foundation of his rule in a unified Britain, a confirmation of marriage between peoples as between monarch and state. But he had insisted even then that this law was not “cleare and full,” but in many cases burdened with “obscuritie … and want of fulnesse … breeding every day new questions.” It was an unconscionable situation that, he said, “enforce[d] the judges to judge … by cases and presidents, wherein … there must be a great uncertaintie” for both the king and his subjects. England’s law, which James insisted could be the only means to establish a stable and absolute marriage between the two nations, was therefore to be subjected to “the clearing and the sweeping off the rust.”57


The king’s attempt to “sweep off the rust” from England’s law produced a battle with Parliament and the common law judges that lasted throughout his reign and has been interpreted as a defense of his prerogative against those who would place his authority under law. Among his English subjects, James was best known for his insistence that, in the words of the biblical king David, “Kings are called Gods … because they sit upon God his Throne.” But he would also argue that a “King governing in a setled Kingdome, leaves to be a King, and degenerates into a Tyrant, assone as he leaves off to rule according to his Lawes.”58 Well into the middle years of his reign, James represented law as the product, the off-spring, of the legitimate union, the “marriage,” of the king to the nation. Thus, he insisted that judges could be only “Interpretours of Law,” never “makers of Law.” They could give advice on the form and substance of existing law, but if they created law through their judgments, they usurped the authority of Parliament and king, undermining the marriage between ruler and nation that established legitimate political government: For when you make a Decree never heard of before, you are Lawgivers and not Law-tellers … Looke to Plowdens Cases, and your old Responsa prudentum; if you finde it not there, then (ab initio non fuit sic) I must say with CHRIST, Away with the new polygamie, and maintaine the ancient Law pure and undefild, as it was before. As James himself could not be “one head to governe two bodies, or one man to be husband of two wives, whereof Christ himselfe said, Ab initio non fuit sic,”59 he would not tolerate a state in which there were two husbands to the nation in the procreation of laws. The same marriage imagery that had allowed him and his supporters to confirm the natural, divine, and legitimate order of the Union acted here as a means to reveal corruption in the state, identified with unlawful marriage and illegitimate reproduction. *** Nearly a generation after the initial Union debates, Calybute Downing defined the royal prerogative: [O]ur present soveraigne hath [his crown] by lineall succession from an absolute Conqueror, which was confirmed to his father of pious memorie, by the nuncupative will of his sacred predecessor


[Elizabeth] who then adopted him, and all was made sure unto him by the elective assent of the supreme nobilitie …60 Charles’ prerogative right was based on conquest, hereditary succession, and consent. For Downing, these were not contradictory sources of authority, but various versions of contract, in which designation of the monarch was a human act, royal authority granted by God. His analysis, printed during the period of Charles I’s “personal rule,” was part of a subdued debate within the political nation about the security of inherited rights and liberties, issues that would be primary in the early years of the civil wars. In 1632, the succession itself was no longer, and not yet, subject to question, yet the marriage contract in political theory, during these years before 1640, still reinforced the divine and natural authority embodied in the formation of household and political governments. It could be used to reconcile conquest and contract, and to confirm the consensual foundation of subjection. The punishment that made Eve subject to her husband had brought about the patriarchal authority of king and husband, but, at the same time that marriage reinforced the natural hierarchy of men over women, it confirmed the superiority of moral and reasoning humans over beasts. It laid the foundation for society as it offered the pattern for civil government. But the violence of conquest mirrored in abduction contradicted central assumptions about the rights of subjects to consent to the contract that required their obedience. Laws that were the children of one king’s marriage to the nation restrained, necessarily, the free and absolute paternal authority of his successors. Above all, the origins of government in marriage raised serious questions about the source of power exercised by governors. The contradictions could be ignored as long as king and subjects were at peace with one another; once war broke out between husband and wife, they had to be erased, or the metaphor of marriage compromised or abandoned.

2 “A mutuall covenant betwixt King and people”

When James I died in 1625, he left his son with an unfinished Union project that even he had abandoned for some years. Thus, Charles I, like many of his fellow monarchs in the mid-seventeenth century, inherited a “composite state,” ostensibly united under a central government, but in reality divided by differences in regional law and customs, governing practices and personnel, and, particularly, religious liturgy and clerical government.1 James, a Scot who had understood his northern kingdom better than England, had contented himself with creating the appearance of religious uniformity in 1610 by establishing bishops in Scotland, not as Church of England episcopal representatives, but as mere moderators of a presbyterian Kirk. Over the next eleven years, his efforts to bring comparable uniformity in liturgy met with little success, and by 1621, he had come to terms with the existence of two national churches, similar only in appearance.2 In the first decade or so of his own reign, Charles – who was far more English than Scots – apparently accepted this situation as well, though he made efforts to bring together the subjects of his two kingdoms through other projects. By the mid-1630s, however, he and his archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, had determined that the “true church” of England and Scotland should be one in practice and liturgy as well as outward government; by 1636, the new Book of Common Prayer for the Kirk, drafted by the Scottish bishops and reviewed by Laud, was ready. When it was introduced early in the next year, the presbyterian Scots rejected it almost without a hearing, angered that it had been imposed from above by their “English” king rather than debated in Kirk assemblies, and assuming that its new liturgy was English in origin and “popish” in ceremony.3 By 1637, Scotland was in revolt, and Charles I needed money for an army to reclaim the northern half of his “composite” kingdom. 33


Historically, tax subsidies could be imposed only with the approval of Parliament, the representative body of England that had not met for nearly ten years. During this period of “personal rule,” Charles had kept his government solvent, if not debt-free, by requiring payment of certain prerogative rates, including Ship Money, a contribution that traditionally involved conscription of men and ships from ports in times of immediate naval emergency. The king, however, without exactly defining the nature of the external threat, was collecting the rate – in cash, not kind – across all England. Although there was little outward sign of opposition to Ship Money, the annual sums collected had dwindled each year; in 1638, when Charles’ attempt to suppress the Scottish rebellion with only raw levies failed miserably, the royal government recognized that Ship Money would not supply the army needed. Charles’ first Parliament since 1628 met in April, 1640, and lasted only until May, when the king dissolved it, frustrated that its members preferred to address Ship Money grievances rather than the Scottish rebellion. But when he failed to supply his forces over the summer, Charles was forced to call a second, equally hostile Parliament, that met for the first time on November 3, 1640. It would continue to meet, in various forms, for thirteen years; but by 1642 divisions between king and Parliament had reached such an impasse that Charles deserted London and rallied his supporters at Oxford. From 1642 through 1644, when reconciliation between Charles I and his Parliament remained the primary goal of both sides, marriage as a metaphor for the contract between king and nation served each side in its claim to support existing political government and the proper balance between the monarch’s prerogatives and subjects’ liberties. During this debate, “marriage” most often continued to reveal the equivalency of authority relations in oeconomic and political governments, confirming the power of king and husband over kingdom and wife. But one undercurrent in the discussion differentiated the two relationships in some way, usually by establishing the authority of either the husband or the king on a more perfectly “natural” foundation than the contractual one that had been central to earlier discussions. By 1649, however, when the civil wars had ended and Parliament had executed Charles I, debates shifted necessarily to the question of whether the new commonwealth government, particularly that established by Oliver Cromwell in 1652, should be obeyed. While political theorists and clerics attended to the reconstitution and reconstruction of political government, and to the problem of its legitimacy, they also reexamined and re-theorized the origins of government in

“A mutuall covenant betwixt King and People” 35

both polity and household. For the first time, the marriage contract appeared to be an afterthought, an appendix to the central problems of the political contract itself. Nevertheless, “marriage” remained a viable source for defining the contractual limits of political government, particularly if those limits were understood to be constrained only by God. *** Some twenty years ago, Mary Lyndon Shanley explored the problem of the marriage contract as an analogue of the social contract in a brief article on the seventeenth-century civil war debates and the works of Restoration social contract theorists. She argued that the use of the marriage contract as an absolute and unbreakable contract of government by supporters of Charles I confirmed the authority of the king and limited the rights of subjects to rebel. Parliamentarians, on the other hand, debating within a social reality that denied divorce beyond separation from bed and board, were unable to make the marriage contract effectively defend their right to resist the authority of the king. Her over-arching thesis contended that “the theoretical arguments which emerged from these debates [between 1640 and 1700] over political sovereignty eventually … became the bases for Liberal arguments about female equality and marriage.”4 Though I am not fully persuaded by this aspect of her conclusions, my analysis of the early works of the civil war is much indebted to her delineation of the basic contractual issues involved. However, she assumes that Royalists introduced the marriage contract into the debate, forcing their opponents to address the issue; instead, both sides clearly inherited a set of assumptions regarding the connection between household and kingdom that in some measure supported their positions on rightful government. Further, while Shanley argued that use of marriage forced some “to take more liberal positions with regard to marriage and divorce than were generally acceptable,” I would suggest that only John Milton was willing to make this step, and not necessarily for the benefit of both “marriage partners.”5 Instead Parliamentarians began, in a pattern that would eventually transform conceptions of the political contract, to represent marriage not as a guide for limiting the power of the monarch, but as a sign of the difference between marital authority and the power exercised in a polity. Their opponents, on the other hand, increasingly connected the prerogative of the monarch with the “natural” authority of a father rather than the “contractual” authority of a husband. By the time political divorce was actually effected with the execution of the king in


1649, ideas of “marriage” and “divorce” in most political tracts had been replaced by arguments that specifically differentiated marital contract from political contract. Only Thomas Hobbes, whose views were roundly condemned by both sides, equated the two – not to liberalize either, but to confirm the “absolute” condition of each. It was the absolute nature of the marriage contract that, Shanley thought, was most difficult for Parliamentarians to address. Yet their earliest tracts were more interested in showing that the political contract, based on an absolute marriage contract, protected the rights of subjects, represented by Parliament, to defend themselves from the unjust actions of the king. Puritan cleric, William Bridge, for example, argued that because there was a “mutuall covenant betwixt the King and the people [that] binds the King to the people, as well as the people to the King,” neither party could act against the interests of the other. In order for each to retain trust in the covenant, both parties had to abide by the implicit and original reason for creating it. The king was responsible for maintaining the safety of the people, and although his failure to do so did not immediately dissolve the contract, “neither [were the people] to forfeit their right of looking to themselves.” In establishing a trust that was not explicitly stated, but nonetheless assumed, this political contract resembled the marriage contract, in which: there is a covenant stricken betweene a man and a woman … when they marry one another [though] it is not verbally expressed in their agreement, that if one commit Adultery, that party shall be divorced; and yet we know that that covenant of Marriage carries the force of such a condition.6 Thus the “reason of law” implicit in the original contract of government bound both king and subject, legally limiting the power of the former in order to secure the safety, security, and stability of the kingdom. Henry Parker, an Oxford-educated political writer, drew upon a similar conception of the relationship between king and nation to argue for Parliament’s right to defend itself against “the erection of Arbitrary rule.” Although he did not demand or even suggest divorce, he insisted that, in political government as in marriage, desertion by one party permitted the other to take action for its own protection: [I]f the Wife leave her Husbands bed and become an adultresse, ‘tis good reason that she lose her dowry, and the reputation of a wife,


but if the Husband will causlesly reject her, ‘tis great injustice that she should suffer any detriment thereby, or be diminished of any priviledge whatsoever. Thus, if the king could show that he was endangered by his Parliament, that “they sought His oppression, and he had no other means to withstand their tyranny,” he was justified in leaving it and taking action to redress his grievance. But, in Parker’s view, Parliament had been the party deserted, by a king who had taken “ill Counsaile,” much as a husband might leave his wife to consort with ill company.7 He did not suggest that she had a right to divorce him; at most, agreed Parker’s clerical allies, her subordinate position permitted only the right to separate from him in order “to secure her Person from his violence.”8 As Shanley contended, any argument that the marriage contract, and thus the political contract, might be broken by the deserted wife, like Bridge’s suggestion that “divorce” was available to the wife in the event of “adultery,” confronted a definition of divorce that maintained the rights of a husband rather than those of a wife. Only one Parliamentarian made the adjustments necessary for divorce to be available within both the political and oeconomic governments. Other scholars have noted that in the letter of dedication to the second edition of Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, John Milton insisted that if the contracts of government in household and state were equivalent, as his colleagues argued, then both should be breakable according to the same rules. Drawing on traditional conceptions of salus populi, the “peoples’ safety,” Milton insisted that both marriage and political government were contracted to promote and ensure not only the physical wellbeing of husband and wife, ruler and people, but to make possible their “sanctity of life” in spiritual peace and salvation. Thus, not only adultery, but any act that undermined these should be cause for divorce, including incompatibility, expressed by Milton primarily as the failure of the wife to be a “meet or like help.”9 Political government was dependent upon the good government of each household, which could not be maintained if the original terms of the marriage contract, creating not merely one flesh in body, but a single mind or soul, were destroyed. “Reformation in the state” could not take place “while such an evill as this lies undiscer’d or unregarded in the house.” Therefore, “revers[ing] the terms of the analogy,” between marriage and political contracts, Milton argued “as a whole people is in proportion to an ill Government, so is one man to an ill marriage.”10 Divorce had to be available at each level. What Shanley did not emphasize in her interpretation was that Milton reversed in this


single phrase not simply the analogy, but the identity of the participants in the contract. In his political marriage, the king was the wife, the people the husband, the “one man” whose condition had become untenable. Although Milton could imagine divorce in both realms, he could not, any more than his Royalist contemporaries, imagine that the right to divorce might rest as fully with the wife as the husband.11 Royalist responses to the idea that the people could divorce their king directly confronted the reversal Milton’s analysis presented. Dudley Digges, another Oxford-educated gentleman, insisted that even if divorce could break the bond of political government, this could occur only at the instigation of the king, since he was the husband, and the laws of divorce even among the Jews had allowed only the husband to initiate the break: They must take their King for better for worse. It is very observable though it was permitted to the man in some cases, to give a bill of divorce, yet this licence was never allowed to women; so fathers might abdicate their children, not they their fathers; women cannot unmarry; nor the people unsubject themselves.12 It was impossible for the “people” to be the husband, for, like the woman contracting marriage, the people had become the subordinate party in the contract establishing political government and had, by subjecting themselves to a “head,” given up their right to end the terms of the contract. Thus, as one Royalist cleric argued, they could not “shake him off at pleasure.” Although, under Jewish law, “the husband for jealousie or discontent might have given to his wife a bill of divorcement,” such a power had never been granted to her.13 Identifying the king as the husband confirmed that subjects in household and polity could not, according to the terms of their contracts, simply “shake off” their government. To reverse the authority relationships would undermine the very purpose of government, social order and security. Furthermore, the terms of the marriage contract were, in fact, not implicit, but written clearly into the original ordinance of marriage, “They two shall be one flesh.” Adultery was an act that by definition destroyed that union, and therefore was a legitimate reason for divorce. On the other hand, the like implication of reason and declaration of Law must appear before we can see any warrant for Subjects to resist and provide for their own safety: for as of the parties married, so of a Prince and the


people entrusted to him by God, it may be said, whom God hath enjoyned let no man put asunder. Once again, Royalists insisted that the right to divorce was in the king only. If he oppressed his subjects, he abused an authority that was already intrinsic to his place; however, if they revolted against – divorced – him, they were guilty of “usurping of power that belong[ed] not to them.” Such action not only overturned government in the kingdom, but in the household as well, for “let not the woman usurp authority over the man, nor Subjects over their Prince.”14 Thus, as Shanley argued, the supporters of the king in these early years of the civil wars insisted that if there was a contract made between governor and governed, it was the absolute and unbreakable “marriage” contract described by the previous generation of theorists. But, in addition, they contended that the people could not gain the benefits of government unless they accepted that “possible inconveniences” arose with subjection to the powers established by God. Having “by solemne contract devested” themselves of power, they could not take it back without “manifest breach of divine ordinance” which “continues this union; marriages and Governments are both ratified in heaven.” There was no point in arguing that other forms of government might be more just, more fair, even more stable, because our faith once given to the present Government, cannot be recalled; this civill union is as fast tyed as the marriage knot, we are bound to take it for better or worse.15 Royalists continually reminded their readers that even if the foundation of government had in some measure originated in the consent of the people to a contract, it was God who gave power to the monarch and made the bond absolute. When subjects disobeyed their king, therefore, they simultaneously disobeyed the divine ruler who was the source of his power. The theoretical view that a ruler could be chosen by the people, but that his authority and power were granted by God had been basic to ideas about marriage and the political contract prior to the 1640s. But during the civil wars, Royalists made use of this idea to undermine any suggestion that the power to rule a kingdom had ever been intrinsic to those who would become its subjects: A woman by her choice and consent designeth her husband, but the maritall power and dominion is onely from God; for how can


she conferre or transferre that power which was never fixed in her, nay by God and nature she is to be ruled by her husband. It is more then than manifest that an humane act may designe the person of a King, and that the power is conferred by God alone. Even the first marriage had not been a bond between equals, since the woman was made not “of the earth,” but “of the man”; thus, the creation of political government was not a granting of power from subjects to a person of equal status, but a consent to the condition of rule required by God. Those who insisted that power originated in the people argued “that in the woman is primarily and radically maritall power.” Although the “constitution of Kings” did involve “[s]ome humane act, as election, succession, or conquest,” their authority came from God, since no subject had the “intrinsecall power” to “collate it, produce it, worke it, or effect it.”16 Thus, consent to the contracts of marriage or political government did not lessen the necessity of obedience nor limit the contracts themselves. Although the first biblical rulers were husbands and fathers, the first “Governours” of modern kingdoms, who held “absolute power … within a narrow compasse,” had been created through a contract that established a higher patriarchal authority: It was our own act which united all particular paternal power in Him, and that these are truly transferred, and now really in Him, is very evident, because else we should be bound to obey our Fathers commands, before those of the King.17 By consenting to political government, all fathers, the original governors, had made themselves subjects and were, therefore, bound by the same obligation of obedience as they expected of their own subjects, their wives and children. The natural authority of fatherhood had made possible the creation of a contractual authority in monarchy that was renewed with the crowning of each new monarch, as, with each generation, marriages established new households. In the context of war between king and Parliament, even most Royalists were unwilling to grant that consent was unnecessary to distinguish “Violent” or “Martiall” rule from the “mixt” governments common to “our Moderne Kingdomes.”18 But Dudley Digges argued explicitly that even conquest without consent could establish a legitimate government. However, as one of the only theorists from this


period to retell the legend of the Sabines, Digges also demonstrated the way in which consent transformed the condition of subjects: The consent of the woman makes such a man her husband, so the consent of the people is now necessary to the making Kings (for conquest is but a kind of ravishing, which many times prepares the way to a wedding, as the Sabine woman [sic] choose rather to be wives, then concubines, and most people preferre the condition of Subjects, though under hard laws to that of slaves.) For Digges, consent to conquest was in one way but another argument for an absolute contract of political government, in which power itself was never transferred from subjects to king, but invested in the monarch by the hand of God. However, tracing the origins of government to a contract, even an absolute one, also ameliorated the condition of subjection itself. The “conquest” of Britain, first by Saxons and Danes, and later by William I, had not been “it self a right, yet it [was] the mother of it,” when, by contract, the condition of both “faithfull Subjects” and monarch were redefined, creating his condition as their legitimate father. They had agreed “to be peaceably governed by such Laws, as he shall, or hath given them”; he had “restraine[d] his absolute right by compact, and bestow[ed] some liberties and some priviledges upon the people.”19 In Digges’ conception of government, the rhetoric of absolute contract restrained a monarch’s “absolute right” to define the parameters of his own authority and his subjects’ obedience, protecting the prerogatives of all. For Parliamentarians, this view of conquest was particularly problematic, as it had been for common lawyers under James I. If their armies were defeated by the king’s forces, after all, Charles might choose to establish his new government without reference to existing law, the right of any conqueror. Thus, argued one Parliamentarian, those who denied the people’s right of election or consent weakened rather than strengthened the authority of legitimate kings, because they justified not only conquest, but rebellion: [M]eere conquest being nothing else but an unjust usurpation … why may not the subject rise up and take arms to deliver themselves from that slavery?20 Instead, mutual consent to the contract of political government, like consent to marriage, ensured the safety and security of both parties. A


“compelled surrender of liberty” by conquest established slavery, not lawful government, since “such a violent Conquerour who will be a father and a husband to a people, against their will, is not a lawfull King,” nor could a lawful king give countenance to rights of conquest without endangering his own authority and prerogatives.21 If they viewed conquest as irremediably unlawful as a basis for government, Parliamentarians dealt with the designation and extent of power held by kings, and husbands, in two ways. The more traditional argument drew upon Aristotelian distinctions between forms of authority. The form of power varied with the identity of the governor and, more importantly, “his” subjects “[F]or there is a power over ones wife, another over his children, and another over his family.” This differentiation of subjection within the household will have important implications for defining subjects in the state as “wives” rather than “sons.” In this context, the interesting point – made only implicitly – is that, unlike household relationships, the “power” and “forme of government” in the state were determined not only by God, but by “humane ordinance.”22 Even if the husband’s authority was made possible through consent and contract, the power he wielded was nonnegotiable, set specifically by the direction of God, first in Paradise and later in the punishment of Eve. In the state, on the other hand, only government itself was required, the embodiment of authority into “supreme powers,” which were defined by those who agreed to come under its rule. Defining these “species of Power” required distinguishing between “order” and “Jurisdiction,” the former indicative of all God’s creation, including marriage, the latter implying a “coercive power” which was established and exercised only in certain contexts. For example, Henry Parker’s history of “Power” began, as had most divine right analysis of the origins of government, with Maritall power, which by definition excluded the possibility of coercion necessary to the maintenance of political government. Negating earlier images of a marriage of king and kingdom to create a body politic, Parker insisted that such a union applied only to the joining of man and woman. Husband and wife were “one flesh,” and it was thus “improper” to imagine that the husband could be “said justly to have any jurisdiction over his own parts or members; ‘tis a kind of soloecisme in nature.” Further, were such “coercive power” essential to his position, there could be no law established to limit his right to accuse, try, and punish his wife, nor any grounds upon which she could defend herself or appeal for redress. Nor was there any indication in Scripture “to countenance


any coertion of this nature, unlesse we will call that of divorce and repudiation so,” both of which were reserved to the husband, but also “discountenanced by our Savior.” Finally, the existence of civil laws that regulated the rights of husbands over their wives proved that such absolute coercive power had not been established by God in nature, since, “if it were from nature, before Civill power it could not justly be repealed, nor merit to bee altered.” Natural law could not be limited by civil law, and thus nature subjected wives to husbands only because “God has indued [the latter] with more majestie, strength, and noble parts.”23 Marriage might have been the first and original government, but no argument for the coercive power of the king could be founded upon it. Although these distinctions were not original to the 1640s, new conceptions of governing contracts did emerge during these years. Parker’s great innovation in thinking about political government, and one that would be particularly influential among later political theorists, was that in the covenant between monarch and subjects, power itself had emerged from the “people.” [S]ince all naturall power is in those which obey, they which contract to obey to their owne ruine, or having so contracted, they which esteem such a contract before their own preservation, are felonious to themselves and rebellious to nature. Because the primary reason for political government was “common safety and utility,” therefore, subjects whose ruler had betrayed the fundamental terms of the contract were justified in “seeking justice against their enemies,” as the abandoned wife could do from her neglectful husband.24 His fellow Parliamentarians insisted in addition that the original contract, which their opponents defined as absolute in its terms, was not even absolutely necessary to the human condition. As man and woman chose to consent to the matrimonial bond to create an oeconomic government, individual peoples voluntarily agreed to form a bond that established political government. “Marriage [was] GODS Institution and Ordinance, and more originally then the Governments politicall … yet are not all of mankinde bound to marry.” In the same way, not all people needed “Government Politicall.” As marriage had been more essential in the years immediately after the creation, “when the World was thinner,” political government was now more necessary “to secure ones selfe and others from wrong, and doe … good and glorifie GOD in all.” But even changed circumstances


could not create an absolute necessity for government, could not prove “that there must be powers every where.”25 This differentiation of marital government from political government did not, in these works from the first civil war, negate the possibility that the two were interconnected and, in important ways, analogous for understanding and defining rights of authority, particularly with regard to their contractual foundations. Parliamentarians made very effective use of the metaphors of marriage and divorce to explain their understanding of the prerogatives of king and subjects. The ambivalence in their analysis centered on the issues of natural subjection and natural freedom: husbands (and fathers) ruled by natural right, but they were naturally free to determine the limits of the political government within which they lived and governed. This distinction would become even more pointed in the second half of the century. For Royalists, the issues that had been reconciled through the metaphor of the marriage contract – created by free consent but instituting an absolute and unbreakable bond of authority – became opposed to one another in the next generation of debates. Especially in the years after the execution of Charles I, Royalists increasingly compared the king’s prerogative power not to the marital authority of a husband but to the non-contractual, godly, and indisputably natural authority of fathers. Natural freedom and natural subjection could no longer be fully reconciled, for either faction, in the marriage contract. *** By the late 1640s, the debate over the contract of political government involved participants who were neither gentlemen nor universityeducated clergy or laity, largely as a result of divisions among the king’s opponents. When Charles attempted to negotiate with the Scots in 1646, his continuing intransigence in defense of episcopacy transformed possible allies into enemies. The Scots sold him to the English Parliament. Suddenly possessed of the upper hand in negotiations, its leading members found that Charles still refused to cooperate; in response, they had the bishops’ estates sold, established a national Presbyterian church, and made plans for the pacification of Ireland. In order to accomplish this last victory, however, Parliament’s leaders needed the cooperation of the New Model Army, led by Independents who desired religious toleration of non-Catholic sects, and made up of common soldiers who sought reform of representation and the franchise, as well as payment of wages that had long been in arrears. When


the leaders of Parliament ordered a portion of the troops to Ireland and the remainder disbanded, agitators within the Army mutinied, taking a Solemn Engagement not to disband until their grievances were satisfied. The Army gained the upper hand when cavalry troops quietly took control of the king; from this point on, debates about abuses of government would address not only royal authority, but “parliamentary tyranny.”26 In this context, contentions for the natural freedom of men emerged most insistently from the writings of John Lilburne and the Levellers. Although their conception of the status of subjects depended upon the authority established for each man in marriage – the topic of Part II – they considered questions of political government without explicitly suggesting that the exercise of authority in the state was at all comparable to that wielded in the household. Implicitly, in fact, the manner in which they represented the formation and practice of state government distinguished it completely from the origins and bonds of marriage. Lilburne’s Agreement of the People, for example, carefully and fully delineated proportional representation, the “qualifications of persons to elect or be elected,” the numbers required in the assembly for voting and debates, the form of the state council, and the power of representatives. He restrained his assembly from instituting any act that would “render up or give or take away any of the foundations of common right, liberty, and safety … [or] level men’s estates, destroy property, or make all things common,” and provided for freedom of conscience to all non-Catholic Christians. Government, in this document, was neither natural nor divinely ordained, though, according to Lilburne, the defeat of the people’s “enemies” had been a sign that God had “owned [their] cause.” Instead, government was created and instituted by “men of twenty-one years of age or upwards and housekeepers,” to protect and defend their “common rights and liberties” with the assistance, but not by the ordinance, of God.27 Although marriage might remain a foundation for a man’s position as subject within the body politic, contracts of political government established relations of authority that were quite different from those existing between husband and wife. At the same time, though not necessarily in direct response, the defenders of monarchy also began to abandon contractual issues represented by marriage in order to argue not only that all government was ordained by God, but that subjection, not freedom, was the natural condition of all men. One Royalist, in a treatise of nearly 200 pages, made no mention of the marriage contract or even the specifically


marital authority of Adam over Eve. Instead, his analysis of monarchy traced its origins to the Monarchicall Supremacy, not onely Oeconomicall over that one created family in Paradise, but Political over a society consisting of many families which were to descend of Adam: For the same Law which Commanded obedience of children to Parents, servants to Masters, and subjects to Kings in Paradise, did oblige all Adams posterity.28 Monarchical authority could not be contractual if its origins and descent were based upon Adam’s status as a “father” rather than a “husband.” Once Charles had been executed in 1649, Royalist emphasis on the natural authority of fathers as the foundation for political government became even more dominant. When, in 1650, Robert Filmer – whose works would have a profound impact on later political debates – traced the origin of government to Genesis 3.16, “where God ordained Adam to rule over his Wife, and her desires were to be subject to his,” he argued that this authority defined not Adam’s contractual right as a husband, but his natural right as “the father of all mankind.” That right had only been made firmer when it was reestablished in the fatherly authority of Noah, from whom later kings derived their power. Filmer’s single use of “marriage” asserted only that government as directive power could not be the result of sin, as others had suggested, since it had existed even prior to the Fall in Adam’s rule over Eve as an extension of his natural body. “Coactive power,” the right to use force to ensure obedience, had become part of Adam’s natural right to govern when sin, the “disorder which was not in the state of innocency,” had appeared in the world. No consent, no contract had been necessary either in Eden or after the Fall to establish the “power or right of government … the form of the power of governing, and the person having that power,” merely the act of God and the natural condition of fatherhood.29 Those who attempted to create government on any other basis usurped not only royal power, but the rights of fathers and the authority of God. For those who sought to establish a government without a king, debates about civil authority were, necessarily, focused on the form that any new government should take and the power its representatives should wield. Perhaps it is simply logical that, at least initially, such discussions would avoid the problem of marriage. Even the suggestion that the household and the state were equivalent could


logically undermine the authority of governors in one while justifying the rights of subjects in the other. But marriage did not disappear from political debates. John Hall, for example, in The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy, assumed that Adam’s “oeconomic” rule had nothing to do with “Civil Government,” yet his history of the Scottish kings relied on an interdependence of household and kingdom to reveal the tyranny of their reigns.30 Marriage as an issue of consent and contract in political government appeared only rarely, however, and was most evident in perhaps the most highly contested works of the period. For most theorists in the early years of the commonwealth, marriage remained a prerequisite to participation in the state; for some, it was even a precondition to the formation of civil society itself. But few found it necessary to equate the contract of marriage with the social contract that formed the polity. For example, rather than rejecting all forms of natural subjection, commonwealth theorists granted that the subjection of sons to fathers was not only natural, but a foundation of all civil government. Marriage divided this natural condition of obedience into which all men were born from a political condition in which obedience was the effect of consent. This political contract was not – in fact, could not be – comparable to the marriage contract, since the latter created a natural condition of subjection, that of the wife to her husband, that was incompatible with the natural freedom necessary to political government. But when a son chose to participate in a contract that required an exercise of his own authority, whether over a wife in marriage or over servants in a trade, he took on the role of a “father,” and, thus, a political subject, a “free man.” Ironically, therefore, as we will see in Chapter 5, while most defenders and critics of Interregnum government continued to associate the rights of political subjects with the authority of husbands, they simultaneously divided the role of a wife, of a subject in the household, from the conditions of subjection in the polity. However, a small minority of theorists, particularly two who were roundly condemned by both republicans and monarchists, were less quick to abandon all aspects of marriage as a way to think about political contract. Although Gerrard Winstanley, in The Law of Freedom, abandoned the marital contract as a model for his political government, his description of marriage offered a direct insight into the civil society he hoped to achieve. The structure of his text hardly supports this idea. For Winstanley traced “first original of Government” to Adam, defining him as the “first father” rather than the first husband; he even saved


his discussion of marriage law for the last section of his outline of just, egalitarian government. But by insisting that marriage was to be contracted freely without regard to parental intervention or status, he illustrated his conception of the very purpose of state government and the liberties of its political subjects: Every man and woman shall have the free liberty to marry whom they love, if they can obtain the love and liking of that party whom they would marry; and neither birth nor portion shall hinder the match, for we are all of one blood, mankind; and for portion, the common store-houses are every man[s] and maid’s portion, as free to one as to another.31 This description of marriage is significant in two ways. First, as social position was insignificant in the choice of a marriage partner, so it was to rights of participation in his commonwealth based upon shared property, free consent, and status earned by office or labor, not privilege. On this basis, his critics could certainly argue that he, and his followers, intended to “level” estates. And yet, by defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman, Winstanley also distinguished his political movement from the radical sects accused of allowing free sexual contact between all men and women; the “Diggers” supported the traditional household and its religious underpinnings. Winstanley never argued that the status of a husband served as the identifying mark of a subject in the state, a freeman. But he clearly depended upon marriage, both as a unit of property and a sign of godly rule, to legitimate his definition of government against its critics. The most criticized political theorist of the early 1650s was, however, Thomas Hobbes.32 Although modern historians and political theorists have most often described him as the consummate social contract theorist, he was also one of the last political thinkers to insist that all levels of government were contractually equivalent. Hobbes’ rulers were absolute, but he did not, as contemporary defenders of absolutism were doing, assume that their authority was natural, with natural foundations in the rights of fatherhood. Instead he argued – like his republican contemporaries – that those who formed civil society, who freely contracted with one another for mutual protection under political government, were “the Fathers, not … the Mothers of families.”33 In order to reconcile these ideas, Hobbes did what no one since Milton had done: he established the origins and conditions of the marriage


contact on precisely the same foundations as the social contract. Of course, Milton’s two contracts had been breakable, and perhaps even renegotiable; his critics accused him of creating a new religious sect, which they called “Divorcers” and portrayed in religious tracts as husbands beating their wives with sticks.34 In contrast, Hobbes, who would be no less reviled as a religious apostate, transformed the absolute contract embodied in earlier images of marriage into an unbreakable bond that originated not in divine law or the natural order, but in conquest and consent. As Carole Pateman has argued, Hobbes located the first conquests in a state of nature “where there are no Matrimoniall lawes” that would identify the father, and thus the first dominion was in mothers over their children.35 Even this authority was not natural, but based on contract, on an on-going agreement to care for their children in exchange for obedience. According to Pateman, this contract was continuously self-renewing, since one party had to provide, on a daily basis, nurture for the other in order to retain authority. Marriage, however, like other long-term contracts in Hobbes’ state of nature, “suffer[ed] from an endemic problem of keeping contracts and of ‘performing second.’” In the state of nature, the “only contract that an individual, of his or her own volition, [could] enter into in safety [was] one in which agreement and performance [took] place at the same time.” One of the few actions that met this standard was “an act of coitus”; marriage, on the other hand, was a relationship that depended upon a trust unavailable in the state of nature, with its conditions of “all against all.”36 There, a mother acquired her “Dominion” as the head of a family “By Generation” and retained authority unless and until she “contracted” away her rights to a man who, “by Conquest,” then became her Lord or Master. As Pateman argues, for Hobbes, the role of wife and mother disappeared into the role of contracted servant, as every family was made up of a man and his children; or of a man and his servants; or of a man, and his children, and servants together: wherein the Father or Master is the Soveraign.37 In Hobbes’ conceptualization of the origins of commonwealths, women had to be conquered and subsumed under the dominion of men before civil society was possible, when men themselves established by consent – or conquest, its equivalent – an absolute “master” of the state, “Leviathan.”


Pateman’s analysis brilliantly reveals the extent to which Hobbes wrote the absolute contractual authority of men over women into the foundation of the ruler’s absolute contractual authority over subjects. But, that “absolute contract” had been part of political debates for years, implicit in the use of the marriage metaphor. What disconnected Hobbes from previous writers was not simply his contention that purely natural relations of authority did not exist among humans, but that metaphor should not be a means of describing or analyzing the human condition. As he argued in his first book of Leviathan, metaphor was one of the four “Abuses of Speech,” a use of words “in other sense than that they are ordained for … to deceive others.”38 Victoria Kahn has shown that Hobbes was not simply hostile to metaphor, but assumed that “all language [was] ambiguous, all texts require[d] interpretation, and all interpretation [was] debatable.” The only way to establish “right reason” was to establish a single absolute that measured and established truth. Kahn focused on the monarch as that absolute, and certainly Leviathan was, for Hobbes, the standard by which even religious issues were to be judged.39 But Hobbes’ rigorous efforts to avoid “abuse” of language in his analysis of governments also disguised his reliance on earlier imagery concerned with conquest and the absolute contract of marriage. His use of “servant” to define the position of the wife in a household, for example, was perfectly consistent with his wish to differentiate authority based on “Generation” from that founded upon “Conquest, or Victory in war,” but was not far removed from the views of theorists who discriminated between the authority wielded by a husband from that of a father or master.40 Thus, although he made no direct use of the myth of the Sabines, he retained the basic elements of that story in his contention that civil society could not be created until men had achieved “Dominion” over women “by Conquest,” since they could not do so “by Generation.” Men’s authority over women was not natural because men were not naturally superior, “[f]or there [was] not always that difference of strength or prudence between the man and the woman, as that the right [could] be determined without War” in the state of nature. Men’s victory in that war, based primarily upon might rather than right, had made possible their contractual formation of a society in which “Civill Law” established the rights of ruler and subjects, giving legal standing to all and, in doing so, transforming concubines into wives and slaves into servants. In his description of the inception of such a civil society, Hobbes portrayed the unification of men under Leviathan in terms


almost identical to those used by the Royalist Dudley Digges in 1643. But his words also reflect those used by supporters of Union to define the uniting of England and Scotland in “one flesh” forty years before that: The only way to erect such a Common Power … is, to conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men … This is more than Consent, or Concord; it is a reall Unitie of them all, in one and the same Person … the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMON-WEALTH, in latine CIVITAS. This is the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speake more reverently) of that Mortall God, to which wee owe under the Immortall God, our peace and defence.41 The “Conquest” of women by men led to the “Generation of that great LEVIATHAN”; wives disappeared into and were represented by their husbands, as those husbands gave birth to, then disappeared into and were represented by their sovereign in an organic body politic. Both actions were effected through contracts that formed absolute and unbreakable relations of authority nearly identical to the marriages of kingdoms and peoples celebrated by James I. On the single occasion that Hobbes actually used marriage as a metaphor for his idealization of earthly government and sovereign authority, he revealed that his conception of the “Unitie” within Leviathan was equivalent to a monarch’s marriage to his kingdom. Arguing that no people should prefer another form of government to their own, any more than worship idols, he admonished Christian rulers to be “Jealous” of their subjects, and not allow them to be seduced from their loyalty, as they have often been, not onely secretly, but openly, so as to proclaime Marriage with them in facie Ecclesiae by Preachers; and by publishing the same in the open streets: which may fitly be compared to the violation of the second of the ten Commandements. The contract implicit in the authority of “Fathers,” because it existed “before the Institution of Common-wealth,” made them “absolute Soveraigns in their own Families,” unless limited by the contract that created the commonwealth. However, the contract in which they joined to give birth to Leviathan established that the “Soveraign Representative” of the commonwealth “never wanteth Right to any


thing, otherwise, than as he himself is the Subject of God.” Men’s absolute contractual right to govern their wives made possible, but was continually dependent upon, the absolute ruler to whom they were subject.42 In his reconstruction of the terms and foundations of authority, Hobbes extended his investigation of the absolute contract into the realms of heaven and hell, using marriage as a measure of the form of government that would exist in each after the resurrection. As part of his analysis of the “Christian commonwealth,” he concluded his materialist proof that angels were permanent or eternal rather than incorporeal bodies by quoting the gospel of Matthew 22:30: “In the resurrection men doe neither marry, nor give in marriage, but are as the Angels of God in heaven.” Since the resurrection itself implied the joining of humans’ spiritual and corporeal bodies, angels could not, therefore, be “incorporeal.” They were, instead, like the resurrected, “permanent” or “Eternal.” The condition of heaven, therefore, was not without material existence, but was comparable to life in Eden. Hobbes pictured an Eden in which Adam was “created in such a condition of life, as had he not broken the commandement of God, he had enjoyed it in the Paradise of Eden Everlastingly.” Therefore, “that saying of our Saviour” in the gospel is a description of an Eternal Life, resembling that which we lost in Adam in the point of Marriage. For seeing Adam, and Eve, if they had not sinned, had lived on Earth Eternally, in their individuall persons; it is manifest, they should not continually have procreated their kind.43 “Marriage” came after sin and the Fall in Hobbes’ analysis of Christian commonwealths, as the conquest of women had come before the creation of Leviathan in the first civil states. In both, marriage created a hierarchy necessary to the ordering of a chaos of all against all, whether existing as a “state of Nature” or a condition of the expulsion from Paradise. But marriage was also, in Hobbes’ picture of governments, a measure of “Everlasting Death.” Unlike those who achieved “Everlasting Life” and became, “as the Angels of God in heaven,” immortal and without marriage, those condemned to eternal punishment would continue to “live as they did, marry, and give in marriage, and have grosse and corruptible bodies, as all mankind now have; and consequently may engender perpetually, after the Resurrection, as


they did before.” Marriage, that had been the sign of mortality to Adam and Eve, would ensure with its unending procreation that hell never lacked “wicked men to be tormented” with “Fire, or Torments,” but, more particularly, with death. For marriage and procreation in hell would take place without the hope that had been the shared tradition of Judeo-Christian culture, “that God promised a Redeemer to Adam, and such of his seed as should trust in him, and repent.”44 Hobbes’ view ran directly against earlier arguments that marriage, the first government established by God in Paradise, was the mark of the divine origins of monarchy, rather than a punishment for sin. However, it recreated the perspective, argued by Godfrey Goodman in 1616, that the fall of humankind had necessitated a rule that God had instigated as a punishment, a subjection passed on by every mother to her off-spring. The absolute contract embodied in marriage as much as the absolute ruler embodied in Leviathan united Hobbes’ construction of government in heaven and hell, in natural and Christian realms to an extent unmatched even by early seventeenthcentury clerics. *** The conflicts of the civil war and the disturbingly contingent structure of political government during the Interregnum had forced English political thinkers to consider in detail the contract that established authority in the polity. As they did so, the relationship created by the marriage contract was more often distinguished from political bonds than equated to them. This involved, on one side, the abandonment of the natural and divine foundation of government in marriage for a conception of rule based upon the consent of free men to a social contract that could be renegotiated if the established rulers became tyrannical. On the other, the consensual and contractual aspects of marriage disappeared, as the source of government was associated with the authority of fathers over sons, a power perceived to be at once more “natural” and more fully supported by biblical ordinance in the fifth commandment. Only the unhappily married John Milton and the bachelor Thomas Hobbes found in marriage a way to understand and express the structures of political government. For the former, each contract had to be broken when its purpose, the safety and well-being of its members, was endangered; for the second, both contracts had to be absolute in order for government of any kind to exist. Both these views were widely condemned by contemporaries. Instead, over the


next few decades, the marriage contract in political thought would shift from one that confirmed the moral and consensual foundations of political government to one that measured a relationship that defined what was not political.

3 “From Adam’s having bin alone”

At the end of the 1650s, just prior to the return of Charles II and the reestablishment of monarchy in England, two clerics, Edward Gee and Richard Baxter, published their views on legitimate civil authority. Both men were presbyterian divines who had been troubled over their political allegiance during the Interregnum. In many ways, they seem to have agreed on the contractual foundations of civil society, using marriage extensively as a means to define the substance or reason for such contracts. Gee, however, was writing directly against the divine right theorist, Robert Filmer, whose The Anarchy of a Limited or Mixed Monarchy, published ten years earlier, had argued for a political government that was based upon the natural authority of fathers established by divine ordinance in Paradise.1 On the other hand, Baxter was responding to the republican tracts of James Harrington, at the latter’s invitation. Both Gee and Baxter reiterated many of the arguments from the early 1640s. Like other defenders of monarchy, they agreed that, though a woman designated the person who was to be her husband, as a people designated their ruler, it was God who gave “the Power of an Husband.”2 Neither recognized conquest alone as a source of legitimate government, arguing instead, as had supporters of Parliament, that consent and contract must follow. Finally, both men insisted, like their contemporaries, that the contracting of civil government actually confirmed the power of “fathers of families,” supporting the natural authority of husband and father within the household. Although Gee emphasized the ultimate equivalency of the marriage contract to the political contract, and Baxter argued that the two governments differed significantly, neither imagined that the power of kings could be defined simply as a natural authority comparable to that of fathers. 55


For Edward Gee, all earthly power drew upon either “Natural power” or “Moral power” or a combination of the two. By itself, the first was “no other then a brutish predominancy or violence,” which, since it was available to beasts as well as “reasonable creatures,” stood completely outside “civil liberty, order, or right.” Moral power was “a special state, or function, or administration amongst men,” not divided from natural power, but holding “its sword by vertue of its authority” rather than the other way round. Moral power originated in right, not might; if civil society were not based upon it, then kings would have to be ruled by the people, Parliaments by “the community.” But subjection to moral power arose from different conditions, either “by means extrinsecal” and without volition, as children were subject to parents, or “by the will, choice, or consent of the parties in whom the relation” exists.3 Choice marked the origins of both marriage and the political government of commonwealths, discriminating them from the natural power of fathers. All persons were subject to fathers within the family, however, unless and until they became fathers themselves, at which time they were capable of freely forming or consenting to civil society. Yet Gee extended his conception of moral power to define even legitimate rights of fatherhood under the umbrella of contract. He argued that “the having of civil power must have a moral constitution” by returning to the difference between paternal and conjugal relationships. He is truly said to be a father that begets a child, though it be in whoredome, and a bastard is truly called a son. But two cannot be called husband and wife from naturall copulation, but there must be betwixt them, besides that, a consent, or contract for substance valid, and lawfull to set them in that relation. As in civil society, marriage established legitimate authority through a contract, consent to which was “a moral relation as to the way of its production [and] … therefore must result from a morall act.” On the other hand, the relationship of father and son – without an intervening contract of marriage – was “a naturall relation, in regard of its rise” and could not, therefore, be either a relationship of authority and subjection or the primary foundation of civil society. “Fathers of families” had authority as fathers only because they had acquired moral power by contracting the role and authority of husbands, as rulers contracted, with the consent of their subjects, to govern a commonwealth.4

“From Adam’s having bin alone” 57

Gee gave no indication that the terms of a marriage contract differed in any respect from contracts for political government – once formed, both were absolute and unbreakable, confirming the moral authority of kings and “fathers of families.” Richard Baxter, on the other hand, outlined three essential differences between the contracts, beginning with the problem of “designation theory.” A woman by her choice designated her husband, but had no choice in determining who would rule in the household, for “if they should by Contract agree, that the wife shall not be subject to the Husband, it were ipso facto null, as being contrary to the divine Institution or Law.” God had made wives subject to their husbands, and nothing could be done by either party to change that condition. For political government, however, God had instituted no such restraint, but “hath left it free to [commonwealths] to put the Soveraignty into the hands of one, or two, or an hundred, or a thousand.” Second, the marriage contract established an authority relationship that was “for life” and not “dissolvable on any terms but those of [God’s] description.” No such requirements had been set for civil contracts; even a “Dictator for a year, or two years is not forbidden.”5 Although both wives and political subjects could seek remedy for injury, only the latter had a hand in defining the terms and period of subjection. Baxter’s third distinction between marriage and political government reiterated earlier views more closely associated with theories of absolute rule: no person could live outside the rule of civil society. In part, his emphasis on the necessity of political government arose from his contention – against the views of republicans like Harrington, who insisted that freedom was the birthright of every man – that government was instituted by God and that subjection to it was, on that basis, “natural”: To mankind in common, it is made a duty to live in this order of Government where it may be had. He therefore that should think he is born a Freeman, and therefore will maintain his liberty, and be Governed by none, (being not a Governour himself) doth sin against God … Nature immediately makes an inequality in our procreation and birth … [and] such inequality of persons in point of sufficiency and endowments, as necessitateth Government … And therefore even in state of marriage Nature subjecteth the weaker sexe to the Government of the stronger. To argue against this natural order was to “make the seed of the Serpent to be the Soveraign Rulers of the earth,” against the original


promise of God to Adam that had ameliorated the punishment of the Fall. Therefore, although men could define through contract the terms by which they were governed in a commonwealth, they could not choose to live outside it. On the other hand, women, who could not rewrite the terms of their marital subjection, could, nonetheless, choose not to marry, not to place themselves under the authority of a husband. Their contract was optional, but absolute in its terms; their husbands chose the original terms of their subjection to political government, but “not a man among many millions” could choose not to be a subject.6 Edward Gee’s response to Filmer had been to reincorporate the consensual, contractual terms of marriage into the foundation of political government. Richard Baxter’s answer to the republican thinking of Harrington redefined not the relations of authority within “oeconomic” government but those that structured the state. Both writers found in the imagery of marriage contract, however, a means by which to support the returning monarchy and simultaneously maintain the consensual rights of its subjects. If their works were at all a measure of political thought in the early years of the Restoration, they were, by the time of the next great crisis in English political history, either largely ignored or condemned. *** The Restoration of king and Parliament in 1660, in England and Scotland, was marked by efforts at reconciliation, particularly on the part of Charles II, who sought only to protect his long-denied crown. But the religious divisions and political conflicts that had undermined Union and created civil war and revolution were not resolved – they would, in fact, create recurring “crises” through the remainder of the seventeenth century and beyond. During the first five years of Charles’ reign, his Parliament reestablished episcopacy, but in a form so intolerant that even moderate Presbyterians could not be incorporated within it. King and parliament were returned to the balance of sovereignty that had existed prior to the passing of the Triennial Act – not until 1694 would the calling of parliaments be taken out of the hands of the monarch and made a regular feature of political government. NonAnglicans, or Dissenters, excluded from office and deprived of liberty of conscience, would find political champions in the Whig party, which had opposed the harsh penalties for non-conformity supported by the “High Church” Tories. If both parties associated arbitrary gov-


ernment with popery, they also, with few exceptions, opposed any return to the republican government that had existed briefly in the early 1650s.7 Each party championed at one time or another an “ancient constitution”; but the most conservative Anglican Tories were willing to trace its origins to a law of nature based on “fatherly” subjection, while the most radical of Whigs insisted that all men were born into natural freedom. Though these groups may have represented only a fraction of the political nation, their views tended to fuel the hottest debates concerning the contract of government. Although the restored monarchy faced crises almost from the moment of its conception, issues of political contract, and the marriage “contract,” reemerged most powerfully during the late 1670s and early 1680s. In what has come to be called the “Exclusion Crisis,” a series of Parliaments attempted to exclude the Catholic James, Duke of York, brother of Charles II, from the throne. Although these efforts have most often been associated solely with James’ Catholicism, historians have argued recently that they were, in addition, a reaction to the influence of France on the English court and to the king’s attempt to rule, as his father had done, without Parliament.8 However, the two issues were hardly mutually exclusive: both involved fears concerning arbitrary government, and, most particularly, infringement of Englishmen’s liberties. Opponents of James’ succession, particularly the more radical Whigs led by the earl of Shaftesbury, argued that “[s]ince Protestants were ‘heretics’ from the Catholic standpoint, there could be no ‘contract’ between a Catholic king and a Protestant people,” particularly no contract for just government limited by law. Without such a contract, government could be founded only upon “conquest,” and subjects would be transformed into slaves. A Catholic king was required by his religion to destroy heretics; at the very least, he would “confiscate the property and estates of Protestants” and deprive them of their rights and liberties. France was the premier example of the effects of such tyranny: a Catholic kingdom whose traditional representative body had not met since 1614, it was governed by an absolute monarch who persecuted his Protestant minority by means of a large standing army and whose international conquests demonstrated a clear determination to achieve “universal monarchy” throughout Europe, if not the world. The campaigners to change the succession, in and out of Parliament, framed “their political arguments around the slogans No Popery, No Slavery” and “Liberty and Property” because they viewed Catholicism as incompatible with the contractual foundation of English government and subjects’ rights.9


The king and his supporters responded to Parliament’s actions both directly – by dissolving recalcitrant sessions through the royal prerogative – and indirectly, notably with the publication of Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha in 1680, nearly thirty years after the death of its author and more than forty years after it was probably written.10 Unlike the debates that marked the early years of the civil wars, the discussions that followed completely distinguished the marital contract from the political contract. In Filmer’s work, contract itself disappeared into a system of relationships constructed upon the natural subjection of sons to fathers. His opponents, rather than drawing on the contractual implications of marriage to limit the king’s power or to establish the consensual element of political government, instead used marriage, and wives and mothers, to frame the boundaries of paternal rights and redefine their relevance to political authority. On both sides of the debate, the contract of marriage was represented as either insignificant or dangerous to the foundation of authority in the kingdom. Though some historians have argued that Filmer’s patriarchal version of absolutist monarchy was “more popular before than after” he wrote, and that “few writers quoted him,” the work of Richard Ashcraft shows that his influence underlay absolutist arguments from at least the 1680s. Even those who did not quote Filmer directly nonetheless assumed “that God gave Adam the power of being king,” establishing thereby the first government in the natural father of humankind.11 This was not a new argument, but in the midst of a crisis of succession, such a vision of government offered the king and his brother a defense of their inheritance that tied them inextricably to each of the fathers who were their subjects, without reliance on election or consent. For Filmer’s argument not only set absolute sovereign power in kings, but traced their rights through sons and fathers to the biblical father of mankind, Adam, and insisted that, as monarchical power was fatherly in its origins, fatherly power was monarchical in its prerogatives. The lordship which Adam by creation had over the whole world, and by right descending from him the patriarchs did enjoy, was as large and ample as the absolutest dominion of any monarch which hath been since the creation. Kings ruled by their wills, restrained only by the laws of nature and God, and subject only to God’s punishment. Likewise, every “father of a family governs by no other law than by his own will … and yet, for


all this, every father is bound … to do his best for the preservation of his family” in accordance with natural law.12 Oeconomic government and political government were, thus, identical, in their origins, powers, and constraints, tied to one another through the rule of the original father and monarch of the newly created world. Filmer asserts here more than an interdependence of order between household and state; his outline of government involves a clearly organized pyramid of authority. In Patriarcha, his omission of the rule of husbands over wives eliminates any connection between this authority and an original contract. Even marriage – absolutely binding, with sovereignty established by God – was based on election and consent, not simply nature. Contracts of government in any form were irrelevant, after all, if subjection was natural; and if subjection was not natural, then every government would be within the power of “the headless multitude when they please[d] to cast off the yoke.”13 Therefore, absolute as the husband’s authority might be, it was tainted by consent and contract, and thus excluded from Filmer’s universe of natural subjection, where the relationship of father and son defined monarchical prerogative as both absolute and inherently generous and self-sacrificing: As the father over one family, so the king, as father over many families, extends his care to preserve, feed, clothe, instruct, and defend the whole commonwealth. His war, his peace, his courts of justice, and all his acts of sovereignty, tend only to preserve and distribute to every subordinate and inferior father, and to their children, their rights and privileges, so that all the duties of a king are summed up in an universal fatherly care of his people.14 Positive law could not restrain a monarch because he was the father of civil law as he was a father to his subjects, bound by no laws but those established by God and nature. Filmer’s position resembles that of his near contemporary, James I, who, in his speech to the justices, had insisted that they remain interpreters, not procreators, of law. James, however, had emphasized that his right to create law was made possible by his union, his marriage, with the kingdom, not simply patriarchal right. Such an implication of contract for political subjection gave historical legitimacy to consent and election that undermined the universal and natural condition of government that Filmer, and his Restoration followers, insisted was necessary for order and government to exist. “Matters of fact” involving conquest, election, or


even hereditary succession were irrelevant to men like Robert Brady, who concluded, as had Filmer, that English kings “derive[d] their title from God and Nature only.”15 When James Tyrrell, one of many associated with the earl of Shaftesbury, responded to this patriarchal vision, he reasserted the necessary presence of both consent and contract to the foundations of political government, drawing on imagery that had been central to the debates of the early 1640s to define the limits of both monarchical and fatherly authority. In doing so, he divided political authority from oeconomic authority, while insisting that public order remained dependent upon the proper organization of households. To some extent, his response was an effect of the debate itself: against an opponent who had so completely identified political authority with oeconomic authority through the father-son relationship, an emphasis on separation of the two would be expected. Certainly, Tyrrell’s contemporaries, Algernon Sidney and John Locke, drew similarly powerful lines between what we have come to define as “public” and “private.” But seen from the perspective of marriage, the distinction would have been particularly essential to men who wished to avoid equating the contract that established political government from the one that created a family. Gordon Schochet has noted that most of James Tyrrell’s Patriarcha non Monarcha was directed toward undermining Filmer’s assertion that “Children are tyed to an Absolute Subjection or Servitude” to either father or mother. In fact, the appearance of women in this text was designed to demonstrate limitations on the power of fathers, even that originating by divine ordinance in Adam. Prior to the Fall, argued Tyrrell, a right to “subdue or tame the Brute Creatures” was given “as well to the Female as Male of Mankind,” and thus no claim could be made that absolute, undivided monarchical authority rested upon this grant.16 Furthermore, when, after the Fall, God “ordained Adam to rule over his Wife,” he established thereby only “a Conjugal, and not Filial Subjection,” one that did not oblige the wife to submit without selfdefense to the “unjust violence or rage of her Husband.” Neither in the state of innocence nor after the expulsion from Eden had God granted Adam the kind of authority Filmer had insisted made him an absolute monarch, argued Tyrrell. But if such power was not established by direct grant, was it, he asked, possible to infer or locate such authority by reasoning it from “the Law of Nature”?17 For Tyrrell, the “state of Nature” and the state of “Innocence” were nearly equivalent. Marriage was a voluntary, though necessary, con-


tract that had existed prior to the formation of civil society and had been set in place by God. Although Hobbes had also located the formation of families prior to civil society, his war of all against all, in which conquest determined rights of contractual authority, was, for Tyrrell, entirely without foundation in natural or divine law. Instead, marriage remained, as for many theorists before him, the pivotal consensual act upon which the authority of a father was founded. But in Tyrrell’s hands, that contract became not a means for confirming the divine and natural foundation of all authority in society, but a way to limit the authority most essential to Filmer’s view of the state, the “Power of Fathers.” Because, Tyrrell argued, outside marriage the identity of the father could not be certainly known – since sometimes even the mother was not sure – “no man [was] obliged to take care of or breed up a Bastard.” Therefore, “the Right of the Father,” as well as his obligation, “commence[d] by vertue of the Marriage, which is a mutual Compact between a Man and a Woman for their Cohabitation, the generation of Children and their joint care and provision for them.” A man acquired the right to authority over his children by obtaining authority over a woman, whose natural inferiority “as the weaker vessel” was confirmed by God’s law. Nevertheless, no woman, by consenting to the authority of her husband in marriage, gave up to him all interest in her children, despite the fact that “her Power and Right in them [were] still subordinate” to his. In Tyrrell’s state of nature, the contract between the husband and wife might, in fact, have been negotiated in such a way that he could not “dispose of the Children without the Mothers consent,” in the same way that it was “often so agreed in the Marriages of Soveraign Princes, who are always supposed to be in the state of Nature, in respect to each other.”18 Thus the authority of fathers on which Filmer placed such importance was neither absolute nor natural because it originated in contract and was shared, of necessity, with mothers. Nor could that contract, Tyrrell insisted, provide the source of the absolute subjection that Filmer claimed for his monarch. Although every wife was naturally inferior to her husband, that was simply because men were “commonly stronger both in body and mind”; her subjection necessarily ceased when her husband was incapable of governing the household, and she was forced to ensure its “well-being,” in which she had “an equal share.” But even when she submitted to her husband’s authority, her subjection was not “as a Slave,” and he did not have power of life and death over her unless “such Condition or Bargain were made at the Marriage” in the state of nature, or was


granted by the commonwealth in which they lived, as Spain and Italy gave a husband the right to kill his wife caught in the act of adultery. “Coactive” power, the power of life and death, was not given to any private person except “for the common good and preservation of Mankind”; even the monarch could claim powers of punishment only to accomplish that end.19 More importantly, authority could not “commence barely from Generation” as Filmer argued because that would give unmarried women absolute power over their children comparable to that claimed for the absolute monarch. Even a married woman had to contribute more effort to the child in “bearing, bringing it forth, nursing and breeding it up,” and at the biological level, “all Naturalists h[e]ld the Child partaker more of her than of the Father.” However, her contract of marriage ensured that both she and the child were obligated to submit to the natural, but limited, authority of the husband and father. On the other hand, if “generation” alone in the law of nature gave fathers an absolute and unlimited power, as the French theorist Jean Bodin had argued, and Filmer implied, then women without husbands to claim that authority could exercise it themselves without having to answer to anyone. In that state of affairs, women that murder their Bastards would have a good time on’t, because having no Husbands, they have the full power over the Life of their Children; and there is no reason that it should be retrencht by any positive Laws, because some offend against it.20 If absolute powers of life and death existed in the state of nature as a result of marriage contracts or procreation, then they could not be denied to women who were essential to both. Finally, Tyrrell attacked Filmer’s absolute paternal authority by insisting that marriage itself limited, with each generation, the power of fathers. Adam could neither force his sons to marry against their wills, nor deny them the right to marry, because in either case, he would be acting against the direction of God. If he commanded the first, his son would be unable to obey the primary ordinance of marriage, to “leave Father and Mother, and cleave to his Wife,” since he would be unable to love her. If the second, Adam denied the original order of God “to increase and multiply, and replenish the Earth.” Every son, in every generation, had the “Liberty” to marry, even against the will of his father. If he did so, of course, he might face the possibility of dis-


inheritance, “since every man is free to dispose of his own” property, but his liberty to marry could not be infringed.21 At no point did Tyrrell argue that the marriage contract that created household government and the authority of a father was in any way comparable to the social contract that established the political state. As Mary Shanley pointed out, he shifted the “ground of woman’s subordination in marriage from scripture to nature, and finally to her own consent.”22 But his effort to do so was not directed toward making the marriage contract less rigorously hierarchical or absolute, as Shanley argued, but was designed, I would suggest, to undermine both of Filmer’s basic assumptions about fatherhood and absolute monarchy. First, Tyrrell attempted to prove that the authority of fathers could not be absolute because it was confined within and restrained by the marriage contract and shared with mothers. Secondly, he pursued the Aristotelian argument that the natural authority established in the household was different in kind from that in the state, since the marriage contract could not give men the power of life and death over their wives and children that rulers necessarily had over their subjects in order to protect and defend the common good. Patriarcha non Monarcha was printed, anonymously, at the time of the Exclusion Crisis; it would be another ten years before Tyrrell’s longtime friend and colleague, John Locke, would publish his Two Treatises of Government, shortly after the Glorious Revolution had brought about the overthrow of James II and installed as joint monarchs James’ daughter and son-in-law, Mary and William.23 Locke’s refutation of Filmer’s absolutist conception of government drew on arguments similar to those made by Tyrrell; the two men had, in fact, worked together on a manuscript supporting religious toleration during the period of the Exclusion Crisis. In his Two Treatises, however, Locke spent far more time critically assessing the contracts upon which both marriage and civil society rested; while suggesting that the first, like the latter, might be negotiable, his conclusions nonetheless clearly discriminated between the terms, conditions, and foundations of each. Over the last twenty years, historians of Restoration politics have demonstrated persuasively that John Locke was scarcely the moderate, purely philosophical Whig portrayed by previous generations. As a close associate of the earl of Shaftesbury, he participated actively in developing and distributing pamphlets promoting Exclusion, and supporting toleration of Dissenters. He, with many fellow “radicals” such as Algernon Sidney, signed the “Monster” Petition of 1680 requesting that Charles II allow the elected Parliament to sit. At the accession of


James II in 1685, Locke left England for the continent, living with other exiles in the Netherlands until the Glorious Revolution, when James “deserted” the throne and William of Orange brought an army into England to ensure the freedom of parliaments. Within a short time, Locke was, like other radicals, discouraged and eventually disgusted by the tepid moderation of the revolution’s Convention, as well as the new king’s willingness to include in his government men who had been responsible for some of James’ worst infringements of liberties. The longtime supporter of radical political principles and movements responded by publishing, anonymously, the Two Treatises of Government in 1690.24 In his First Treatise, Locke responded to Filmer’s biblical exegesis by examining more closely the context of Genesis 3:16, in which God gave Adam authority over Eve. For many earlier theorists, as we have seen, this was the original foundation of all human government; Robert Filmer had drawn from it the conclusion that the authority of kings arose from fatherhood. Against such interpretations, Locke pointed out, first, that the event took place at the moment of punishment and expulsion from Eden, and that the words were spoken to Eve, not Adam, as a sign that she, “having been the first and forwardest in the disobedience,” would be “laid below him.” At such a time, ‘twould be hard to imagine, that God, in the same breath, should make [Adam] universal monarch over all mankind, and a day labourer for his life, turn him out of Paradise to till the ground (verse 23), and at the same time advance him to a throne, and all the privileges and ease of absolute power. Thus the biblical foundation for conjugal authority from which previous theorists had derived the source of government in both the household and the polity was, in fact, not a grant of government at all, but a prediction of “what should be woman’s lot,” her condition as a result of the first sin. Second, if such conjugal subjection had created political subjection, and could be equated to it, then England’s “Queens Mary or Elizabeth, had they married any of their subjects, had been by this text put into a political subjection” to her husband, overturning the very rights of primogeniture upon which Filmer’s patriarchal theory rested. Eve’s punishment established in each husband the right to “order the things of private concernment in his family, as proprietor of the goods and land there,” but carried with it no foundation for political authority over other men.25


Furthermore, Locke used the marriage contract itself, as had Tyrrell, to decimate Filmer’s contention that political authority could arise from “generation” or “begetting.” If, as Filmer insisted, Adam’s absolute “sovereignty” came from fatherhood, then it could not be passed to his sons, since they could not be fathers to their “brethren.” It was as ludicrous to speak of inheriting “paternal power” as it was to argue that one man might inherit another’s “conjugal power.” If Adam had died before Eve, would “his heir … have had, by right of inheriting Adam’s fatherhood, sovereign power over Eve his mother,” who had “begotten” him, in the form of either paternal or conjugal right? Locke did not expound upon the incestuous implication of this question; for him, it seems to have been sufficient to suggest its absurdity, and the associated problems of fornication and adultery, to draw his conclusion: When, therefore, it can be showed that conjugal power can belong to him that is not an husband, it will also, I believe, be proved that our author’s paternal power, acquired by begetting, may be inherited by a son, and that a brother, as heir to his father’s power, may have paternal power over his brethren, and, by the same rule, conjugal power too.26 Each father had “his own” right in his person to authority over his children “by begetting,” as each husband had “conjugal power” on the basis of a contract to which he and his wife had consented; neither generation nor marriage established the heritable, absolute political sovereignty claimed by Filmer. Locke changed the terms of the problem in his Second Treatise, arguing, first, that Filmer had founded the absolute sovereignty of kings in “paternal power,” as if “the power of parents” was established “wholly in the father … [and] the mother had no share in it.” Like Tyrrell, Locke insisted that recognition of her right and authority completely undermined the patriarchal argument. Although the power of parents could, perhaps, without any great harshness, bear the name of absolute dominion, and regal authority, when under the title of paternal power it seemed appropriated to the father, would yet have sounded but oddly, and in the very name shown the absurdity, if this supposed absolute power over children had been called parental, and thereby have discovered that it belonged to the mother too.27


Parental authority was divided between two persons through the marriage contract, not established irrevocably and absolutely in one, and could not, therefore, offer a model for absolute monarchy. Furthermore, this power was not “absolute, arbitrary dominion,” but the shared responsibility to care for children until they reached a “State of maturity” in which they would be capable of understanding and living by the “law of reason,” the natural law to which all persons were subject. Were the substance of parental power greater than this, comparable to the authority wielded in the political state, then every king would be the political subject of his mother, and every mother could claim sovereign power over her children on the death of her husband. And will anyone say that the mother hath a legislative power over her children? That she can make standing rules which shall be of perpetual obligation, by which they ought to regulate all the concerns of their property, and bound their liberty all the course of their lives? Or can she enforce the observation of them with capital punishments?28 Locke’s direct response to these questions was simply to lay these powers in the hands of civil magistrates; fathers could not exercise such dominion because mothers could not be imagined to do so. Filmer’s absolute patriarchal government was absurd in conception and unreasonable in conclusion. Thus, although, as Aristotle had argued, the “first society was between man and wife, which gave beginning” to all other authority relationships within each family, the “rule proper” to that unit “came short of political society.” The “voluntary compact” of marriage permitted procreation, ensured mutual support and benefit, and created shared responsibility in the care of one another and, particularly, children, but it was not a contract comparable to that which created civil society, since it did not give either member powers of life and death. If it had, if marriage gave husbands “absolute sovereignty and power of life and death naturally,” then “there could be no matrimony in any of those countries where the husband is allowed no such absolute authority.” Unlike Tyrrell, who had suggested that it might be possible, in the state of nature, for a wife to agree to terms that gave her husband absolute power, Locke emphasized the opposite: that the marriage contract could be limited as well as voluntary, extending no longer than necessary to provide for the education, property, and welfare of


children. But like his colleague, he insisted that any rights within marriage were subject to the “positive law” of civil society, “which ordain[ed] all such contracts to be perpetual,” and that “the rule” necessary to provide for their “common interest and property” “naturally f[ell] to the man’s share, as the abler and the stronger.”29 If Locke imagined, as Mary Shanley argues, that a negotiable “contract might regulate property rights and maintenance obligations in marriage,” he did so, in part, to further discriminate that private contract from the public contract that created political government, in which property rights were non-negotiable.30 What I find more interesting about his re-conceptualization of the household concerns not the relationship of husband and wife, but of father and son – that connection so often associated with patriarchal theory. For the essential purpose of the marriage contract in the Two Treatises is not to create that system of absolute household authority so necessary to the interpretations of the early seventeenth century. It is, instead, to raise and educate children who will, once grown, become in their turn productive, and reproductive, husbands and wives. The sons so reared and matured will be, like their fathers, capable of contracting government, of freely subjecting themselves to political authority – in other words, equal in birth to their fathers. The contractual equality between fathers and sons that Filmer had insisted was impossible has become, in Locke, the very basis of the social contract. When the next “Exclusion” tract was finally printed near the end of the century, the crisis of English politics involved a controversy that seemed to threaten once again traditional liberties, if not the Protestant religion. The continental wars of the 1690s, in which the new king, William III, had involved both himself and his English subjects – either through taxation or foreign service – had led him to finally request an army of 7,000. Minuscule by European standards, but not seen in England since early in the Restoration, such an army was voted down by his Parliaments and led to a dramatic change in the make-up of the royal government, as Whigs, who had supported the decade of wars, gave place to Tories. The nation at large had no desire for a standing army, having already endured rule by military dictatorship in the 1650s, enforced by Cromwell’s New Model Army. The threat of popery had been defeated in the Glorious Revolution; most Englishmen did not plan to open the door to another symbol of arbitrary government. Radical Whigs made particularly clear their opposition to an army, and appealed to moderate Whigs outside the court in several pamphlets and tracts, including one by a Whig “martyr” of


1683. Algernon Sidney – great-nephew of the Elizabethan Protestant hero-poet, Sir Philip Sidney – had been convicted that year of “compassing and imagining the death of the king” on the basis of manuscripts seized from his private study rather than upon any evidence of direct complicity in a plot against Charles II and his brother. Such manipulation of the law by royal government disturbed even gentlemen “who would never have subscribed to Sidney’s political philosophy.”31 When published in 1698 as Discourses concerning Government, his undeniably radical views were softened by the publisher and his associates to appear less republican, but no less critical of arbitrary rule. Sidney’s views drew upon the assumptions of classical republicanism, best represented in the seventeenth century by James Harrington’s Oceana, the text to which Richard Baxter had responded in his Holy Commonwealth. Like Tyrrell and Locke, Sidney divided the oeconomic state from the politic one; but he did so largely by implication and assumption, by simply ignoring the existence or relevance of the household for questions of civil society and political government. Women and wives are significant in his Discourses because they are rarely present, and marriage is distinguished by its complete absence. Sidney was quite clear about the reason for these exclusions: civil society and political government were established by equals, men born in a state of natural freedom, producing a society of equals under a single rule of law. Oeconomic government, on the other hand, came into being between parties unequal in nature and created a natural hierarchy of authority under the husband, father, and master. It was natural gender difference alone that excluded women from political government, not their subordination to a husband, by whom they had consented to be ruled and represented.32 Sidney constructed his image of political government by following very carefully the arguments and evidence set out by Filmer, as had Locke, and Tyrrell, but began his biblical exegesis prior to the Fall. In this Eden, Adam was neither the first absolute father nor the head of a household government lacking powers of life and death over his subjects. He was simply alone. “[E]xamine,” Sidney argued, “what would have bin, if God had at once created many Men, or the Conclusion that can be drawn from Adam’s having bin alone.” The statement introduced two of Sidney’s central assumptions, the first of which was that if more than one man had existed in Eden, all of them would have been naturally equal, “unless God had given a Preference to one.” Natural equality between men was the condition that made possible and, in fact, defined civil society. Claiming, as others had, “that Adam


had only an Oeconomical, not a political Power,” he argued further that this was merely “the voice … of Nature and common sense.” Since the father was always the natural superior of his children, they could not, among themselves, make up the members of a civil society, “because a Civil Society is composed of Equals, and fortified by mutual compacts, which could not be between him and his Children.”33 All bonds associated with the household were meaningless for Sidney’s discussion of civil society because they described a system of relationships that was, by definition, different from those existing in the state. The second assumption was, of course, that any discussion of civil society and its government by definition excluded women. They were not pertinent to it, since household government was not, and therefore Eve did not exist in Paradise. Among the early patriarchs, Sidney argued, political authority could not have been exercised because there were no citizens, no civil subjects. Abraham, for example, could not possibly have been a monarch of “kingdoms” since he had “not one foot of Land,” or, for many years, even sons, merely “a Wife and Slaves.”34 Women were important to Sidney’s Discourses to undercut Robert Filmer’s contention for absolute, heritable monarchical rights, as they had been for Locke and Tyrrell. However, because he completely rejected the relevance of the household to civil rule, it was not their right to power over children that Sidney emphasized, but their natural inferiority to and difference from men. Women and marriage were relevant to the question of political government only in a hereditary monarchy, where they acted as “temptations and snares” that undermined authority itself and proved that monarchy was an untenable form of government. Blair Worden has described Sidney’s version of the political “contract” as “a one-sided bargain that [left] kings permanently subject to the whims of the sovereign people.”35 Women were, by nature, unprepared to exercise such a sovereignty. Sidney’s attack on monarchy, like those of Locke and Tyrrell, made use of women, but in his case, the women were the daughters who, against nature itself, had rights to succession within Filmer’s form of government. The idea that monarchs inherited their authority from Adam and Noah could not be true, Sidney argued, because it justified inheritance of the crown by female as well as male off-spring. Were that not the case, “the title of our English Kings [was] wholly abolished … since Henry the 1st,” whose daughter, Matilda, had been his only legitimate child. But it was against the law of nature to argue that “Women [were] as fit as Men to perform the Office of a King, that is, as the Israelites said to Samuel, to go in and out before us, to judg us, and


to fight our Battels.” Their very condition – composed of “sweetness, gentleness, delicacy, and tenderness” – made them unsuited not only to the demands of rule, but to the contracting of political authority in which coercive power was to be exercised, both of which were “utterly repugnant to, and inconsistent with that modesty which does so eminently shine in all those that are good amongst [women].” Men must exclude women from the political realm, not because they were governed within the household, but because the law of nature – which was, for “Mankind” – reason itself, required that women be segregated from political society. Whether absolutist or contractual, legitimate political government could not be an hereditary monarchy, in which the succession of a woman to power was not only possible, but necessary.36 If, as Thomas Laqueur has argued, women were beginning to be defined as incommensurable to men in terms of biology and sexuality by the end of the seventeenth century, Algernon Sidney outlined in his political theory an analogous conception of women in relation to civil society.37 Where Locke and Tyrrell had implied that natural superiority resided in men, Sidney made it the very foundation of his contractual republican government. *** Sidney’s republicanism represents perhaps the most rigorous attempt to differentiate the foundation and formation of political government from the contract that initiated government within marriage. His views were shared by few of his contemporaries; even John Locke, whose contract theory historians have most closely associated with the period, held far more radical views than his closest Whig associates – one of the reasons he did not attach his name to the Two Treatises.38 Nor were Sidney and Locke as influential in radical politics as many of their contemporaries, including Thomas Hunt, Samuel Johnson, and James Tyrrell.39 But when Mary Astell responded to social contract theorists in 1706, she seemed to be directing herself entirely to Locke when she lamented that the men who had deposed James II in 1689 and, in the words of the Bill of Rights, “deliver[ed] [England] from popery and arbitrary power,” had not incorporated their ideal of free civil society into domestic society: [If] Absolute Sovereignty be not necessary in a State, how comes it to be so in a Family? or if in a Family why not in a State … If the Authority of the Husband so far as it extends, is sacred and inalien-


able, why not of the Prince? The Domestic Sovereign is without Dispute Elected, and the Stipulation and Contract are mutual, is it not then partial in Men to the last degree, to contend for, and practise that Arbitrary Dominion in their Families, which they abhor and exclaim against in the State? … If all Men are born free, how is it that all Women are born slaves? as they must be if the being subjected to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary Will of Men, be the perfect Condition of Slavery? As Ruth Perry has argued, Astell believed her own rights and status as a gentlewoman were bound up in the hierarchy established by monarchy; its overthrow had made her, like every woman, simply another property available to any free man capable of gaining her consent to marriage. By the time Astell wrote, marriage was no longer a contract that defined all relations of authority and confirmed a woman’s relevance to the public and political world through her position as a wife; it was, instead, a contract that confirmed her natural inferiority. This is one way in which the seventeenth century marked the beginning of woman’s “private” sphere, different in kind from her husband’s condition in household or state. Thus, Astell contends, the only source of freedom for a wife was in her most “private” moments, when, through her religious faith, she could “discern a time when her Sex [should] be no bar to the best Employments” in the “Prospect of Heaven.” Marriage was, for women, a lifelong sacrifice, “a more Heroic Action than all the famous Masculine Heroes can boast of … a continual Martyrdom to bring Glory to GOD and Benefit to Mankind.” If she agreed with John Locke that its worthy purpose was “to Educate Souls,” she could not locate its benefits for women in civil society, only in “Heaven.”40 At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the marriage contract had provided a model for subjection for all humankind on the basis of a bond established by nature, by consent, and by divine law. Those who argued that the social contract was negotiated and consented to by those who were naturally free distinguished it from the marriage contract, while those who wished to purge political government of every element of election and contract replaced the husband and wife with the father and son. Nevertheless, even most contract theorists continued to depend upon marital status to define the political subject. Changes in the definition of subjection within the state during the seventeenth century is the subject of Part II.


Part II Subjection in Oeconomy and Polity


4 “Life, Liberty and Dower”

In the years between the 1485 coronation of Henry VII, who had been “‘recognized’ as ‘chosen and required’ by all three estates,” and 1603, the ceremonial formulations associated with crowning a new monarch had varied somewhat according to political circumstances. Although there is clear evidence concerning the public celebrations – James’ entry into London and other royal processions – neither his own nor his predecessor’s coronation formulae have survived. If, however, the words of his ceremony were the same as those used by his son, Charles I, James would have been “presented as the ‘rightful inheritor of the crown of this realm,’ and the people asked whether they were willing to do their ‘homage, service and bounden duty’ to him.”1 The blend of consent and natural right in this formula is almost identical to the position James defined for himself in his early speeches to Parliament, when he portrayed himself as married to his kingdoms. For his subjects, marriage would have brought a similar, if less exalted, transformation. As the coronation “marriage” converted a royal heir into a ruler, every man’s marriage marked the step from subjection within the household of father or master to rule within his own oeconomic unit. The sponsus regni acted as head of the politic body; the husband was the head of an oeconomic body, of an individuum, an indivisible entity within which he commanded and controlled – under the laws of God, nature, and the polity – all persons and property. If he had married appropriately, he would not only recreate a social order based on status, wealth, and occupation, but would also, by governing his household effectively, confirm his right to liberties as a subject of the king. Finally, the obligations of obedience and fellow governance that every husband required of his wife within the household were a model for his own role in the kingdom. The complex interdependence of 77


these ideas in early seventeenth-century English literature meant that marriage was represented not simply as the only means of legitimate reproduction, but as the foundation of all legitimate subjection and production in the state, the means by which political stability, religious unity, and social order were maintained and recreated with each new generation. Prior to 1640, political tracts, which so effectively set out the contractual sources of the “marriage” between king and nation, offer almost no evidence for the complications of political subjection which that marriage, or any marriage, entailed. The primary duty of the subject was obedience, and there was little to be said beyond that, for subjection was a condition to which all were born and in which most remained for the greater part of their lives. As Bishop Goodman put it, “One and twentie yeeres passe, when wee live under the custodie, and tuition of others … [L]ooke into the Register booke … and you shall finde more living under the age of thirtie, then above.” More importantly, disobedience to divine authority in Paradise had brought the punishment of servitude to humankind through the subjection of Eve and all her off-spring; disobedience to the human authority of the king would bring the greater evil of slavery. Debating the limits of the king’s prerogative or raising questions about the rights of subjects primarily involved specific legal questions or conflicts, without reference to the contract of government that established the absolute supremacy of the monarch.2 But in the plays and household manuals of this period, marriage was the pivotal event upon which the complications of rule and subjection, obligations and liberties, in household and state were developed and debated. Comedies resolved social disorder and tragicomedies political conflict by means of marriage; household guides measured order itself, within and outside a family, in the harmonious society of husband and wife. If playwrights seem to have found more ways to upset the bonds of marriage than the authors of household guides could imagine to resolve them, they also made clearer the contradiction raised by marriage itself, which was expected to establish an absolute authority in husband and father, but which could only be made on the basis of free choice and consent. In significantly different, but mutually reinforcing, ways, the authors of these texts presented marriage as a contract that both created and restrained the kingly authority of a husband within a household while it established the limits of each subjects’ obligations and liberties under the husbandly authority of the monarch within the kingdom.

“Life, Liberty and Dower” 79

*** Jacobeans staged the correspondence between the accession of a legitimate monarch to the throne and the creation of a political subject in marriage through their own distinctive theatrical form, the genre drama historians have termed tragicomedy. John Fletcher’s definition of this genre, printed with the text of The Faithful Shepherdess along with his defense of that play against its hostile reception, has become famous: A tragie-comedie is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is inough to make it no tragedie, yet brings some neere it, which is inough to make it no comedie: which must be a representation of familiar people, with such kinde of trouble as no life be questiond, so that a God is as lawfull in this as in a tragedie, and meane people as in a comedie.3 The description is extraordinarily vague and could apply to Shakespeare’s romances and “dark comedies” as well as many of the history plays of the period, including Henry V. It has come, however, to be most commonly associated with Jacobean and Caroline plays in which political disorder or other possible disasters end in marriage rather than death. The designation applies, therefore, to Fletcher and Massinger’s The Beggars’ Bush (1622), in which the natural prince is revealed by his refusal to abandon his espoused wife even in the face of devastating financial loss. His unshakeable love – which the marriage service demands of every husband and every “head” as a reflection of Christ’s love of the church – contrasts sharply with the deeds of the usurper, Woolfort, who is a “Prince in nothing but [his] beastly lusts/ And boundless rapines.”4 But it also applies to John Ford’s The Lover’s Melancholy (1629), a Caroline play that was termed a “tragedy” on the original frontispiece, but that concludes with a marriage between Prince Pallador and his long-betrothed wife, Eroclea, who had disappeared the night before the intended wedding, when the king had attempted her “Rape, by some bad Agents.” Reunited, their marriage restores Pallador from “the dull Lethargy of lost security” and simultaneously brings health back to the body politic, exemplified in the recovery of Meleandor, Eroclea’s father, from an insanity he had suffered since her disappearance.5 Thus, English tragicomedy in the early seventeenth century can be defined not simply as a genre that ends in marriage, but one that created or recreated legitimate political rule by means of a marriage, as


the coronation of a monarch created the sponsus regni. In Francis Beaumont’s A King and No King (1611), for example, Arbaces, the king of Iberia, has come to the throne illegitimately through the efforts of the woman he believes to be his mother, Queen Arane. As a young wife, fearing that her elderly husband would die before he could father an heir, she had pretended pregnancy and claimed the infant son of an advisor, Gobrius, as her own. Within a short time, she bore a legitimate heir, a daughter, Panthaea. However, at the death of the king, Arbaces, as the supposed first-born son, had assumed the crown. The young king had, since then, been the victim of numerous attempts by his “mother” to have him murdered; as he notes, “What will the world / Conceive of me? with what unnaturall sinnes / Will they suppose me laden, when my life / Is sought by her that gave it to the world?” But, early in the play, he himself gives evident proofs that he is an unnatural monarch, vain-glorious, hot-tempered, impatient with his advisors, ruthless and tyrannous against his enemies. The ultimate sign of his illegitimacy appears when he sees again, after years away at war, the young woman he believes is his sister. His sexual lust for her, which he, like Beaumont’s audience, believes to be incestuous, leads him first to disown Panthaea and banish her from his sight, then to confess his passion in terms that threaten rape as well as incest. On discovering that she could return his love if their conditions were different, he seeks to overturn the order of nature itself, lamenting the restraints on “[a]ccursed man” who, unlike the beasts, has his “actions bounded in / With curious rules.” Finally, Arbaces turns his anger against his natural father, placing all blame on Gobrius for encouraging love between brother and sister through letters even before they met. When Arbaces learns that he is “no king,” the true nobility of his character reveals itself, no longer burdened with a title to which he had no right. But, as he proclaims Panthaea as the true heir and queen, the man who was “no king” also claims, in his proposal of marriage, his legitimate right to take on the responsibilities of “a king,” the head of royal household and royal government.6 Thus tragicomedy created legitimate political rule through marriage; the genre for “everyman,” comedy, concerned the acquisition of political liberties for the husbands who were to be his subjects in the kingdom. One, in particular, brilliantly laid out the foundations and complications of binding household government to political government: Eastward Ho!, a play produced soon after James’ accession. The result of a collaboration between three of the finest playwrights of the period – George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and John Marston – the play


certainly “deserves to be ranked among the greatest Jacobean comedies including Shakespeare’s.”7 Its portrayal of the Scots, either in the original or in a surreptitious production, brought on the wrath of the royal government and led to the temporary imprisonment of Jonson and Chapman (Marston learned of the danger and escaped). An extraordinarily effective collaboration, unified by Jonson’s favorite themes of alchemy and humorous characters, it is also a play controlled by a central theme in contemporary debates on the Anglo-Scottish Union: marriage. The play may be a direct commentary on that debate, but this is difficult to determine since, in one way or another, all comedies were, by definition, “about” marriage. However, its playwrights use commonplaces on the role of marriage in the creation and maintenance of authority in household and state to structure their criticism of political and social disruption. In particular, these playwrights, like the authors of household guides, use marriage to define membership in the body politic; to demonstrate the limits of freedom and obedience set by marriage within a patriarchal system; and to explore the ways in which appropriate marriage creates stable oeconomic units and recreates the social hierarchy. Although the source of the main plot is unknown, it is, certainly, a burlesque of “the old Plays on prodigals,” focused on an overly zealous, self-righteous goldsmith, Touchstone, who has two apprentices, both of them younger sons of gentlemen, but otherwise substantively different. Golding begins the play as pure gold, a gentleman who has learned to serve and becomes a master well before the end of the play. Quicksilver has pretenses to his status as “gentleman,” but acts out the darker aspects of that rank: he is prodigal, drunken, and wasteful; he has taken a young woman, Sindefy, from the country and made her his whore; and he has stolen from his master and, to get additional maintenance for his riotousness, has allied himself with a usurer, Security, who cheats his clients out of lands and money. The lucky goldsmith also has two daughters, rude Gertrude, “of a proud ambition and nice wantonness,” and mild Mildred, “of a modest humility and comely soberness.”8 At the beginning of the play, Gertrude is making plans, against her father’s wishes, to marry Sir Petronel Flash, who has just purchased his knighthood. He plans, in turn, with the help of Quicksilver – who wants a trip down-river to court for his assistance – to pawn his new wife’s land to Security to finance a voyage to Virginia with the old usurer’s young wife, Winifred. Abandoned by her husband, and with a father unwilling to help her, Gertrude has to pawn all her wedding clothes and her coach to feed herself and her


“gentlewoman,” Sindefy. Meanwhile, Quicksilver, Petronel, Security, and poor Winifred – a most unwilling voyager – are wrecked on their way to the ship, and the men end up in prison. Only Golding, who has become a master deputy for the city, is able to rescue everyone and bring about reconciliation. No character in this play escapes some measure of abuse by the playwrights: Golding and Mildred are as insufferably good as the wayward characters are delightfully disruptive. Yet their marriage, an example, as Touchstone remarks, of the commonplace of contemporary marriage guides that “[f]it birth, fit age, keeps long a quiet bed,” is also the model against which the play criticizes the lust for wealth and social or political advancement represented by their associates. Accepting Golding’s proposal, Mildred visualizes a fit marriage that simultaneously represents the substance of a well-ordered society: I have observed that the bridle given to those violent flatteries of fortune is seldom recovered; they bear one headlong in desire from one novelty to another, and where those ranging appetites reign, there is ever more passion than reason; no stay, and so no happiness. These hasty advancements are not natural; Nature hath given us legs to go to our objects, not wings to fly to them. If this is her conception of orderly oeconomic and political government, it is one that most benefits her bridegroom, who immediately receives, with the consent of her father, his freedom and “such a portion as shall make Knight Petronel himself envy” him. Further, “not a week married,” he is “chosen commoner and alderman’s deputy in a day” by the London city fathers. If marriage was in alchemy often used as a sign of conversion, in Golding’s case the transformation was not of substance, but of condition. Even before his marriage, Golding would have met the two different standards of honor defined by historians Mervyn James and Richard Cust. A gentleman by birth, he can stave off Quicksilver’s physical assault, and simultaneously speak the language of an educated Protestant humanist, loyal in his service to master and state.9 But only after having taken on the responsibilities of a husband and been freed from service to another man does he become capable of other roles appropriate to his status in the body politic of the city of London. Although social historians are not in full agreement about the extent of the transformation in status conferred by marriage, from the standpoint of the middling and lower classes it was not an insignificant


change. If marriage was not necessarily, as John Gillis has argued, “a highly privileged status,” there were certainly “very clearly marked” distinctions between the married and unmarried within each social rank. In the early sixteenth century, all single persons in Coventry, regardless of rank and age, were referred to as “lads” or “maids” and expected to show proper deference to the married “masters” and “dames” who were simultaneously their guardians, employers, and governors. A century later the same distinctions were still evident, perhaps even sharper because of the concentration of property into fewer and fewer hands. Social and cultural practice reflected this hierarchy “in everything from church seating to modes of address,” evidence of status that wives were as eager to claim as their husbands.10 For men, however, becoming a husband usually meant acquiring freedom from service in another man’s household and gaining headship of an oeconomic government, his office comparable to that of the monarch in political government. Marriage was, therefore, in the words of a defender of women, the mark which demonstrated that a young man had “past [his] minority, or served [his] Apprenships [sic] under the government of others,” a sign that he stood among the “free-men,” the “honest men” of his community. Thus the man who became a husband claimed not simply a new social status, but a political one as well; according to Thomas Heywood, “Plato … appointed single men no place of dignity in the common-weale, nor suffered any to be conferred upon them.” Even Sir Francis Bacon acknowledged in his Essays that “[u]nmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants; but not always best subjects” in the commonwealth. Having acceded to authority within his own “domesticle Common-weale” through marriage, a husband exercised the power of the sponsus regni over the persons and property that formed his household and established his position in the polity as an “individual.”11 *** This oeconomic individual or individuum encompassed more than the unity expressed in the marriage service by Adam’s claim to Eve’s body as “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.” For it was not a unity of bodies, according to one author, but of property rights in the husband


that was most basic to the status and power acquired by a man in marriage: By the common law mariage is a gift of all the goods and chattels personall of the wife to her husband, so that no kinde of propertie in the same remaineth in her … [N]o one thing can be named, wherein the power and authoritie of the husband more consisteth, then in the goods.12 Writers insisted that a wife should not control even property that she had held in her own name prior to marriage nor give in charity money or property her husband intended for his own use. In extraordinary situations – as when he was riotous, drunken, or wasteful–she might save to provide for the household or for relief of the poor, but any agreement she made for sale or exchange of property without his consent was by definition of her condition as a “Feme Covert quodammoda an infant … voyd.”13 Like herself, a woman’s property was supposed to be subsumed into the identity of her husband upon marriage, and she could do little or nothing to prevent him from selling or wasting it. As Amy Louise Erickson has shown, this picture of absolute coverture was an idealization rather than an exact rendering of social practice. Women of almost every social status took great care to protect property they brought to a marriage, and, at least during the first half of the seventeenth century, succeeded to a great extent.14 But ideologically, and in terms of common law, marriage defined a unified body of persons and property under one head, the husband. This body was an individuum, a “conjunction … betweene man and wife” in which “they [are] by intent and wise fiction of Law, one person.” The individual could not be divided by divorce and could be distinguished into persons only if the husband were guilty of illegal acts, if he failed to live up to his responsibilities as the head of the household and a political subject: “in criminall and other speciall causes,” noted one author, “you shall find that persona is an Individuum spoken of any thing which hath reason.” As long as a husband proved himself capable of his status, however, his condition as head of this individual defined his right to participate, at the level appropriate to his social status, in the rule of the commonwealth by subsuming his wife into his oeconomic body. Her position as a wife simultaneously excluded her from the political realm, from making or enforcing laws in the polity, and made her husband responsible for order in both household and state as “the punishment of Adams sinne.”15


According to Derek Hirst, this right of householders to participate in their kingdom’s government could extend beyond local interests, represented by the character of Golding, into elections for members of Parliament. Although franchise in county elections had been granted only to the 40-shilling freeholder since 1430, inflationary trends and uncertainties about land tenure had substantially increased the numbers of those qualified to vote during the late sixteenth century. Since, “by the early seventeenth century, an extremely small acreage of land would have given an aspiring voter an income of 40s,” even many cottagers claimed franchise rights, along with those who supplemented their income through wage labor. In boroughs, groups opposed to an established “oligarchy” of governors within a town or city could broaden the franchise to freemen or even larger numbers, particularly if their efforts were supported by influential allies among the local gentry. James and Charles, and their Privy Councils, worked to restrict popular participation in both parliamentary and municipal elections, supporting the privileged “oligarchy” against the unprivileged; and, though the monarchs claimed to limit their support to ruling groups who “exercised their powers judiciously,” even many elites viewed royal interference with considerable misgiving. Thus, expansion of the franchise to freemen and even householders did not seriously disturb a gentry which, in many cases, found in increased numbers a means of strengthening their own position against the centralized, and increasingly isolated, court.16 Thus, the husband’s responsibility as head of his oeconomic body made him not only a member of the politic body, but often also a participant in it. At the same, his control of property within his household resonated with English claims to natural rights and liberties. In debates over the “liberties of the subject … [t]he individual’s property rights were the most closely defended.” The right of free men to hold property was confirmed by common law, which protected them from slavery, or, rather, villeinage; thus, a king who took their property without their consent deprived them of those liberties, of their freedom, as well.17 No less a scholar than Sir Francis Bacon suggested that these property rights were by definition also the rights in propriety associated with marriage; that the three “things” specifically favored by English law were “Life, Liberty and Dower.” And what is the reason …? This, because our Law is grounded upon the Law of Nature. And these three things doe flow from the Law of Nature, preservation of life naturall, Liberty, which every Beast or Bird


seeketh and affecteth naturally, and the society of man and wife, where of Dower is the reward natural.18 Coming, as this does, in the midst of one of his speeches supporting the naturalization of the Scots and the intermarriage of the peoples of England and Scotland, Bacon’s claim might appear suspect. But given contemporary assumptions about marriage as the original and absolute contract of political government, the creation of a household in marriage would easily be associated with the natural rights of life and liberty. Bacon’s use of “dower” appears to encompass more than simply the widow’s common law dower right to one-third of all her late husband’s property. Rather, in the context, it portrays a unified vision of the legitimate productive and reproductive rights associated with marriage, including the portions brought by each spouse to the household as well as inheritance rights. To acquire authority over a wife and all marital property was, therefore, a right and privilege – a liberty – as well as “one of the first reall and royall gifts that God with his owne hand bestowed upon Adam.”19 Furthermore, in a society in which a man’s status was determined by birth and his occupation decided by others when he was still a child, marriage was, for most, the only significant action of life that expressed free choice. In the exercise of that freedom, a man proved the quality of his own judgment and his right to the liberties of a subject, by his choice of wife; simultaneously, he established the foundation upon which the order and wealth of society, as well as his own household government, depended. *** If marriage was to create an “individual” that was a well-ordered oeconomic body within the body politic, it first had to be formed on the basis of free choice and consent. Freedom to assess the quality and make choice of an appropriate spouse was one sign that the resulting household would be a quiet, well-ordered addition to the community. So important was this freedom to the church that the “solemnization of marriage” in the Book of Common Prayer provided three opportunities, in addition to the “proclamation of banns over three consecutive Sundays,” for each prospective spouse to show dissent. As summed up in the closing words of the ceremony: Forasmuch as N. and N. have consented together in holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this company, and thereto


have given and pledged their troth either to the other, and have declared the same by giving and receiving of a ring, and by the joining of hands: I pronounce that they be man and wife together …20 By the end of every public marriage ceremony, the community would have heard and seen the voluntary, mutual agreement of the couple to their union. Of course, the marriage service also allowed members of the community to object to the union, revealing one of the primary difficulties involved with free choice. For, “by law all those between the ages of fifteen and forty-five who were unmarried and without estates of their own were required to be in service,” in other words, under the household authority of a parent or master and mistress, whose consent was necessary before a marriage could be made.21 Although some contemporaries claimed that the authority of a father extended as far as the authority of a king, the authors of marriage guides, and the playwrights who were their contemporaries, insisted that no one should force marriage upon children or servants. The father who forced his child to marry for money or social advancement or prevented a marriage simply to satisfy his own arbitrary will, transformed his fatherly authority into an “unnaturall and cruell” tyranny.22 Parents might, indeed ought to, seek out appropriate spouses for their children and had the right to be solicited for consent to any match proposed by son or daughter. But marriage, as God’s first command to humankind alone and the original of all government, had to be free to all those who sought it. Somehow, the balance between the natural authority of a father and this natural freedom of children had to be maintained in order to prevent the “mischiefes” of a quarrelsome marriage, or worse, “divorce, or any other separation, [or] wishing, yea practising one anothers death.”23 Such frightening possibilities were realized in the violent popular pamphlets of the day, in which “the murders of husbands by wives and their lovers were attributed, at least in part, to the tragic legacy of marriages arranged contrary to the woman’s wishes by her parents.” A society that defined political status, at least in part, by marital status, could be destroyed by such “abuses of patriarchal” authority, which “set up cracks and fissures in the delicate skein of social obligations, rights, and duties which alone protected the human world from the … depredations of sin and the devil.”24 Playwrights often represented such tragedies, especially if the party forced into an unwanted marriage was a man. In the aptly titled The Miseries of an Enforced Marriage (1607), young Scarborow, who has


promised marriage to Clare, the daughter of a gentleman in his home county, is forced to marry Katherine, the niece of his guardian, Lord Falconbridge, or face loss of his inheritance. Scarborow relents, but the marriage creates only tragedy, as he himself predicted that it would: “Fate, pity me, because I am enforc’d: / For I have heard those matches have cost blood, / Where love is once begun, and then withstood.” Clare kills herself, while Scarborow lives wastefully, leaving his new wife and children, as well as his brothers and sister, in poverty. Only the death of Falconbridge, who repents the marriage he “enforced,” brings relief to those who remain. Some fifteen years later, The Witch of Edmonton, a play ostensibly based on an actual incident, again portrayed the moral and social degradation, and the tragic end, of a young man forced into marriage by a father in order to save the family estate.25 Deprived of their liberty to choose and consent to marriage freely, these young men fail to create an oeconomic government that supports the stability of the kingdom. Instead, they become slaves, to overbearing fathers or their own lusts, disrupting social and political order. In comedy, by contrast, marriage was a successful declaration of freedom – at least, from the household government of another man. No playwright made this more evident than Richard Brome in the 1630s. During the same decade in which Robert Filmer was probably writing his great work on the power of fathers, Patriarcha, and Charles I was ruling England without benefit of Parliament, Brome repeatedly insisted in his “city comedies,” plays set in the crowded and unruly communities of London, that patriarchal authority was necessarily limited in the realm of marital rights. His focus on this issue must be seen, first and foremost, as recognition of his own condition as a “Son of Ben” Jonson, who had assisted Brome in his early years in the theater. In Brome’s comedies, Jonson’s humorous characters reappear as irrational fathers interfering with the marriage rights of their sons, most of whom reasonable and honorable gentlemen. One of the best examples is The Weeding of Covent Garden, a play whose wonderful complexities of characterization and plot can only be skimmed. Crosswill, father of Gabriel, Katherine, and Mihil, approves of nothing in his children, “no, not those actions which he himself cannot deny are virtuous … as if there were no other way to show his power over [their] obedience.”26 He has come to London primarily in order to disobey the most recent royal “Proclamation of Restraint,” which once again commanded gentlemen to remain in the countryside for the sake of orderly political government. Having displayed his contempt for


stability in the kingdom, Crosswill proves equally adept at destroying order within his own household. He and his old friend, Cockbrain, an inept justice of Middlesex, have decided – for no obvious reason beyond a desire to avoid providing marriage portions – to prevent the union of Katherine Crosswill to Anthony Cockbrain. As a result, Crosswill complains that his daughter has taken over his house and, by maintaining her chastity, deprived him of grandchildren. She will never be married, he insists, except without his blessing. In the meantime, Cockbrain, who is attempting to “weed” Covent Garden of its dangerous elements, instead spies upon his own son, trusting the most untrustworthy persons he meets and undermining his own political authority. Although Brome presents youthful sources of disruption in the play – including a “precision,” or puritan, and a “debauched” young man who seduced and abandoned a worthy young woman – the fathers in this play are primarily responsible for the overthrow of social order and patriarchy through their attempts to dominate and control the marriage rights of their children. These young people, particularly Anthony and Katherine, Mihil and his beloved Lucy Rooksbill, stage a rebellion against their fathers’ unreasoning tyranny, but it is a revolt that recreates both order and patriarchal authority through free consent to marriage, reconciling characters long divided from one another and bringing peace to the community. Appropriately for the “father of Brome,” Ben Jonson, with his collaborators, had presented in Eastward Ho! the overthrow of order in the inappropriate marriage choices of young people made possible by too great a freedom. Touchstone seems a decent man, but proves himself unworthy of his status by failing to govern the members of his household: his wife and elder daughter make plans for the latter’s marriage with no regard to his wishes or respect for his pocketbook, while Quicksilver ignores his orders and advice, steals from him, and prefers to keep a mistress rather than take on the responsibilities of a husband. Only Golding and Mildred prove their own worth, not Touchstone’s, by balancing obedience and desire for consent with free choice of an appropriate spouse, a choice that supports and recreates existing social distinctions. Natural rights of “dower,” this play argues, had to be balanced not only with the rightful authority of fathers, but with “[f]it birth, [and] fit age,” not merely to make “a quiet bed,” but to renew social order and confirm the liberties of worthy subjects through appropriate and equal marriages.27 ***


In both generations of comedy, marriages produced free political subjects and reproduced orderly society only when they were based on what marriage guides called “equality.” However, equality was, in many ways, a problematic term for discussion of marriage, or of any other “government,” in the seventeenth century. The idea that husband and wife were equal within the household was, at the least, “a fond conceit,” at worst a sign of dangerous sectarianism. Instead, for most writers of the period, equality implied, first, that every marriage should be based on the social and personal equalities represented by Golding and Mildred, equalities of “Age, Estate, Condition, Pietie.” Although husband and wife had within their marriage equal right to one another’s bodies for procreation, and were, at the same time, “equall … of that gracious and free benefit, whereby they have everlasting life given them,” she was, at best, his “fellow governor,” subordinate always to his authority. His rule and her obedience would be appropriately balanced, however, only if husband and wife were equal prior to marriage, in age, social status, wealth, “friends,” and virtue. Under those circumstances, the “causes of Matrimony” would be secured, including “increase of Children … and the eviting of fornication and uncleannesse.”28 Equal marriage made reproduction chaste and lawful; but it also secured the authority of the husband, while it recreated the religious, political, and social order upon which the state depended for stability. Religious equality, or, in the memorable words of William Gouge, “parity .. in piety,” was most important for the clerics who authored household guides because it prevented “divorce of the true faith” which marriage between “Atheists, Infidels, and such like persons” threatened, a danger both external and internal to the marriage.29 The primary responsibility in “the government of a familie” was to instill “christian holinesse” in children and servants, so division in faith between father and mother, master and mistress created confusion, disorder, and even insubordination in the next generation of society. Nor could any household remain orderly if not directed by “the most blessed word of God.” After all, religious division between husband and wife undermined the union that reflected the holy bond between Christ and his Church: So that … this Image of Gods love, and of our eternall and most happie conjunction with Christ, (he the head, and we the members; hee the husband, and we the wife; hee, our welbeloved one, and we his aswell beloved) is not to be found in everie conjunction … but onely in the godly united match.


The wife without virtue or “true faith” was most likely to commit adultery or to question the authority of her husband, “impeach[ing] thereby the honour of Christs place” and overthrowing the household government on which the commonwealth depended.30 However, mismatching in religion could create more than the threat of sexual dishonor or misery for an individual head of household. As Frances Dolan has shown, the Catholic wife presented a religious threat that, simultaneously, threatened treason, or at least “petty treason,” since she owed primary obedience to the pope rather than to her husband or king. So commonplace was the assumption that Catholic women could not be obedient, loyal wives to Protestant husbands that popular texts equated them to “Catholic subject[s] within a Protestant nation; in both cases, it was feared that Catholicism released subordinates from their duty to obey.” Further, if a Catholic wife was likely to disobey her husband for the sake of her religion, her dangerous recusancy was also difficult for the king to punish, given the limitations on her rights and privileges under coverture. The man with a Catholic wife, like every husband, held his status as a subject at least in part through his rights over her property. Yet that very authority forced him to pay the fines assessed for her recusancy. Since, “lack of control over marital property – at the level of theory” protected Catholic women, the government could not establish any law that imposed punishment directly on a married woman without the unfortunate consequence of overturning coverture.31 Given the significance of marital property rights to political rights, this would have been the equivalent of destroying a subject’s liberties. Thus, “parity in piety” was not simply necessary to the stability of church and to the legitimate reproduction of true Christians; it maintained liberties and order in household and polity. Although inequality of age was not as dangerous as the treasonous disorder associated with Catholicism, it was equally unsettling as a threat to both marital chastity and proper authority relations between husband and wife. Authors of marriage guides were of one mind with playwrights in their insistence that old age and youth were as unable to maintain order in marriage as seasons to exist simultaneously. An older woman who was persuaded to marry a young gentleman was likely to find, like the widow in John Stowes’ famous Survey of London, that he had squandered her money and abandoned her, stripping her at one moment of social and marital status and forcing her to seek charity from the community. More importantly for social stability, an old husband would find it nearly impossible to maintain the respect of


his wife because he would be less able to render her the “debt” of “due benevolence,” an unacceptable situation given his position as “head” and “governor.” Thomas Heywood explained this problem in his story of an old citizen who told his young betrothed that “an old horse will travel and goe through a long journey as wel as a young”; she, “laying her hand upon the bottome of her belly, said, I, but I feare, Sir, not in this rode way.” Robert Crofts reminded older men of the tragic experiences of Vulcan, Claudius, and Menelaus, among others, all of whom had been betrayed or cuckolded by their beautiful young wives, suffering “Jealousie, Strife, Shame, Sorrow, Discontent, and Misery.” Equality, or near equality, in age laid the groundwork for a long-lived and happy marriage because it made husband and wife “more fit for procreation of children, for a mutuall performance of mariage duties each to other, and for making their companie and societie every way more happie.” But it also ensured that they were more likely to keep their marriage chaste by “keep[ing] their bodies from being defiled with strange flesh.” In such marriages, the wife would be “a crowne of gold upon the Head of her Husband, her Head,” not the source of his cuckold’s horns, those theatrical ensigns of a disorderly society.32 Marital chastity secured not only the social honor of a household, but legitimacy to children, whose inheritance rights were so necessary to their future social and political status. The authors who outlined the best foundation for marriage unambiguously recommended equal age and equal virtue. Despite the importance of property rights to marriage and political liberties, however, many found it more difficult to defend equality in birth and wealth. Like beauty, wealth and family status often tempted individuals to “instantly with all the eagernesse and speed they can … seeke to have their desire and lust satisfied” without waiting to consider more essential qualities or to consult with parents or friends. Of course, if playwrights are to be believed, parents were precisely those most likely to rely on property interests, to value the joining of land to land rather than heart to heart. Certainly, the most notable defender of common law property rights and liberties, Sir Edward Coke, was not above forcing his own daughter into an unwanted marriage for the sake of his own ambitions. But, as beauty – or rather, health and fitness of body – made husband and wife more likely to maintain reproductive chastity, equality of birth or wealth ensured that the necessary authority of the husband would not be overturned or “make the one insult over the other more then is meet.” Mismatching in social status was enough of an evil when the husband married a beautiful woman of much lower


rank, since “[h]is lightnes therein ever love [wa]s deem’d” and, furthermore, by making her his wife, he raised her to his own social position. As James I informed his queen, “whether ye were a king’s or a cook’s daughter, ye must be all alike to me being once my wife.”33 If the unequal marriage raised the wife far above her previous status, it merely created the possibility that his authority would be too rigorously enforced, too tyrannous; that he would treat her as a servant rather than a wife. A husband’s abuse of his authority, however, was far less dangerous than the effect of an unequal marriage between a “Woman of a noble race … [and a] Man of farre inferiour place.” She took her rank, as her name, from her husband, and if she was noble by a first marriage rather than by birth, she lost that title if she married ignobly. But in addition – and more importantly, for most of these authors – a woman of much higher birth than her husband might attempt to be master in their household, “so as the order which God hath established will be cleane perverted: and the honour of mariage laid in the dust.” Like the image of the cuckold, the image of the wife who usurped oeconomic government has come to be well recognized as representing disorder in her society and dishonor for herself, her husband, and “all heads, even to Christ the head of the Church.” Her prior social status could not be allowed to overturn or even diminish the authority which a husband was always to maintain: [B]y vertue of the matrimoniall bond the husband is made the head of his wife, though the husband were before mariage a very begger, and of meane parentage, and the wife very wealthy and of a noble stocke; or though he were her prentise, or bondslave.34 Her nobility could not raise him to her rank, but her consent to marry gave him the status of a head of household and membership in the polity. By her own consent, she had agreed to place herself under his authority; thus, a wealthy woman’s inappropriate choice of husband upset the social order, as it could disorder the household if she usurped his rule. But, if a man married well in every sense of the term, having chosen freely, but conscientiously, an “equal” partner for his household, he proved himself qualified for the burdens and responsibilities of governing in the polity. Only those of virtue and substance had a right to that position, as only the true and rightful heir could and should be made the sponsus regni. But, if equal marriages created an orderly oeconomic


body, an individuum in which persons and property were bound together under a worthy head, they also reinforced all other lines of order in society, especially those involving religion, social status, and property. Therefore, although the wielding of authority in the community was never entirely associated with the acquisition and exercise of authority within a household, equal marriages reinforced the social rank and rights of freehold that defined those eligible to participate in local government and the parliamentary franchise. Marriage was a sign that a man had “some authority among his neighbours.”35 He was responsible for maintaining order within his realm – the popular “skimmington” ritual punished not simply the over-bearing wife, but the husband who had been unable to govern her. His ability to exercise that authority, however, was, in part, dependent upon the woman he had chosen to be his “fellow governor,” the wife who had to balance her obedience to her husband with the requirement that she assist in running their household. Her rights and obligations within that household, after all, defined his rights and obligations in the kingdom. *** In addition to ensuring free consent, the marriage service in the Book of Common Prayer also required each bridegroom to promise, first, to love his wife. She, on the other hand, was enjoined first to obey. At the moment of her marriage, therefore, every wife consented to be a subject as Eve had been almost from the moment of her creation, a condition confirmed and intensified by the punishments that accompanied the expulsion from Eden. James I had himself defined the terms of this subjection in his instructions on marriage to his son, Henry, in “a kings dutie in his office.” … [Y]e are the head, shee is your bodie: it is your office to command and hers to obey; but yet with such a sweete harmonie, as shee should bee as readie to obeye as ye to commande, as willing to follow as ye to goe before … suffer her never to meddle with the Politick governemente of the common-weale, but hold her at the Oeconomicke rule of the house, and yet all to bee subjecte to your direction. Although James was speaking of a queen, the right of any wife to “meddle with the Politick governmente of the common-weale” was effectively negated by her condition as part of the individual of which


her husband was head; but even a king recognized her essential role as subordinate ruler within oeconomic government.36 Balancing the rigorously hierarchical image of marriage in the early seventeenth century was this portrayal of the wife as a “fellow governor” whose rights within marriage paralleled and supported the rights of her husband in the body politic. The condition of subjection for a wife was, thus, joined with a measure of authority that, according to the authors of marriage guides, distinguished her position as a subject from all other subjects within a household: “wives [were] farre the most excellent and therefore to be placed in the first ranke.”37 However, as the title of “fellow governor” suggests, the authority of a wife within the household was expected to give place in every respect to that of her husband. His was “the honor of Headship” that he could “not dispose to the wife, though he translate the government of things.”38 But her subordinate government did not lessen his authority; instead, it brought honor to him within the household and made his rule more effective: We see that in all estates the king or highest governour hath other Magistrates under him, who have a command over the subjects, and yet thereby the kings supreme authoritie is no whit impaired, but rather the better established, and he the more honoured. So is it in a family. As long as she did everything “with the consent and reference of her husbands wil … as his Lieutenant under him,” household government was not impaired or undermined, but well ordered. In fact, only by taking responsibility as a “deputy, an officer substituted” to her husband could the wife help to create and maintain the oeconomic unit upon which the recreation of the polity was dependent with each generation.39 Her office as a fellow governor, rightly performed, honored and supported household, nation, and religion, and their heads, her husband, her monarch, and Christ himself. Although historians of popular political culture have tended to emphasize the disorderly behavior of women, especially those who disrupted or overturned household authority, it is also clear from their research that women “had a responsibility to share in the defence of communal rights” or to provide for their families’ subsistence. Though they were not expected to take leadership roles in popular riots or demonstrations, and were usually punished if they did, evidence suggests that the office of a wife, so praised by clergy in their domestic


guides, also had value to the communities in which these women lived. Men within the middling and laboring classes were, especially during food shortages or other times of social stress, likely to be “active in prosecuting witches, putting scolds in the cucking-stool and taking the initiative – sometimes in defiance of authority – in shaming masculine women and their feeble husbands.”40 But those same men expected their wives, mothers, and daughters to participate in food riots or marches against those who threatened the stability of the community. This was not a contradiction: where a husband and householder, as a direct subject of the king, might be prosecuted for such actions, his wife, as fellow governor within his household, could act for the good of their oeconomy without risking its future security. Thus, within her marriage, a wife possessed two primary privileges or liberties: to “oversee and give order for all things within the house” and to advise her husband in matters of importance to the household. Neither of these rights implied that she could act without the implicit or explicit agreement of her husband. Everything she did in her office as “Huswife” was assumed to be under his direction and exercised at his discretion, even if he were absent for an extended period of time. Her advice had to be given with restraint and with recognition that “when her way is not liked of, though it bee the best way, she may not thereupon set all at sixe and seven … [but] holde her place.” A wise husband would listen to the suggestions of a faithful wife, especially since her excellence in office as his “helper” was a measure of his wisdom in choosing her to be joined in his household government. But if he did not, she could, under no circumstances, continue to “contend” against the person to whose rule she had consented: Admit the case to be betweene thee and thy Prince: For reformation, or otherwise in withholding right, wilt thou trie him by unquietnes in words or deedes? … [A]s there is no striving with a Prince, because of his power, so there is (or should be) no contending with the husband (for whatsoever cause) because of that absolute soveraigntie which is in his hand.41 Although the power of a husband was, quantitatively, far inferior to that of a king, the obligation of obedience for a wife was as basic as that of a royal subject; her right to advise, however necessary and honorable, could not diminish her primary duty. But this obligation to obey was complicated if her husband required her to act in a manner that went against the laws of God or king. If he


commanded her to disobey his earthly government, even after she had advised against it, his status as “King, Priest, and Prophet in his house” made him responsible and answerable to the law, “she having done her dutie by intreatie.” But if he ordered her to act against God and her conscience, the matter was more difficult to resolve, especially for the more “puritan” of Protestant clerics. William Gouge insisted that a wife must always obey her husband “provided that his command be not against the Lord, and his word.” The author of Counsel to a husband agreed that a husband’s threats should not keep a wife from attending church services, even if she faced corporal punishment upon her return; only if she was physically restrained could she be excused. But all insisted that she must be very sure that her conscience was supported by Biblical authority and not simply her own willfulness, the ultimate sign of sinfulness in a wife whose first duty was obedience. The husband was warned “never [to] set his private authoritie, against these authorities [of God and magistrate] that are stronger than his,” but the only option given her was passive obedience.42 *** In the early years of the seventeenth century, the office of a wife gave her husband status in the polity as an “individual,” measured in his legitimate authority over her, their children and servants, and the property brought to their household by marriage. Their union, if well matched and freely chosen, recreated distinctions of social rank in the kingdom and confirmed its religious unity. Finally, her rights to advise him in matters of urgency to the persons and property within his oeconomic body provided the model for his liberties in the politic body of which the king was head. If these issues were, for the most part, implicit during this period, the debates set off by the eruption of civil war made the complexities of rule and subjection in household and state explicit. If a husband’s office was comparable to those of king and God, between 1642 and 1644, a wife’s office under his government became a way to defend his own rights and liberties under those who ruled the body politic.

5 “All natural power is in those which obey”

By the time the Scots rebelled against the challenge to their religious liberties, represented by the new “Bishop’s Book” of Common Prayer, many of their English neighbors had been attempting for several years to defend their “liberties” through litigation. For them, liberty involved primarily property, in this case the collection of extra-parliamentary rates such as Ship Money.1 The problem was that there was some difference of opinion about whether these “rates” were actually “taxes,” imposed without the consent of Parliament. Since 1635, several nobles and gentlemen – including Lord Saye and Sele, a leading Parliamentarian during the civil wars – had been trying unsuccessfully to challenge Ship Money in the common law courts. Finally, in 1637, Charles I decided to bring a minor gentleman, John Hampden, before King’s Bench to gain a judgment in support of his prerogative right. He succeeded in a sense: seven of the twelve judges decided his rate was not a tax. Unfortunately, three of the remaining justices implied in their judgments that the king was collecting an unlawful tax, giving support to those who opposed Ship Money. From this point on, resistance to its collection and hostility to the king’s use of his prerogative power increased as revenues from the rate decreased. When Charles found it essential to call Parliament to raise funds for his “Bishop’s War” in Scotland, his house of Commons confronted him with a long list of complaints and proposals designed, in their view, to protect their “liberties.” During the first year of the Long Parliament, the king agreed to a series of statutes that confirmed the right of parliament to control any form of taxation, abolished the few remaining feudal dues, and swept away the royal prerogative courts. He accepted tri-annual meetings of parliament and gave up his right to prorogue or dissolve the existing one. His decision to sacrifice his leading councillor, Thomas 98

“All natural power is in those which obey” 99

Wentworth, earl of Strafford, to a Commons seeking vengeance for what they called tyranny would haunt him to the end of his life. But when the house of Commons wrested away control of the militia – the only means to enforce coercive political power in seventeenth-century England – Charles had finally had enough. From 1642 to 1644, as their armies battled one another, his “Royalist” supporters would debate “Parliamentarians” over the balance between the liberties of subjects and the prerogatives of kings. During 1640, as one Parliament came and went, and another began its long odyssey, two strikingly different tracts appeared: John Swan’s Redde Debitum, or A discourse in defence of three chiefe Fatherhoods and the anonymous pamphlet, The parliament of women. Each dealt with a different aspect of the crisis developing within Charles’ government. Swan’s text was a serious answer to critics of the episcopal structure and reform of the English church; it defended clergymen’s right to tithes as well as archbishop Laud’s recent innovations in worship, which had brought the “beautie of holinesse” and, for many, the appearance of Catholicism, into English church services. In contrast, The parliament of women was a burlesque of disorderly parliaments, set in ancient Rome, but peopled with unruly London wives. Different as they were in content and structure, both texts addressed the problem of disorder in the polity brought about by the dual crises of the personal rule: taxation and religious reformation. But, in addition, both used images of wives as a means to explore and explain the problem of subjection in the state. For Swan, she was the fellow governor, with the responsibility to protect the safety and sanctity of her household; for the anonymous author of The parliament of women, she was the shrew and scold, the dangerous and disruptive subject usurping government. Together, these texts, at the beginning of a decade of division and civil war, drew together the disparate images from earlier in the century that would be essential to debates over rule and subjection. Swan’s “three fatherhoods” were “naturall parents,” who “give us a [natural] beeing”; “politicall parents” who give “safe” being; and “spirituall parents” who give “well-being.” The use of “parents” rather than “fathers” grew from the biblical text he had chosen to support the necessity of obedience to and respect for all magistrates in the state and all governors of the church, Proverbs 30.11: “There is a generation that curseth their Father, and doth not blesse their Mother.” This verse, Swan argued, defined two sins, one of “commission,” one of “omission,” the second of which he claimed was “every way as bad (nay rather worse)” than the first. But in his analysis, both sins undermined


order and authority in the state, which he likened repeatedly to governance in the household, with husband and father as head, wife and mother as fellow governor. These images bound the safety and security of church and state under “Kings and Queenes,” the “nursing fathers, and nursing mothers of the Church and … therefore … of the Common-weale.” Such intertwining of the political and religious realms was hardly unusual for this period, but in the context of a crisis over taxation and church reformation, it confirmed that acts against the church were acts against the state. Those who wished to do away with bishops or, worse, divide the church into independent congregations undermined the government of the king, while those who would limit the power of a monarch in any way destroyed the church they claimed to be protecting. Swan reminded his readers that the clerics who most often claimed that subjects possessed the right to resist a tyrant were also those who attacked the “true” English, episcopal church. The “fierce frenzie of Anabaptisticall Doctrine,” that denied infant baptism, also claimed that all “Magistracie” should be abolished as “abhominable,” while “dangerous puritans” undermined the doctrine that “[k]ings hold their crownes of God.” Worst of all, “Pope and Puritane-papists” celebrated the deposition of any king who denied the higher authority of the Catholic church. But mother church had no right to claim authority over the fathers of kingdoms: The Miter may not trample on the neckes of Princes, and dispose of kingdomes when and where it pleaseth: … Not in defence of Christs spouse the Church; because there is no firme warrant for such.2 King and church must be honored in their separate roles as ruler and “fellow-governor”; when subjects failed to honor both, they divided the kingdom, as children disobedient to father or mother disordered a household. Swan’s view of the bond between king and church was supported by a second analysis in which he equated the standing of a mother as fellow governor within a family to the magistrates of the state and officers of the church who guided and disciplined the subjects of each. In the polity, the blessing or duty which is pertinent to the Mother (who is the weaker vessell) may in this place stand to signifie that not the meanest officer, which the King (our supreame governour here on earth) shall constitute, may bee cursed or despised.


The “Mother” in the biblical passage was not “a meere cypher,” but the ensign of the men who acted in place of the king, as a wife acted in place of her husband, and were, therefore, owed “such honour and dutie as [wa]s proportionable” to the offices they held. Likewise, the “Governours of the Church” filled the place of a “Mother” in their service to the spiritual fathers. Like the wife and mother, they were a part of the larger “popular and promiscuous bodie” of the faithful, but they were also “Officers” responsible for the protection and maintenance of the whole.3 Where Swan emphasized the orderliness of household, state, and church when governed by both husband and wife, father and mother, the author of The parliament of women stressed the overthrow of all these interdependent governments when subjects usurped authority. The original Ecclesiazusae, or Assembly of Women was, of course, Aristophanes’ biting comedy about the take-over of Athens’ democratic ecclesia by city wives whose leader is far more sophisticated and intelligent than the rabble of men who inhabit the play and – in the playwright’s view – the city assembly.4 In this first of several midseventeenth-century versions, the story is set in ancient Rome – now the capital of a threatening Catholic church and its hierarchy. It opens as a young boy of the nobility, Papirius, returns to his house after accompanying his father to the Senate. Required by his mother to tell all that passed there, but knowing he is not permitted to reveal the debates of the assembly, the boy claims that a decree has been passed “that it should be lawfull for every man to have two Wives.” His mother responds immediately to this perceived threat by assembling all the noblewomen of Rome at her house. However, “this [is] no sooner noysed in the City, but it [is] presently bruted in the Suburbs, and before” the ladies can “propose anything to be concluded,” “a great many Tradesmens wives” appear at the door to act as a house of Commons. All these women, noble and common alike, see the supposed ordinance as a two-fold overthrow of what they represent to be their prerogative rights. First, men, who “can hardly please one” will never be able to satisfy the sexual and material needs of two wives. Worse, once given two, their desire for wives “will grow to ten, from ten to twenty, and then what a racket there [will] be, who [shall] rule the Roost?” The assembly readily agrees that instead each wife should have two husbands, since one of them was always likely to be away on business of some kind and unable to meet his obligation of due benevolence. One representative argues that every husband’s property should belong unconditionally to his wife; a second that no man


should marry unless his “intent [be] to please her, serve her, and obey her.” As the session is about to close, they concoct a “cure for any old or yong Cuckolds” in order to disprove that “old Proverb, Once a whore, and ever a whore.”5 One by one, the basic ordering principles of the household, the rights by which husbands claimed membership in the polity, are overthrown in this tract: reproductive power, control of property, and even the right of headship itself. But in representing these, the author also associates the productive and reproductive order of marriage more closely to recent disturbances in the government of the state. In the chaotic debates, one member of the assembly argues that if “their Husbands rebelled,” wives should be allowed to resist, as Commons did their king, with the claim that “they meant neither murther nor manslaughter, but what they did, was se defendendo.” Another member, urging her companions to demand their rightful authority, draws upon history – the favorite resource for defenders of women – to praise those magnanimous and Masculine-spirited Matrons[,] thos[e] valiant Viragoes[,] those lusty Ladies: those daring Amazonian Damsels … who made Coxcombs of Keysars, Puppets of Princes, Captives of Captains, Fools of Philosophers, and Henchmen of their husbands[.] Finally, the women pass a law that underscores concerns about ongoing threats to the unity and stability of English Protestantism through the imagery of the cuckolded husband. For decades, a primary concern of English bishops and ministers had been the presence of Jesuits secretly conducting mass and making converts from the safety of gentry households. Thus the new “law” required these representatives of papal authority “to be gelt or libb’d, to avoid [the] jealousies of … husbands.”6 Swan’s construction of a well-ordered polity in which subordinate governors can, indeed must, stand in the place of the wife and mother is here, unquestionably, represented in its most disordered form, as disruptive wives stand in for unruly royal subjects and subversive religious doctrine. Yet this disorder has as much to do with the upsetting of class order as gender order, for the decorous gathering of noblewomen evolves uncontrollably and inevitably into an undisciplined mob dominated by the voices of “Tradesmens wives.” The interdependence of governments in state, church, and household is matched and supported, this pamphlet argues, by that interdependence of gender and class hier-


archies that plays and marriage guides had for years so rigorously and consistently reinforced. Once the noblewomen stepped out of their place as officers within, but not outside, their households, they could not prevent their conduct of government from spreading to those whose social status had, under most conditions, excluded them from governing. The image of disobedient women introducing further disorder into society reflects upon the fears many gentlemen would carry throughout the civil wars: That if they stood against the king, the commons’ obedience, which was the guarantee of their own supremacy in society, would give way to this kind of anarchy and that “they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”7 Representing women as a sign of disorder and misgovernment, as the last chapter argued, was a well-established seventeenth-century European practice. Certainly the imagery of The parliament of women represents this disorder in sexual, social, and religious terms, even suggesting, with the cure for cuckoldry, the problem of women’s power and witchcraft. However, during the years from 1642 through 1644, Swan’s picture of the wife as a fellow governor whose obedience ennobled all subjection was as important as the image of disorderly women to debates on sovereignty and prerogative rights. For the men who fought alongside the king, not surprisingly, emphasis fell primarily on the necessary obedience of wives and subjects, who had consented, even if only implicitly, to government. For those who worked on the side of Parliament, proclaiming the rights of the “helpmeet” made it possible for them to insist, as Conrad Russell put it many years ago, that “they did not want a divorce between king and Parliament, but a restitution of conjugal rights.”8 In these years, as Parliamentarians and Royalists debated the nature of the contract of political government and its relationship to the absolute contract of marriage, they also addressed explicitly for the first time questions concerning the rights and obligations of subjects within that contract, issues confined primarily to plays and household guides prior to 1640. However, one aspect of the association between marital and political rights critical to previous discussion went relatively untouched: marriage as a sign of liberty, a rite of accession for men to both household sovereignty and political subjection. Undoubtedly, the lack of interest in this question during the early 1640s arose from two interlocking political conditions. First, since monarchical government itself was not yet under attack, the right of authority in political and oeconomic governments had not yet become an issue. Second, the legitimate participants in political government did not require definition. Those who


should be acting in the capacity of subordinate governors and advisors were already doing so in Parliament. Only after years of war and social upheaval would defining the political subject become an object of debate, transforming civil war into revolution. In the meanwhile, debate focused on the subjection of a wife as a fellow governor within marriage. For Parliamentarians, her place, as the source of human subjection itself, measured the limits of authority and the rights of the monarch’s subjects to redress of grievances. Having consented to government for their own good and safety, wives and political subjects retained the right to preserve the body of which they were a part, a right that neither household nor political “head” could diminish. On their side, Royalists insisted that the rights of subjects, not rulers, were necessarily limited by the original contract of government and employed images of female disorder to illustrate their contention. As defenders of the king intensified their emphasis on the absolute obedience required of subjects, however, Parliamentarians overturned the image of the sponsus regni, transforming the king from a husband to a wife who served as a “help meet” in the governing of the state. By 1644, both sides agreed on only one aspect of wifely subjection: her condition was primarily the effect of divine order and natural law rather than contract. Parliamentarians used this idea to measure the difference between the rights of political subjects and oeconomic subjects, while Royalists confirmed the connection between political and oeconomic governments by insisting that subjection was the natural condition of all, freedom unnatural to everyone but the monarch who answered only to God. *** Thus, in the years before 1645, Parliamentarians drew on the images of original government familiar from Chapters 1 and 4. Their earliest stories again traced the first government to Paradise in the marriage of Eve to Adam. Though this union confirmed that subjection was necessary to human society, Parliamentarians argued that the subjection of the first woman to her husband actually mitigated and dignified the condition of human subjection itself. If monarchy had its foundation in Adam’s right to govern, argued one writer, such a right could not have existed until the creation of Eve unless one “granted that his Subjects were Beasts, which is the same (without jesting) … [that Royalists] would have the people in every Monarchy to be.”9 No theorist in the period would have questioned the natural and absolute


dominion of mankind over the earth and its fruits or over the lesser creatures. But any suggestion that Adam’s right to this authority established the prerogatives of kings made subjects and their representatives less than slaves. In his insistence that he is not “jesting,” this author confronts the image of a disorderly wife with an avowal of a chaste, well-governing one. Her creation had confirmed the necessity of hierarchy without denying all rights to those who lived under government – without, in other words, turning men into beasts. If, after the expulsion from Paradise, a more rigorous subjection had been necessary, it did not involve abandonment to slavery. And though St. Paul had ordered Christians to be subject to civil powers, he did not enforce a more absolute subjection, but merely confirmed existing obligations. “[N]either doth he preach a new, but the common obedience, that Citizens should obey their Magistrates, and wives their husbands.” Christianity, and social order itself, was preserved by the necessary, but “common obedience” of wives to their household governor and subjects to their king, proving thereby that the freedom declared by the gospel of Christ was not a danger to the peace of existing political authority.10 Obedient wives were the sign of a natural, godly, and, especially, Christian polity, but their obedience was not the enslavement implied by the claims of Royalists. The idea that the political subject was comparable to a well-governing wife was developed further in a series of pamphlets attempting to prove that subjects, like kings, were anointed by God. The biblical passage from Judges, “Touch not mine anointed,” was, one Parliamentarian noted, addressed not to subjects, but to a king, Abimelech. This bloody, ambitious monarch, who had murdered his own brothers in his quest for a kingdom, had tried to rape Sarah, Abraham’s wife, when the two arrived in his kingdom. Despite his previous tyranny, Abimelech heeded God’s warning that the rape of Sarah would bring his own death and the destruction of his nation, and refrained himself. Although the pamphlet’s author admitted that kings were also anointed by God, he insisted that this biblical text, since it spoke to kings rather than about them, placed wives and all other subjects of government under God’s protection as well, within organic relationships based on mutual rights and obligations. The husband hath no more right or authority to injure or destroy the wife, or the master the servant, the head the inferiour members, then they have to destroy the husband, master, or head. And as the leudnesse of the King, husband, parent, master, must not cause the


people, wife, child, servant, to rebel against them … so the undutifulnes or vices of the people, wife, child, or servant, must not cause the King, husband, parent, or master, … to give over their care, protection, and vigilancy over them, or any waies injuriously to intreat them. As the first wife, Eve, had been the source of original subjection, Sarah and all wives become in this passage the many kinds of “inferiour subjects” whose obligations of obedience should be matched by their governors’ care and restraint in the exercise of authority.11 Government existed and was maintained – as marriage guides, plays, and popular pamphlets had suggested earlier – only when ruler as well as ruled accepted responsibility for ensuring the safety and security of his subjects along with God’s blessing. By equating wives with political subjects, Parliamentarians confirmed that subjection was not slavery or servitude, for her subordinate condition was meant to benefit not only her husband, but the entire household of which she was a part. A monarch should not consider his authority to be comparable to that of a “master” because the role of a subject was not to direct all his actions toward the good of the king as a servant did for his master. Rather, like the “government of husband and wife, or father and sonne,” civil government existed for the mutual good of superior and inferior. Further, a “lawfull King” could not be “a violent Conquerour who [would] be a father and a husband to a people, against their will,” as could the master who conquered and enslaved another.12 When a husband acted against the interests of the household, his wife, as fellow governor, had a responsibility to protect the safety and security of oeconomic government. As “fellow governor” in the existing political situation, Parliament could not be prevented “from saving themselves and the whole State, or from seeking justice against their enemies” to save the body politic.13 Against these arguments, Royalists responded with accusations that their opponents were interested not in balancing authority between king and subjects, but in overthrowing and supplanting the law and, especially, true religion. One apocalyptic Royalist vision found in the actions of Parliament a “concomitancy of Satan and Schism” and in its members and supporters a collection of the sectaries and papists like those excoriated by Swan in 1640. The idea that “Touch not mine Anointed shall concerne the Subject not the King” transformed “Monarchy into a Democracy,” and encouraged the “spirituall whoredome of Lay-Preachers, and Shee-Divines that hath procreated these


monsters in Religion, this Viporous Brood of Schismaticall Tenets … entrenching upon the Prerogative of Princes.” Lewd usurpers of the religious authority or rebellious subjects bent on turning the body politic upon its head, these characters bear little resemblance to the innocent and virtuous wives of the patriarchs who stood for the honorable, anointed subject in Parliamentary tracts. Even Royalists who accepted, in defending their king, that subjects might also be “Gods anoynted,” insisted that this special condition did not imply a “Politick sense,” but a “Spirituall sense … and therefore politick their armes must not be.”14 The anointing of wives and political subjects granted no liberties that tended to armed insurrection and the destruction of the kingdom, but merely confirmed their membership in the body of the church of which Christ was the head, or in the body politic whose head was the king. Subjects could not act against authority; instead, they must passively suffer the penalties for disobedience based on “spiritual” defense of conscience. Royalists were unwilling to recognize that Parliament could ever claim rights of conscience in order to act against the king and emphasized the wife’s obligation of obedience in marriage to prove this point. As she could not divorce her husband, “the dissent of the inferior party, let it be not upon fancyed, but reall discontents” being insufficient to “disolve the compact,” neither could she usurp any portion of her husband’s authority. Subjects of the king who did so were “overbusie, like our Mother Eve,” whose sin had caused the expulsion from Eden and was the reason God had intensified all obligations of obedience to government.15 Like Bishop Goodman twenty-five years before, Royalists argued that wives, far from exemplifying the rights and privileges of subjects, instead confirmed the condition of subjection itself as a result of her sin. Eve, like every wife and all political subjects, was “the image and glory of the man, deriving all her power and splendor from him, as the Moon doth from the Sun,” and subjection within every family and polity had been based upon her punishment, “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Inferior subjects could not act against their governors, even “in the case of Idolatrie,” when, for example, “the husband was bound to dilate, accuse, and witnesse against his wife … but there [was] no charge to the wife to accuse or witnesse against the husband.” Moreover, if subjects of the state insisted upon their right to limit the authority of the monarch or, worse, assume the power that their consent to government had conferred upon him, they must accept that “the like should hold” “in all inferiour contracts of lesse concernment.”16 Subjects who


were also husbands risked the overthrow and illegitimacy of their own authority when they acted against their king. *** As opposing armies finally faced each other in the field, and marriage became less useful as a way of describing relations of political authority, the idea of a wife as a subject and fellow governor seemed no longer relevant to debates on political subjection. At mid-decade, however, an event occurred that brought to the forefront of debate the one wife in the kingdom who had been for twenty years a source of some uneasiness on the part of Charles’ Protestant subjects: his queen, Henrietta Maria. She was the Catholic sister of the late Most Christian King of France, Louis XIII, aunt to its child monarch, Louis XIV, and she practiced her religion without apology and very nearly without restraint. Nor was the effect of her religion confined to her chapel and those who joined her there; even the masques she had sponsored for presentation to the king and court had been immersed in doctrines of Catholicism as well as neo-Platonist thought, both of which extolled the virtues and power of women.17 When, in the early 1630s, William Prynne had attacked her for appearing on the court stage in plays and masques in his Histriomastix, he was not just expressing contemporary opinion about the scandalousness of women actors. As Frances Dolan has demonstrated, his outrage at the presence of women on a stage fit into a Protestant polemical literature filled with “Catholic men [who] worship[ed] women as goddesses and submit[ted] themselves to women’s advice and rule.”18 But Henrietta Maria had appeared only rarely in the debates of the early 1640s, and then primarily as the innocent victim of the Commons’ assault on King Charles. One Parliamentarian had even begged the queen not to be jealous of the king’s love for his people, nor to allow her hostility to Parliament and defense of Catholicism, a religion that “ha[d] deposed many Kings,” to enlarge the rupture already begun in the kingdom.19 The king’s oeconomic and political governments should be united in seeking order in the state, not jealous of each other’s love for their head. As long as both sides refused to promote – rather than merely raise the possibility of – divorce, the sacred bond between Charles and his queen was as vital to peace as that between king and state. In 1645, however, at the battle of Naseby, Parliamentary soldiers recovered Charles’ private papers, including copies in his own hand of the letters he had been exchanging with his queen, who had fled to


France with her younger children to ensure their safety and to gain military support for her husband. Sent back to London, the letters appeared in print, with annotations, in The kings cabinet opened. The documents themselves suggest little more than the kind of confidence, intimacy, and trust that contemporaries expected of a well-ordered marriage. But the annotations draw on every possible implication of Henrietta Maria’s influence to argue that the “spouse of the kingdom” was, in truth, in subjection to his own wife, “though she be of the weaker sexe, borne an Alien, bred up in a contrary Religion.” Her Catholicism had created an unnatural oeconomic and political government, subverting the lines of authority.20 Dolan described this condition as “reverse coverture,” existing “in the royal household, and as a consequence, in the kingdom.”21 However, the threat conveyed was much more complex than simply an overturning of coverture or household order, like that portrayed in the disorderly “parliaments of women.” For, when the annotator insisted that Charles had not simply granted his wife the oeconomic rule of the house but the political government of the commonwealth, he was describing a condition in which the king’s true political “spouse” has been rejected and abandoned. No longer “fellow governor” within the polity, subjects, represented in Parliament, have been transformed into servants, or worse, slaves, for Charles had taken the “Queens Counsels” to be “as powerfull as commands” without respect for the liberties of his political subjects. Always “implacable to [the] Religion, Nation, and Government” of England, Henrietta Maria had now even assumed a formal political office as “Resident” ambassador to France in order to raise an army of conquest that would destroy English laws and institutions. In fact, though the annotator did not make the connection explicit, he implied that the queen had bewitched her husband. For she had, by her influence, made the king “more zealous for Bishops and Papists (cal’d his, and the Queens friends)” than herself, “trust[ing] none but Papists” to be his advisors and abandoning his “Protestant Subjects” or, worse, undermining “their just liberties, laws, and the very use of Parliaments.”22 As they had been five years earlier, religion and kingdom were threatened to their foundations by the image of a wife, this time a living woman, not just an imaginary assembly of them. In the following years, other “real” women became objects of much debate over the religious and political condition of England, as “Eve’s Daughters,” who had once been the ensign of subjection and the necessity of government for all people, came to be identified primarily with apostasy and anarchy – disorder in religion and danger to traditional political liberties.


One of the most fascinating aspects of the shift in thinking about – or at least in presenting – conceptions of government during the late 1640s and through the 1650s is that it is not clear whether the image of a wife as a fellow governor disappeared primarily because, in the context of political divorce, opposing theories of government could no longer accommodate her or because the activities of real women made the idea too threatening. Of course, as J. G. A. Pocock has argued, the “real” is always inseparable from the way in which it is given meaning in the structure of language and ideology.23 What is clear, however, is that during this period, human actions incessantly upset ideas about order and equality that previous generations had so carefully laid down. As the actions of the queen appeared to threaten lines of authority in the royal household and, therefore, the kingdom, the idea of the wife as a fellow governor become less tenable as a metaphor for shared power in the state. Simultaneously, the spiritual equality that had been essential to definitions of an equal marriage prior to the civil wars became the foundation for many women’s claims to rights of teaching and even preaching within the independent religious sects. But if contemporaries responded to the crisis by seeing unruly women everywhere, they were particularly likely to see the ones who came from among the “lowest of the people.” These women were, to Thomas Edwards, a Presbyterian gentleman, as dangerous as men like John Lilburne, who argued for the right of the “Free-men of England” to choose members of Parliament, or Gerrard Winstanley, who claimed “community of goods.” As in 1640, the authority of men over women could not be separated from the power of the nobility and gentry over the middling and lower classes. Those who had argued for the nation’s right to preserve the body politic as a wife did her household were now confronted with “swarmes … of illiterate and mechanick Preachers, yea of Women and Boy Preachers” who threatened to place “the whole Kingdom in Gods Black Bill,” to bring it a Bill of Divorce not from the king, but from God.24 Edwards’ opponents, too, though divided among themselves in their efforts to reinstate or reform political government, nonetheless agreed with him on one issue: the “fellow governor” was actually a usurping and unnatural wife. *** Between 1645 and 1647, while the Parliament’s New Model Army was proving itself in the field, fears of an ultimate divorce between king and nation intensified as the opposing Royalist and Parliamentary


forces multiplied into four groups divided by religious and political goals. After a series of losses, Charles I surrendered to the Scots in 1647, still hoping that they would accept his religious reforms and place him on the throne. Instead, they turned him over to Parliament, whose members found that they, too, could not reach a settlement with their king. Then, in June, the king was captured by an officer of the New Model Army. By that time, many members of Parliament had begun to fear the religious and political views of many in the army, while the army was alarmed by Parliament’s attempts to have it disbanded. And almost everyone distrusted Charles I, who, even as he sought better terms with his captors, was completing negotiations with the Scots in hopes that presbyterians in Parliament would prefer to support him and their northern neighbors rather than the independent army they had created. After he finally succeeded with the Scots in December, the second civil war began; by December, 1648, the New Model Army had defeated the numerically superior armies of the king and removed those members of Parliament who had supported a national presbyterian church or threatened to suppress the army. The remaining members of Parliament, soon called the “Rump,” continued to govern with the support or, perhaps, under the control of a politically and militarily powerful army, led by Oliver Cromwell. By the end of January, 1649, Charles I had been tried for treason and beheaded before a silent, awe-struck crowd. During this period, as the ideal of the wife as a “fellow governor” and model for political subjection in the kingdom faded from political debates, ideas about marriage as the mark of a man’s political liberty reappeared in the works of the Levellers. In a recent analysis of their definitions of franchise-holders – persons who should participate in parliamentary elections – David Wootton has persuasively demonstrated that the “democracy” proposed by Lilburne, Rainsborough, Overton, and others was not based on the “inalienable rights of individuals,” but on the “proto-political authority of fathers.” Wives and servants had already consented to subject themselves to another; children were subject on the basis of a “natural, pre-political authority” to their parents. Those who were beggars were dependent on charity, on the productive resources of others, like any servant. But men who had stepped out from under the oeconomic authority of another by marrying and establishing a household – even if that household did not meet the traditional 40-shilling freehold requirement – should be able, the Levellers argued, to participate in the formation of government and in its on-going policies. Heads of households, those who, as


Wootton notes, were “entitled to wear their hats at home,” had the right to consent to the political government within which their own authority over wives, servants, and children was to be exercised.25 Such a conception of the political subject was, however, as “traditional” in many ways as the forty-shilling freehold, associated with social status and privileges within a community and, occasionally, with franchise rights. Wootton connected it to sixteenth-century religious definitions of electors within each presbytery, who were to be “heads of families.” It may also reflect upon the ideal of the urban citizen, given the London background shared by many Leveller leaders.26 But, whatever its immediate origins, several points about the householder franchise are essential to this discussion of the relationship between political and marital subjection. First, although I agree with Wootton that the Levellers were not arguing for the inalienable political rights of “individuals” as persons, they were working within a conception of the “individual” that involved the union of property and persons created by marriage. As Ann Hughes has shown, Leveller leaders represented themselves “not as individual men, but very overtly as householders, as the heads of mutually supportive, clearly differentiated units of husbands, wives, servants and children.” If joined with rights over household property – even the radical Gerrard Winstanley included that element – the Leveller franchise-holder looks very much like the individuum.27 Second, Wootton argues that Levellers believed that the householder’s contract with government was renegotiable, like that of a servant and unlike that of a wife. Thus, although they continued to view marriage as the mark that transformed a man from an oeconomic subject into a political subject, they, like most of their contemporaries, no longer saw a wife’s subjection in the household as equivalent to the relationship between her husband and his government. Politically, the husband was “free,” the wife in subjection. The only inalienable freedom they shared was the free exercise of religion according to their consciences, not the dictates of the state. Ironically, Leveller men and women gained this freedom, at least temporarily; they were less successful in their battle for the householder franchise, which died with the king and the rise of Oliver Cromwell. However, if the Leveller leaders did not portray themselves as “wives” in their relationship to political government, their stories and petitions nonetheless convey traditional notions about the obligations of a wife to act as a fellow governor within the household. Lilburne, for example, defended his wife, Elizabeth, for publicly petitioning the house of Commons by insisting she had acted only “at [his] earnest


desire.” Himself “unjust[ly] imprisoned,” he had gained a hearing before the Commons through her good offices and the actions of the honorable wives who were her friends. Lilburne and the other “honest householders” imprisoned for claiming the right to participate in their government, had been stripped of their ability to support, protect and govern their families by the unjust leaders who had seized control of the polity. They were, therefore, in danger of losing the very foundation of their claims to the status of franchise-holders. The wives who acted in their stead could serve as the visible sign of their honest households and seek redress on their husbands’ behalf. But, as the “weaker vessel” subordinate to their husbands’ authority, they could not claim the franchise rights that were the political sign of his oeconomic government.28 While the Levellers were extolling their “fellow governors,” however, many pamphleteers, royalist and republican, returned to the image of disorderly women as representatives of a disobedient people in another round of “women’s parliaments,” including a reprint of the 1640 pamphlet. As Susan Wiseman has pointed out, the structure and content of these pamphlets often makes it difficult to determine precise political viewpoints, perhaps in part because the misuse of power by both army and Parliament outraged more than just the king’s supporters.29 Nonetheless, one consistent element in these “parliaments” is the identification of political problems with women’s sexual license. Of course, representations of libidinous women were not new either, but from this point on, they tend to be dissociated from issues of social and political rank, and thus unleash not simply a “world turned upside down,” but a world in anarchy, where liberties are mere licentiousness and freedom grounds for every kind of religious apostasy. In The Ladies, a Second Time, Assembled in Parliament, for example, noblewomen have the same complaints as “Citizens Wives,” demanding the right to replace “weake persons [who] were crept into places, beyond their abilitie,” including, it must be assumed, their husbands. Bishops are commended for having “beene very free and cordiall, even to their utmost abilities … in some private performances.”30 Religious problems have become questions about the mechanics of sexual intercourse, while the increasing casualties of war offer this legislative body an opportunity to grant women greater sexual freedom in order to restore the population. Every problem presented is a function of women’s natural reproductive power, without any reference to the overthrow of property and authority relations that had been essential to the earlier “parliament of women.” Women still stand in for unworthy men in


these pamphlets, but not within a unified social world where lines of order can be clearly traced. Instead, their sexuality creates an anarchy of ambition, greed, and desire, or their sexual deviance connects them to specific political or religious groups whose actions subvert the very foundations of English Protestant monarchy. One example of the latter imagery appears in a clearly pro-royalist, pro-episcopacy pamphlet from 1648, when Charles was a prisoner of one or another of the factions arrayed against him. In Mistris Parliament Presented in her Bed, after … the Birth of her Monstrous Offspring, the Childe of Deformation, a disorderly assembly of wives has been replaced by a single “wife” whose disloyalty to her “husband” has made her a whore. Like any woman awaiting delivery of her child, the main character of this piece is surrounded by her “Gossips,” who are not neighborly “goodwives,” but fellow conspirators. “Schisme” represents English presbyterianism, seeking to destroy Mistress Truth, the true Protestant religion embodied in the episcopal English church. “Schisme”, and Mistress “Synod,” the Scottish Kirk, would replace episcopacy, headed by the king, with an illegitimate government by lay elders and a national synod. Mistress “Sedition” presents the goals of the New Model Army: independent congregations and the political participation of freemen. Each character expresses immeasurable pride in her individual contributions to the overthrow of Mistress Parliament’s household “under the vizard of Religion.” What the pamphleteer obviously sees as the overthrow of political government and the rightful authority of the monarch, “Sedition” proclaims is a just effort “to make every free-borne Subject a quiet possessor of his propriety and liberty, to suppresse Tyranny, and prevent Arbitrarinesse in the King.” By the end of the “play,” Mistress Parliament has not given birth; instead, she has vomited up a confession that she has acted only for “the satisfying of [her] own private Lust, though pretended … for the publique good.”31 The childbed imagery of Mistress Parliament and her “gossips” – which has at least one counterpart in pre-civil war theater – represents through sexual betrayal of the kingdom’s spouse the overthrow of true religion and monarchical government traditionally associated with Catholicism and puritanism.32 At one point, in fact, the main character is accused of having become the “Mother of Harlots,” an image usually reserved for the Catholic Church and papacy. Though this pamphlet does not present the kind of anarchy common to this period, like others, it remains focused on sexuality and reproduction, using these categories alone to excoriate the religious and political factions its


author condemns. Despite the obvious threat to social rank personified in “Sedition,” problems of class order have dissolved into gender order. In addition, however, the portrayal of Parliament as a wife who has become a whore illuminates another aspect of the shift in thinking about subjection. At the beginning of the century, a husband’s status as a political subject was measured, in part, by his ability to govern his wife. The man who was cuckolded by his wife was also to blame for his situation, since he had, in some way, failed to live up to his obligations. There is no sense of that balance here. The king is wholly innocent of any failure in his government. On the contrary, his lawful “spouse,” by her own public declarations, has overthrown the authority of her “husband,” has prostituted herself to others and, through her rebellion, replaced his crown with a cuckold’s horns. The effect of this imagery is two-fold. A wife’s adultery was, as we have seen, the only act that provided legitimate grounds for divorce and, therefore, earlier implicit threats to break the marital union that defined political government are here made explicit. But, in addition, responsibility for his “wife’s” actions has been completely removed from the shoulders of the king and husband; her prostitution of herself reflected only on her own disloyalty and lack of virtue, not on his status or right to govern. In this pamphlet, “Mistress Parliament” is less a fallen “fellow governor” than an unnatural subject. *** From the death of Charles I in 1649 to the “restoration” of Charles II in 1660, debates on the nature of political subjection underwent an interesting evolution that I have come to call the “mysterious disappearance of Eve.” Her absence from political analysis might be explicable had writers simply avoided the story of the Creation and Fall entirely. But this did not happen, perhaps because the biblical history was so integrally associated with the origins of political subjection in this deeply religious society. In any case, whether they supported universal natural subjection or natural freedom, writers retold the story with the plot or character shifts necessary to support their conclusions. In place of Eve and her “daughters” appeared sons, who would, one day, gain status in society as husbands and fathers themselves, but with their position sustained less by marriage than by the birthright or property they inherited from their fathers. Robert Filmer had been arguing for the natural subjection of all men to kings since well before the civil wars, and his retelling of the biblical


Fall had always pushed aside Eve somewhat to further emphasize the importance of Adam’s fatherhood as the original source of royal authority. But the exclusively “patriarchal” origins of subjection presented in his Observations upon Aristotle from 1652 are more startling than those of Patriarcha, which had been written so many years earlier and would be printed so much later.33 The goal of Observations was clearly to negate the legitimacy of Cromwell’s rule by demolishing all arguments in favor of original natural freedom, even if absolute subjection could be, as in Leviathan, reestablished by an unbreakable social contract. Thus Filmer’s preface turned from the object of his analysis, the writings of the pagan Aristotle, and placed the source of monarchical power and the natural condition of subjection for all men in “the father of all flesh, Adam,” whom no “Heathen Authors, who were ignorant of the manner of the creation of the world” could have known or described. The authority of monarchs “comes from fatherhood,” and since no one could claim to be without a father, natural freedom could not exist; those who argued for it did so “to the great scandall of Christianity, and bringing in of Atheisme, since a naturall freedome of mankinde cannot be supposed without the deniall of the creation of Adam.” Generation was the original and only rightful source of authority and subjection, not contract; even Aristotle, drawing from Plato, confirmed this. Thus, imagining a contract of government, absolute or renegotiable, was, by definition, absurd and invalid for any civilized nation claiming to be Christian.34 Further, Aristotle himself, although interested in “Common-weales as were founded by particular persons” had never suggested that a “naturall right” existed in “the people to found, or elect their kinde of government.” It seems the underived Majesty of the people, was such a metaphysical piece of speculation as our grand Philosopher was not acquainted with.” In fact, the argument that “men are by nature free born” made any organized government impossible, unless that government was in its institution intended to be a tyranny. For, if “self-preservation is to be regarded in the first place,” then any form of government other than “self-government” must be unlawful. Further, any contract of government established by one group of “fathers” to “enslave themselves” would be an “unreasonable and unnaturall” act against the freedom of the “whole people” and, more particularly, their own children, whose


natural freedom had been replaced by slavery. Finally, claims to natural rights of “Liberty” and “Property” were self-contradictory, since any claim to liberty implied the complete overthrow of property.35 For Filmer, the only possible solution was the recognition that “[e]very man … is so far from being free born, that by his very birth, hee becomes a subject to him that begets him.” It was a view that he had been expressing, in personal papers and printed tracts, for at least fifteen years; but in this text, more than in any of his other writings, the wife and mother in the process of generating natural subjection nearly disappears. Eve is not mentioned with Adam in God’s command “to multiply and people the earth and subdue it,” nor is her subjection the source of her off-springs’ servitude. The only “Mother” to which Filmer refers is the one that he must include because she exists in the original quotation from Aristotle. And only the king’s wife is significant, since his marriage to her brings him, and the commonwealth, the right to make war “for recovering or preserving” rights to “dominions” to which she is a natural heir, a title that no “Popular Estate” can possibly acquire.36 In earlier writings, Filmer had derided the idea of natural freedom by resorting to the image of the virgin, born as free as any of her brothers. Here, his analysis denies that either the authority established in politic government or the rights of subjects to participate in it can arise from “marriage.” Thus, inheritance rights may involve the wife in the rights of her husband, but Leveller householders can make no claim that marriage gives them the status of a political subject. And if Filmer insists that government itself is natural, not contractual, he has, like Hobbes, against whom so much of his criticism is directed, transformed the political “generation” of monarchs and subjects into a process that involves only men. As we will see in Chapter 8, women exist in his political world only when their sexuality overturns legitimate order. Most of those who argued for the natural freedom of all men were, like Filmer, uncomfortable with both the Leveller household franchise and any conception of political government that was contractually equivalent to marriage; thus their rewriting of the biblical Fall overturned both absolute monarchy and any dissociation of liberties from property. Anthony Asham, for instance, was willing to accept that the “first Magistracy was grounded in Nature” for Adam and the early patriarchs, but concluded that the “Power, Jurisdiction, yea duty of a supreme Magistrate” had to be defined in terms of the reciprocal bonds between fathers and sons rather than as bondage and servitude. The founders of the first modern governments could not have empowered


their rulers to their “owne prejudice”; as children of government, like any “minor,” they could “meliorate,” but not “by any Compact deteriorate their condition.” Asham could find in neither Adam nor the early patriarchs any sign of “absolute” authority or unbreakable contract. At the same time, he, and other opponents of absolute monarchy, insisted that property rights were original to the human condition, necessary even to the foundations of Christian life in the tradition of charity. There was, therefore, no basis for inferring a “free Primitive communion” advocated by some of his contemporaries. In fact, Asham argued, returning to the biblical Fall, the first sin was not one of temptation or disobedience – infringements of godly and natural subjection – but a trespass against property rights: When Adam was alone in the Garden of Eden, he was in a state of property, for of one tree thereof he might not eat: so that his first sin was a sin against property, and therefore theft, or at least a sin of Ambition by theft; as Ambition ever since is maintein’d by usurping some other thing also which belongs to another.37 Adam’s “fall” had made it necessary to institute a means of protecting rights of property ownership that had been an essential mark of the human condition even before the first man became, with the creation of woman, a husband and patriarch. Thus, modern governments existed only to protect the property that was the sign of man’s rights and liberties since the moment of his creation. When John Streater approached the relationship of property to natural freedom in his own Observations Historical, Political, and Philosophical upon Aristotles first Book of Political Government, he focused his energy on explaining the reasons for unequal property division. Although he agreed with the philosopher that “[t]he Society of man and wife … [was] the first and principal part of a Common-wealth,” Streater also wrote Eve out of the biblical Fall in order to disprove Aristotle’s assumption that either lawlessness or slavery or even subjection existed “by nature” rather than “by accident.” Though it was true that no “free people” could be found anywhere, Streater argued, this was not an effect of their natural condition, but of the “transgression of our father Adam,” whose sin resulted in vast inequalities of property-holding: [W]ithout question this is come upon us as a curse: some of our kind villeins, or Copyholders[,] othersom slaves[,] the freest are servants, a general bondage seemeth to overspread the Creation.


Not even women were subject by “nature,” and the subjection of a wife to her husband was an effect, not of Eve’s sin, but of the unequal property relations created by “Adam’s transgression.” For, as a widow, a woman became a “free subject,” the effect of her dower right, by which “she claimeth a third by the law of England.” Within marriage, however, a wife was subject in her role as “help meet” under coverture, a condition that denied her the right to participate in the “prevention of being slaves which is the duty of those which govern to undertake.” If “Man and Woman are a perfect society,” their union was not a model for the government of the commonwealth, only the primary unit of production and reproduction within it. Nor was a wife’s condition in the household analogous to her husband’s in the state, for there he was a “freeman,” and his ruler was his “servant,” for if the ruler were a lord, his subjects would be slaves, if a master, they would be servants. Thus, although Streater insisted that the reproduction of the household was not, as Filmer suggested, solely the work of fathers, he nonetheless distinguished the condition of a polity and its members from that of the household and its subjects.38 Although both Asham and Streater based political liberties in property rights, they disagreed about the relationship between marital status and political status. Streater emphasized instead the property and productivity of families. Marriage was vitally necessary to increase the population and, thus, the wealth of the polity. Reproduction that took place outside of marriage created children who were “neglected” by their parents and were, therefore, a drain on the nation. On the other hand, legitimate off-spring became productive members of the commonwealth and made possible its expansion by conquest and colonization. So essential to the commonwealth was marriage that “prudent States” would “compel” their people “to live in lawful matrimony.” But, although Streater agreed with Aristotle that a man “not restrained by the yoke of Marriage” must be “a wicked wretch, or more then a man,” most likely to be without law and to raise the disorder of war, he never used marriage to define the change in a man’s status from natural subjection to political freedom. If this omission suggests that he opposed the householder franchise demanded by his Leveller contemporaries, it does not diminish his insistence that a wealthy, strong polity depended upon “lawful matrimony.”39 On the other hand, Asham firmly identified married men with the free subjects responsible for creating and defending the “Civill compact” of government made up of “several families thus depending on our selves.” The “selves” to which he referred specifically excluded


“the persons in each family relating to it selfe, the sonne not being borne in a free state, but in subjection which he owes for conservation.” The natural rights associated with political subjection, particularly the right to protect themselves and the persons and property within their households, were established “in marriage [which] obliges a man to leave all Relations to adhere to that of his private familie.” The “self” that Asham defines here is like the individuum of earlier writings, the condition of a man with a wife, children, servants, and, particularly, property. Although, Asham insists, property had at one time been held in common, after the Fall only those who had reached the “free state” after marriage were in a position to have access to it, to have “absolute and supreme right alike to [their] private persons and to all things, and having mutuum jus in both … were fitted for Mutuall compact.”40 Within the changing conditions of civil government, Asham holds on to earlier definitions of the person for whom political subjection is both a right and an obligation. But if marriage remains the mark that distinguishes a natural subject from a free political subject, Asham differentiates the rights and obligations of the latter from those that apply to the wife within the household. Magistrates may expect “filial” duty on the part of their subjects, but a wife’s condition has no analogue in political relationships. Women were, by “the laws of Nature in its simplicity excluded from all superiority,” since it was not “in Adams power to subject himselfe to Eve.” Asham explains this exclusion by reference to the mixed government that had evolved under Elizabeth, arguing that it was not the queen’s natural right as heir to her father that gave her power, but “the conjoynt sanctions of those who participate[d] with her in the supremacy of rights” and the “fiction of Law” that gave her “Kingly power.” Women were naturally subject to men, “excluded from all superiority” in the state unless the men who were free subjects of the state were willing to accept that “good things may lawfully be taken from a bad hand.”41 Thus, although Asham continued to view marriage as a step into freedom for a man, he agreed with many of his Royalist opponents that the original subjection of the wife to her own husband applied to all women in relation to all men. Men could claim natural freedom and, as full individuals political liberties; women existed only in natural subjection. *** One of the most fascinating aspects of Leviathan involves its odd sense of irony. For, in this work, Thomas Hobbes managed to invert in every


sense the views of those around him. As we saw in Chapter 2, he reasserted the absolute contract linking marriage to political government at the very moment that his contemporaries on both sides were abandoning it. Simultaneously, he denied the religious and spiritual qualities long associated with Protestant marriage by linking it, in the end, to the “kingdome of Darknesse.” In the realm of political subjection and the significance of the “oeconomic” unit, he does much the same thing. While monarchists, republicans, and “levellers” alike were naturalizing the subject condition of wives – and, in some cases, all women – Hobbes argued that, on the contrary, the role of a wife was not more “natural” than that of a political subject, but was solely an effect of conquest and contract. All people, male and female, were free in his imaginary state of nature, not distinguished by any natural inferiority based on gender, except, possibly, physical strength. However, in this condition of “all against all,” where there was no external power to protect and secure rights to the life, liberty, and property of the weak, might made right and, thus, women were easily conquered. There was, of course, an implicit or explicit consent to be ruled – women had consented to the absolute rule of one man to avoid the predation of all other men. And, having given up their natural freedom, wives and all other household servants could not participate in the creation of civil society and the political government that would protect their husbands’ lives, liberties, and properties from the conquest women had suffered. This was the work of their “masters,” the “fathers of families,” who would “father,” create by “Generation,” the sovereign power that would bear, from that point on, absolute authority in the commonwealth. Having begun from a condition of natural freedom rather than natural subjection, “fathers” had to consent to a contract that made them subjects of a Leviathan granted the authority to define their liberties, their rights of property, and even their religion within the boundaries of its realm. Perhaps it is not too great a leap to suggest that Hobbes makes wives of subjects as much as he makes subjects of wives. But there is one other extraordinary aspect of Hobbes’ use of household imagery. For he is one the earliest writers to use the term “oeconomy” to refer to an entity external to the household. His reference involves the organization and administration of the public treasury, including accounts of “Tributes, Impositions, Rents, [and] Fines.”42 The usage, from our twentieth-century perspective, is not extraordinary; nor is it far outside the range of contemporary thought, since productivity and orderliness were two of the essential qualities associated


with the “honest household.” Legitimate and respectable reproduction was, obviously, the other. In transferring the terminology from household to state, Hobbes was not creating a new science of political economy: his usage is confined to administrative practices, and elicits no sweeping political analysis. The terms “oeconomic” or “oeconomy” would, in regard to government, retain that definition for some decades. As always, there is something both old and new in Hobbes, however. If his conception of “oeconomic” ties political administration to household organization, it does so within an absolute social contract comparable to the contract that formed the first families. For the next generation of social contract theorists, however, the oeconomy that supported and maintained, that was, in fact, vitally necessary to the political contract would resemble much more the productive and reproductive households described by Asham and Streater.

6 “Life, Liberty and Estate”

Although the most famous crisis of the restored monarchy, the Exclusion Crisis, would involve questions of royal marriage and succession, the system of thinking that had connected the special status of a wife to the rights of subjects in the polity never fully reemerged during the Restoration. The image of a sponsus regni returned briefly in the coronation poems, but any chance that it might be fully revived suffered irreparable setback as an effect of royal behavior. For the new king’s sexual escapades made reflections upon his marriage to the state a source of irony for supporters as well as opponents. Charles II all but abandoned his marriage to Catherine of Braganza, a union that remained barren, while he gave his many mistresses at least fourteen illegitimate children. As one poet perceptively remarked, Charles represented “[t]he truest Pater Patriae e’re was yet, / For al, or most of’s subjects, does beget.”1 Such imagery de-legitimized even theories of natural fatherhood, while it gave natural liberty the appearance of unnatural license. When the potency of his illicit sexuality and the impotence of his marriage failed to produce a legitimate heir to replace his Catholic brother, James, Duke of York, there were few who would continue to bind king and nation in marriage, fewer who would find in that union a model for the subject’s accession to political rights in the state. Some of the earliest pamphlets of the new reign, however, drew subtly upon the idea that a wife’s role in the household was comparable to her husband’s subjection to the king. Robin Hood and His Crew of Souldiers, A Comedy acted at Nottingham on the day of His sacred Majesties Coronation – hardly a play, and without many of the basic structures of “comedy,” especially marriage – presents Robin, John, and their band meeting a Messenger who brings news of the coronation. 123


The new monarch’s generous offer of amnesty to all rebels who surrender peacefully to his rule, a promise first given in the Declaration of Breda before Charles’ return, is greeted with scorn, as these free men proclaim their rights and liberties and their power to ignore laws made only to prevent their good living. Surrender to government would be comparable to transformation into a weak “Country wench at a Churching.” This “ceremony of restoration and cleansing after the impurity and sequestration of child-bearing,” is, according to this pamphleteer, exactly what these free men of Nottingham require, for they have generated a society that exists outside divine and natural laws of subjection.2 As if to prove this with their own words, John and Robin reject their monarch with a parody of natural freedom, once so essential commonwealth political thought: Every brave soule is born a King … [B]ounteous nature ties not her selfe to rules of State, or the hard Laws that cruell men impose; she’s free in all her gifts … Why then should the severities of obedience, and the strait niceties of Law shackle this Noble soul, whom nature meant not onely free but soveraigne. Defenders of monarchy had always argued that only kings were born free from earthly subjection, a contention aimed primarily at the pretensions of the papacy; during the civil wars, this argument had been essential to criticism of parliamentary arguments for the natural freedom of all men. Thus, for the Messenger, this “boldnesse” is not equivalent to “glory,” but to “Rebellion,” worthy not of honor, but “shame.” Laws and kingly government were instituted by God and existed for the protection of the “Generous” from “th’ambitious and unruly nature” that enslaves men. Like the women who subject themselves humbly to purification and return to the church, men who are “virtuous and honest (which is the truest gallantry)” cannot lose freedom in obeying “the commands of [their] Prince, especially, when with his regality and Kingly power, are joyn’d the true embellishments of piety and real goodnesse.”3 Not until the outlaws have heard the story of Charles’ sufferings and losses are they finally purified, persuaded that their claims of freedom have been not the declarations of men but the lusts of beasts, “not differing from the fiery Lyon or the cruell Bear, but in [their] knowledge to doe greater ill.”4 Natural freedom, this pamphleteer argued, was an ideology of might over right, imposed by the powerful and opposed to the honor of true men who recognize the necessity of monarchy. But

“Life, Liberty and Estate” 125

the ideal represented is not natural subjection, as was so often proposed by many royalists during the civil wars and after, but a chivalric and nearly feudal order. This is appropriate, perhaps, to the setting of the pamphlet itself; however, it also suggests the principle of ancient law that would remain one of the most common elements of English political thought throughout the century.5 The emphasis on law also suggests a more rigorously male characterization of political status, limiting references to marriage or wives or women. Even the coronation, which had once bound together the condition of monarch and subjects through both consent and natural right and which still signified to some writers that the monarch had become the “sponsus regni, qui per anulum [was] espoused to his Realm,” has no special place in this pamphlet beyond the title in which the event is proclaimed. But if, in this pamphlet, marriage does not establish political rights for subjects or restore political order in the state, neither does subjection arise solely from the natural and divine authority granted to fathers.6 Thus, although the works of Robert Filmer were reprinted during the Exclusion Crisis, many Tories defended their monarch’s prerogative power primarily on the basis of ancient law and the protection it provided to “Life, Liberty, or Estate,” rather than natural subjection. Roger L’Estrange, a fiery royalist, argued in The Free-born Subject, or the Englishmans Birthright that men submitted to government in order to confirm their freedoms, for laws protected rights of property in both person and estate. No king could govern, however, if he was to be “rejudged” by his people for every action. No law could exist requiring a king to govern by the law. Those who claimed that monarchs existed solely for “Salus Populi” brought “a direct Dissolution of the Law, and a Prostitution of Authority to the Will of the Multitude.” These people, not the king, usurped government and endangered their own liberties, as a previous generation had rebelled against and eventually murdered their rightful monarch. Another pamphleteer defended the “divine right of kings” in part as an extension of the “Divine Power to Rule” that a father had over his son, and a master over his servant. But its author insisted that this power included “Obligations” that, in the case of the “Kings of England,” involved “Laws … for the preservation of all the Rights and Liberties of the People, as well as those of the Crown.” This balance between divine right and parliamentary law was, according to Tim Harris, politically practical for Tories during the 1680s if they were to “recapture the middle ground from the Whigs,” negate ideas of natural freedom, support the legal rights of succession, and defend the Church of England established by law. Theoretically, their


ideal of a natural subjection to divinely ordained kings, whose rights were simultaneously limited and confirmed by law, seemed to banish wives and women from political relevance.7 However, as petitioning in support of Parliament proclaimed “the rights and liberties of the people,” critics of this popular undertaking responded with updated “parliaments of women.” One version offered a statement of grievances and a list of the representatives to be called on the basis of an “Ancient Writ of Queen Mabs” found in the “Records of Utopia.” The pamphlet both parodies contemporary petitions, and, with its opening phrases, recalls the divisive ideology of the civil wars and the extent to which fears of class disorder could be given meaning in the overturning of gender roles: Forasmuch as by the Laws of Nature, Women have a great share in the Creation, and that they eat, drink, sleep, talk, and do all the other Deeds of Nature, and natural Acts, as well as Man, having … seen the vile miscarriages of the Lordly and domineering Creature, Man, who hath very tyrannically excluded them from both Arts and Arms … [and] have not ordered their Affairs to the content of all .. have, with one Consent … resolved to congregate themselves, and to meddle with the Affairs of the Common-wealth. All groups in society are to be represented by this female parliament, including “The Lady Gold-Chain,” “Madam Court-Ape,” and several tradeswomen for the city of London, along with representatives from the universities – among these “Mrs. Syllogism” and “Mrs. Ignorance” – from the Inns of Court, and even from the “two Play-Houses.” They are not primarily disobedient or disorderly wives nor do they voice the perspectives of a particularly class. Instead, like the women from Interregnum pamphlets, they are representatives of a factional group, in this case political rather than religious. In the immediate context of Exclusion, their petition for natural freedom undermines both the validity of a traditional political practice and a radical political ideology. Like Robert Filmer’s virgin who was born as free as her brothers, these female petitioners discredit the claim that all men are capable of participating in the government of civil society, of “meddl[ing] with the Affairs of the Common-wealth.”8 These and other pamphlets from this period suggest that the office of a wife, and even the status of a husband, had only limited significance in debates over political rights by the late seventeenth century, at least for supporters of a monarch whose marital relationship was scarcely


exemplary. However, the men who petitioned for parliaments during the Exclusion Crisis, like many of their Commonwealth predecessors, also limited comparison between the liberties of political subjects and the rights of a wife as fellow governor in the household. Her status remained largely distinct from his, bound within a contract incomparable to the political contract by which his liberties and property were protected and the salus populi, the common good, was ensured. Nevertheless, moderate and radical Whigs, in their opposition to absolute and arbitrary government, continued to draw upon an ideal that connected “fathers of families” with the founders of civil society and political government. Only these men were qualified to participate in the franchise or, at the very least, to contribute their voices and services to the government of the kingdom. However, if there was general agreement that “fathers of families” had specific rights and liberties with regard to the social contract of government, there was, even between close political associates, rarely full agreement about what it meant to be a “father of a family,” particularly in relation to marriage and property rights. *** Given the early seventeenth-century definition of an “individual” and its relationship to marriage, reproduction, coverture, and political status, most modern interpretations of “property” in the works of John Locke have ignored the essential connection between the “oeconomic” unit and household conceptions of property.9 Social contract theorists like Locke and Sidney worked within a political context that had shifted dramatically over the course of the century; but the social implications of marriage and its cultural practices had changed only marginally. If, as David Cressy has shown, the aristocracy increasingly chose to celebrate nuptials without participation of the larger community, the middling and laboring classes continued their traditional religious and public ceremonies, even during the Interregnum when such celebrations were discouraged.10 Furthermore, despite the expansion of commerce and trade, the development of new agricultural techniques and organization, and the emergence of separate financial institutions, property remained primarily a family issue, created within a family business or estate, expanded through marriage and the rights of coverture attendant on it, and passed from one generation within a family to the next. To speak of an “economy” was to speak of a household well into the eighteenth century; to use “economical” to refer to


other institutions, as Hobbes had done, was to praise their organization and administration of persons and properties. Thus, to fully understand conceptions of political subjection for those who refused to accept the “natural” authority of kings, but who argued for the liberties of “fathers of families,” a brief detour into social history seems appropriate. The wealthiest and most powerful members of the political nation, in particular, dealt with their property primarily in terms of family and inheritance through generations. Although wives could retain portions of their separate property through equity or chancery courts, in most circumstances, their husbands acquired full control over any income, moveables or land. Married women’s property would not be protected in statute law until 1882; even then, wives would gain “equity, not equality” with their husbands.11 Furthermore, by mid-century, the “fathers of families” within the landed classes had been given a powerful legal device, the strict settlement, which would simultaneously secure their landed estates for future generations and leave them with absolute and independent control over very little of their property. Under common law, land descended by male primogeniture; historians of English law have long argued that, for centuries, fathers had repeatedly attempted to provide for younger sons and daughters who suffered under this harsh regimen. Eileen Spring has turned this argument on its head, however, by showing that the primary concern of landowners was not to provide support for younger siblings of a male heir, but was, instead, to ensure the “postponement” of heiresses-atlaw.12 These daughters, who by definition lacked a male sibling, were entitled in common law to inherit equal portions of the family’s landed estate. This on its own was undesirable, and could be devastating, dividing the family’s wealth and, thus, diluting its social and political influence. In addition, from at least the fourteenth century, only males could inherit most newly-created titles; thus land could pass to daughters, while a title passed to a collateral male, raising the possibility of an impoverished, landless nobility. An end to this practice, destructive to the power and influence of the leading figures in the kingdom, had been sought for centuries, but was only made secure by the invention of the strict settlement. This legal formula has commonly been credited to Orlando Bridgman, whose earliest documents date from the late 1640s and were designed specifically to address the heiress-at-law. Made at the marriage of a male heir, the strict settlement provided limited portions for younger children and a jointure for the widow. If the marriage did not produce a male heir, the settlement


set aside larger portions for any heiresses-at-law (who, under common law, would have divided the estate) and returned the bulk of the estate to the nearest collateral male, who also inherited any family title. An extremely useful device – it would long remain a staple of aristocratic estate management – the strict settlement offered at least three obvious advantages. First, estates could not be divided among heiresses nor separated from noble status, thus strengthening the long-term standing of a family, politically, socially, and financially. The fact that the English nobility dominated national politics into the early years of the twentieth century proves the effectiveness of this family strategy. Second, a widow, for whom jointure had long become a substitute for dower, would have strictly limited claims on patrimonial lands, proportional to the dowry she had brought to her marriage. And, finally, no overly indulgent father would be able to decrease the value of the estate by providing too generously for well-loved daughters or younger sons. As Spring points out, the strict settlement strengthened the patriline as it weakened the power of individual husbands and fathers over the patrilineal estate by determining, at the time of marriage and before the birth of any off-spring, the rules of inheritance. The same fathers who could no longer be too indulgent were also unable to manipulate disobedient or dissolute children through control of the purse-strings. The strict settlement, of course, had its greatest impact on members of the landed aristocracy and gentry, a tiny proportion of the population, though undoubtedly possessed of a plurality of wealth and political power. As always, the middling classes of town and country also sought a “good match,” but for them, marriage was less about securing the future patriline and more about establishing an economically viable household. “Marrying well” continued to be the main means of transferring property, occupational status, personal contacts, money, tools, livestock, and women [sic] across generations and kin groups … For many young men, their wives’ dowries would constitute the most important infusion of capital they would ever receive …13 In a society where upward mobility was difficult and even maintaining social position a struggle, the criteria of a good portion remained an exceptionally important qualification, for young women as well as young men. Family connections, both personal and financial, could revive or stabilize a failing business; lack of such support could lead to


indebtedness, poverty, or worse. An “equal” marriage for the middling and laboring classes remained one to which both spouses contributed, in property, skills, and kinship. It was also a marriage in which the husband and father expected to govern according to the principles still set out in the marriage service and to have absolute control over the bulk of the family property. Two contradictory images of the wife emerge from these historical perspectives. In one, the wife contributes almost equally to the financial stability of the household, accepting the rule of her husband and his control of her property while helping to ensure domestic order. Her daughters will be provided portions, like their brothers, in order to expand the family’s financial and social connections and, thereby, increase the security of all its members. In the other, the wife – especially after she is widowed – and her daughters are a drain upon the patrilineal estate, especially when land and title revert to a collateral heir or a son by an earlier marriage. This latter imagery sometimes appears even in modern histories of the European family, which condemn heiresses-at-law for their excessive portions or decry the widow who holds rights to both her original marital jointure and a dower payment from lands acquired during her marriage.14 Neither wifely image fully meshes with the complex social experience of living families. However, they are indirectly reflected in political contract theory, in which the property of the household more than the authority of fathers define political status. No longer politically significant as a “fellow governor,” she remains valuable to the oeconomy of her family as a connecting link between father and son, whose property relationship, in whatever its form, builds and maintains civil society. Thus, marriage itself was never fully antithetical to the paternal bond nor to filial rights; social contract theorists were quite willing to use the marriage contract and the rights of mothers to limit the authority of fathers. Furthermore, as Rachel Weil argues, the family as a whole was of great importance to Whig theorists, who saw it not only as “an institution in which children were produced and cared for, and … through which the transfer of property between generations was organized,” but as a resource for ensuring the expansion of national wealth, population, and commerce.15 Thus, the property rights of a household head remained significant to arguments about the political liberties of “fathers of families,” and their sons. James Tyrrell, for example, associated men’s natural freedom specifically with the right of choice in marriage, a connection more common in Jacobean political tracts, household guides, and plays than in Restoration pamphlets and treat-


ises. Marriage was a sign of the original freedom ordained by God, Tyrrell argued, and neither Adam nor any father after him could prevent or force the marriages of sons and daughters. This was not, however, a revival of Bacon’s proclamation that life, liberty, and dower were basic to English law, for Tyrrell’s conception of property was simultaneously grounded in the oeconomic unit and distinct from rights of marriage. A father could not arbitrarily determine whether or not his children would marry, nor force a particular union, because marriage had pre-existed civil society. His power did, however, extend over the household’s property, since the need to protect “Propriety” had first caused “fathers of families” to submit to political government and the powers of a magistrate. A father could, therefore, disinherit a son for marrying against his wishes, “since every man is free to dispose of his own.” The son, in turn, was free to choose for himself “which he valued most, his own Liberty, or his Fathers kindness, and the hopes of his share of his Estate after his death.” The right to marry on the basis of free choice was essential to the legitimate reproduction of society, since the contract of marriage was the only means to legitimate “Generation”; but the contract that created political government and protected property permitted fathers to distribute their wealth with the same freedom.16 Freedom of choice in marriage was also vital, Tyrrell argued, because marriage moved young men one step closer to membership in the body politic: only the “Fathers of Families, having Wives, Children, and Slaves under their Domestic Government” had any interest in the creation or continuance of the polity. Although the authority the father wielded over his household was in no way comparable to political power, his success in organizing, ordering, educating, and disciplining the members of his oeconomic unit proved him worthy of participating in the polity. The viewpoint Tyrrell expressed here seems to have been shared by a number of his contemporaries, particularly among the commercial and trading classes. For them, according to Margaret Hunt, political virtue was not the classical republican one of the honorable citizen warrior. It was, instead, a “prudential morality” that required the proper ordering of families and “true independence of mind” based upon “diligence, thrift, chastity, domesticity, respect for contracts and rationality.”17 Tyrrell insisted that the “fathers of families” who were incapable of meeting these standards did not deserve political status. Such men proved that, although men were “commonly stronger both in body and mind than” women, they could also be inferior, as when they were drunks or fools or madmen. In


those circumstances, the wife would be forced to rule in the household in order to ensure its preservation, as any “individual Free-man” had the “power to dispose of his actions for his own preservation and the common good of mankind.”18 She could not, however, replace him as a political subject, for her rights in the household were the effect of a pre-political contract, marriage. Tyrrell granted only one absolute marital, pre-political power to husbands: control over his wife’s body. This power was fully consistent with Tyrrell’s claim that marriage itself was a natural freedom essential to legitimate reproduction, for only children born into households headed by a father assured of his rights in them would add to the wealth and security of the kingdom. Free choice and consent to marriage were more likely to ensure this than enforcement of a father’s arbitrary will. In his justification and explanation for this apparent dichotomy, Tyrrell drew upon the political prejudices of his countrymen as well as the colonial experience of Europeans who had found in the “new world” societies in which private property as they understood it did not exist. For the “West Indian,” argued Tyrrell, civil society had not yet delegated to the magistrate powers of life and death because there was no “Propriety.” In this “state of nature,” however, the husband nonetheless held reproductive rights through marriage, and thus the “power to kill both his Wife and the Adulterer, if taken in the act.”19 Tyrrell points out that such barbarity had not always been decisively ended by the establishment of civil society and political government, as proved in the laws of Spain and Italy. Of course, these were Catholic countries and, by definition in Protestant England, subjected to arbitrary government, where the lustful self-interest of monarchs, not the common good, held sway. In any civil society, however, legitimate reproduction was in the interests of all “Free-men,” since illegitimate, abandoned children contributed, not to the wealth of society, but to its burden. Furthermore, only legitimate sons could take on the “oeconomic” responsibilities and rights of property that defined the political subject. If Tyrrell’s “father of a family” bears some resemblance to the individuum of the early seventeenth century, it is one in which property has clearly replaced marriage as the foundation for civil society and political government, primarily as a way to differentiate forms of authority. Tyrrell’s contemporary and friend, John Locke, by dissociating rights of marriage from natural freedom, more fully emphasized the connection between the political subject and a man’s right to property in his person and labor.20 Like Tyrrell, he argued that the purpose


of “political society” was the protection and preservation of a man’s property, “that is his life, liberty and estate.” He, too, drew upon the tradition that “fathers of families” had contracted with one another to establish civil society and political government to protect the “common interest and property” of each household. Locke was willing to limit the authority of husbands in the marriage contract, as he limited the authority of fathers by declaring the right of mothers. Filmer’s fathers and kings possessed absolute dominion and authority as a result of “Generation.” The only absolutes in Locke’s state of nature were those that gave each “[m]an being born” a title to perfect freedom, and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any other man or number of men in the world, … [and] by nature a power not only to preserve his property, that is his life, liberty and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men, but to judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even with death itself in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it. Unlike Tyrrell, Locke insisted that the power of life and death existed only between men with regard to protection of property. It was not connected in any way with the authority that a husband could wield over his wife, or a parent over his or her children in the state of nature, but belonged to each “man” in relation to other “men” for protecting and preserving property rights. “[P]olitical society,” therefore, came into existence only when “every one of the members hath quitted this natural power [to protect his property and] resigned it up into the hands of the community.”21 Such a civil society incorporated into itself all the elements necessary for protecting property, including law, unbiased judges, and the power to enforce punishment, to which each member had to submit. Locke argued that rights to property distinguished “paternal” power from “political” power, and “political” from absolute or “despotical” power. The “power of the father” over his child was natural, but it was different from his right to dispose of and protect his own property; it was not an absolute power, for it was limited by the right God possessed as “maker of us all.” The child was the property of God and was born with the same rights to property as the father. “Paternal power” gave the father no right to take or sell his child’s property – “life, liberty, and estate” – only the authority “to manage” it “where


minority [made] the child incapable.” “Absolute monarchy,” on the other hand, made private property unviable, since the power held by every man in the state of nature became the right of a single ruler, against whose will no law, no judge, no punishment could bring redress. If political society existed for the purpose of protecting property, the “despotical” power typical of absolute monarchy was exercised “over such as have no property at all.”22 Locke was certainly not the first theorist to make property and its protection central to the foundation and purpose of political society. But even during the civil wars, opponents of natural subjection had envisioned the political subject’s property primarily as an extension of his reproductive authority within the household, as well as provisioning and protection, while Locke developed ideas of property that distinguished it from all natural relations of authority. If this was not “possessive individualism,” it nonetheless marked a significant shift in the definition of an “individual,” as well as that of a subject in the political state. As he had separated the terms of the marriage contract from the social contract, Locke also defined the political subject in a manner that marginalized the issue of his marital status. Marriage as a contractual bond involved pre-political relations of authority and was unnecessary for acquiring the property rights that lay at the foundation of political rights. As an unmarried man himself, Locke may have side-stepped the issue of marital status simply for personal reasons. However, in defining property as both inherited estate and creative labor, he confirmed that marriage was essential to any civil society. Marriage not only ensured legitimate reproduction and increase in the productive population, as Tyrrell had insisted, it also established the primary unit of society in which the education and maturation of the next generation of political subjects took place. If, Locke argued, the marriage contract could be ended, it should nonetheless remain in force as long as there were children in the family who required nourishment of mind and body, the obligation of parents, not just to their off-spring, but to God. For, although sons held rights of property even in their minority, they could not participate in the social contract unless and until they had reached maturity, physically and intellectually, and thereby left behind the authority of father and mother. Ironically, therefore, Locke’s theory of the political subject, which abandoned marital status as a mark of accession to political rights, depended upon private marriages to create the public members of the polity, who would be able to labor productively for the common good.


But Locke’s conception of the political subject also made the relationship between fathers and sons more essential to the creation and maintenance of civil society than had Robert Filmer. Filmer had focused upon a fatherly authority that constituted the basic unit of a pyramid of authority and subjection in human society, including, especially in his early work, the subjection of wives to their husbands. A son was simply one species of subject, the one most useful to Filmer’s task of defining political authority as “natural” to humankind. For Locke, on the other hand, the only relationship essential to the formation of the state was the bond of property existing between men as a product of labor or as inheritance rights between father and son. It was not the son’s subjection that was important, but the rights he held, with his brothers, to the property descending from their father and the education his parents could and should provide. Locke’s insistence that fathers could not deprive their sons of any property designated to them suggests that he was fully prepared to accept the implications of the strict settlement on fatherly power over estates, for such generational property rights were necessary, along with the productive power every man possessed in his mind and body, to establish each new generation of political subjects. Thus, although Richard Ashcraft and Mark Goldie have persuasively demonstrated that John Locke was far more radical politically than most of his friends and contemporaries, his conception of property rights were not antithetical to the interests of the landed. Further, the concepts of subjection he set out resembled in many respects the ideals of an emerging commercial class, the “liberal republicans” recently analyzed by Steve Pincus. These men were not classical republicans like Milton or Harrington, who had “idealized agrarian commonwealths” and conceived of political power as “dependent on virtuous citizen armies, not on the state’s possession of economic wealth.” Those men had condemned commercial interests as destructive forces within the commonwealth; Milton had even blamed merchants and trade for the fall of Commonwealth government. “Liberals,” on the other hand, “celebrated merchants as the most useful members of society … [and] believed that the basis of economic well-being was … human labor.” Private interest, for these men, was “not individualistic, but national,” contributing to the strength and wealth of the commonwealth and promoting the “common good.” If, as Pincus argues, Henry Parker and John Streater were early promoters of a commercial republic, Locke’s insistence on a more general conception of property as both labor and inheritance suggests that he was not so fully bound to one form of productivity and wealth


over another. However, his emphasis on the rearing of children in the household, particularly the responsibility of father and mother to their education, shows that he was interested in far more than the security of property rights. Locke emphasized the stability and health of each “oeconomy,” productively and reproductively, as a way to ensure population increase and wealth in the polity.23 Pincus argues persuasively that Restoration liberals supported a “new political economy” concerned with how the state promoted the common good, rather than an unbridled economic individualism. His use of the term “political economy” seems to me particularly appropriate, since Locke and others granted political liberties to “fathers of families” and located the “oeconomy,” not in the productive forces of the nation at large, but in the household. However, when contemporaries employed “oeconomic” to refer to an entity outside the household, they were usually defining a system of organization and order, not a particular form of production. In that sense, the household provided a model for the polity that was not simply “economic”: well into the eighteenth century, even “[e]lites measured status and merit by considerations that included how one ordered one’s household, and how well one was served.”24 But if this system of order did not involve merely property, neither did it reflect the same pyramid of authority relationships that had bound the household “oeconomy” to the political household through marriage when Sir Francis Bacon praised “life, liberty, and dower.” Thus, if the liberal republicans in Pincus’ analysis defined a “new” political economy, its innovation was as much about the redefinition of political authority as it was about productive property. *** The dissociation of marital authority from kingly authority, and the shift from marriage toward property as a sign of political status, has led me to reconsider a long-discredited historical thesis, the “rise of the companionate marriage.” If social and cultural practice did not change significantly over the century; and if measures of “equality” still referred to prospective spouses, not the marital relationship, it would seem that Lawrence Stone’s analysis of family, like his “crisis of the aristocracy,” is pure mythology. However, there are elements of the change in marriage Stone explored if we shift analysis from relationships and ideals within marriage to the political connections that once framed the bonds between husband and wife, king and kingdom, particularly in sermons and household tracts, where they are most common. For most


Restoration clerics, old ideas were in many ways the best. For example, William Secker’s A Wedding Ring Fit for the Finger: or the salve of Divinity on the sore of Humanity stressed most of the same requirements of wifely subjection and obedience typical of earlier household manuals. A wife must be “the help,” “so much and no more,” for she was made “for the mans comfort,” not he for “the Womans command.” Secker agreed with the traditional view that within the boundaries of the household, a wife may be a “Soveraign” in her husband’s absence, as the moon shines in the absence of the sun, but must “be subject in [his] presence.” Like his predecessors, Secker had a very ambivalent view of the joining of properties as a goal for marriage. A wife, he insisted, was a “Companion” who should not be treated as a “drudg,” nor joined to him to be a servant rather than a wife: It’s a sad spectacle to see a Virgin sold with her own money unto slavery, when Services are better than Marriages; the one receives Wages, whilst the other buyes their fetters.25 From the clerical standpoint, despite the rising popularity of the strict settlement, the joining of land to land rather than heart to heart undermined the very purpose of marriage, and destroyed the foundation of an orderly household. Yet for Secker, the bond established by marriage had implications only for the household itself, not the kingdom. A sermon of the same title from 1632 makes clear some of the shifts in attitude. In the earlier sermon, the wife gave a “Crowne to her husband,” an idea, as we have seen, associated with his accession to membership in the polity and the coronation of the monarch. In Secker’s sermon, the “Crown of glory” was set “upon the head of Matrimony” by the “whole Trinity” through the institution of the true church.26 In 1632, Adam had “no Paradise without Eve” and was “imperfect without a wife”; in 1661, his dominion over creation was his Coronation: Though he was the Emperour of the earth, and the Admiral of the Seas, yet in Paradise without a Companion, though he was truely happy yet he was not fully happy; Though he had enough for his board, yet he had not enough for his bed.27 The earlier cleric had criticized the political tracts of the French Catholic theorist, Jean Bodin, because they excluded wives from “honourable service” as “a builder, in regard of the Church and


Common weale”; though he had insisted that she must not work in “publike office,” by her office in the household, “the Magistrate rules, the Minister teaches, the husband-man labours, the Physician cures, the Lawyer pleades, and the Souldier fights.” In contrast, Secker, while he admitted that “the world would be a desart without a consort,” gave no significance to the wife’s office outside the boundaries of the household, for herself, her husband, or the commonwealth. The physical boundary of the household itself now fully contained not only the activities of a wife, but the meaning of her place for society. She should not contend with nor alienate her husband, but should train his children to avoid “damnation” and stay at home to increase his “prosperity,” If marriage was the first society, for Secker its only significance outside the realm of the household was to confirm that orderly society required the submission of women to the rule of men: Our ribs were not ordained to be our Rulers. They are not made of the head to claim superiority, but out of the side to be content with equality. They desert the Author of nature, that invert the order of nature.28 More fully than his predecessor, William Secker represented the ideals of what Stone called “companionate” marriage, not because Secker defined a more loving and “equal” marriage, but because in his sermon, the authority of a husband was so thoroughly distinguished from the authority of a king. Secker’s conception of equality made a wife no more equal outside marriage than she had been earlier in the century, nor less obligated to submit to the rule of her husband within the household. But her obedience was no longer that of a subject to a king, nor was her union with her husband at any point connected to political rights. These distinctions provide the appearance of greater companionability in marriage, even as they prevent a wife from claiming even a secondary role in the commonwealth through her subordinate government of a household. Wives continued to be irrevocably separated from the political and public realm, even as their household “office” confirmed their natural inferiority to men. *** The transformation of political subjection away from marriage toward property-holding thus redefined the relationship of women to their social world. Although the wielding of political power had never been


accessible to them, save in the unusual rights of a queen, their accession to the office of a wife had, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, bound them, through their husbands, into the system of orderly government in the commonwealth. Wives were, after all, responsible for a productive and reproductive order within the house that directly supported their husbands’ participation in productive and governing enterprises outside it. Further, husbands held those rights in the polity largely as an effect of the marriages that made them heads of oeconomic governments. From the late 1640s through the 1680s, however, political and social conflict converged in such a way that the traditional conception of authority as equivalent and mutually reinforcing between household and state came to be seen as destructive to all lines of hierarchy and order. The logic of that system fell apart during a period when women called for freedom of conscience, and men of the artisan classes claimed not simply membership in the polity, but franchise rights on the basis of house-holding. Slowly and unsystematically, as the contract of marriage was distinguished from the contract of political government, the individual that had incorporated the productive and reproductive rights of a husband was increasingly referred to as a man of “estate,” in person and in heritable property. For women, the realm of the household that had always been their primary space became more fully associated with reproduction and discriminated from production. When, in the eighteenth century, the English feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, sought political citizenship for women, she justified her demand within a value system described by Locke, in which the creative labor of a mother involved the nurture and education of sons and daughters she had born. This, not her office as a wife, gave her an interest in the governing of the polity and rights of citizenship. In the late seventeenth century, however, literate women still often explained their roles in the commonwealth in terms of their marriage. As others have noted, the structure of women’s autobiography during the second half of the seventeenth century tended to involve marriage as a central theme, their stories beginning with or, like any comedy or fairy tale, ending with a wedding. The focus is scarcely surprising, since this was one of the few critical events in the life of any woman at the time. However, in the memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshawe, her marriage is drawn irrevocably into another layer of her life experience, the service of her husband, Sir Richard Fanshawe, to Charles I and, later, Charles II.29 Her history begins in heraldry, with her own family writ large, each ancestor – first patrilineal, then matrilineal – described according to wealth, honors, marriage connections and, particularly, service to


the monarch. This conception of the status of family and its essential connection to royal service then structures her history of Sir Richard. For, as this is the memoir of her marriage and of her devoted service to a beloved husband, it is, even more, the story of his devotion and service to his monarchs. This association between her role as wife and his as royal tutor, councillor, and ambassador binds the disparate and apparently disconnected tales from her life together. Sir Richard’s duties as her husband often stand at odds with his simultaneous duties as king’s subject and servant. In one notable episode, he teaches his wife to accept that he must keep some areas of his royal service secret from her, as he accepts that he cannot always share his monarch’s secret confidences. Sir Richard’s death during return from service as Spanish ambassador for Charles II moves Lady Fanshawe to her first political criticism. Quoting her husband’s own translation of Horace, she gives him the role of the noble and loyal courtier, Lollio, then laments both her own sins and the deceits of “wicked men,” who had betrayed him through vile and false rumours and who would, eventually, deny her economic support in adversity.30 These might, of course, be only the petty complaints of an aging widow whose status and security had suffered as a result of civil war and exile. But her harshest criticism was not directed toward the Cromwellian government that had caused much of her suffering, but against Sir Richard’s fellow exiles, including, indirectly, Charles II, implying that she viewed her husband’s “husband” as a poor reflection of her own. For, Sir Richard Fanshawe had betrayed no man, not even his enemies, while Charles had allowed the worst of these to destroy his loyal servant. The comparison is also, of course, between Lady Fanshawe – who was, if not always the best of wives, at least an honest and honorable one – and the dishonorable men in the king’s service. Like Mary Astell, Lady Fanshawe held a view of the connection between marital subjection and political subjection that ran counter to the one shared by most of her male contemporaries, Whig or Tory. For her, household and kingdom, wife and political subject, remained bound together in mutually reinforcing obligations involving loving authority and obedience, protection and service. This system of thinking, that had dominated the first half of the seventeenth century, also defined tyranny in terms of these relationships. Marriage was the model for rightful government, and kings transformed themselves into tyrants when they usurped a subject’s marital rights through some act of lust or greed. How this idea changed – how “rape” became “rapine” – is the subject of Part III.

Part III Tyranny, Chastity and Liberty


7 “As David’s dealing with Uriah”

Early seventeenth-century English thinkers drew upon the imagery of marital chastity in household government and political government to represent both the peculiar condition of English subjects and the special religious and political role of their kingdom. Ideally, by maintaining chastity in marriage, each householder ensured his own honorable position at its head – his right to claim liberties as a member of the polity – and confirmed the political, religious, and social order of his community and nation. Chaste marriage was a means to prevent fornication and the expansion of “stews” and other centers of social disruption; more importantly, it exemplified the marriage of Christ to his true Protestant church, in contrast to the irreligious polygamy alleged against sectarians and to the unnatural celibacy of papists. Marital chastity was, thus, a reflection of and foundation for the Church of England and the royal government that preserved it. Although the association of chastity with marriage rather than celibacy was typical of a European-wide Protestant perspective beginning with the reforms of Martin Luther, English writers used the imagery not only to distinguish their church from the evils of Catholicism, but their kingdom from the cruel and despotic governments they associated with Catholic monarchs and the pope. These same English writers defined tyranny itself in terms of infringement of and an assault on the chastity of marriage. For England and its church, such tyranny threatened to overturn or subvert the marriages between king and kingdom, between the true church and its members. Within the kingdom itself, the legitimacy of royal government depended upon respect for the chastity of its loyal subjects’ households; any assault on the marriage bond that created oeconomic order threatened also the stability of the polity. 143


When the authors of household manuals and political tracts spoke of chastity in the early seventeenth century, they usually did not mean virginity, though this was quite obviously expected of the unmarried woman and even, on occasion, the unmarried man. Instead, chastity was most often associated with the “honorable” institution of marriage, which had brought divine blessing upon the original ordinance of God to be fruitful and multiply, and thereby created the first and most perfect human government. In Of the Church, Richard Field even insisted that virginity was not a virtue because, if it were, then married folkes could not have all vertues: nay, because all vertues are connexed, not having this of virginitie they could have none. Besides that, no vertue is lost but by sinne, whereas virginitie may be lost by that which is no sinne, as by the Act of Matrimonie. Married men and women were able to maintain “chastitie and puritie” because marriage transformed the sin of fornication into the ordinance of God to be fruitful and multiply.1 Playwright and humorist Thomas Heywood agreed, arguing that “the name and vertue of virginitie extendeth” even to “those that be married” because “everie chaste soule, which abstaineth from things unlawfull and forbidden, keepeth it still.”2 Identifying the English nation with the chaste marriage that created the original bond of government implied its close association with God’s first and eternal hopes for humankind. But it also offered a pattern and foundation for building a society intended for his service. Chaste marriage was “a Remedy against fornication, adultery, and all unlawfull Lusts,” a means to “possesse” the “vessels” of the body “in holiness and honour” while ensuring “a godly seed preserved on earth,” the creation and reproduction of a godly society.3 William Whately considered all social disorder to be the effect of fornication; marriage had been instituted by “[t]he Law of God, the Law of Nature, the Lawes of all well-ordered societies” to ensure that reproduction established order rather than disrupted it: Doth [whoredom] not utterly overthrow the orderly societie of a Common-wealth? Doth it not transforme men into the savage rudenesse of the bruit creatures, where no young almost can know his sire? When children were born outside wedlock, they and their legitimate brothers and sisters, who would not know their own siblings, were

“As David’s dealing with Uriah” 145

subject to incest, unnatural lusts, and damnation by the laws of God. Furthermore, living outside a father’s oeconomic government, they could not be brought up to respect the king and his politic government. Whately’s view that desertion could be grounds for divorce because it invited each party to commit adultery – an act he equated with “whoredom” – brought him trouble from church authorities, but it was consistent with his argument that only chaste marriage made possible the reproduction of a society without disruption of lines of authority in household and state. For him, adultery was “a capitall crime” because the adulterer was someone “that for filthy pleasure sake, would adventure at once to trample under foote, all the authoritie of God and man and all Governours.”4 It was, therefore, both heretical and treasonous. Sir Francis Bacon, in his utopian fantasy New Atlantis, presented a similar vision of a society founded on an ideal of chaste marriage that was not simply “ordained a remedy for unlawful concupiscence” nor useful only for reproduction. His utopian man respected and honored marriage and thus “greatly esteem[ed] children” and, by ensuring the renewal of the family, brought honor and wealth to himself and his country. For Bacon, who viewed married men as the most stable and loyal subjects, this fantasy world presented a sad contrast to that of Europeans, who chose “rather a libertine and impure single life, than to be yoked in marriage.” The most important ceremony in his imagined utopia was one that celebrated fatherhood and the authority embodied in it. But Bacon made clear that such authority was possible only because chaste marriage, directed toward the recreation of social order, was the ideal for all members of the community. Those who avoided marriage for celibate life failed to serve the needs of the state of which they were a part. Those who preferred to frequent stews, according to Bacon, saw marriage as a contract for “alliance, or portion, or reputation” rather than God’s law, a means to disrupt status and social order and, thus, usurp power illegitimately. Bacon’s representation of marriage in Atlantis drew upon both classical and Judaeo-Christian traditions, for Aristotle’s vision of husband and wife as the basis for more complex authority relations in society is articulated by a Jewish native of this utopia, whose ideas of chastity in marriage are, ironically, more rigorous than those Bacon finds in Christian Europe. Here, Bacon represents marriage as a foundation for authority and order in the state; elsewhere he had termed it a natural right. Like many others, he defined marriage as the basic foundation of the individuum, the political subject; an assault on it would, therefore,


be interpreted as an attack on legitimate lines of government and the liberties of subjects.5 For clerics, the qualitative value of chaste marriage was, of course, its resemblance to the bond between Christ and his true church. William Gouge developed the implications of this connection in the first treatise of his Domesticall Duties, where he insisted in the very structure of his “exposition of Ephesians” that an understanding of the meaning and purpose of this bond would clarify all questions of religious and political order. Submission and subjection were required of every wife, as the church was to obey always the commands and wishes of its head and Savior. But her subjection as a wife was an obligation owed to her “owne husband as may be approved of the Lord,” and not to every man, as some sectarians argued: Here by the way note the foolish collection of Adamites, Familists, and such like licentious libertines, who from the generall words which the Apostle useth (men and women) inferre that all women are as wives to all men … Which beastly opinion … is contrary to the current of Scripture, and to the ancient law of mariage. By obeying her head in “indifferent things” and keeping her body chaste for her husband, the wife accomplished two things necessary for an orderly society. Because “wives [were] the fountaine from whence all other degrees [did] spring: and therefore ought first to be cleansed,” her obedience in the office of wife set the pattern for all other godly subjection in household, state, and church.6 Further, the wife who obeyed her own husband, the representative of Christ, differentiated her household from those that questioned the heads of church and state through their misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the bond of marriage. Gouge viewed the husband’s status as far more difficult and complicated than a wife’s, reflecting as it did upon the headship of Christ. For, although a husband’s prerogatives were greater, implying rights of nearly absolute rule, they necessitated greater obligations and duties, in particular, that “by his provident care he may be as a saviour to” his wife. Thus, a husband was to “love” her, as she was to “obey” him; and that love was to be both spiritual and physical, expressing her subordinate, but indivisible, condition as “his bodie”: [A] wife is not only as a mans bodie, namely, his outward flesh, but as his person, his bodie and soule. She is as his bodie, because she


was taken out of his bodie: and because she is set under him, as his bodie under his head. She is as himselfe … In which respect a wife is commonly called a mans second selfe.7 The oeconomic body formed of persons and property into the “individual” was also a sacred body, like the indivisible body of Christ and his church. It could only be divided if the chastity of bodies that it required was violated. For Gouge, the most dangerous force acting against the headship and chastity of household, church, and state was the papacy, which undermined marriage in two ways. In his view, first of all, the pope and his adherents “oppose[d] chastitie and matrimonie one to another, as two contraries,” and, to support their arguments against the marriage of priests, insisted that “Mariage is a living in the flesh, a sowing to the flesh, a pollution of the flesh.” Their view benefitted those who were capable of living a single, virgin life, but condemned all who could not “containe” to sin and damnation. In contrast, the “lawfull and honest use of mariage” as taught by the English church and the ancient fathers, made it possible for those who were unable to live as virgins to maintain their chastity nonetheless, ensuring the legitimacy of children as well as the godliness of their households. Second, in its preference for celibacy, the papacy demeaned the very mystery of marriage as a reflection of the headship of Christ to his church, the most visible sign of which was the pope’s claim to the role of husband assigned to Christ in the title “Supreme head of the whole Church.” “Till the Pope of Rome can shew so [sic] good reason for this title,” Gouge wrote, “we will account him a blasphemous usurper thereof.” Having usurped the headship to which only Christ was entitled as “Bridegroome” and “Husband” of the church, the pope had taken to himself the power to undermine other relations of authority, in particular the right to “give pardon for sinne,” including dispensation for incest, and to “free subjects from allegeance to their Soveraignes.”8 Thus the pope’s celebration of the celibate and single life was at one with his usurpation of Christ’s headship of the church and his recurring efforts to overthrow the rightful rule of English Protestant monarchs. Thomas Dekker’s The Whore of Babylon, a history of Elizabeth’s reign rendered into the form of a morality play, presents one of the most vivid non-clerical examples of the perceived Catholic threat.9 The original date of the drama is unknown, but it is very unlikely to have been performed during the reign of the Virgin Queen, given her sensitivity to representations of herself in drama. Its ferocious anti-Catholic


imagery, along with the intertwining of church and state in the person of Titania, the central character, suggests that it might have been a theatrical response to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when a circle of Catholic assassins tried to blow up the Palace of Westminster. Dekker’s Titania, the virgin Fairie Queen, is married to her nation for the sole purpose of creating and maintaining a place where Truth, the true Protestant religion, can find safety from the usurping power of the papacy. Represented here in the character of the “Empress,” the Catholic Church is also quite obviously the title character. Complaining to the Spanish, French, and Italian rulers who are merely servile puppet heads of their respective kingdoms, the “Whore” attacks those who have misidentified her as a threat to the Fairie Queen and her church and kingdom, accusations that, as in Gouge’s treatise, associate claims of celibacy with uncontrolled sensuality and fornication: [They] call me Whore of Babylon … Give out that I am common: that for lust, and hire I prostitute this body: that to Kings I quaffe full bowles of strong enchanting wines, To make them dote on me … And that all Potentates that tread on earth, With our abominations should be drunke, And be by us undone. She sends her subject tyrants to seduce, or rape, and conquer Titania and Truth; they fail, however, not only because each of these “wives” defends her own chastity, and thus the honor of the state and the church, but because each is also supported by their devoted Protestant officers.10 These characters strongly resemble those who, like Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, had acted as “God’s officer[s]” over the course of Elizabeth’s reign and stood “in place of a king by virtue of a personal relationship with (if not marriage to) England’s queen.” Her longstanding claim to be married to the kingdom had often been interpreted as a willingness to be its wife.11 Dekker’s portrayal of Catholic tyranny certainly depended upon this assumption. Thus he could represent Catholicism as a menace to religious, political, and oeconomic governments simultaneously by associating it with assault on a married woman’s chastity, the defense of which preserved household, state, and church. James I thus confronted expectations on the part of his English subjects that he would, if not take on the role of “wife” in his marriage to


the political nation, at least shoulder the burdens of protecting the Protestant kingdom previously carried by Elizabeth’s loyal councillors.12 By the early 1620s, however, many of his English subjects began to believe that he had failed to protect and defend the true religion against the forces of the anti-Christ and his “Whore,” a failure made most visible in his efforts to marry his surviving son, Charles, to the Infanta of Spain. From James’ perspective, the move was politically logical. Since his daughter was married to a leading continental Protestant, the Elector Palatine, an alliance with a strong, Catholic monarch would not only reduce the likelihood of English involvement in the Thirty Years War, but place James in a position to bring peace and, possibly, reconciliation and reunification to the western Christian church. This was, perhaps, a lofty goal, but it was totally unwelcome in a kingdom that was deeply anti-Catholic. By 1623, James further weakened support for his international peace-making by issuing “Directions concerning Preaching” that effectively stifled anti-Spanish and antiCatholic sermons. Only bishops and deans could speak freely, “and then only on special feast-days.” Afternoon preaching was very nearly banned, and the Book of Homilies, to be used instead, was reprinted for the first time in thirty years. “Obedience” and “general comments on ‘faith and good life’ were highly recommended as topics for morning sermons by the king.” Such royal action would have been viewed suspiciously under any circumstances, but only “two days before … James [had] ordered the formal suspension of the penal laws” against Catholics, intensifying fears of their influence. By 1624, after Prince Charles and his friend, the duke of Buckingham, rode “secretly” to Madrid in an attempt to finalize the marriage, James’ subjects were very nearly in a panic, fearful that their pure church and free kingdom might be enslaved by Catholic perfidy.13 The safe return of the prince and duke after months of unsuccessful negotiation was met with kingdom-wide joy and relief. It was in this context that Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess appeared. This highly successful play was viewed by “slightly less than 30,000 people, almost one-tenth of London’s total population.” Whether it was intended as a careful staging of political events and characters or simply as a morality play based loosely on the central conflicts involved, it ran for nine days, so long, in fact, that the Spanish ambassador had to appeal to James for its closure.14 The attacks on the Spanish match and the treatment of Charles and Buckingham by the court of Spain were well appreciated and commented upon by those who saw or heard about it, since such a direct


assault on royal policy was both unusual and highly dangerous. But there are within the main plot and subplots elements of the Catholic threat to chastity and marriage typical of Gouge’s reflections in his marriage treatise. As we will find, such imagery was typical not only of Middleton’s drama, but commonplace in other tragedies of the period, and in many contemporary political tracts.15 The play sets the Spanish Black King and his court against the White King’s kingdom and religion, beginning with the attempted seduction of the White Queen’s Pawn through the confessional persuasions of the Black Bishop’s Pawn, described as a “jesuit.” Eventually, she confesses her prior devotion to the White Bishop’s Pawn, but her love had “left no stain / In all [her] passage, sir, no print of wrong / For the most chaste maid that may trace [her] footsteps” because the man to whom she had given her heart could not become her husband. He had been “gelded” by the treachery of the Black Knight, and the impotency affects both body and voice so far than he cannot protect her from the Black Pawn’s perfidy. T. H. Howard-Hill notes that he, like previous editors of Middleton’s text, has been unable to identify any individual on whom the White Bishop’s Pawn might have been based. But, given the connection between the potent religious persuasiveness of the Black Bishop’s Pawn – voice of Spanish Catholicism – the silencing of the White Bishop’s Pawn, it seems quite likely that Middleton was commenting specifically on James’ proclamation of 1623 forbidding preaching against Catholicism. No longer protected by the voice of her “lover” and denied marriage to him, the White Queen’s Pawn displays the purity and passion for salvation of English Protestantism; but her religious devotion is exactly what makes her susceptible to the persuasions of the Black Bishop’s Pawn. In the meantime, the Black King, who has a “burning affection … to the rape of devotion,” encourages his pawn “by all watchful advantage … [to] make some attempt upon the White Queen’s person, whose fall or prostitution [his] lust most violently rages for.”16 She is open to assault for precisely the same reason as her Pawn: her husband, the White King – all too obviously representing James himself – has been persuaded to accept peace with Spain and therefore made his wife and kingdom subject to the machinations of a dangerous enemy. Because the “husbands” of nation and church, the king and the White Bishop’s Pawn, have lost their authority, the rape of the White Queen’s Pawn can be prevented only by her own virtue, the intervention of the equally chaste and virtuous White Queen, and the efforts of the sensual, villainous Black Queen’s Pawn. The chastity – the religious and political order and unity of the


kingdom and its households – has been left to wives and subjects because their husbands and rulers, who should have been their protectors and saviors, have misused their authority and power. One of many contemporary tracts whose sentiments reflect those of A Game at Chess was “Vox Coeli,” which also explained the threat of Spain’s “Black House” as a tyrannous assault on marriage. Printed in 1624, it portrayed a conversation in heaven between recent English monarchs and princes, who concentrated their criticism on the religious and political activities of the Jesuits. The author of this work also attacked more directly the conquests and usurpations of Spanish rulers, who aspired to “universall” monarchy. Having once achieved a marital “match” with England, argued the author, “Spaine undoubtedly [would] in a short time over-match England” and her government. The effects of such a conquest are detailed by the characters representing “Queen Elizabeth” and “Prince Henry,” late son to James I, both of whom were known for their unwavering commitment to Protestantism: And then shall Englands strong men fall upon the edge of the sword; her virgins bee defloured and murthered, her wives defiled and slaine insight of their dying husbands, and their children and young babes shall have their braines dashed out’ ‘…then shall our nobilitie and gentrie dye upon the swords of those barbarous Castilians, and those who escape and survive their fury, shall be fettered and led captives and slaves to work in the mines of Peru and Mexico.17 The resonance of these passages with biblical imagery, and the final intervention of “Divine and Coelestiall Majestie” against the marriage, associated England with God’s chosen people and their history as the providential working out of God’s plan. Spain was the servant of AntiChrist, an enslaving empire intending to destroy the liberties of the political class and reduce them to a position below that of the poorest free-born Englishman. Preventing the Spanish political marriage was connected here, as elsewhere, with preservation of legitimate government in kingdom and church, as well as personal salvation. But the contention that the Spanish match would enslave English subjects, transforming men’s public status into slavery by undermining authority relations within the king’s household and government, resonated with contemporary ideas that associated internal political disorder with assault on chaste marriage. Representations of Catholicism’s tyrannous


threat to the English church, state, and household confirmed the need for these to remain unified and unquestioningly subject to their “heads” to ensure order and stability. When tyranny was enacted by rulers or subjects within a single nation, on the other hand, the very definitions of order and stability came into question. *** When political thinkers justified the creation of a legitimate political government on the basis of conquest, they used the example of marriage after abduction. Such a marriage could take place, however, only if the “conquered” had lost or not yet acquired a legitimate governor. If the woman were married or betrothed, the ravisher could not escape punishment, for he had committed “a mixt crime, and such as carryed with it the face of Injustice, as well as Uncleannesse,” injustice against the husband as well as uncleanness against the wife.18 When the abductor or rapist was the head of a Christian state, the act was doubly heinous, for the monarch who behaved according to his lusts not only robbed a woman of her honor and chastity in marriage, but enslaved his male subjects, who, deprived of the liberties founded upon the persons and property of their household, could not act against the officer who was God’s vice-regent on earth, no matter his tyranny: Although then Kings and Princes through their tyrannie, persecution, and oppression, should be our enemies … yet wee are to love them from our hearts … [S]ubjects are obliged in duty and out of conscience cheerefully to obey Tyrannous, unbeleeving, haereticall, Apostaticall princes, as Powers ordained of God.19 Such obedience to and respect for the authority of the monarch was not, of course, entirely antithetical to the office of husband, father, and master, since the same subjection required of him was owed to him by wife, children, and servants.20 But when an anointed king usurped the government of a subject’s household, taking from him the right in the body of his wife that defined both the honor and chastity of his marriage and his liberties as a political subject, to what extent could that “individual” exercise his right to self-preservation? How far could the wife defend herself and her chastity, since “the honour of all dependeth onelie on the woman: in such sort, that there is no honour within the house, longer then a mans wife is honourable”?21 The authors of marriage guides and political tracts did not tread upon this difficult


and dangerous question; but poets and dramatists, while constrained by a system of licensing as powerful as any confronting their clerical contemporaries, addressed the issue repeatedly, working within two intellectual and literary traditions, one classical and pre-Christian, the other biblical. The rape of Lucretia, the chaste wife of a Roman nobleman, by a son of the ruling Tarquins had, according to Roman historians and theorists, been the cause of the overthrow of the ancient monarchy and the founding of the first Roman republic by Lucius Junius Brutus and his followers. The story had, therefore, become associated with a republican political tradition, particularly, as Stephanie Jed has argued, among the Italian humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. English tradition was somewhat more conservative, according to Ian Donaldson, for one loyal subject in the early seventeenth century, William Fulbecke, “made it quite clear that he considered the expulsion of the Tarquins a political blunder on the part of the Roman people.”22 William Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece has been interpreted innumerable times by literary critics and historians, who have defined it variously as politically conservative, subversively republican, and even proto-feminist.23 For most of these interpreters, Lucrece has represented the private effects of tyranny, Brutus the public ones. But this poem, and the play of the same name by Thomas Heywood, assume instead that an attack on the private chastity of marriage was perceived as the ultimate act of public tyranny, both the last and the most heinous. In order to gain power, the Tarquins had been capable of assaulting the lines of authority within their own family: Lucius Tarquinius … had caused his own father-in-law Servius Tullius to be cruelly murdered, and, contrary to the Roman laws and customs, not requiring or staying for the people’s suffrages, had possessed himself of the kingdom.24 These actions, omitted from the body of Shakespeare’s poem, were nonetheless central to the myth as handed down by Livy, and would be staged by Heywood, who showed the wife of Tarquin walking over her father’s body, and threatening “ore his truncke in our Chariot [to] ride.”25 Not simply acts of cruelty and violence, they presaged the rape itself because they involved the overthrow of the ruler’s and his subjects’ rights in the Roman state, an arrogant refusal to wait for the traditional offering of the “people’s suffrages” before taking power. The younger Tarquin’s rape of a subject’s wife carried the illegitimate


overthrow of state authority into the government of one man’s household, usurping his right to “sovereignty” over his wife. Tarquin’s son, Shakespeare says, “like a foul usurper, went about / From this fair throne to heave the owner out,” as his father had done in Rome itself. But this not only undermined sovereignty within the household; like the act of the rapist’s father, it also transformed the condition of subjects in the state, making them slaves to the lusts of their ruler until Brutus led them to freedom by banishing all the Tarquins and establishing a republic.26 Defense of chastity was, therefore, an act that saved more than personal honor, for it preserved the sanctity of marriages that were the source of stability in the state and of men’s “subjecthood,” their status as members of the body politic.27 Brutus and his followers had been able to overthrow the tyrant Tarquins; such action was, in a Christian commonwealth, severely limited by those who wrote of the prerogatives of kings and subjects: [I]f there be any offence committed by [the king] forasmuch as there is no breve to enforce or constraine him, there may be supplication made that hee would correct, and mend his fault: which if hee shall not do: it is abundantly sufficient punishment for him that he is to expect God a revenger: for no man may presume judicially to examine his doings, much lesse to oppose them by force and violence.28 No subject could endanger the life of the head, who was the viceregent of God, in either the politic or oeconomic household. But drama repeatedly staged the complications of tyranny as rule that usurped the rights of marriage, by rape or seduction, by breaking betrothal vows, or by demeaning or demoralizing the tie by which production and reproduction of society were possible, the liberties of subjects created, and the sanctity of kingdom and church assured. It was particularly horrible because it was an act of injustice that destroyed both oeconomic and politic government and transformed a subject into a slave, since it could not be avenged without defiance of God as well as king. The Tarquins exemplified such lustful tyranny. But a like sin had been committed by the king who could best be identified as God’s just representative and vice-regent, the biblical David, who had seduced Bathsheba and sent her husband, Uriah, to be killed in battle. Robert Saunderson, chaplain to Charles I, contrasted this “tyrannous act” to the justice of the heathen monarch, Abimelech,


who restrained his lust for Sarah when he learned that she was the wife of Abraham: [S]ee Abimelech on the one side, though allured with Sarahs beauty; yet free from the least injurious thought to her husband, or adulterous intent in himselfe … [and] David on the other side, enflamed with lust after Bathsheba, whom he knew to bee another mans Wife: plotting first, how to compasse his filthy desires with the Wife, and then after how to conceale it from the Husband, by many wicked and politicke fetches; and, when none of those would take, at last to have him murthered.29 David’s seduction of a subject’s wife was an act that made him appear to be both a tyrant and infidel, while Abimelech acted the role of the anointed of God. Of course, Saunderson argued, the injustice perpetrated in a single act of adultery did not make one ruler a tyrant any more than one act of justice in avoiding adultery made the other a lawful king. His contemporaries argued further that even tyrannous acts did not give subjects the right to take vengeance. “Against thee, against thee only have I sinned,” was David’s repentant cry to God, and he was punished by God in the loss of his first-born.30 Subjects, like David’s minister, Nathan, could only attempt to persuade him to see his sin, repent, and restore justice, if he could. Such imagery took form in English theater in the last years of Elizabeth, but it would dominate the stage throughout James’ reign. Even before his portrayal of Tarquin, Thomas Heywood, in his ongoing contest with the popular playwright for the Globe, created a new plot for tragedy that would be, in various guises, typical of his successors’ plays.31 Responding to Shakespeare’s Richard III, he took as historical subject the reign of Edward IV, great-grandfather of their queen, a king noted for bravery and noble carriage, but with a reputation blemished, like David’s, by elicit seduction. The story of Edward’s “Mistress Shore,” wife of a respectable London citizen, had, according to Richard Helgerson, become the stuff of legend even before her death, beginning with Sir Thomas More’s history of the period; poets had gradually given her a personality, but not until Heywood’s play did she acquire a Christian name. There, Jane Shore stands not only for the chaste wife forced to choose between a happy, loving marriage and the demands of her lustful, yet noble, king; she also personifies the city of London, placed between opposing dynasties, braving the conflicts arising from rebellion and divided loyalties. Jane’s husband, Matthew, exemplifies


the best of Londoners, proud of his status as husband and householder, seeking no greater rank than “citizen.” Like her, he cannot oppose the injustice of his king’s action directly – as Helgerson noted, the play “endorses this unconditional loyalty” as it “also makes clear that the kings who command it … are unworthy [their] high office.” Helgerson interprets this conflict as proof that, even in Elizabethan times, the “bourgeois home” was a “far more compelling locus of affective attachment” than loyalty to the king. However, given the significance of marriage during this period for establishing the liberties of subjects and prerogatives of monarchs, the seduction exposed in Heywood’s play must be viewed as much more than household “disruption from without.”32 Edward IV is less a “usurper” than a rightful king by conquest, having defeated the armies supporting Henry VI. The mayor and council of London have recognized him by consent, as they demonstrate in their hard-won victory against a rebel assault on the city. Flawed by lust he may be, but he is the “bridegroom of the realm,” dealing justly and fairly even with rebels. However, blemished by the sin of David, having seduced the wife of a subject who, like Uriah the Hittite, was heroic in battle defending his monarch’s crown, Edward is similarly punished, though only after death. For the crown is then usurped by his brother, Richard, who imprisons, then murders, not just the firstborn, but both of Edward’s sons. Jane and her Matthew die in each others’ arms, banished from London by the tyrant king, but reconciled at last.33 Though, indeed, the play has many elements associated with eighteenth-century melodrama, including a great deal of painfully sappy dialogue, its basic plot-line would repeatedly serve the next generation of playwrights to express the nature of tyranny, in this case, a tyranny having its origins in conquest. The fictional rulers created by Beaumont, Fletcher, Middleton, and Webster, among others, would rarely possess the nobler qualities of Edward IV, or King David, but most would also govern Christian kingdoms in which subjects could not justly rise up against even a tyrant. Before turning from theater to royal court politics, I want to present evidence from one more Jacobean tragedy, Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Maid’s Tragedy, not only because it offers additional evidence for understanding contemporary definitions of tyranny, but because it will be revived during the Restoration, with significant transformations of plot structure and character. In this play, Amintor, a war hero who has just married Evadne at the behest of his monarch, finds himself denied the rights of a husband on his wedding night because his new wife has been, and remains, that king’s mistress. Her obedience to her ruler and


lover undermines both her husband’s rights in her body and the authority that is necessary to his condition as a political subject, husband, and householder. But, further, Amintor’s obedience to his own ruler makes it impossible for him to defend his authority and liberties as a subject or to take vengeance upon the monarch who bears a two-fold identity, as man and as God’s officer: If you have any worth, for heavens’ sake, think I fear not swords; for, as you are mere man, I dare as easily kill you for this deed, As you dare think to do it. But there is Divinity about you, that strikes dead My rising passions.34 Amintor’s words imply that he is an innocent sufferer, but he is guilty of a similar betrayal, for he had abandoned his betrothal to Aspatia (the “maid” of the play’s title) for his ambitions, as the king had abdicated his duty to the kingdom and his subjects to follow his own sexual lust. The king’s assault upon the rights appertaining to chaste marriage, like that of Heywood’s tyrannous imperial heir in The Rape of Lucrece, was a sign of his unremitting and unrepentant injustice, and he, like Tarquin, is avenged. Tarquin, in a Rome not yet ruled by the laws of Christian obedience, met with the wrath of the husband, the father, and all those citizens whose rights were abused by the rape of a chaste wife. Beaumont and Fletcher’s king, set in an imaginary hereditary monarchy, is killed by his mistress, who acts as the “cursed instrument” of God’s vengeance. The political subjects of his kingdom have, as a result of the overthrow of household authority and rights by their monarch, been “fettered and led captives and slaves.”35 *** James I himself insisted that monarchs ceased to be lawful kings and transformed themselves into tyrants when they acted on the basis of lust. He prided himself on his knowledge of the law, the security of his church, and the justice and equity of his rule. Unfortunately, he had, especially prior to his accession to the English throne, repeatedly identified himself with the biblical monarch most closely associated with portrayals of tyranny, David. Of course, from James’ perspective, he was, like the biblical hero, a king who had been chosen by the particular hand of God to serve his providential purpose and he answered


to none but God. In the first pages of The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, James referred to many biblical kings and prophets, but quoted David most often and set his words before any others: Kings are called Gods by the propheticall King David, because they sit upon God his Throne in the earth, and have the count of their administration to give unto him. Their office is To minister Justice and Judgement to the people as the same David saith: To advance the good, and punish the evill, as he likewise saith …To procure the peace of the people, as the same David saith …36 The absolutism implied in this text was, to some extent, softened once James came to the English throne in 1603, in part by his increasing use of marriage as a way to define his relationship to the kingdom.37 But by identifying himself so closely with a ruler guilty of the unjust destruction of marriage and the subversion of subjects’ liberties, James found himself charged with a similar tyranny in connection with the marriage of his own cousin, the Lady Arabella Stuart. In 1610, at the age of thirty-four, Stuart secretly married William Seymour, like her an heir, though more distant, to the English throne.38 When the marriage was discovered, James was outraged. In a letter to the bishop of Durham, the king expressed his sense of betrayal that, after having been “expressly forbidden” “to match herself without [his] knowledge,” she had then married a man who had in the king’s presence “forsworn all interest as concerning her … with solemn protestations upon his allegiance.” They were disobedient and ungrateful subjects toward whom he would, nonetheless, “temper the severity of … justice with grace and favour.”39 Arabella was initially imprisoned at Lambeth, and Seymour placed in the Tower of London; before James’ plan to move her away from her husband to the north could be accomplished, both escaped, Arabella disguised as a man. Seymour made it to the continent, but his wife was recaptured off the French coast, imprisoned in the Tower, and died of what was apparently suicide by starvation in 1615. During the early days of her first imprisonment, Arabella appealed repeatedly for “Royall Justice and favour that my owne soule witnesseth I have ever deserved at his Majesty’s hands, and will ever endevour to deserve of him and his whilst I have breath.” She denied vehemently any intent to disobey, insisting “how impossible it was for me to imagine it could be offensive to your Majesty having few dayes before given me leave to bestow my selfe on any subject of your Majesty (which likewise your Majesty [might] have


donne long since).” Her suggestion that the king had, like the unjust fathers of marriage guides, failed to provide his dependent with a husband, was extended to imply a greater injustice, the injustice associated with David’s tyranny: I most humbly beseech your Majesty of whose gratious goodnesse I presume so much that if it weare as convenient in a worldly way as malice may make it seeme to separate us whom God hath joyned, your Majesty would not do evill that good might come thereof, nor make me that have the honor to be so near your Majesty in bloud the first precedent that ever was though our Princes may have left some as little imitable for so good and gratious a Kinge as your Majesty as Davids dealing with Uriah.40 Stuart’s suggestion that the separation of husband and wife was, at the least, an act “little imitable,” was more forcefully made by others. Writing long after the event, Bishop Godfrey Goodman, otherwise sympathetic to James, noted that “to be imprisoned for the honourable estate of marriage, was against God’s law and the law of nature.”41 At least one Londoner saw the issue as more than a threat to natural or divine law, associating it instead with other signs of unjust rule. Just after Stuart’s recapture in 1611, Sir George Waldegrave and Sir James Lancaster reported to Privy Council a conversation they had had with Captain Robert Flink and another associate. Waldegrave testified that “after supper, speches were moved concerning the Ladye Arabella being taken again, and of her being in the Tower, and also, about certain idle, and unbeseming speches (reported to be uttered) concerning the Creacion of Barronetts.” James’ sale of this newly-created hereditary title provided him with one of his few dependable sources of revenue, though it also brought him intense criticism from the existing nobility, who had no desire to expand their numbers and thus cheapen their status in the government. Further, the previous year had seen bitter contentions between the king and Parliament over the sources of his revenue, making any commentary on the royal treasury extremely dangerous.42 That Stuart’s case was placed in this context, and was perceived as an example of royal injustice, if not tyranny, is confirmed by Flink’s next comments, words that so concerned the Privy Council: [A]nd notwithstanding the said admonition [by Sir George to avoid dangerous topics], the said Robt. Flink said; Well Sirs, These are odd


Tymes, or odd Doeinges (one of those speches he used). Take heed, for by God, you may all of you have such a Blowe, wthin these 48tye howres, that will make all yor hearts cold in yr bellies.43 James saw Arabella Stuart’s action as rebellion: “[N]oe respect of personall affeccion, can make us neglect those consideracions wherein both our honor and order of the governement is interested.” Many of his subjects, including Seymour’s uncle, agreed.44 But that his treatment of her marriage was discussed by Stuart and Flink in terms that associated it with injustice confirms that usurpation of the rights associated with marriage, even by an anointed king, was understood by more than just playwrights, clerics, and political theorists as an act of tyranny. But the tyrant who was such a notable feature of tragedy, and even tragicomedy, during James’ reign very nearly vanished from the drama between 1625, when Charles I succeeded his father, and 1642, when the theaters were closed by Parliament at the beginning of the civil wars. Particularly after 1629, when Charles prorogued Parliament and began what would come to be known as the “personal rule,” the tyranny of kings was increasingly replaced by the equally dangerous tyranny of high and mighty subjects in new plays.45 As the old Jacobean plays were repeatedly revived in the popular theaters, the more elite audiences of the private theaters and the court saw a slightly different plot-line. Although tyranny continued to be associated with breach of marriage, and the subsequent disruption of state order, the instigators were represented as over-mighty, or overly ambitious, subjects. John Ford’s The Broken Heart (1629), for example, appearing shortly after the murder of Charles’ favorite, the duke of Buckingham, portrayed rival factions using forced marriage alliances to increase their power at court, undermining the rule of a lawful king and eventually placing his kingdom in the hands of a neighbor prince.46 In this play, the monarch is innocent, his dynasty destroyed and his kingdom threatened by subjects whose ambition for power or riches subverts his authority, a form of tyranny or rebellion represented in their manipulation of marriage rights. The king is less blameless in James Shirley’s only known tragedy, The Cardinal (1642), whose title character plots to marry a widowed, but still virgin, Duchess Rosaura, to his unworthy nephew. He persuades the king to prevent her marriage with Alvarez, a young courtier to whom she has promised herself, but when this fails, the cardinal’s nephew, Columbo, murders Alvarez on his wedding day. The Duchess is avenged when Columbo is killed in a duel; but she goes


mad, and is made the ward of the Cardinal, who attempts to rape, then poison her, before he is tricked into taking poison himself. Although the king takes final responsibility for the tragedies, it is the treacherous and tyrannous subject who has set them in motion: … How much are kings abused by those they take To royal grace! Whom, when they cherish most By nice indulgence, they do often arm Against themselves; from whence this maxim springs, None have more need of perspectives than kings.47 Shirley claimed in his prologue that his audience would recognize the manipulations of Richelieu and Mazarin in the title character and locate the play in France. But, I agree with Martin Butler that the tragedy represented a critique of the transformations within the English church supported by the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, who was, at the time the play was performed, already imprisoned in the Tower awaiting trial for treason.48 However, the Cardinal is not the only character in the play who undermines political government by acts against the rights of marriage. Like Ford, Shirley has substituted for a tyrant king the dangers presented by ambitious, over-mighty subjects, whose illicit acquisition and use of power destroys order in state and household and undermines the prerogatives of the monarch and the liberties of husbands who are true, loyal subjects. Maintenance of chastity in marriage represented, in the period before the outbreak of civil war, not simply issues of virtue and personal honor, but political liberties and status. Since marriage made a “man,” the head of an oeconomy and thus a member of the polity, the “conjugal rights” associated with it identified him as a worthy subject. It was, perhaps, the most essential foundation of his liberties, the special rights within his community and nation that differentiated him from his own sons and servants. Accession to such status required, however, that he take responsibility for obedience on the part of himself and his household to the head of the state, the monarch. Thus, when rulers in Jacobean tragedy usurped the rights of marriage and, especially, subjected wives to seduction, rape, or dishonor, they stripped their subjects of political liberties. Unable to avenge themselves, subjects became slaves to the lusts of a tyrant or, if they dared to rebel, participated in their own damnation as they overturned divine order in the state, like the over-mighty subjects of Caroline tragedy.


These conflicting images – the chaste wife, the lustful tyrant, the over-mighty and rebellious subject, the enslaved husband – would be central to early civil war confrontations over the relative prerogatives of king and subject. If the wife as a subject within the household became, during the civil war, a means to define the limits of obedience for male subjects of the kingdom, the preservation of chastity became the issue upon which rights of self-preservation, for both subject and nation, revolved. Those defending Parliament defined their actions as a defense of the chastity of the state against the subversion of true religion by the “whore of Babylon,” Catholicism, while they associated protection of household chastity with the right to self-preservation against a tyrannous king. Charles’ supporters denied the grounds of either position by offering their own picture of tyranny in the multiplication of rulers and victims, while insisting that the subject who defended his or her natural body against such tyranny acted against God’s laws.

8 “Taking you a wife for his own lusts”

Beginning in 1642, the plots of Jacobean and Caroline plays, in which an attack on the chastity of marriage between monarch and nation, or husband and wife, had been the most significant measure of tyranny, were resurrected and retold in political tracts. But in the context of actual conflict between a ruler and his subjects, defense of chastity was more explicitly represented as an exercise in selfpreservation. For Parliamentarians, tyranny lay in the actions of a royal government that disrupted household order, and thus the political rights of subjects. Although their stories placed significant emphasis on the property rights of the husband and householder, the rape or seduction of a wife remained the central violation to be resisted. If Royalists measured tyranny through a similar view of household rights, the “household” under assault in their stories tended to be the king’s. The tyrants were rebellious political subjects who destroyed their own liberties while they prostituted the sacred union of monarch and nation. Each side accused the other of endangering England, its religion, and its orderly households by joining with familiar enemies: sectarians, papists, and presbyterians. More openly than ever before, however, the possible responses to tyranny, the limits of resistance available to those who wished to preserve the governments that created and recreated an ordered society, came under explicit discussion, as subjects fought to defend their liberties, their king to protect his prerogatives. At this point, both sides agreed that political government shifted towards tyranny when it preyed upon the chastity of subjects’ households, for neither had abandoned the belief that the first marriage created the first government. As each subsequent marriage was intended to propagate and protect human life, the work of political 163


government was the “[p]reservation of mankind” and “the maine naturall and secondary end of man”: For which cause God said it was not good for man to be alone: and therefore gave him a Woman to be his Helper, that so by meanes of generation he might propagate his of-spring to the worlds end. Thus, government protected the property produced by men’s “toile and labour” and ensured the safety of “womens deliveries in childbirth, which cannot possibly alwayes and every where be performed requisitely by themselves and their families.”1 Here, once again, is the connection between production and reproduction that lay at the center of ideas about political subjection and the special condition of householders so important to Parliament’s defenders. However, the author of this text was a Royalist who argued that the interdependence of households and kingdom made subjects in one comparable to subjects within the other; in both, authority was established and confirmed by God. Thus, if wives had no right to rebel against their husbands, subjects could not overthrow their king under color of selfpreservation. Nevertheless, his insistence on the significance of chaste households for a stable polity raised the central question for his opponents: what should and could a householder do if the “chastity” of his marriage was threatened by his ruler? Their answer relied upon the religious ideals associated with marriage since at least the Reformation. Because “chastity” was the mark of a godly household as of the union between Christ and his church, no law could be established, no authority given by God, “to violate the Chastity of any,” even if the monarch was lawfully entitled to take the lives of those who had disobeyed him. … Though Court flatterers should say, the King in regard of his absolutenesse is Lord of life and death; yet no man ever said, that the King is Lord of chastity, faith, and oath that the wife hath made to her husband. Political government could not exist if its head was not granted rights of punishment that extended even to the life of his subjects. But a royal “absolutenesse” that defiled marriage – the original bond of government – simultaneously violated and undermined the foundations of all government. Further, because the right of the subject to a place in the politic body was defined by his position as husband and head of an

“Taking you a wife for his own lusts” 165

oeconomic government, assault on the chastity of any person within his household undermined irreparably his authority as husband, father, or master, as well as his political rights. Destroyed property could be repaired or replaced, his own death placed him in the hands of God, but a wife or daughter raped or seduced, a son or servant forced into “Sodomy,” could not be made chaste again nor avenged.2 For the same God who had established the husband’s government had anointed kings to wield his sword and limited the ability of subjects to resist. That overbearing tyrant of Jacobean tragedy came to life again in these tracts portraying lawless rape or seduction. For, though Parliamentarians were willing to admit that physical suffering and even death could be unjustly imposed without opposition – for the right to punish was essential to political government – they could not countenance a form of violence that bankrupted the meaning of “subjecthood.” A king guilty of this beares the Sword, not only in vaine, in reference to any good end intended by Gods ordinance, but altogether contrary to it; and so farr from being the Minister of God, that he is (as before) a Minister of his owne lusts … to pursue with all wrath, and revenge him that doth good, and will not be a slave to his lawles designes and desires.3 By using the imagery of the chaste household, they were able to insist that every subject had the right to protect the persons and property within his household and resist the lusts of any monarch that threatened them. This kind of self-preservation was essential to the preservation of the kingdom itself. Parliamentarians told lurid stories of the emperor, Nero, who encouraged his followers to “catch mens Wives and ravish them before their Husbands faces and after that rob the rich mens houses … what greater (or equall) dissolution of that Order, for which the power is set up of God can be imagined?” England had its own such tyrant in King John, who had robbed and tortured his subjects and vilely “expos[ed] Noble mens wives to shame.” These tyrants, like Tarquin, had been confronted with their crimes, their authority overturned or at least limited. But, as in earlier years, David, the “just king … worth 10000. nay 100000. of … his Subjects,” more precisely exemplified the Christian king whose rule had lapsed into tyranny. David had been guilty of “committing two acts of tyranny, one of taking his owne faithfull


Subjects wife from him, and another in killing himself”; Charles I, though not guilty of an actual rape or seduction, had nonetheless usurped the rights of his subjects and of their representatives in Parliament. He had, as yet, done nothing that could “denude himselfe of all the Kingly power that he had,” nor release subjects from their obligation to obey his laws and submit to his unjust punishments; the problem was that Parliamentarians had not yet determined how far they were willing to act against a lawful king whose actions might by tyrannous, but who was their “husband.”4 Although some recalled the late fourteenth-century deposition of Richard II in favor of his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, almost none attempted to define specifically the limits of resistance available to subjects.5 Their opponents, on the other hand, insisted that the very definition of a subject involved unquestioning obedience to the authority set over him in the state. The political subject who endured unjust punishments demonstrated “the patience of the Saints, which shall be rewarded with heaven, because they suffer, rather then do evill for earthly considerations.”6 Denying the irresistible power of the king was equivalent to denying the existence and authority of God, since there was “no power but of God,” and those who “resiste[d] the power, resiste[d] the ordinance of God.”7 Even “ill Governours” served God’s ultimate purpose, inflicting upon a people “his just sentence for … former transgressions.” “Self-preservation” was unnecessary for the righteous subject, argued Royalists, for God would protect them from unendurable suffering. Thus, Sarah, the biblical heroine whom Parliamentarians had used to prove that subjects were, like kings, “God’s anointed,” became an example of God’s protection of his “servants,” apparent in that speech which he useth unto Abimelech, King of Gerar … I withheld thee from sinning against me: therefore suffered I thee not to touch her. No act of “self-preservation” had been necessary to protect Sarah from “uncleanness” or Abraham from “injustice.” Instead, like true subjects of earthly and heavenly power, they had trusted to God and prepared to suffer by “passive obedience … a kind of suffering being as sure a sign of subjection, as any thing else whatsoever.” For Royalists, the tyranny that enslaved the people of England originated not in the king, God’s vice-regent, but in the usurpation of royal government by Parliament.8


Thus, Royalist visions reflected Caroline theatrical images of overmighty and tyrannous subjects subverting sacred monarchy and replacing it with the rule of many, whose multiple lusts increased the danger of misrule for both household and kingdom: Let us suppose a Prince to be lustful, or cruel, or covetous, or prodigal … If these vices are so grievous, when confined within one brest; to what height will our misery swell, when they shall be scattered through … each corner of the Land? Their wives and daughters may be safe by distance, and live out of the reach of one mans embraces: If his lose desires are so insatiable, how can they weary those of so many!9 If a woman’s defense of chastity represented the subject’s natural right of self-preservation, then it was more endangered by many rulers than one, particularly since they had “more private ends then the King.” Ironically, therefore, Parliament’s method of defending subjects’ rights ensured the overturning of those rights. Dudley Digges insisted that those who argued for resistance against the lawful monarch implied that “[m]agistrates may lawfully steal, or commit adultery [sic], if they sin for the Commonwealth,” threatening thereby the order of every household when they “plunder in hopes to finde letters amongst malignant goods, or ly with other mens wives, to unlock their breasts; and discover such secrets, whereby they may more easily cut their husbands throats.”10 Tyranny was the work, argued Digges and other Royalists, not of the king, but of his subjects, and when Parliamentarians defined self-preservation as the right to protect and defend marital chastity, by resistance, if necessary, they subverted both the state and their own rights as subjects. But, more heinously, Parliamentary tyranny had threatened to destroy the royal household itself. The acts they claimed to be necessary for self-preservation had already separated the king from his queen, and their on-going rebelliousness demonstrated their desire “to divorce personally (if they could) those royall Personages in whom we are most happie … whom in heart and affection the devill and his malice cannot divide.”11 Royalist response to The kings cabinet opened, in which the private letters of the royal couple were printed, replayed the tragedies of Ford and Shirley: tyrannous subjects had undermined all order by disregarding marital rights and chastity. A Key to the Kings Cabinet contrasted the disreputable actions of Parliament with those of an ancient Athenian assembly. Having captured the correspondence of


their enemy, Philip of Macedon, the Athenians had refused to break the seal of only one letter, the one addressed to his wife: The whole Assembly rose in some disorder: cryed out, that, that Letter should by no meanes be opened … [and] without any the least violation offered to the Sacred Seale, to Her they sent it. Parliament, by their “barbarous and unmanly” actions, had raped the royal household, preferring “their Profit” before “their Honesty.” They had thus proved themselves less “Christian” than the preChristian Athenians who “would never have prostituted those chast and holy Papers, to the base adulteries of all common Eyes.” The king’s letters “breath[ed] nothing but the sweets of Love and Preservation” – the terminology so popular with Parliament – but his enemies would “not let him loath a Rebel, nay, they will not let him love a Wife.”12 Parliamentarians who claimed that they fought merely to preserve the chaste marriages of subjects seriously weakened their arguments by their own acts of violation and, thus, tyranny. Each faction employed similar imagery to assess the threat posed by their rivals to the chaste bride of Christ, the Protestant English church. Thomas Dekkers’ portrait of the papacy and its Catholic allies in The Whore of Babylon became the substance of parliamentary charges against their king’s government. Several puritan ministers, some of whom would eventually be part of the assembly of divines gathered to simplify the ritual of the church and transform its authority structures, argued that the king had defended his nation in strange ways against the “spirituall whoredome” of “Popery.” For he had, they wrote, taken on advisors and servants as “a Woman suspected of incontinence … should take to her selfe the parties with whom she were suspected to be her servants the better to defend her honour.” Another Parliamentarian, comparing the monarch to the wife rather than the husband, reminded his readers that the “Israelite [was] not to pitty the wife that lyeth in his bosome, when she inticeth him to goe a whooring after strange Gods” but was to kill her.13 Charles and his supporters were threatening through their tyranny not only the chastity of all English subjects’ households, but, more importantly, the chastity of Christ’s spouse, the English church. The king’s defenders, however, located this threat not in the pope and Catholicism, but in the restructuring of church government from episcopal to “Prebyteriall” rule. In their attack on rule by “elders,” Royalists revived earlier associations of sectarianism with lust and


lewdness, asserting that these men took the gossip of suspicious wives or envious neighbors as legitimate grounds for invading the order of every man’s household. One writer claimed he could produce a “whole Volume … of young women … disgraced and defamed: of many Families divided and scattered, whereas before there was no jealousie betwixt the man and the wife.”14 Standing outside the traditional orderly lines of hierarchy, this new ecclesiastical government, like the new parliamentary one, turned every action, every social relationship upon its head: wives set over their husbands; merchants punished for doing lawful business; gentlemen disgraced, or permitted to tyrannize over the poor; and neighbors encouraged to disrupt and divide the community with their feuds. Thus, internal tyranny, whether instigated by rulers or subjects, was equated by both Royalists and Parliamentarians with the usurping of authority defined by the chastity of marriage in household, state, and church. If they shared assumptions about the social order that respect for chaste marriage maintained, the distance between the two positions in these debates can most easily be seen in their representations of the relationship between ravishment and conquest. One Parliamentarian denied that “compelled surrender of liberty” by conquest could ever be legitimated, and argued that “such a violent Conquerour who will be a father and a husband to a people, against their will, is not a lawfull King.” But many Royalists at this point defended the ideal of a rape that gave way to a marriage, and a conquest that created a powerful nation. Consent to government, like consent to marriage, was a means to avoid enslavement, to replace the status of concubine with the office of wife: “conquest is but a kind of ravishing, which many times prepares the way to a wedding.”15 What the opposition argued in defending the right of self-preservation represented in marital chastity was that such a substitution did not change the condition of the slave to that of subject, merely confirmed his enslavement. *** The stories of tyranny within the political debates of the early 1640s were never the central focus of tracts and treatises and were, thus, necessarily abbreviated and underdeveloped. The histories – of David or Abimelech or King John – were familiar enough to potential readers to require little further exploration. Furthermore, since neither side had yet given up all hope of reconciliation, the issues under consideration focused more on balance between ruler and subject, rather than the


possibility of actually overthrowing “tyranny.” But as civil war dragged on, as partisan voices drowned out moderation in Parliament, and as the king played his enemies against each other, stories of tyranny on both sides vilified the opposition with increasing fervor and outrage, making compromise unlikely. These hardening perspectives are particularly apparent in two pamphlet forms that developed and flourished throughout the 1640s and into the Interregnum: the prophecy and the play. Popular pamphlet storytelling was, of course, not new. Under both the early Stuart monarchs, and their predecessor, pamphlet ballads had been used to voice anonymous opposition to royal policy, as well as libel a rival in the community, while pamphlet scaffold confessions satisfied popular interest in lurid crime and confirmed the truth of God’s providential power. During the last ten years, scholarly research has demonstrated the power and pervasiveness of such printed material, particularly during the middle years of the century.16 But the prophecy and play pamphlets of mid-century are especially interesting because each resonated with a particular faction in the conflict. Prophecies appeared most often in the writings of radical political groups and religious sects. Perhaps the best known political prophecy pamphlets are those of Gerrard Winstanley, leader of the Diggers, or True Levellers. In his writings, English historical analysis and biblical exegesis support his vision of a land transformed from enslavement under Norman law to one of perfect equality between men – a term referring very specifically to male heads of households. As Christopher Hill, Winstanley’s biographer, has suggested, “In England, the revolutionary decades gave wide publicity to what was almost a new profession – the prophet, whether as interpreter of the stars, or of traditional popular myths, or of the Bible.”17 Though there was often little programmatic agreement between one prophet and another, their visions were more likely to introduce new social organization or chiliastic expectation of the world’s end. The producers of play pamphlets, on the other hand, presented a more conservative ideal of social order. From the closing of the theaters in 1642, Royalists had gleefully accused Parliament of hypocritical puritanism and an unwillingness to have their actions mirrored honestly in the theater and thus exposed as illegitimate. As Lois Potter and other literary scholars have shown, plays had political significance even if they had no obviously political content. It was no accident that the renewal of civil war in 1647 saw the publication of the Beaumont and Fletcher folio and caused Richard Fanshawe to translate Il Pastor


Fido.18 Pamphlet plays were, almost exclusively, royalist in content, transforming the standard characters and plots of early seventeenthcentury drama into caricatures and commentaries on the current news of the second civil war. The Committee-Men Curried (1647), a “piece discovering the corruption of Committee-men and Excisemen” and “the unjust sufferings of the Royal party” offered a fairly typical plot for the period, as Parliamentary government officers acted the roles of Jacobean tyrants within a plot reminiscent of Ben Jonson’s city comedy. The tragedy of war and revolution was replayed as bizarre tragic farce in this and other plays, whose titles more than describe their stories: The Scottish Politike Presbyter, Slain by an English Independent and the first and second parts of Craftie Cromwell, or Oliver ordering our New State and in His Glory as King, both “Tragi-comedie” in form, and “levelling” in content. 19 In these and others, the new rulers seduced wives as the cuckolded husbands lusted for gold and power in order to subvert social and political hierarchy. Unlike prophecies, pamphlet plays were, in fact, quite standardized in structure and content; and when Charles I was executed, tragicomedy simply slipped into tragedy. Although the authors of these pamphlet forms would seem unlikely allies at any time, at least two shared similar visions of the nature of tyranny and the rights of self-preservation. By December of 1648, the possibility of reconciling the king and the parliamentary representatives of his nation had become unfathomable except to a very few. One of these was Elizabeth Poole, “the Abingdon prophetess,” who, along with her pamphlet An Alarum of War, has made a brief appearance, often as a footnote, in several standard histories of the seventeenth century, not to mention most social histories of early modern Englishwomen. In a recent article, Manfred Brod described the London-born Poole as a young woman in her midtwenties by 1648, and a member of the Particular Baptist congregation of Abingdon, a small town near Oxford. Brod has tentatively identified her as the central figure in a conflict between the Presbyterian, Robert Poole, and the congregation of Particular Baptists led by William Kiffin, a dispute significant enough to be noted in Thomas Edwards’ Gangrena as an example of “the danger to both public and family order in the actions of sectaries.” As Brod notes, whether she was allied in 1648 with the Leveller pamphleteer John Lilburne, or associated with Henry Ireton, Commissary-general of the New Model Army, her appearance before the High Court of Justice in December certainly “shows that a woman could enter the political field and be accepted,” whether her


advice was heeded or not.20 There is no evidence to indicate that Poole had any formal education beyond basic reading and writing skills, though she is credited with composing the letter that formed the second half of her address to the Court. She had been displaced from her London congregation at some time during the 1640s, and her spiritual pilgrimage would eventually lead her to even more radical activities in the 1650s and 1660s. She was finally arrested in 1668 for maintaining an unlicenced press. The first of Poole’s two visions was presented in a speech before the High Court, and was well received, in part, Brod argues, because its imagery was so unusual, a necessary prerequisite for the visionary prophecy. But this vision was also acceptable, he points out, because it implied that the army, in its role as healer of the commonwealth, should eliminate the king, the source of infection. Though a “healer” was usually a woman, and most often poor and old, such a comparison was welcome to a Court already prepared to punish its monarch. However, I would suggest that the role of men as “healers” was not so new, especially within the army, and appealed to an ideal established during years of civil war, when the care and treatment of the sick and wounded had become a soldier’s labor, and a significant aspect of both armies’ work. Practical as well as moral, the “personal and communal obligation” to respond to the needs of suffering soldiers was viewed as a means of “sustaining troop morale and loyalty and of returning men to active service … as a part of a general duty to aid the afflicted, and a special duty to those who suffered for one’s own cause.”21 The imagery appealed to the highest ideals of the battlefield and the goals of political government. Of course, it did also confirm to the High Court that survival of the patient might occasionally mean amputation of a diseased member – in this case, the monarch. If these men were already intent upon removing the royal head from the body politic, therefore, the vision Poole provided them in writing some days later must have been most unwelcome, for it reminded them that the “diseased member” was their “head and husband,” to whom they owed the same submissive obedience they expected of their own wives. In this letter, Poole drew upon that “stale and pedestrian” commonplace so familiar to her listeners: political government was based upon a contract equivalent to the marriage contract. Thus, the Court and Parliament had no right to “put away” their husband, the king, or “take his life.” But while she defended her monarch, she nonetheless recognized that he had acted as a lustful and tyrannous ruler, like those


whom clerics, playwrights and political pamphleteers had often represented: The King is your Father and husband, which you were and are to obey in the Lord, and no other way, for when he forgot his Subordination to divine Fatherhood and headship, thinking he had begotten you a generation to his own pleasure, and taking you a wife for his own lusts, thereby is the yoak taken from your necks. As husband and father, head of the political household, the king had been granted an authority to govern and punish the bodies of his subjects, who had to obey as long as he did not subvert his own government by acting against the higher laws of God. The High Court, like Parliament, could do no more than serve in the capacity of “an helper,” for, like a husband whose status was measured by the authority he wielded over his wife and her property in coverture, the king had been given power over “all that [his subjects] have and are” in their “bodies.” He was the “Saviour of [their] body,” responsible for ensuring their safety and well-being in the state, as every husband was responsible for the maintenance of his wife in the relationship that reflected the mystical union of Christ, the spiritual savior, and his church. But Charles I had “profaned his Saviour-ship,” had chosen not to remain, as every husband should be, “Subordinate” to God, and had usurped an “absolute” authority by “taking [them] a wife for his own lusts.”22 Unfortunately, ameliorating this condition was extraordinarily difficult, because, as Elizabeth Poole knew very well, a wife’s right to exercise authority was strictly limited. The Court, representing the wife that was to the king as “an helper in the body of the people,” could not break the bond that he had already weakened by his tyranny. “You never heard,” she argued, “that a wife might put away her husband, as he is the head of her body.” They could not deny the monarch’s authority over the kingdom nor dispose of it without his consent, but they could act for the protection and safety of their political household. Poole exemplified such action in the biblical story of Abigail, who had relieved king “David and his men in their distress” after “seeing [her husband] Nabal ha[d] refused.” Abigail was told that her husband’s failure to act the role of a good subject would cause David, in response, to destroy Nabal’s household and take his life. To protect the oeconomic body of which she was a part, she had “act[ed] in his stead” and assumed his responsibility to serve, but had never tried to


usurp her husband’s power over the whole, or, worse, to “lift … [her] hand against [her] husband to take his life.” In the same way, the High Court could attempt to protect the politic body from the king, to “hold the hands of [their] husband, that he pierce not [their] bowels with a knife or sword to take [their] life,” but they could not overthrow his authority, either by divorce or death. He had to be left to the justice of God: “For as the Lord revenged his own cause upon Nabal,” he would do the same for England.23 Elizabeth Poole’s use of the rights and obligations of marriage as a means to defend the subject’s right to self-preservation drew upon the “spirit of Union” that was part of the traditional imagery of husband and wife as one flesh. And, although the head of each could, as an effect of his office, expect absolute obedience, he could not expect his wife to act against the laws of God nor allow the destruction of the body that they formed. It is interesting that Poole appeals to her listeners “as Men, Fathers, and Brethren in the Lord,” not as husbands.24 Perhaps this is not surprising: To make reference to their private condition as husbands would undermine her vision of them as the political wife, as it might have reminded them of her own condition as a woman living outside the authority of a husband. In any event, the only husbands in her text are the king and Nabal, each of whom had failed in his obligations, threatening by his insolence and tyranny the destruction of his own household. Although each wife could try to preserve what remained, ultimately, the punishment of each husband, each tyrant, should be left to God. Within a few days of her letter’s reception by the Court, however, this “helper in the body of the people” had exercised earthly justice on its king and husband, and amputated its head. After the regicide, an unusual Royalist play pamphlet took up the same problem of tyranny as an infringement of marriage chastity. Christopher Wase’s translation of Sophocles’ play, Electra, was dedicated to the Princess Elizabeth, Charles I’s eldest daughter.25 Like Poole, Wase was in his mid-twenties in 1649, but he was a scholar and had been a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, until he was deprived after delivering to the college a forged letter, allegedly from the king. Captured at sea after leaving England following the execution, he would fight with the Spanish army against France in the 1650s. At the Restoration, he, too, was restored to a small measure of status – by 1671, he was superior beadle-at-law and printer to Oxford University, and would eventually serve as head of Dedham free school and master at Tunbridge. In addition to his translation of Sophocles’ Electra under


discussion here, Wase would publish an English-Latin, Latin-English grammar. Wase translated this play, he wrote, to enlighten a young princess who was not, as he was, “soyl’d with the dustie records of Time, or impertinent History, further then the Arras can instruct, or then may be understood by one who is well-vers’d in the Ward-robe.” He therefore produced a rare treasure among seventeenth-century political pamphlets: a vernacular play with explanatory footnotes and illustrations. These devices allowed him to teach his literate reader, despite her lack of formal education, his interpretation of the metaphorical imagery embedded in Sophocles’ play, and the ways in which he as translator had succeeded in “Representing Allegorically these Times.”26 Although he envisioned tyranny and the overthrow of the marriage of king and nation in terms of conflicts nearly identical to those presented by Elizabeth Poole, he made a significant reversal: this time, the lustful tyrant was the nation, what he called the “queen politick.” When compared with a modern English edition of Electra, Wase’s translation shows no sign that he took liberties with the original – scene structure, characterization, and the general import of the speeches are identical. Yet Wase – through careful choice of words and of explanatory footnotes that gave a contemporary meaning to the ancient story – managed to produce a work that was able, as one verse in his praise put it, “not to translate, but to transport the Greek.” Wase attacked parliamentary usurpation of royal government directly by reminding his reader of the 1642 playhouse closures. “Since Playes are the Mirrours wherein Mens actions are reflected,” he wrote, this was “perhaps … the true cause, that some, privy to the Uglinesse of their own guilt, [had] issued out Warrants, for the breaking of all those Looking-glasses.” Finally, his “ingenious choice” of Electra permitted him to portray England’s tragedy as one simultaneously oeconomic and political, affecting the king’s family as well as his politic body and, eventually, the households of every subject. Throughout the play, there exists this continual crossing between oeconomic and political experience, as both households suffer from the loss of their head. As one poet lamented in a dedicatory verse, “Our Agamemnon’s dead, Electra grieves, / The onely hope is that Orestes lives.” Wase made every effort to transform Sophocles’ “dim Christall” into a clear glass in which he could render “Allegorically these Times.”27 The Greek play told the history of Orestes’ return to punish his mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus – here named Egist – for the murder of his father, Agamemnon. Wase confronted a fairly


significant difficulty in representing this fallen monarch as a noble householder and political ruler. For Agamemnon had, according to most accounts, sacrificed his own daughter, Iphigenia, to the goddess Artemis in order to help his brother, Menelaus, recover Helen, stolen by Paris “against the Laws of her Wedlock and his Hospitality.” Agamemnon was not an unknown figure in the political debates of the 1640s; The Kings Cause Briefly Stated (1644) had used the Mycenaean king as a negative example to satirize any monarch who “doth boast of the antiquitie and descent of his Scepter” from a line of tyrannous, murderous ancestors.28 Wase did not try to disguise what he termed the many breaches of “nuptiall honour” committed by members of the Agamemnon’s Atrean house within only three generations. However, the translator praised the comparative innocence of the Mycenaean ruler in comparison to his murderer and cousin, Egist, who was the offspring of an incestuous rape committed by a father upon his own daughter. More importantly, however, no historical evidence existed, Wase argued, to justify the accusation against Agamemnon concerning the sacrifice of his daughter. In fact, he claimed, this story had obviously been confused with that of the biblical Jephtha, who had sacrificed his daughter to God for victory in war and who had lived at about the same time, “so that some think this of Iphigenia a fiction.”29 In any event, no act in the history of the Atrean house could match the murder committed by Clytemnestra on her lord and king and husband. This was the crime, Wase insisted, that brought greatest infamy, and thus, in avenging it, Orestes could seek and gain the forgiveness of the gods for himself and his family. Wase lost no time in identifying Clytemnestra with the nation that has just executed its king – perhaps to avoid any association of the character with Henrietta Maria – by footnoting Electra’s first description of the murder: Here may not unproperly be urg’d the old caution, that similitudes run not upon all foure: Yet may this be a fit pourtraiture of an accumulative or aggregative Lady, the queen politick, which hat trull’d it in the lewd embraces of the soldiery, and to consummate the scandall, shall have conspired with it, and together hainously upon agreement destroys her just and undoubted Lord. This was, of course, not the first occasion in which the body politic had been cast in the role of an adulterous wife. Like Mrs. Parliament presented in her Bed, Wase’s “queen politick” is an adulteress who “without


or Law or Band/In the twice polluted sheets,/Lawlesse she loves combate meets.”30 Each of these wives has usurped her husband’s rights to her body in committing adultery, but each has established a different kind of tyrannous and illegitimate government. Mrs. Parliament exercises authority in his place; Clytemnestra grants that authority to another, equally unlawful, governor. But this is only possible because she has added to the crime of adultery her husband’s murder, an act that, in any wife, was defined as petty treason, but for this “queen politick,” acting with her lover, was treason itself. The interdependence of authority relations in household and kingdom that Wase wishes to demonstrate is made evident by the very nature of the crime presented in this play: a husband’s murder is also rebellion, petty treason is the treasonous usurping of government. To reinforce this, Wase employed every means at his disposal to identify Agamemnon’s murder with the execution of Charles I: … with the broad steel-faced Cleaver The Royall Temples they dissever. Treason was Privy-counsellour, Lust was the Executioner.31 This pointed translation of the original is supported by footnotes describing the murder weapon itself: the Poll-ax Rasor-edg’d “Which with opprobrious stroke, / Off its Sovereigne took,” is carefully delineated in text and geometrical diagram to look precisely like an executioner’s axe.32 The “queen politick’s” usurpation of oeconomic and political rule has made her not only a murderous queen and traitorous wife, but a cruel and tyrannous mother. Her son, and the true heir, Orestes, had been forced into exile when Clytemnestra learned from the oracles that he would eventually avenge his father’s death. Her daughters, Chrysothemis and Electra, are prisoners of their “Fathers Headsmen,” and Electra complains that she sees in the queen’s actions toward them “More of the Mistris harsh, then Mother kind.” No longer treated as princesses, they have become servants in their household and polity. Government itself has been transformed from a natural subjection based on the legitimate marriage of king and state to an unnatural, tyrannous servitude. Each of these daughters responds differently to her enslavement. Chrysothemis accepts and abides by the rule of the usurpers in order to protect what is left of her “Liberty,” although she admits that “Justice is, not what [she] say[s],/But what [Electra] do[es].”


She claims she is only acting within the limits set for her by her “Inferiour … Sex,” but Wase describes her as a “white-liver’d Complyer,” blindly accepting servitude under a tyrannous, adulterous government. In contrast, Electra is a “Generous Defyer” who refuses to accept that even a limited liberty can exist as long as Egist and the woman whom she calls her “Step-Dame Mother” hold the reins of government.33 Wase’s translation and footnotes tend to minimize criticisms of Electra’s behavior by Chrysothemis and the Chorus present in the original play, attacks that focus on the limits set by her gender identity; the translator and editor suggests, instead, that, as a subject, Electra has a right to attack the usurpers directly – to resist their authority – in the name of legitimate rule and subjection, whether in polity or household, as she could never do against her rightful governor. When this loyal subject repeatedly complains that she can never aspire to be a wife and mother in such a state, Wase unequivocally connects the overthrow of a legitimate monarch with the destruction of all subjects’ liberties. Orestes concludes the play by avenging his father’s death on the bodies of mother and step-father, scenes that take place off-stage in the palace where they had murdered Agamemnon. In his poetic epilogue, Wase argues that, like this avenging prince, Charles II has been unjustly exiled and denied his rights as legitimate monarch. Unlike Orestes, however, Charles has no wish for revenge, only a desire to transform division and disorder into reconciliation and renewal by a reunion with his nation. This legitimate marriage would replace the lustful, illegitimate, and adulterous rule created by the “queen politick” and her usurping husband. But if this is to happen, the English people must, like Electra, refuse to bow to the usurping tyrants, whose “grim Horsemen tread / Upon the quaking Countreys head.” Though they can spoil without Consent, Yet e’re they rule we must Indent: Force can but in a Rape engage, ‘Tis Choice must make it Marriage. The “Will,” the natural desire of Charles’ nation for its husband, must not be “enchant[ed],” seduced into acceptance of a different political order in which “Sinne conspire[s] with Conscience,” for this would destroy authority in both politic and oeconomic households and overthrow the nation’s social order.34


Wase argues in this concluding verse, as had many of his predecessors, that the usurping of legitimate propriety in the state overturned distinctions of rank essential to stability and good order in society. Like many other pamphlets, his play presents what has come to be called a “woman-on-top,” an overturning of gender order, but the epilogue represents a “world turned upside down,” the extinction of social order as an effect of the break-up of the politic marriage between king and nation. Should the English people accept the change in government, then … like the froward Miltonist, We our old Nuptiall knot untwist: And with the hands, late faith did joyn, This Bill of plain Divorce now signe. … His Fathers murder this commends, And crowns it with its plotted ends. His sacred Person this assayles, And the dire Regicide entayles … Breaking the bonds of legitimate government – divorcing the king by accepting the government of another – “entailed,” placed rights of inheritance and coverture, in those who were unworthy to be heads of government, creating a “Popular bondage.” As a result, those who should hold both are made subject to the “Whip and Yoke” of “an Inferiour surly lord.” Only the return and “Restauration” of Charles II would replace enslavement with orderly subjection based on “the soft rein of love.” From the “Peers,” no longer forced to endure the “Scorn” of bowing before inferiors, to the “Villagers” no longer “aw’d by a stern troopers brow,” to the “Wealthy Citie” restored to “decent State and Rev’rend ranks,” all members of society would find in the restoration of the legitimate political marriage between king and nation, the recreation and confirmation of social hierarchy.35 His vision seems notably idealistic given the political realities, in which a powerful army had not only overthrown the armies of the king, but tried, convicted, and executed him for treason and tyranny. However, his assumption that tyranny still involved assault on a chaste household was echoed by contemporary Leveller women petitioners, who wrote that they would never cease to speak out “until we have prevailed that We, our Husbands, Children, Friends, and Servants may not be liable to be thus abused, violated, and butchered at men’s Wills


and Pleasures.” Their husbands, many languishing in prisons as a result of their criticisms of Parliament and demands for franchise, defended themselves in personal histories that emphasized their status as “honest, responsible householders” who were unable to “perform their proper roles of protecting and providing for their dependents – because of Parliament’s apostasy.” Their stories represent invasions of individual households in terms of “rape,” not just rapine, assaults that divide wife and children from their husband, father, and head, a “monstrous disruption” comparable to Wase’s imagery of a monstrous political government.36 The Leveller wives, like Poole’s Abigail, saw themselves as representatives of their imprisoned husbands; like Electra or Lucrece, they were willing to stand up against tyrannous assault to protect their household honor and, thus, the liberties of their husbands. However, when the histories of tyrants – particularly Tarquin and David – were revived in the 1650s, the chaste marriages, and the wives, so significant in earlier definitions of tyranny, were often shifted to the margins. Colonel Robert Bennet, for instance, used the story of David and Uriah as one of eight examples to justify the execution of Charles I against those who argued that kings could not be tried by their subjects. But the question of David’s tyranny in seducing Bathsheba was excluded from his story; instead, the murder of Uriah was at issue, and Bennet insisted that this, “being secretly contrived,” could not have been known to those who might have formed the “humane Judicature (which is to proceed secundum allegata & probata).” Thus, “it was not Davids Regall Authority that did exempt him from Justice … but it was the indulgence of the Almighty.”37 A few years later, the Leveller John Lilburne made use of the story of Tarquin to assess the rights of kings and the liberties of subjects. Though he had defended his own household in terms of its chastity and honor, in his history, he replaced the violent rape of Lucrece with an emphasis on men’s natural freedom and the limits of political resistance: And although it be so, that none are free, and that a true and perfect freedom cannot in this World be attained to, yet a prevention of being slaves may be attained to … the tyrannical Government of Rome by Tarquin, as King, was changed to the Government of Consuls, without any wrong doing, except the Tarquins being banished. That state which is changed, begins first by violence or without it; and when it begins with violence, it must do wrong to many … [and] possibly change from servitude to slavery.38


The violent act that had portrayed tyranny for earlier playwrights, political theorists, and even prophets seems isolated from the world of politics in most texts from this period. But this makes sense if the opposing factions in this debate have shifted the foundations of political subjection away from marriage contract toward explanations that rely upon “natural” freedom or “natural” subjection. Neither perspective required the presence of a chaste wife who preserved the oeconomic body of which she was governor. Men born naturally free identified their rights in terms of the “father of a family,” but their wives were not significantly distinct from other household members. Nor was a wife particularly significant to those who viewed all subjection as a natural condition of birth; for them, in fact, her consent to contract made her subjection less exemplary than that of a son. In this context, the model for the chaste, self-sacrificing wife, Lucrece, became, in the hands of a leading Royalist, the sign, not of the tyranny of rulers, but of the “wantonness and licentiousness of the people of Rome.” Robert Filmer attacked, not the young Tarquin, whose rape had once been the most notable sign of his family’s tyranny, but those who were “unjust” enough to “condemn the father for the crime of his Son.” Lucrece, whose willingness to accept defilement of her body in order to protect the public and political reputation of her husband, is represented as a woman more concerned with her own reputation than her actual chastity as a wife: The fact of young Tarquin cannot be excused, yet without wrong to the reputation of so chaste a Lady as Lucrece is reputed to be, it may be said, she had a greater desire to be thought chaste, then to be chaste; she might have died untouched, and unspotted in her body, if she had not been afraid to be slandered for inchastity. The chastity of Lucrece’s body is, for Filmer, clearly inconsequential to her husband’s liberties as a subject of the Tarquins. His right to vengeance for the wrong done to his household in the assault on his wife has no part in this story. Rather, Lucrece’s choice to bow to the lusts of a man whom she had accepted into her household as her husband’s friend is merely a measure of her own choice to maintain the outward sign of her purity rather than purity itself, “as if she had chosen rather to be a whore, then to be thought a whore.”39 When, at the end of a decade of commonwealth rule, the restoration of monarchy became likely, however, others who had long supported


the natural rights of kings were able to revive – at least momentarily – the old connection of tyranny to rape or seduction. Cromwell’s Conspiracy, a Tragy-comedy from 1660, was a rewriting of The Tragedy of Charles I (1649), but the only scenes from the original that remained unchanged portrayed the late Lord Protector as the seducer of the married Mrs. Lambert and, therefore, betrayer of all justice in earthly government. Yet the play also revives many images of early seventeenth-century tragedy. The tyrant Cromwell is, first, Marlowe’s Tamberlaine, boasting of his greatness to Hugh Peter and encouraging an infidel religion, then Beaumont’s seducing King from The Maid’s Tragedy. As Shakespeare’s Lear, he refuses to attend to the advice of his honest and honorable daughter, and, finally, as Shirley’s over-mighty Cardinal, he dies cursing those around him. Charles I performs the role of tragic hero, dying like Hamlet with gentle “adieu[s]” to those around him and praise from their lips: Now his blest Spirit is ascended up Where Souls of Heroes do enjoy their bliss And all Celestiall comforts meet and kiss. But Charles II is not the hero of the tragicomedy, returned like Orestes to avenge his father’s death and bind himself to his nation in marriage. Instead, the saviors of state are Richard Cromwell, who “loves the lawful Heir; and rather would/He had the power,” and General Monk, a soldier like Oliver Cromwell, who represents the king and seeks reestablish monarchy and “a Free Parliament.” If Monk’s concluding lines imply that this restoration will bring a marriage, they also suggest that it will be one not notable for chaste love, but carnal lust: Go home, Ring Bells, and make good lusty fires; A King you crave, you shall have your desires.40 If the tragicomedies of the 1640s had tended to predict an outcome too hopeful for the circumstances in which they were written, the conclusion of this pamphlet play offered an unusually accurate vision of the sexual liberty that would be associated with the new king, in both his oeconomic and political governments. Under such circumstances, the playwright or theorist who publicly defined tyranny as infringement upon chaste marriage might find himself, or herself, open to charges of treason. But the disappearance of this image from definitions of tyranny also involved a shift in thinking about political authority


itself, a shift that denied the relevancy of marriage to political relations of authority. The effect was a change in the way in which women’s sexual and reproductive power was understood and represented, on the stage and in political discourse, one that simultaneously denied that she was necessary to the political arena and insisted, in increasingly pornographic language, that her sexuality undermined every level of social order.

9 “His Wife, said he, his Wife! O fatall sound!”

In 1660, the exiled “Charles, by the grace of God, king of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, etc.,” represented himself to his nation in “The Declaration of Breda” as simultaneously God’s vice-regent and the supporter of law and justice, the harbinger of peace and the compassionate healer. The crown was, he claimed, “that right which God and nature hath made our due,” but the “desire … to enjoy what is ours” was no greater “than that all our subjects may enjoy what by law is theirs by a full extending … mercy where it is warranted and deserved.” Not a merciless tyrant, he was a just and charitable king, inviting his “loving subjects” to a perfect union among themselves under [his] protection, for the resettlement of [his] just rights and theirs in a free parliament, by which, upon the word of a king, [he] will be advised.1 Charles assumes in this text that his condition as monarch is independent of any outward sign of his accession to the throne. He is the king, by birth and God’s designation, with or without the recognition and free consent of his subjects signified by the coronation. Although those subjects must be united with him if Charles’ right is to be exercised, their consent is marginal to his status as king. When those subjects responded with a typical out-pouring of praise and celebration “upon His Happy Arrival” and coronation, they assumed very much the same attitude. “Marriage” between monarch and nation to explain or describe the restoration of royal government rarely signaled the transformation of the royal heir into the head of the body politic. Although Samuel Holland had Charles raised, not so much by “Bloud” as by “Love unto a Crown,” his fellow poets preferred the images of 184

“His Wife, said he, his Wife! O fatall sound” 185

natural right and divine providence to which their king resorted. The restoration, for example, marked a return of the sun – with, of course, a pun on “son” – to his proper sphere, an event that, after years of “darkness,” seemed both natural and miraculous. But, Charles’ return was also a “second Birth,” or the miraculous rejoining of the body politic with its head. When poets used marriage as a way of expressing the relationship between king and nation, however, they no longer represented it as a bond that raised the royal heir to the status of monarch, but one that restored to the nation the status it had lost during the decade of Charles’ absence.2 Probably the most famous of these poems is John Dryden’s Astraea Redux, which expressed the desire of the nation and its people for consummation of their marital love to their sovereign: We sigh’d to hear the fair Iberian Bride Must grow a Lilie to the Lilies side, While Our cross Stars deny’d us Charles his Bed Whom our first Flames and Virgin Love did wed. In 1659, the treaty betrothing young Louis XIV of France to Maria Theresa of Spain had promised peace between two powerful Catholic nations that had been at odds many times during the century. The specter of England’s former division against itself Dryden transformed into a tragicomedy. The nation and her monarch, like chaste, “early Lovers,” had feared themselves separated forever, first by “Sires” who “ere [they] came to age [their] Portion spent”; then by “the May-game of malicious arts” that made the lovers suspicious of one another until, “When once they [found] their Jealousies were vain / With double heat renew[ed] their fires again.” So long divided, the lovers could now become one, as the nation, like “some unequal Bride in nobler sheets,” was raised by “Charles his name” from the “shame” of the past. In this union, the king’s natural rights of inheritance would overcome the unworthy condition of his nation, transforming dishonor – Dryden’s diction implies both social status and virtue – into honor.3 Nor was Dryden the only poet who saw in this marriage the restoration of the nation more than the raising of a monarch. Exultationis Carmen, written, according to the title page, by “the unworthiest of his majesties hand-maids,” Rachel Jevon, portrayed Britain as “Three widdow’d Kingdoms” awaiting “their espoused King,” a polygamous image that miraculously receded with the marriage. Charles had been a strangely uprooted “Royal Oak,” forced to travel from nation to nation,


carrying peace and vitality with him, while his “Native Country” had been “faint and languishing.” Yet he has finally been “recall[ed] … to His native Grove,” to reign once again “O’re hearts subdu’d by Love, not by a Sword.” Like Christopher Wase ten years earlier, Jevon represented the kingdom as a wife wrapped in the guilt of bloodshed, in need of her husband’s Christ-like forgiveness: Who doth not stand amazed thus to see The spotless Turtle Dove Espous’d to be Unto a Bride whose Robes with blood are foul; Loe Lovely Charles with Dove-like Galless Soul, (Coming to th’Ark of His blood delug’d Land, With peaceful Olive in His Sacred Hand) Espoused is to Albion dy’d in gore; And to her Princely Beauty doth restore; Then Celebrate the Espousals of our King, With us let far and near all Nations Sing. In casting Charles as a “Dove,” Jevon drew simultaneously on natural and biblical images of purity and steadfastness. The turtle dove was commonly represented as one of the few creatures in nature to mate for life. But the dove was also the bird that had brought the promise of God’s forgiveness to Noah, perhaps an implicit reference to the king’s own promise of amnesty in the Declaration of Breda. Further, the “Dove” was one of the names given by Solomon to God’s church and was the visible sign of Christ’s baptism. Jevon, like many others, may have hoped that restoration of the monarch would also restore the established Church of England. In any case, her marriage between king and nation was not an event that signified his accession to power. Rather, it celebrated his sacrifice for the purification of a “Bride whose Robes with blood [were] foul,” the blood of her people, her own children, as well as the blood of his father, Charles I. His rights to the throne were divine and natural; only by subjecting herself to him in marriage would all Britain achieve freedom and end her damnable and unnatural rebellion.4 In other poems, the conception that freedom, not subjection, created tyranny inspired a new interpretation of the Tarquins’ history and the rise of the Roman republic. Like the imperial tyrants, Charles has been exiled, yet not as a result of his own tyranny, but that of his subjects. Thus, the two exiles experienced their banishment in ways that reflected upon the distance between tyranny and rightful rule. Unlike


Charles II, Tarquin had fought his banishment with “potent Armes” hoping to bring about “his Restoration.” But he was “Oppos’d by his own Pride, and Lucrece Rape,” as well as the struggles of “Rome to be free.” Charles, on the other hand, guiltless of even the shadow of tyranny, had no need of “Princes nor Aides, nor Intercessors,” “no Advocate, but mild Delay,” a convenient excuse for the fact that the exiled king had been unable to find allies to help him regain the crown. In time, nonetheless, he had known, his people, unlike the republican Romans, would “no Freedome find, but to Obey,” and would take on once again their natural and, thus, reasonable condition as subjects: After Your tyring Exile, we disclose, You do Return the Prince we did Expose, … But by a madding People chas’d away. And mad again, till they restore Thy sway. Thus, although Tarquin remained the perfect tyrant, defined most clearly by the rape committed on a subject’s wife, his crime had been equaled by the Roman people in their “strugling … to be free.” Charles had committed no act comparable to the “madness” with which his subjects had been infected. In this poem, tyranny was both a usurpation of rights and liberties, and an exercise in excessive freedom or licentiousness. Further, in England, where monarchy was established by God and by rights of inheritance, it was a crime against divine, natural, and civil order, a “madness” that could only be an act of the people, never of the monarch.5 The portrayal of the nation as an unnatural tyrant was even more forcefully expressed in David’s returne, a text that, in a complicated series of maneuvers, equated Charles’ exile to that of God’s biblical viceregent, but associated David’s tyranny with the crimes of English subjects. The biblical monarch’s sin was, however, no longer primarily the seduction of Uriah’s wife and the unjust usurpation of his rights and liberties, but his murder: Deliver me from bloud-guiltinesse, O God, saith David: David was guilty of Adultery, as well as Murder; yea but ‘tis this Murder, this Bloud, which hee had shed, that dogs him, and sticks upon his conscience: well, and whose bloud was it? why, the bloud of Uriah, the bloud of a Subject: now, if the bloud of Uriah did so torment King David,


O how would the bloud of David have tormented some poor Uriah? if common bloud be pretious, how pretious is bloud Royall. The English nation had committed a tyranny greater than any that could be imagined by a ruler. As the “children,” “members,” and “sheep” of their king, Charles I, they had shed the blood of their natural father and head, their anointed shepherd. Worse, they had inflicted the punishment that should have been their’s upon the natural heir, the new father and head, who was forced into exile by his political sons. David’s banishment was an act of justice: “At David’s command, Uriah must lose his bloud, at God’s command, David must lose his crown” to his rebellious son, Absalom. The biblical exile had reinforced divine and natural lines of authority; in contrast, the banishment of Charles II had undermined all natural and godly power in the nation. Charles and David were alike because both were designated by God to reign in their respective nations; but, in exile, one was the innocent sufferer, the other a repentant sinner. Though it was possible to imagine in 1660 that God would sometimes “correct [kings] for sin,” these writers preferred to think that the nation would act the part of the tyrant before her restored monarch.6 In these early works of the Restoration, “tyranny” was both the act of a nation usurping the prerogatives of its king and an example of a licentious freedom that denied the lines of authority imposed by divine ordinance and the laws of nature. If such tyranny could imply assault on chaste marriage, as did the references to David and Tarquin, it was as likely to be associated with unrestrained freedom, personified in Mistress Rump, the Parliament that had been formed when, in 1648, the opponents of Cromwell and the army had been excluded or “Secluded” from the Long Parliament. “She” was not, therefore, an adulterous wife, but a “a false W[hore] never true,” who, having never represented the nation, was never married to the monarch, and “she” had betrayed both king and nation with her violent and lascivious rebellion. At the dramatic climax, she vomits up the “blood, innocent blood,” of her late “King,” who “suffered by [her] Tyranny,” along with the “Gold, accursed Gold, for love of which [she] sold [her] God, murdered [her] King, gave away [her] Soul.” Mrs. Rump’s rebellion was both unnatural, and unchristian, equivalent to Judas’ betrayal. Yet, the guilt of her tyranny was also limited to the few Englishmen who had consented to the regicide. Surrounding Mrs. Rump are the traditional neighborly “Gossips” who are free of her crimes, among them the “Secluded” members and other subjects who represent loyalty


to Charles II and hopes for a “Free Parliament.” Also present are Londoners, who had once been the Rump’s surest supporters, but who had repented and returned their allegiance to the king. The author of this pamphlet insisted that the Rump Parliament’s “tyranny” could not have been an adulterous act, for she had never been a wife. Nonetheless, it was an illicit and lascivious one, a measure of her excessive liberty and of the illegitimacy of her claim to represent the nation. Yet Charles’ loyal subjects, through their free Parliament, would not become the true spouse to their returning bridegroom, displacing the lascivious mistress. Instead, the king would return as the divine and natural heir, the “Son of Charles” the “mattyr’d King.”7 Such imagery supports an ideal of monarchy as one form of natural subjection, connecting king and subjects, fathers and sons through a pyramid of authority relations that have been threatened, not by the lusts of the monarch, but by the licentiousness of subjects who had demanded their liberties without respecting divinely sanctioned royal prerogatives. Subjects had usurped the king’s authority; in that sense, therefore, their lusts resembled those of Jacobean tyrants or Caroline over-mighty subjects. Yet an element essential to those earlier conceptions of tyranny is now absent: tyranny as the shattering of marital chastity, either between king and nation or husband and his wife. For example, the pamphlet retelling the biblical history of David and Bathsheba, David’s returne, dissociated adultery, the seduction of a wife from her husband, from rights of sovereignty in the kingdom or authority in the household. David’s adulterous act was a sin, but not an injustice. Further, only the act that assaulted the body of Uriah directly, not the oeconomic body of the household represented in his wife, caused the king to repent and submit himself, not to the judgment of his subjects, but to God. When those subjects, led by David’s son Absalom, had rebelled, they became tyrants, usurpers of the authority invested in their king by God and his natural law. Tyranny, in this pamphlet, was liberty taken to the extreme of license, not misuse of prerogative in an act of injustice against a chaste household. A monarch might be ungodly, but he could not be the lustful, usurping tyrant who had appeared so often in early seventeenth-century tragedy. This sums up conceptions of tyranny within a perspective that made royal authority as natural as that of fathers. But Thomas Hobbes had drawn similar conclusions beginning from a state of nature that denied all natural subjection, even between men and women. For he insisted that the sovereign created from “Generation” by civil subjects could


never be a tyrant. “I think,” he wrote in the concluding remarks of Leviathan, “the toleration of a professed hatred of Tyranny, is a Toleration of hatred to Common-wealth in general.” Since subjects had, by absolute contract among themselves, established authority over the commonwealth in their sovereign, his acts were their own, and their complaints against him were, therefore, complaints against themselves. Like the author of David’s returne, Hobbes admitted that “they that have Soveraigne power, may commit Iniquity,” but he, too, insisted that such acts could not be acts of “Injustice,” since justice itself had been “Instituted” in the sovereign, in this case, by his subjects.8 Hobbes’ conclusions undercut the very definition of tyranny that Robert Saunderson had given in his sermon on Abimelech and David, when he defined the seduction of a married woman as an act of “uncleannesse” and “injustice.” Although Hobbes saw the authority of household and state as equivalent and interdependent, his insistence that the head of the latter could not commit tyranny made his contractual sovereign as absolute as the model for divine right, King David. Although Richard Baxter opposed this and any theory of government that gave a monarch absolute power, his conception of tyranny also avoided the conclusion that a king’s lustful iniquities could undermine his just prerogatives. Such rulers could never “destroy” all their subjects, even if … at their pleasure their particular Subjects must be the fuel of their rage and lust. Every mans Estate, Wife or Daughter that they have a mind to, must be theirs; and their word must command the Heads of the best deserving Nobility to the block. Therefore, these injustices would become tyranny only if subjects obeyed the king without question, instead of accepting responsibility for judging the lawfulness of his actions and proclamations. Baxter’s conclusion supports a traditional argument that the king could do no wrong: any royal order that went against the established laws of the kingdom had to be disobeyed by subordinate magistrates, and if it was not, the magistrate, not the monarch, was guilty and punishable. Thus, in Baxter’s story of David, Joab, the commander who had, at the order of his king, placed Uriah in a position of danger during the battle, was more guilty than the king himself, having been an “instrument to murder him, though by the enemies sword.” David could be punished only by God; Joab would have been subject to punishment under the


kingdom’s laws. Likewise, the woman whom a monarch attempted to “ravish” had the responsibility to resist. “Else the Woman should be guilty of Adultery, being bound by God, to preserve her chastity, and so should those that being bound to assist her, do neglect it.”9 “Ravishment” was both a sin and an illegal act, but it was not a usurpation of authority. As an act of lust standing outside lawful government, the monarch’s rape of a subject’s wife should be resisted, by the victim and those around her. Yet, such a right of resistance did not justify rebellion in any kingdom supported by a system of laws that protected both subjects and king. In dividing “iniquity” and “uncleanness” from “injustice,” Baxter, like Hobbes and contemporary divine right theorists, located tyranny not in the monarch, but in those subjects who failed to protect themselves, their households, and the principles of law itself from the lusts of a man who misused his royal power. In 1660, therefore, when political subjects celebrated their “marriage” to the returning king, it was the kingdom that was being lifted from the iniquity of licentious liberty and tyranny. Subjects’ marriages, and the authority of husbands within households, were already irrelevant to the problem of royal prerogative or tyranny. Over the course of the next decades, as the political ramifications of absolute royal government incited critical response, however, kings could, once again, be tyrants. However, as there were several ways to define royal prerogatives and subjects’ liberties, so there were at least two definitions of lustful tyranny. In one, the traditional image of sexual violence against one wife exploded into an orgy of sexual liberty and licentiousness. In the other, property crimes replaced sexual iniquity as the ultimate symbol of tyranny – rape became rapine. *** One of the most unnerving aspects of addressing political discourse in Restoration England involves the widespread use of pornographic images, and I am most willing to confess myself unable to draw overarching conclusions about its appearance. Certainly, the separation of political liberty from the special authority and sexual privileges of a husband cannot fully explain “porno-political” discourse, but I would argue that it provides a logical point of departure from which to examine these texts. The connection of tyranny with sexual lust had existed throughout the century. But, as long as a ruler’s seduction or rape of one subject’s wife could be associated with the symbolic overturning of all authority, and, thus, all liberties, no more than a single


sexual assault required representation. The conclusion was obvious: such a ruler was a tyrant, subverting his own prerogative in his unjust usurpation of a subject’s liberties. If the tyrant was a Christian king, however, his subjects could no more resist him than a wife could deny or resist her husband’s rule. Civil war and revolution had destroyed both the unity of authority between king and husbands and of obedience between subjects and wives. The demands of Levellers and soldiers for franchise rights had collapsed older notions of liberty as privilege into emerging conceptions of liberty as freedom. As James Grantham Turner has argued, freedom itself came under suspicion – not only for royalists defending a divine right monarchy, but for classical republicans who insisted that liberty should remain a special privilege of the few.10 Thus, when contemporaries confronted the sexual excesses of Charles II, they had inherited a view of tyranny as lust, but no longer had a model within which lustful tyranny could be expressed and contained. The king’s licentiousness could be expressed only as a usurpation of all sexual power – an absolutism so complete that political subjects had become impotent, and divine right could be represented as the procreative power of the classical god, Priapus. These images incited both fear and envy – even Charles’ defenders would use his sexual exploits as a way to express his prerogative rights. John Dryden, in the great epic poem Absalom and Achitophel, represented his king as, once again, the returning exile, David; this time, however, he had “Scatter’d his Maker’s Image through the Land,” while keeping Bathsheba, the wife who had been the cause of his banishment, in the royal bed. If, as Paul Hammond has argued, pornographic poetry offered “examples of the confusion of public and private,” I would suggest that this confusion involved the breakdown of a system of political thought in which the authority established in marriage and coronation, household and kingdom, were understood to be necessarily interdependent.11 Playwrights expressed this disjunction in their rewrites of earlier tragedy: the dialogue remained largely unchanged, but the genre was transformed. Nahum Tate’s rewrite of King Lear in 1681, for example, changed tragedy to tragicomedy because the playwright could not imagine that “Cordelia’s Indifference and her Father’s Passion in the first Scene [was] probable” or that these could effect such a tragic end for both characters. Her “indifference” in declaring her love for Lear was, of course, a defense of the right of husbands to the love and obedience of their wives, whose office created the political subject, against the authority of fathers. “Why have my sisters husbands,” she still asks


Lear, “if they love you all? / Happ’ly when I shall wed, the lord whose hand / Shall take my plight, will carry half my love.”12 Lear’s rejection of her, and refusal to endow her marriage with the portion that was due her, had once provided but one sign of his tyranny, as both father and ruler. Tate, who recognized the tragic form but not the underlying principles, gave Cordelia what he could imagine was a reason for denying her father all her love by creating a “Love betwixt Edgar and Cordelia, that never chang’d word with each other in the Original.”13 Lear’s tragedy was, thus, transformed into the lovers’ tragicomedy when the old king’s restoration made possible the crowning of Cordelia and her marriage to Edgar. The act that had defined tragedy and tyranny had become a tragicomic misunderstanding between father and daughter. A more stunning rewrite, however, was Edmund Waller’s “mend[ing]” of Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Maid’s Tragedy, a play that, more clearly than any other, had once presented the terms of tyranny as a usurping of subjects’ rights in marriage. Waller preserved the play in its entirety save for the final scenes that, in the original, had brought death to the king at the hands of his mistress, Evadne, who then, like the young lovers divided, also died. In the new version, Evadne warns the king by letter to protect himself from the rebellious fury of her brother, Melantius. Where the earlier Evadne had blamed the king for her lost honor and virginity, in words and deeds, this one instead bemoans the “hard … fate” of women who “are besieg’d like Frontier Towns, if fair.” She uses the language of political conquest to express a wrong that, in the end, she insists was not a misuse of political authority, but a sign of her own weakness. Like Richard Baxter, she divides lust from legitimate rule. The king can do no wrong, so she must shoulder the subject’s responsibility for failing to resist: … it costs as dear To ruine us, as Nations to subdue: But we are faulty, tho all this be true. For Towns are starv’d, or battr’d e’re they yield; But We perswaded rather than compell’d: For things superfluous neglect our Fame, And weakly render up our selves to shame.14 She exiles herself to Asia, where she can seduce other kings, and leaves the resolution of the play, and of lawful government, to two sets of


brothers, the king with his brother, Lucippus, and Melantius and his brother, Diphilus. Within this fraternal struggle, the debate initially turns upon two different views of subjection, not of royal authority. The central injustice of the original play – the king’s usurpation of Aminter’s authority as Evadne’s husband – is never mentioned. Instead, for Melantius, lust is dangerous because it turns “Princes … into Beasts” who dishonor the men “[b]y whose good Conduct [they] securely reign.” In some ways, his perspective is similar to that expressed earlier in the century, for he insists that Brutus acted rightly in response to Tarquin’s “rape.” On the other hand, he never defines the king’s action as an injustice, only as “dishonor” to himself and his family. In response, Lucippus displaces lust with “Love [that] is the frailty of Heroic minds,” opposed to “Reason” the source of all “Justice,” and insists that “all the gratitude Subjects can shew, [is] / To bear with Patience what their Princes do.” The king had been weak, but he had not committed “Rape / … extorted with a violent hand,” for which “Revenge” might be demanded. Instead, he had simply “compl[ied] / With one, that [was] fair and not unwilling”: To your revenge you think the King and all That Sacred is, a Sacrifice should fall: The Town be ruin’d, and this Isle laid wast, Only because your Sister is not chast. To exact a public and political vengeance for the private sin of a woman and the weakness of the king was an act against the divine foundations of all government. Further, although the king himself admits that “Ill govern’d passions in a Princes Breast, / Hazard his private, and the publick rest,” the effect is not to enslave his subjects, but to make him a slave to passion and incapable of government. However, once he admits that he has “infring’d the Law” and bravely exposes himself to the vengeance of Melantius and his brother in a private duel, he receives his pardon and pardons them in turn.15 Waller’s play echoes the Tory pamphlets of the 1680s requiring subjects to accept the sacred power of kings, and kings the authority of the law, and concluding with a celebration, not of marriage, but of brotherhood: Of all we offer to the Pow’re above, The sweetest Incense is fraternal Love. Like the rich clouds that rise from melted Gums,


It spreads itself, and the whole Isle perfumes. This sacred Union has preserv’d the State; And from all Tempest shall secure our fate.16 If, as is possible, Waller wrote the adaptation during the reign of Charles II, this praise of the “fraternal” bond would have pleased both the king and his brother, James. But the play was printed in 1690, after the Glorious Revolution that had supplanted James II and brought William of Orange and Mary, James’ elder daughter, to the English throne. By that time, the vision of “brotherhood” may have suggested quite a different set of issues in a kingdom that had set aside a monarch defined by hereditary claim alone and replaced him with a dual monarchy recognized by Parliament and established in law. *** Among the many other plays and pamphlets, fictions and treatises printed in 1690 appeared the works of two mature writers who had once been schoolmates, but who had, over the course of the Restoration, always found themselves on opposite sides of the issues. John Locke and John Dryden were both attending Westminster School in 1649; on the day Charles I was executed only a few yards away, they were locked in their classrooms and may, as Conrad Russell has suggested, have argued with one another about the merits of the case against their king.17 Locke moved on to Oxford, eventually becoming a close associate and writer for the earl of Shaftesbury, the parliamentary leader so opposed to the succession of the Catholic James, duke of York. Dryden attended Cambridge; as a leading royalist poet and playwright, he would produce perhaps the greatest satire on Shaftesbury, Absalom and Achitophel, along with other more formal statements against Whig policies. Following James II’s accession to the throne, Locke exiled himself to the continent, refusing all offers of pardon from the king, despite the persuasions of his closest friends. During these years, Dryden, who had converted to Catholicism some time after 1685, gained the title of poet laureate, along with the pension attached to it. By 1690, however, their roles had reversed. Refusing to renounce his religion, Dryden had been stripped of his literary title and pension, and was struggling, rather unsuccessfully, to earn his living as a playwright. Locke, who would not participate directly in the politics of the new monarchy, would nonetheless thrive financially from the investments he had made since the early 1680s and find a fairly wide


audience for his many philosophical essays. Despite their different situations, both men had come to see the Glorious Revolution as entirely inglorious, though for opposite reasons. Beyond his own personal losses, Dryden had seen in the Revolution the fall of a Stuart dynasty to which he had given not only his loyalty, but a powerful, often eloquent voice. Locke’s frustration was, as we saw in Chapter 3, more complicated: the revolution he had hoped for would have placed the monarchy under the control of a more powerful and more representative Parliament. Neither view was a popular one, and they faced similarly negative responses to their works. Don Sebastian was a failure on the stage; the Two Treatises of Government, to which Locke would not attach his name, was too radical even for his closest friends. Despite their political isolation from their contemporaries, my analysis of tyranny concludes with Dryden and Locke for reasons that go beyond their continuing interest to literary scholars, political theorists and historians. First, their political choices were based on religious beliefs: Locke was a Dissenter as much or more than he was a radical politician; Dryden would not give up his Catholicism to retain the support of the new regime. Second, each developed a conception of tyranny that reveals the shift in ideology that I have examined in this section. For one of them, tyrannous lust has become assault on property rights specifically; for the other, lust still involves the sexual passion of a ruler, but the framework within which it works has become completely distorted. Locke begins his definition of tyranny with the words of James I, grandfather of both William and Mary. A lawful king, James had told his parliaments, would “ever prefer the weal of the public, and of the whole commonwealth” to his own “private ends.” And, therefore, a king governing in a settled kingdom leaves to be a king, and degenerates into a tyrant as soon as he leaves off to rule according to his laws. Because, for Locke, laws and government itself were instituted to protect “life, liberty, and estate,” the conqueror or tyrant assaulted not the marital union James had extolled, however, but property. Conquerors could no more claim to establish legitimate government than could “robbers or pirates.” Kings and magistrates, likewise, could deny rights of rebellion against unlawful tyranny only if they were willing to grant “upon the same ground that honest men may not oppose robbers or pirates, because this may occasion disorder and


bloodshed.” The eldest son who attempted to deprive his younger brothers of the property left them by their father was a thief and a tyrant; likewise, any government, established for “the preservation of [the people’s] properties,” that used its power “to impoverish, harass, or subdue them” was tyrannous and unlawful. If, in Waller’s play, seduction has been transformed from a sign of tyranny to a sign of one woman’s frailty, in Locke’s analysis, rape has been replaced by rapine as a sign of tyrannous oppression.18 Such a conception of tyranny is the logical effect of Locke’s insistence that all men are born to a natural freedom and that their political rights and liberties have their foundation in property – as labor and estate – rather than in authority over a wife and household. Women were irrelevant to his analysis of tyranny, not because they were without value to civil society, but because men had created political government to protect property. Women’s reproductive and productive labor as mothers was essential to a family’s wealth; their contribution to raising and educating the next generation of political subjects increased the wealth of the nation. But their work was subsumed under the property rights of the “father of the family”; the king who usurped those rights became a tyrant. Dryden’s perspective in Don Sebastian is not so easily stated. The plot itself begins where, the playwright notes, history ended. Historically, the Portuguese prince, Sebastian, had gone to war with the Moslem usurper, “Muley-Moluch”; although allegedly killed in battle, the prince’s body had never been found. When, some years later, the Spanish king had taken advantage of Portuguese weakness, invaded and “Usurped the Crown,” a man claiming to be the lost prince appeared to defend his kingdom. Once again, Sebastian disappeared, probably murdered secretly, according to Dryden. In the play, Sebastian, has taken up his sword to defend an ousted Moslem leader out of love for a princess of that family, Almeyda, who has also fallen in love with the Christian prince and converted to his religion. Defeated in battle, Sebastian and Almeyda are made slaves to the usurper, Muley-Moloch, who seeks first to marry the princess, then, like so many early seventeenth-century tyrants, threatens rape. Marriage, or rather marriages, structure the action of this play as they did so many others. But the central marriage between Sebastian and Almeyda, which takes place well before the end of the play, poisons every step toward reconciliation of characters and kingdoms. Unlike the unions of earlier tragicomedy, their marriage neither resolves political divisions nor restores divine and natural authority. Instead, it


creates political devastation and personal tragedy. For their marriage is not a sacred remedy for sin, but the compounding of fornication with incest.19 This will be Dryden’s fictional solution for the historical disappearance of the Portuguese prince: a marriage that makes possible the historical usurpation of a crown. Throughout the play, he provides hints that the marriage between Almeyda and Sebastian should never take place, but for every objection – religious differences, astrological predictions of doom, parental cautions – there is a reasonable counter. The princess has converted to Christianity; horoscope predictions are self-contradictory; the warnings are illusions created by “some envious Demon.” By Act III, they have married; when the cruel emperor, Muley-Moloch, accuses Sebastian of “the usurpation of [his] Love,” Almeyda, the prince defends his “lawful claim” in the “face of Heav’n.” But the political divisions within the Moslem empire might have been resolved had the emperor married Almeyda; and, from the perspective of earlier tragedy, Sebastian is the ruler guilty of tyranny. For he had, long before these wars, given the young woman betrothed to one courtier, Alonzo – now living as the renegade, Dorax – to another, who had soon died defending his prince. The enforced wife had, however, refused to consummate her marriage, even when faced with royal threats; she still lived, “[a] Widdow and a Maid,” hoping for the return of her love. Dorax, now once again Alonzo, is reconciled with his prince; from this point on, the action works toward reconciliation of the central characters and the overthrow of the apparent tyrant, Muley-Moloch, and his own traitorous courtiers. But when an old Portuguese royal councillor finally reappears, not knowing that Sebastian and Almeyda have married, he exposes their union as unlawful, unnatural, ungodly: Take heed and double not your Fathers crimes: To his Adult’ry, do not add your Incest. Know, she is the product of unlawfull Love: And ‘tis your Carnall Sister you wou’d wed. Sebastian’s father and Almeyda’s mother had been lovers when she and her husband had fled to Portugal as exiles; Almeyda was their daughter. The revelation devastates everyone, including the new Moslem emperor, who weeps at their misfortune. The young couple agree to isolate themselves from one another and live a life of holiness to atone for their sin.20


Dryden is careful to note in his introduction that the moral of the play is in its final lines: “That unrepented Crimes of Parents dead,/Are justly punish’d on their Childrens head.” For a long-time royalist, this reference to the civil wars and revolutions of mid-century would have been recognized by an audience familiar with contemporary Tory pamphlets. But the most telling lines within the action of the play are those in which Alvarez expresses a horrified recognition that he has revealed a threat of incest to those already living in incest. “His Wife, said he, his Wife! O fatall sound!/For had I known it, this unwelcome news/Had never reach’d their ears.”21 The man whom all the characters in the play have repeatedly praised as a man of goodness and loyalty would have concealed on-going sin in order to preserve the kingdom and Sebastian’s royal dynasty. All he is left to do at the conclusion of the play is to join his prince in exile as a religious recluse, while Almeyda retires to a convent. Sebastian’s young courtiers are sent home to marry, promising to keep secret the reason for their ruler’s disappearance. In this play, tragicomic in form, tragic in action, the moral assurance that had once identified marriage with religious, social, and political order, has been completely subverted as a model for royal government. Subjects may attain happiness, sanctity, and stability in their unions; princes confront only tragic exile and isolation.

Conclusions

John Dryden’s Don Sebastian reflects upon precisely the same kind of ambivalence about marriage, family, and political power that appeared in debates over the accession of Mary II and William III. For some onlookers, her position as daughter of James II gave hereditary legitimacy to the transfer of the crown to her and her husband. For others, that very relationship threatened to undermine the new government, as politicians feared her love for her father would eventually lead Mary to abandon her Protestant people to a Catholic monarch. Finally, however, her position as a wife, a feme covert, supported the majority decision to grant rule by law as well as practice to William, a choice Mary fully supported.1 Within these debates, however, there was no suggestion that either monarch would “marry” any one of their three kingdoms. That metaphor had been replaced by a cacophony of images that demonstrated, argues Steven Zwicker, a “failure of idioms”: No dull Succession sanctifies his Right, Nor conquest gain’d in Fight … The mind, impassible and free, No pow’r can govern, but the deity, Howev’r o’re Persons, and o’re Fortunes, may A bold Intruder sway; The Right Divine is by the people given, And ‘tis their Suffrage speaks the mind of Heav’n. Strangely enough, however, each of the disparate ideas in this “Pindarique ode” were at one time or another connected to conceptions of marriage and political authority.2 Freely chosen and yet confirmed by divine law; supported not by conquest or succession, but 200

Conclusions 201

by consent; protecting persons and property within the polity – all these once were fully reconciled by a “marriage” that neither this poet, nor Dryden, nor any theorists of the Glorious Revolution could imagine. However, as we have seen, political thinkers did not entirely abandon the family as the foundation of civil society, and all but the most radical political groups would, into the early years of the nineteenth century, continue to identify citizenship with the married householder, what the early seventeenth century had identified as an “individual.”3 If the Chartist movement sought universal male suffrage, the working-class women who supported it would still describe rights of individual citizenship primarily in terms of a man’s responsibility as a husband and father: We have seen that because the husband’s earnings could not support his family, the wife has been compelled to leave her home neglected and, with her infant children, work at a soul and body degrading toil … a law enacted to treat poverty as a crime … to separate those whom God has joined together, and tear the children from their parents care … [W]e cannot in justice spend the hard earnings of our husbands with those that are opposed to their rights and interests. These were women who, like the wives of Levellers in the seventeenth century, stepped outside their households to gain justice for themselves through franchise rights for their husbands, brothers, and sons. In fact, the Chartist petitioners may have had Elizabeth Lilburne and her contemporaries in mind when they referred to the “historian’s praise of those women, who struggled against tyranny and urged their countrymen to be free or die.”4 Not surprisingly, the Chartists met with a similarly hostile ruling class, concerned that extension of citizenship to working men might encourage women of property to demand the same. But conditions for female enfranchisement were, of course, quite different in 1839 than they had been in 1640, when “parliaments of women” were more rhetorically than politically threatening. For in 1832, voting rights had been firmly and irrevocably established in statute law as a function of male property-owning. Were this “possessive individualist” element of citizenship to be eliminated, a women’s suffrage movement would be far more difficult to crush. If, as I have suggested, the connection between household and polity shifted from one based on authority to one founded in productivity


and organization, the words of these Chartist women remind us that by the mid-nineteenth century, household productivity had been replaced by household consumption, “spend[ing] the hard earnings of husbands.” In this form, the connection between oeconomy and polity is still with us, vividly set out each month in economic reports that measure not only the organization and productivity of businesses and the nation, but the consumption and debt ratio of households, the original oeconomies. In a sadly ironic perversion of John Locke’s connection between family productivity and the common good, household consumption in the United States is the largest component of Gross Domestic Product; and, within that family, the consummate consumer, particularly among the middle classes, is the wife and mother. Perhaps a question for future research should involve considerations of the connection between the rise of consumerism and the enfranchisement of the “help meet.” Of course, this analysis ends, by and large, in 1690, well into the beginning of what many scholars have termed the “long eighteenth century,” but more than a hundred years before the Chartist movement or the modern science of economics. If the arguments set out in the works of Locke, Sidney, and other radical and republican theorists would be far more influential during the reigns of the Hanoverians than they had been under the Stuarts, they were nonetheless formed within the earlier social and political environment. “Fathers of families” remained the “individuals” most vital to their analysis of political liberties; households were models of organization and productivity – in persons and goods – for the kingdom. Marriage created legitimate families and households, establishing in the husband, father, and master natural rights of authority that were, for most theorists, also instituted by God. But monarchs did not “marry” their kingdoms; the marriage contract was inappropriate for expressing the obligations, prerogatives, and limits of royal government. Patriarchal theorists agreed: political authority was different in kind from the oeconomic authority of a husband. But, where contract theorists argued that the two contracts were different, patriarchalists insisted that contract itself was irrelevant to royal “fatherhood.” For men on both sides, the marriage metaphor so vividly present in early seventeenth-century political thought was dead. When Mary Astell reintroduced it so powerfully in her attack on the inequalities of marriage, she was speaking as a conservative Tory, but also as a revolutionary feminist. She was “revolving” back to an earlier relationship between kingdom and household; but the next time feminists

Conclusions 203

equated marriage with political rights nearly two hundred years later, they would be arguing for an equality within marriage that even John Locke might have trembled to imagine.

Notes Introduction 1. J. P. Sommerville, Politics and Ideology in England 1603–1640 (London and New York, 1986) provides an excellent introduction to both political theory and its connection with active politics in the early seventeenth century. 2. Mary Lyndon Shanley, “Marriage Contract and Social Contract in Seventeenth Century English Political Thought,” The Western Political Quarterly, 32, 1 (March 1979); see Chapter 2 for analysis of her approach and response. 3. Anne McLaren, “Gender, Religion, and Early Modern Nationalism: Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, and the Genesis of English Anti-Catholicism” American History Review 107:3 (June, 2002) 739–767; Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven, 1992). 4. David George Hale, The Body Politic. A Political Metaphor in Renaissance English Literature (The Hague, 1971). 5. Gordon J. Schochet, Patriarchalism in Political Thought (Oxford, 1975); Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, 1988). 6. Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500–1800 (New Haven, 1995). 7. See especially Ingrid H. Tague, “Love, Honor, and Obedience: Fashionable Women and the Discourse of Marriage in the early Eighteenth Century” Journal of British Studies 40 (January 2001) 76–106; and Ruth Perry, “Mary Astell and the Feminist Critique of Possessive Individualism,” Eighteenth Century Studies 23, 4 (Summer 1990) pp. 444–457. 8. David Underdown, A Freeborn People (Oxford, 1996) gives several examples of such actions. And though I disagree with many of her conclusions, Susan Amussen, An Ordered Society. Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988) remains an excellent introduction to society and gender politics in this period. 9. Frances E. Dolan, Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England, 1550–1700 (Ithaca and London: 1994; Lena Cowen Orlin, Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England (Ithaca & London, 1994) are only two of the more interesting works in this arena.

Chapter 1 1. Somers Tracts, vol. 2, “The King’s Majesties Speech … 19. day of March, 1603,” (1809) p. 62. 2. These descriptions are used, respectively, by Pauline Croft, King James (Basingstoke, 2003) pp. 53, 59; Brian Levack, The Formation of the British State (Oxford, 1987) p. 27; Lori Anne Ferrell, “The sacred, the profane, and the Union: politics of sermon and masque at the court wedding of Lord and 204

Notes 205

3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

Lady Hay,” in Politics, Religion and Popularity in Early Stuart Britain (Cambridge, 2002). For a history of the Union during James’ reign, one of the best overviews remains Bruce Galloway, The Union of England and Scotland 1603–1608 (Edinburgh, 1986). Somers Tracts, vol. 2, p. 62. William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, Eight Treatises (1622; Amsterdam/ Norwood, N.J., 1976) p. 112. Alexander Niccholles, A discourse of marriage and wiving (1615) p. B2. John Bristoll [Thornborough], The Joiefull and Blessed Reuniting the two mighty and famous kingdomes, England and Scotland into their ancient name of great Brittaine (Oxford, [1605]) pp. 14, 13. Ibid., pp. 75–76. Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, p. 211. James also inherited from the reign of Elizabeth a problem connected with Protestant leadership; see below, p. 25. D. R. Woolf, The Idea of History in Early Stuart England. Erudition, Ideology, and “The Light of Truth” from the Accession of James I to the Civil War (Toronto: 1990). [Sir William Cornwallis], The miraculous and happie Union of England and Scotland (1604) p. D1b. [John Hayward], A Treatise of Union of The two Realmes of England and Scotland (1604) pp. 55–56. Idem. See below for the significance of James’ lineage, and the extent to which marriages established his natural right to the throne, pp. 29–30. Somers Tracts, vol. 2, p. 121. Both Galloway and Levack repeatedly emphasize the king’s willingness to accept slow progress toward Union. Robert Cleaver, A godlie forme of household government (1598) p. 99. The Lawes Resolution of Womens Rights (1632), p. 53. Ibid., p. 51; [Sir John Skinner], Rapta Tatio, The Mirrour of his Majesties present Government, tending to the Union of his whole Iland of Brittanie (1604) p. D3b. Somers Tracts, vol. 2, p. 120; Ferrell, “The sacred, the profane, and the Union,” p. 52. Somers Tracts, vol. 2, p. 120. Letters of King James VI and I, ed. G. P. V. Akrigg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) p. 236. Levack, The Formation of the British State, p. 24. Galloway, The Union of England and Scotland, pp. 11; 83. As Galloway makes clear, the symbolic failure of the Union marriage can be read in part through the demise of its public symbols: even an early form of the “Union Jack” would fall into disuse by the reign of Charles I. Ibid., p. 16. His quotation is from S.P. 14/9/1.7. Ferrell, “The sacred, the profane, and the Union,” p. 59 (italics in original). J. P. Sommerville, Politics and Ideology in England 1603–1640 (London and New York, 1986), pp. 66–69. Howard Nenner, The Right to be King (Houndmills and London: MacMillan, 1995) p. 51. Levack, The Formation of the British State, pp. 40–41.

206 Notes 28. Somers Tracts, vol. 2, p. 121; Cornwallis, The miraculous and happie Union of England and Scotland, pp. E1–E1b. 29. Cleaver, A godlie forme of household government, p. 116. A complete analysis of the grounds of this claim appeared in a legal advice book for women in 1632 and will be addressed below. 30. Thomas Heywood, An Apologie for Actors (1612) pp. B4, B4b, C. 31. Sir Francis Bacon, A Brief Discourse Touching the Happie Union of the Kingdomes of England and Scotland. Dedicated in Private to His Majestie (1603) p. C5. 32. Skinner, Rapta Tatio, p. F2b. 33. Galloway, The Union of England and Scotland, p. 21. 34. Bristoll [Thornborough], The Joiefull and Blessed Reuniting, p. 45. 35. Somers Tracts, vol. 2, p. 63. 36. Cornwallis, The miraculous and happie Union, p. B4b; Galloway, The Union of England and Scotland, p. 39, quoting from SP 14/7/75. 37. Skinner, Rapta Tatio, p. F2b; Somers Tracts, vol. 2, p. 121. 38. Helen Hackett, Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen. Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (Houndmills, 1995) pp. 223–224. 39. Anne McLaren, “The Quest for a King: Gender, Marriage and Succession in Elizabethan England,” Journal of British Studies 41 (July, 2002) p. 289; and Political Culture in the reign of Elizabeth I (Cambridge, 1999) p. 101. 40. Sarah Hanley, “The Monarchic State in Early Modern France: Marital Regime Government and Male Right,” in Politics, Ideology and the Law in Early Modern Europe, ed. Adrianna E. Bakos (Rochester, 1994) pp. 116, 112. 41. Johann P. Sommerville, “English and European Political Ideas in the Early Seventeenth Century: Revisionism and the Case of Absolutism,” Journal of British Studies 35 (April 1996) pp. 174, 172. Sommerville’s overview of absolutist theory in early modern England provides a brilliant summary of the various arguments set out in favor of royal prerogative. 42. Godfrey Goodman, The Fall of Man (1616) p. 250. 43. Ibid., p. 253; see Chapter 4 for connections between the subjection of wives and political subjects. 44. Ibid., pp. 250, 252. 45. Richard Mocket, God and the King (1615) p. 14. 46. Ibid., p. 34. This perspective came to be called, in Catholic theology, designation theory, but was quite common in early seventeenth-century Protestant English theory. See Sommerville, Politics and Ideology, pp. 22–27. 47. Thomas Gataker, “A Wife In Deed” in A Good Wife, Gods Gift: and A Wife Indeed, Two Mariage Sermons (1624), pp. 40, 28. 48. John Gordon, EUNTIKON, or A Sermon of the Union (1604) p. 2. 49. Nenner, The Right to be King, p. 55; Judith M. Richards, “The English Accession of James VI: ‘National’ Identity, Gender and the Personal Monarchy of England” EHR, cxvii. 472 (June 2002) p. 516. 50. Akrigg, Letters of King James, pp. 200–205; Croft, King James, p. 53. 51. Ferrell, “The sacred, the profane, and the Union,” p. 56. Although she connects the imagery of “stranger” with the intermarriage of Scots and English, Ferrell does not connect it with James himself, undoubtedly because her sources are taken from a later period of Union debates. 52. Richards, “The English Accession of James VI,” p. 518.

Notes 207 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

James I, The Workes of the Most High and Mighty Prince, James (1616) p. 195. See Chapter 4 for James’ attitude toward marriage and his wife. Goodman, The Fall of Man, pp. A5b–A6. Statutes of the Realm, Records Commission, (1810–1828) II, p. 499; I Henry VII, c. 1. Somers Tracts, vol. 2, p. 120. James I, The Workes, pp. 531, 194; see Chapter 7 for analysis of the problem of tyranny. Ibid., p. 560. Calybute Downing, Discourse of the state ecclesiasticall (1632) p. 51; quoted in Sommerville, Politics and Ideology in England, p. 66.

Chapter 2 1. Wayne te Brake, Shaping History (Berkeley, 1998) p. 14. His fascinating analysis of the “multiple revolutions” of Britain and Ireland appears in Chapter 4, “Political Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,” pp. 137–149. 2. Bruce Galloway, The Union of England and Scotland, 1603–1608 (Edinburgh, 1986) pp. 144–145. 3. Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven and London, 1992) pp. 783–785; Sharpe provides a detailed analysis of the Ship Money controversies, an overview of which follows. 4. Mary Lyndon Shanley, “Marriage Contract and Social Contract in Seventeenth Century English Political Thought,” The Western Political Quarterly, 32, 1 (March 1979) pp. 79–91; quote p. 80. 5. Ibid., p. 85. 6. William Bridge, The Wounded Conscience Cured (1642) pp. 29, 30, 31. 7. [Parker, Henry], Observations upon Some of His Majesties Late Answers and Expresses (1642) p. 8. 8. [Palmer, Herbert], Scripture and Reason Pleaded for Defensive Armes or The whole Controversie about Subjects taking up Armes (1643) pp. 35–36. 9. John Milton, The Complete Prose Works, Vol. 2, 1643–1648 (New Haven, 1959), pp. 269, 271. 10. Ibid., p. 229; Shanley, “Marriage Contract and Social Contract,” p. 85. 11. See Chapter 5 for discussion of the rights of a wife as comparable to the rights of a subject. 12. Digges, Dudley, The Unlawfulness of Subjects Taking up Arms against their Soveraigne in What Case Soever (1662) p. 128; the tract was originally published in 1643. 13. [Maxwell, John], Sacro-Sancta Regum Majestas: or The Sacred and Royall Prerogative of Christian Kings (Oxford, 1644) p. 98. 14. Ferne, Henry, Conscience Satisfied. That there is no warrant for the Armes now taken up by Subjects (Oxford, 1643) pp. 69, 70. 15. [Digges, Dudley], An Answer to a printed book intituled Observations upon some of His Majesties late answers … (Oxford, 1642) p. 1; Digges, The Unlawfulness of Subjects, pp. 128, 19. 16. [Maxwell], Sacro-Sancta Regum Majestas, pp. 23, 87, 122. 17. Digges, Unlawfulness of Subjects, pp. 17, 70.

208 Notes 18. [Spelman, John], Certain considerations upon the duties of both Prince and People. Written by a Gentleman of quality, a Wel-wisher both to the King and Parliament (Oxford and London, 1642) p. 2. 19. Digges, Unlawfulness of Subjects, pp. 128, 132–3. 20. Bridge, The Wounded Conscience Cured, pp. 27, 28. 21. [Rutherford, Samuel], The Law and the Prince. A dispute for the just prerogative of King and People (1644) p. 119. 22. An answer to Mis-led Doctor Ferne. According to his own method (London: 1642) p. 5. 23. [Parker], Jus Populi, pp. 31, 32. 24. [Parker, Henry], Observations upon Some of His Majesties Late Answers and Expresses (1642) pp. 7, 14, 8. 25. Scripture and Reason, p. 31. 26. Mark Kishlansky, A Monarch Transformed (New York, 1996) p. 175. Kishlansky provides a particularly lucid analysis of the difficult period leading up to the execution of Charles in 1649 in Chapter 7, “Civil War and Revolution 1645–1649,” pp. 158–186. 27. [John Lilborne], An Agreement of the People (1647) p. 7. 28. Michael Hudson, The Divine Right of Government (1647) p. 75. 29. [Robert Filmer], The Anarchy of a Limited or Mixed Monarchy (1648) p. 13. 30. [John Hall], The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy Considered in a review of the Scotch Story, gathered out of their best Authours and Records (1651) p. 22. 31. Gerrard Winstanley, The Law of Freedom and Other Writings, edited by Christopher Hill (Harmondsworth, 1973) pp. 314, 388. 32. The literature on Hobbes is extensive. In addition to C. B. Macpherson’s classic The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Hobbes to Locke (Oxford, 1962), three recent works deal with significant historical issues in his theory: S. A. Lloyd, Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s “Leviathan”: The Power of Mind over Matter (New York, 1992), A. P. Martinich, The Two Gods of “Leviathan”: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics (New York, 1992), and, especially, J. P. Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes: Political Ideas in Context (London, 1992). For more on the religious context, see Patricia Springborg, “Thomas Hobbes and Cardinal Bellarmine: Leviathan and ‘The Ghost of the Roman Empire,” History of Political Thought 16, 4 (Winter 1995) pp. 503–531. 33. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, edited with an introduction by C. B. Macpherson (1968) p. 253. 34. See, for example, the frontispiece to Heresiography by E. Pagitt (1654). 35. Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 254. 36. Carole Pateman, “‘God Hath Ordained to Man a Helper’: Hobbes, Patriarchy and Conjugal Right,” in Mary Lyndon Shanley and Carole Pateman, Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory (Cambridge, 1991) p. 60. 37. Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 253, 255, 257. 38. Ibid., p. 102. 39. Victoria Kahn, Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance (Ithaca and London, 1985) p. 164. 40. Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 255. See Chapter 5 for discussion of the distinction between wives and servants. 41. Ibid., pp. 253, 227.

Notes 209 42. Ibid., pp. 381, 285, 265. 43. Ibid., pp. 481, 479, 481. 44. Ibid., pp. 481, 647–648.

Chapter 3 1. Gordon Schochet expands upon the context of Gee’s reply to Filmer in Patriarchalism in Political Thought, pp. 171–5. 2. Richard Baxter, A Holy Commonwealth, or Political Aphorisms, Opening The true Principles of Government … written … at the invitation of James Harrington … (1659) p. 191; see also Edward Gee, The Divine Right and Original of the Civill Magistrate from God (1658) p. 168. 3. Gee, Divine Right and Original, pp. 19, 22, 82–83. 4. Ibid., p. 201. 5. Baxter, Holy Commonwealth, pp. 56, 446, 447. 6. Ibid., pp. 52–53, 92, 192. 7. Tim Harris, Politics under the later Stuarts (London and New York, 1993); see also his contributions to a debate over Restoration party politics in “Order and Authority: Creating Party in Restoration England,” Albion 25, 4, pp. 581–590, 645–648. 8. See Mark Knights, Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678–81 (1994), and Jonathan Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis 1677–1683 (1991). 9. Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton, 1986) pp. 199, 202, 185; on universal monarchy, see Steven Pincus, Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy 1650–1688 (Cambridge & New York, 1996). 10. Most recently, J. P. Sommerville has dated it to about 1630, although previous editors of the text conclude that it came out of the early years of the civil war; J. P. Sommerville, ed., Sir Robert Filmer, Patriarcha and Other Writings (Cambridge, 1991). 11. J. P. Sommerville, “Absolutism and royalism,” in J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie, eds., The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700 (Cambridge, 1991) p. 360; Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, p. 187. 12. Filmer, Patriarcha and Other Writings, pp. 7, 35. 13. Ibid., p. 32. Sommerville notes that Filmer is, in this passage, quoting James I, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies. See Rachel Weil, “The family in the exclusion crisis: Locke versus Filmer revisited,” in A Nation Transformed, Alan Houston and Steve Pincus, eds. (Cambridge: 2001) for the argument that Filmer is concerned with enforcing political order. 14. Filmer, Patriarcha, p. 12. 15. Ashcraft’s quotation is from Brady’s The Great Point of Succeession Discussed (1681) pp. 1–19; in Revolutionary Politics, p. 189. 16. [James Tyrrell], Patriarcha non Monarcha. The Patriarch Unmonarch’d: Being Observations on a late Treatise and divers other Miscellanie (1681) pp. 13, 10; Schochet discusses Tyrrell’s position in Patriarchalism, pp. 195–198. 17. Tyrrell, Patriarcha non Monarcha, p. 13. 18. Ibid., pp. 13, 14, 15. 19. Ibid., pp. 109, 110, 116.

210 Notes 20. Ibid., pp. 14, 22. 21. Ibid., pp. 31, 30, 33. The generational significance of marriage to defining political subjection will be dealt with further in Chapters 4 through 6. 22. Shanley, “Marriage Contract and Social Contract,” p. 86. 23. Like Hobbes, John Locke has been the subject of many monographs. Besides Macpherson’s Possessive Individualism, the most significant recent analysis is Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton, 1986), which has set off a series of debates over the philosopher’s “radical” politics. 24. Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics; for the “Monster” Petition, see Mark Knights, “Petitioning and the Political Theorists: John Locke, Algernon Sidney, and London’s ‘Monster Petition’ of 1690” Past and Present 138 (February 1993) pp. 94–111. 25. David Wootton, ed., The Political Writings of John Locke (New York, 1993) pp. 243, 245. 26. Ibid., p. 258. 27. Ibid., p. 287. 28. Ibid., pp. 289, 293. 29. Ibid., pp. 300, 302. 30. Shanley, “Marriage Contract and Social Contract,” p. 91. 31. Blair Worden, “The Commonwealth Kidney of Algernon Sidney,” Journal of British Studies 24:1 (January 1985) p. 29. The following overview is drawn from his analysis. 32. Sidney’s assumptions, at least from my reading, seem to have been typical of classical republican perspectives. See comparison between these and “liberal” republicans in Chapter 6. 33. Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government (1698) pp. 17, 67, 68. 34. Ibid., p. 18. 35. Worden, “The Commonwealth Kidney of Algernon Sidney,” p. 16. 36. Sidney, Discourses, pp. 46–47. 37. Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA, 1990). 38. Mark Goldie, “John Locke’s Circle and James II” Historical Journal, 35, 3 (1992) pp. 557–586. 39. Melinda Zook traces the politics and influence of these and other theorists in Radical Whigs and Conspiratorial Politics in Late Stuart England (University Park, 1999). 40. Bridget Hill, ed., The First English Feminist: Reflections Upon Marriage and Other Writings by Mary Astell (New York, 1986) pp. 76, 128, 130; Ruth Perry offers one interpretation of Astell’s thought in “Mary Astell and the Feminist Critique of Possessive Individualism,” Eighteenth Century Studies 23, 4 (Summer 1990) pp. 444–457.

Chapter 4 1. Howard Nenner, The Right to be King (London, 1995) p. 62. 2. Godfrey Goodman, The Fall of Man, or the Corruption of Nature (1616) pp. 83–84. The most recent analysis of the languages of government in the

Notes 211

3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

early seventeenth century is Glenn Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: An Introduction to English Political Thought, 1603–1642 (Basingstoke, 1992); but see also J. P. Sommerville, Politics and Ideology in England 1603–1640 (London and New York, 1986). Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, Fredson Bowers, ed. (Cambridge, 1970) Vol. III, p. 497. John Fletcher [and Philip Massinger], The Beggar’s Bush, Act I, scene ii, lines 89–90; in ibid. John Ford, The Lovers’ Melancholy, Act II, lines 753, 555; in Materials for the Study of Old English Drama, Series I, vol. 23, and Series II, vol. 1 (1908; Vaduz, 1963). Beaumont and Fletcher, A King and No King I, i, 482–485; IV, iv, 131–134, in Bowers, Dramatic Works. Ben Jonson, George Chapman, John Marston, Eastward Ho!, C. G. Petter, ed., (London, 1973) p. xxvii. Ibid., p. xxv.; I, i, 79–81. Ibid. II, i, 161, 60–66; II, i, 139–40; IV, ii, 51–2. Richard Cust, “Honour and Politics in Early Stuart England: The Case of Beaumont and Hastings,” Past and Present, 149, (November 1995) pp. 57–94; Mervyn James, English Politics and the Concept of Honour (Past and Present Suppl. iii: Oxford, 1978). John R. Gillis, For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present (New York & Oxford, 1985) p. 15. For a different perspective, see Paul Griffiths, Youth and Authority (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996). Ester Sowernam, Ester Hath Hanged Haman (1617) pp. A3b, 22; Thomas Heywood, A Curtaine Lecture (1637) p. 139; Francis Bacon, The Essays (London, 1985) p. 81. William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, Eight Treatises (1622; Amsterdam/ Norwood, N.J., 1976) pp. 299, 301. The Lawes Resolution of Womens Rights (1632) p. 141. Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London and New York, 1993). The Lawes Resolution, pp. 4, 6. Derek Hirst, The Representative of the People? (Cambridge, 1975) pp. 30, 50, 90. Sommerville, Politics and Ideology, p. 145. Sommerville’s analysis of the “liberty of the subject,” pp. 145–188, provides not only an excellent theoretical overview, but examples of specific historical debates in the early Stuart context. Sir Francis Bacon, Three Speeches of The Right Honorable, Sir Francis Bacon Knight (1641) p. 35. Thomas Gataker, A Good Wife, Gods Gift (1624) p. 7. Emphasis added; “The form of solemnization of matrimony,” in David Cressy and Lori Anne Ferrell, eds., Religion and Society in Early Modern England. A Sourcebook (London: 1996), p. 54. Susan Dwyer Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1988) p. 48. Robert Cleaver, A godlie forme of household government (1598) p. 320. Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, p. 565. Peter Lake, “Deeds against Nature: Cheap Print, Protestantism, and Murder in Early Seventeenth-Century England,” in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart

212 Notes

25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (Houndmills: MacMillan, 1994), p. 267. George Wilkins, The Miseries of Enforced Marriage in W. Carew Hazlitt, ed., A Select Collection of Old English Plays (New York, 1960) p. 488; Three Jacobean witchcraft plays, ed. Peter Corbin and Douglas Sedge (Manchester, 1986). Richard Brome, A Critical Edition of Richard Brome’s “The Weeding of Covent Garden” and “The Sparagus Garden”, Donald S. McClure, ed. (New York and London, 1980) III, ii, 36–9. Jonson, Chapman, and Marston, Eastward Ho!, II, i, 161. Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, pp. 271, 188; Cleaver, A godlie forme of household government, p. 162; Lawes Resolution, p. 63. Cleaver, A godlie forme, p. 101; Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, pp. 191, 196. Cleaver, A godlie forme, p. 17; Ste. B., Counsel to a husbande: to the wife instruction (1608) pp. 28, 4; Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, p. 344. Frances E. Dolan, Whores of Babylon. Catholicism, Gender, and SeventeenthCentury Print Culture (Ithaca and London, 1999) pp. 59, 65. Alexander Niccholles, A discourse of marriage and wiving (London, 1615) p. 18; William Whately, A Bride-Bush or A Direction for Married Persons (1619) p. 14; Heywood, A Curtaine Lecture, pp. 210–211; Robert Crofts, The Lover or, Nuptiall Love (1638) p. B3; Gataker, A Wife Indeed, p. 38. Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, pp. 197, 189; Patrick Hannay, A Happy Husband, or Directions for a Maide to choose her Mate (1619) p. B1b; Letters of King James VI and I, ed. G. P. V. Akrigg (Berkeley, 1984), p. 214. Comedies that show parental preference for wealth or social rank include Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday, or The Gentle Craft, Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Brome’s The English Moor, or the Mock-Marriage, and Philip Massinger’s A New Way to Pay Old Debts. Hannay, A Happy Husband, p. B1b; Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, pp. 190, 344, 272. Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum: a discourse on the commonwealth of England, L. Alston, ed. (Cambridge, 1906) p. 45. James I, Basilicon Doron (1599; Menston, 1969) pp. 27, 98. Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, p. 25. Ste. B., Counsel to a husbande, p. 51. Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, p. 258; Ste. B., Counsel to a husbande, pp. 48–49; Whately, A Bride-Bush, p. 89. David Underdown, A Freeborn People (Oxford, 1996) pp. 60, 62. Cleaver, A godlie forme, pp. 88–89; Ste. B., Counsel to a husbande, p. 63. Ste. B., Counsel to a husbande, p. 64; Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, p. 258; Whately, A Bride-Bush, p. 115.

Chapter 5 1. What follows is a very simplified version of a complex series of events. The most thorough examination of Charles’ “personal rule” is Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (1993). 2. John Swan, Redde Debitum, or A Discourse in defence of three chiefe Fatherhoods (1640) pp. 6, 1, 10, 11–12.

Notes 213 3. Ibid., pp. 13, 159. 4. Aristophanes, Assembly of Women (Ecclesiazusae), trans. Robert Mayhew (New York: 1997). 5. The parliament of women (1640) pp. A2, B1–B1b, B4. 6. Ibid., pp. B3, A2b, B4b. 7. Ibid., p. A2; quoted by Conrad Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments: English History 1509–1660 (London & New York, 1971) p. 352. 8. Russell, Crisis of Parliaments, p. 346. 9. A Paradox. That Designe upon Religion, Was not the cause of State Misgovernment (1644) p. 11. 10. An answer to Mis-led Doctor Ferne. According to his own method (1642) p. 3. 11. A Vindication of Psalm 105.15 (1642) pp. A2, A3b; A Revindication of the Anoynting and Priviledges of Faithful Subjects (1643) p. A2. See Chapter 8 for an analysis of the connection between tyranny and a ruler’s seduction or rape of a subject’s wife. 12. [Samuel Rutherford], The Law and the Prince (1644) pp. 118, 119. 13. Henry Parker, Observations upon Some of His Majesties Late Answers and Expresses (1642) p. 8. 14. The Soverainty of Kings (1642) p. A1b; A Revindication of Psalme 105.15 (Cambridge: 1643) p. 9. 15. Dudley Digges, The Unlawfulness of Subjects Taking up Arms against their Soveraine (1662) p. 128; A Letter from a Friend in the Country (Oxford: 1644) p. 5. 16. [John Maxwell], Sacro-Sancta Regum Majestas (Oxford: 1644) pp. 15, 11, 98. 17. Erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion: Queene Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments (Cambridge, 1989). Veevers’ work is particularly interesting for its interpretation of “love” as an issue of “morality.” 18. Frances E. Dolan, Whores of Babylon. Catholicism, Gender and SeventeenthCentury Print Culture (Ithaca and London, 1999) 97. 19. An answer to Mis-led Doctor Ferne, p. 36. 20. The Kings Cabinet opened (1645), 43. On noblewomen’s autobiography, see below, pp. 138–40. 21. Dolan, Whores of Babylon, p. 126. 22. The Kings Cabinet Opened, pp. 43, 44, 46, 47. 23. J. G. A. Pocock, Politics, Language, and Time (New York, 1971) pp. 38–39. 24. Thomas Edwards, The First and Second Parts of Gangraena (1646) pp. A3b, 29, A2. See Keith Thomas, “Women and the Civil War Sects,” Past and Present 13, pp. 42–62. 25. David Wootton, “Leveller democracy and the Puritan Revolution,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700 (Cambridge, 1991) pp. 433, 432; Wootton expands on these ideas in “From Rebellion to Revolution,” English Historical Review 105,416 (July 1990) 654–669. 26. Ibid., p. 432. 27. Ann Hughes, “Gender and politics in Leveller literature,” in Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England. Essays presented to David Underdown, eds. Susan Dwyer Amussen and Mark Kishlansky (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). 28. Ibid., pp. 170–171.

214 Notes 29. Susan Wiseman, “‘Adam, the Father of all Flesh’: Porno-Political Rhetoric and Political Theory In and After the English Civil War,” in Pamphlet Wars: Prose in the English Revolution, James Holstun, ed. (1992). 30. The Ladies, a Second Time, Assembled in Parliament (1647) pp. 4–5, 2. 31. Mistris Parliament Presented in her Bed (1648) pp. 4, 5. 32. Thomas Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, in Three Plays, Kenneth Muir, ed. (1975). 33. See Chapter 3, pp. 60–2. 34. [Robert Filmer], Observations Upon Aristotle (1652) pp. A2b, 3. 35. Ibid., pp. 13, 39–40. 36. Ibid., pp. 46, A2b, 19–20. 37. Anthony Asham, Of the Confusions and Revolutions of Governments (1649) pp. 106, 115, 8, 22. 38. John Streater, Observations Historical, Political, and Philosophical upon Aristotles first Book of Political Government (1654) No. 3, p. 18, 4.27, 4.24, 4.29, 3.19. 39. Ibid., 3.18; 7.49. 40. Asham, p. 107. 41. Ibid., p. 117. 42. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (London, 1968) p. 290.

Chapter 6 1. Paul Hammond, “The King’s two bodies: representations of Charles II,” in Jeremy Black and Jeremy Gregory, eds., Culture, Politics and Society in Britain, 1660–1800 (Manchester & New York, 1991) p. 17. 2. Robin Hood and His Crew of Souldiers, A Comedy (1661) n.p.; David Cressy, “Purification, Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women in PostReformation England,” Past and Present 141 (November 1993) p. 109. Cressy argues that, if this view of churching was held by many clerics during this period, it was considered by women as much a social right as a religious rite. 3. Robin Hood and His Crew, n.p. 4. Idem. 5. J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge, 1987). 6. [J. Nalson], The Kings Prerogative and the Subjects Privileges (1680) p. 11. 7. [Roger L’Estrange], The Free-born Subject: or the Englishmans Birthright (1679) pp. 12, t.p., 3; Tim Harris, “Party Turns? Or, Whigs and Tories Get Off Scott Free” Albion 25, 4 (Winter, 1993) pp. 583–584. 8. A List of the Parliament of Women (1679) n.p. 9. C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford, 1962); James Tully, A Discourse on Property. John Locke and his adversaries (Cambridge, 1980). 10. David Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death. Ritual, Religion, and the Life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997) pp. 332–333. 11. Mary Lyndon Shanley, Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England (Princeton, 1989) p. 130.

Notes 215 12. Eileen Spring, Law, Land, and Family. Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800 (Chapel Hill, 1993); see esp. Chapter 1, “The Heiress-at-Law,” and Chapter 5, “The Strict Settlement” for the following. 13. Margaret R. Hunt, The Middling Sort. Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996) pp. 151–152. 14. Both Eileen Spring and Susan Staves point to this recurring problem in historiography of the family. See Spring, Law, Land, and Family, pp. 23 and 45, and Staves, Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660–1833 (Cambridge, MA: 1990) “Conclusion.” 15. Rachel Weil, “The family in the exclusion crisis: Locke versus Filmer revisited,” in A Nation Transformed, Alan Houston and Steve Pincus, eds. (Cambridge: 2001) p. 111. 16. [James Tyrrell], Patriarcha non Monarcha (1681) pp. 33–34, 14–15. 17. Ibid., p. 73; Hunt, p. 196. 18. Tyrrell, p. 109. 19. Ibid., pp. 120, 121. 20. Mary Shanley, “Marriage Contract and Social Contract,” The Western Political Quarterly 32, 1 (March 1979), p. 86. 21. The Political Writings of John Locke, David Wootton, ed. (New York, 1993) p. 304. 22. Ibid., pp. 349, 351. 23. Steve Pincus, “Neither Machiavelian Moment nor Possessive Individualism: Commercial Society and the Defenders of the English Commonwealth” American Historical Review 103, 3 (June 1998) pp. 712, 722, 732–733; Weil, “The family in the exclusion crisis,” pp. 100–124. For Locke’s radical credentials, see Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, and Mark Goldie, “John Locke’s Circle and James II” The Historical Journal 35, 3 (1992) pp. 557–586. 24. Hunt, p. 211. 25. William Secker, A wedding ring fit for the finger (1661) pp. 15–17, 24. 26. A Wedding-Ring Fitted to the Finger of every paire (1632) p. 1; Secker, Wedding Ring, p. 9. 27. Wedding Ring Fitted, p. 6; Secker, Wedding Ring Fit, pp. 8–9. 28. Wedding Ring Fitted, p. 11; Secker, Wedding Ring Fit, p. 6, 15–16. 29. The Memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett, and Ann, Lady Fanshawe, ed. John Loftis (Oxford, 1979). On women’s autobiography, see, for example, Mary Beth Rose, “Gender, Genre and History” in Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Syracuse, 1986). 30. Fanshawe, Memoirs, pp. 103, 115–116, 120, 184–185.

Chapter 7 1. 2. 3. 4.

Richard Field, Of the Church: Five Bookes (1606) p. 141. Thomas Heywood, A Curtaine Lecture (1637) p. 29. Robert Crofts, The Lover or, Nuptiall Love (1638) p. D6b. William Whately, A Bride-Bush, or A Direction for Married Persons (1619) pp. 3, 4. 5. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis, Arthur Johnston, ed. (Oxford, 1974) pp. 235–236. The “Feast of the Family,”

216 Notes

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

24.

described in New Atlantis, celebrates fatherhood in a manner reminiscent of royal pageants and parades, pp. 231–234. See Chapter 4 on marriage as a means to reinforce or disrupt social status and for Bacon’s definition of natural rights and the individuum or individual in early seventeenth-century ideas. William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties (1622; Amsterdam, 1976) pp. 27–28, 25. Ibid., pp. 30, 77. Ibid., pp. 216, 217, 33, 117, 34. Thomas Dekker, The Whore of Babylon; in Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, Fredson Bowers, ed. (Cambridge, 1955). Ibid., I, i, 83–91. See Chapter 4 for an analysis of the wife as subject and governor. Anne McLaren, “The Quest for a King: Gender, Marriage, and Succession in Elizabethan England,” JBS 41 (July, 2002), p. 285. Ibid., p. 289–290. Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 32–33. Thomas Middleton, A Game at Chess, T. H. Howard-Hill, ed. (Manchester and New York, 1993). The editor includes an excellent summary of historiography and literary criticism along with edited comments by contemporaries. Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 302. Middleton himself, though poet to the city of London and, thus, in a reasonably safe political position, went into hiding for some weeks to avoid imprisonment until the crisis had subsided. Cogswell points to two pamphlets in particular, John Gee’s A Foot out of the Snare and Thomas Scott’s Second Part of Vox Populi. Middleton, A Game at Chess, I, i, 141–143; II, i, 21–24. “Vox Coeli, or News from Heaven” Somers Tracts, W. Scott, ed. (1809) vol. 3, pp. 563, 592. These last words are spoken by “Edward VI,” younger brother of Elizabeth I and the first monarch to order changes in liturgy to reflect Protestant ideology. For a brief review of his reign, see D. M. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth: England under the later Tudors, 1547–1603 (New York, 1983). English concern about “universal monarchy” in the late seventeenth century has been examined by Steven C. A. Pincus, Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy 1650–1688 (Cambridge,1996). Robert Saunderson, Twelve Sermons (1637) p. 503. Richard Mocket, God and the King (1615) pp. 53, 59. See Chapters 1 and 4 for a more complete discussion of the obligations of authority and obedience represented by marriage. Robert Cleaver, A godlie forme of household government (1598) p.171. Stephanie Jed, Chaste Thinking: The rape of Lucretia and the birth of humanism (Bloomington, 1989); Ian Donaldson, The Rapes of Lucretia: A myth and its transformations (Oxford, 1982) p. 111. For a review of these interpretations and their importance for understanding the purpose of literary criticism in the humanities, see Annabel Patterson, Reading Between the Lines (Madison, 1993), pp. 297–312. William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece in Poems: Selections, ed. John Roe (Cambridge, 1992) “The Argument.”

Notes 217 25. The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood (New York, 1964) vol. 5, p. 173 (acts, scenes, and lines not numbered). 26. Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece, ll. 36, 412–413. For a very different interpretation of Lucrece’s political significance, see Philippa Berry, “Woman, Language and History in The Rape of Lucrece,” Shakespeare Survey 44 (1991) pp. 33–39. Shakespeare’s poem was apparently very popular – Annabel Patterson has found eight editions before 1640, the last in 1632. See Reading Between the Lines, p. 300. 27. The term “subjecthood” was suggested by Philippe Rosenberg of Duke University to emphasize that this condition was recognized as a mark of peculiar status and carefully differentiated from the condition of slavery. I benefitted greatly from discussions with him in the early stages of his research. 28. Mocket, God and the King, pp. 28. His quotation is from Bracton. 29. Saunderson, Twelve Sermons, p. 521. 30. Mocket, God and the King, p. 29. The quotation is from Psalms 51:6. 31. Francis Beaumont’s The Maid’s Tragedy (see below, pp. 256–257); John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1612–13?), a play that many literary critics have associated with Arabella Stuart’s history (see below); Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women (1603–21?); John Fletcher’s The Beggar’s Bush (1622); Philip Massinger’s The Roman Actor (1626), among many others. Though Shakespeare never follows this plot structure specifically, Gordon MacMullan has argued that he employs the history of David and Bathsheba to illuminate the problem of the Reformation and England’s status as God’s chosen nation in Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII. See his Arden edition of the play (2000). 32. Richard Helgerson, Adulterous Alliances. Home, State, and History in Early Modern European Drama and Painting (Chicago, 2000) pp. 45, 54. 33. Thomas Heywood, King Edward IV, parts 1 and 2 in The dramatic works of Thomas Heywood, v. 1 (New York, 1964/1874). 34. The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, Fredson Bowers, ed. (Cambridge, 1970), vol. 2, III, i, 235–240. Most editors and critics agree that this play is primarily the work of Beaumont. 35. “Vox Coeli,” Somers Tracts, vol. 3, p. 563. 36. The Workes of the Most High and Mighty Prince, James (1616) p. 194. 37. See Chapters 1 and 4, for James’ use of marriage. 38. The most recent biography of Arabella Stuart is Sarah Gristwood, Arbella: England’s Lost Queen (London, 2003); see also David N. Durant, Arbella Stuart: A Rival to the Queen (London, 1978). 39. Letters of King James VI and I, ed. G. P. V. Akrigg (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984) pp. 320–321. 40. Harlein MSS 7003, fols. 66 and 82. 41. Bishop Godfrey Goodman, The Court of King James the First, John S. Brewer, ed. (London, 1839) 1:209–210. 42. Harl. Mss. 7003, f. 134; for a brief analysis of the struggle over royal revenues in the Parliament of 1610, see Roger Lockyer, The Early Stuarts, A Political History of England, 1603–1642 (London & New York, 1989). 43. Ibid.; see also Harl. MSS. 7003, ff. 136 and 137. 44. Harl. MSS. 7003, f. 94; f. 124.

218 Notes 45. For general reference on the personal rule of Charles I, see Lockyer, The Early Stuarts. The most thorough analysis of the period is Kevin Sharpe’s The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1993). 46. John Ford, Materials for the Study of Old English Drama, Series I (1908; Vaduz, 1963). 47. James Shirley, The Revels Plays: The Cardinal, E. M. Yearling, ed. (Manchester, 1986), V. iii. 293–297 48. Martin Butler, Theatre and Crisis 1632–1642 (Cambridge, 1984) p. 236.

Chapter 8 1. Christus Dei, The Lords Annoynted (Oxford, 1643), pp. 4, 11. 2. [Herbert Palmer], Scripture and Reason Pleaded for Defensive Arms (1643) p. 52; Samuel Rutherford, The Law and the Prince (1644) p. 331. 3. [Palmer], Scripture and Reason, p. 9. 4. Ibid., pp. 24–25; An answer to Mis-led Doctor Ferne (1642), p. 35; [Palmer], Scripture and Reason, p. 59 (misnumbered 51); Rutherford, The Law and the Prince, pp. 103–104. 5. David Wootton discusses the implications of their examples for the radical political groups of the late civil war in “From Rebellion to Revolution: the crisis of the winter of 1642/3 and the origins of civil war radicalism,” English Historical Review, 105, 416 (July 1990) pp. 654–669. 6. Dudley Digges, The Unlawfulness of Subjects Taking up Arms (1662), p. 15. The additional irony in this and the following passages is that Digges’ father, of the same name, was one of the most outspoken Parliamentary critics of both James and Charles, repeatedly imprisoned for his comments. 7. James Ussher, The Power Communicated by God to the Prince (1661) pp. 169, 172. 8. Digges, Unlawfulness, p. 15; Ussher, The Power Communicated by God, pp. 161, 145. See, Saunderson, Twelve Sermons, p. 521, for the use of uncleanness and injustice. For the association of Parliamentary rule with the insubordinate wife, see Chapter 5. 9. Digges, Unlawfulness, p. 25. 10. Dudley Digges, An Answer to a printed book (Oxford, 1642), p. 28; Digges, Unlawfulness, p. 135. 11. John Maxwell, Sacro-Sancta Regum Majestas (Oxford, 1644), A4b. 12. A Key to the Kings Cabinet or Animadversions upon the three Printed Speeches … Detecting the Malice and Falshood of their Blasphemous Observations … (Oxford, 1645), pp. 2, 3. 13. [Palmer], Scripture and Reason, p. 173; Rutherford, The Law and the Prince, p. 272. His claim that he is not advocating king-killing is particularly disingenuous in this context. 14. An answer by letter … how Inconsistent Presbyteriall Government is with Monarchy (1644), p. 13. 15. Rutherford, The Law and the Prince, p. 119; Digges, Unlawfulness, p. 128. 16. Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England. 1640–1660 (New Haven, 1992) is the most complete overview. 17. Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (London, 1972) p. 91.

Notes 219 18. Lois Potter, “‘True Tragicomedies’ of the Civil War and Commonwealth,” in Renaissance Tragicomedy. Explorations in Genre and Politics, ed. Nancy Klein Maguire (New York, 1987). 19. The Committee-Man Curried (1647) t.p. These pamphlet plays appeared in 1647 and 1648. 20. Manfred Brod, “Politics and Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England: The Case of Elizabeth Poole,” Albion 31, 3 (Fall, 1999): 395–412; pp. 397, 412. 21. Barbara Donagan, “The casualties of war and treatment of the dead and wounded in the English Civil War,” in Soldiers, Writers, and Statesment of the English Revolution, ed. Ian Gentles, John Morrill, and Blair Worden (Cambridge, MA, 1998) pp. 125, 127. 22. Elizabeth Poole, An Alarum of War, Given to the Army, and to their High Court of Justice (1649) pp. 3, 4, 5. 23. Ibid., p. 5. 24. Ibid., p. 6. 25. [Christopher Wase], Electra of Sophocles: presented to Her Highnesse the Lady Elizabeth (The Hague: 1649). The following information on his life comes from the Dictionary of National Biography. 26. Ibid., p. A2; dedicatory verses, n.p. 27. Ibid., dedicatory verses, n.p. 28. Ibid., p. A2; The Kings Cause Briefly Stated (1644) p. 8. 29. Wase, Electra, p. A2b. 30. Ibid., pp. 5 (n.6), 20. See Chapter 5 for Mrs. Parliament and the obligations of subjects. 31. Ibid., p. 8; compare with a modern translation in Sophocles, Electra, trans. Nicholas Rudall (Chicago, 1993) p. 15: The stroke of the toothed ax of bronze As he lay on his couch Made my heart weep. Treachery made the plan. Lust did the killing. 32. Wase, Electra, p. 19. 33. Ibid., pp. 31, 23, 13, 37, A3b, 43. 34. Ibid., “The Epilogue: Shewing the Parallel in two Poems, The Return and The Restauration,” pp. 2, 3. 35. Ibid., pp. 3–4, 11. 36. Ann Hughes, “Gender and Politics in Leveller literature,” Political Culture and Cultural Politics in early modern England, ed. Susan Amussen and Mark Kishlansky (Manchester, 1995) pp. 172, 173, 174. 37. Bennet, Robert [Col.], King Charle’s Triall Justified: or, Eight Objections against the same fully answered and cleared, by Scripture, Law, History and Reason (1649), pp. 7, 8. 38. John Lilburne, A Declaration To the Free-born People of England Concerning the Government of the Common-Wealth (1654), p. 4. 39. Robert Filmer, Observations upon Aristotles Politiques … Together with Direction for Obedience to Governors (1652) p. 21. 40. Cromwell’s Conspiracy. A Tragy-comedy. Relating to our latter Times. Beginning at the Death of King Charles the First, and ending with the happy Restauration of King Charles the Second (1660), pp. 7, 31, 35.

220 Notes

Chapter 9 1. Bryant, Sir Arthur, ed., The Letters, Speeches, and Declarations of King Charles II (New York, 1968) pp. 84–85. 2. Richard Brathwait, To His Majesty upon his Happy Arrivall (1660) t.p.; Samuel Holland, A Panegyrick on the Coronation (1661) p. 4; Abraham Cowley, Ode, Upon the Blessed Restoration and Returne of His Sacred Majestie Charles the Second (1660) p. 2; Arthur Brett, The Restauration or, A Poem on the Return of the Most Mighty and ever Glorious Prince Charles (1660) p. 7. The image of the “sun,” which historians have come to associate with the Sun King, Louis XIV, was quite popular, and was used by Cowley and Brett, among others. 3. John Dryden, Astraea Redux (1660) pp. 5–6, 12. 4. Rachel Jevon, Exultationis Carmen (1660) p. 4. 5. Martin Lluelyn, To the Kings most excellent Majesty (1660) pp. 6, 7, 8. 6. Francis Gregory, David’s returne (Oxford, 1660) pp. 14, 18. 7. The Famous Tragedie of the Life and Death of Mistress Rump (1660) pp. 1, 2, 3, 8. 8. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (London, 1968) pp. 722, 232. 9. Richard Baxter, A Holy Commonwealth, (1659) pp. 203, 383, 385 (misnumbered 417); Joyce Lee Malcolm provides an interesting analysis of this concept in “Doing No Wrong: Law, Liberty, and the Constraint of Kings” Journal of British Studies 38 (April 1999) 161–186. 10. James Grantham Turner, Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London (Cambridge, 2002) p. 102. 11. Paul Hammond, “The King’s two bodies: representations of Charles II,” in Culture, Politics and Society in Britain, 1660–1800, Jeremy Black and Jeremy Gregory, eds. (Manchester, 1991) pp. 30, 39–40, 27. 12. Nahum Tate, King Lear, in Five Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare, Christopher Spencer, ed. (Urbana, 1965) p. 203; I, i, 111–113. Ironically, Tate quotes these lines from Shakespeare’s version of the play without any change; see The History of King Lear, ed. Stanley Wells (Oxford, 2000) scene I, ll. 90–93. 13. Ibid., p. 203. 14. Edmund Waller, The Maid’s Tragedy Altered with some other Pieces (1690) p. 3, 6. 15. Ibid., pp. 15, 14, 16, 21, 23. 16. Ibid., p. 42. 17. Conrad Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments (Oxford, 1971) p. 383. 18. The Political Writings of John Locke, David Wootton, ed. (New York, 1993) pp. 364, 377. 19. John Dryden, Don Sebastian, in The Works of John Dryden, Berkeley, 1976 (Vol. 15); Preface, l. 25. 20. Ibid., II, I, 574; III, I, 169–171; IV, iii, 645. 21. Ibid., V, I, 726–727, 426.

Conclusions 1. A number of historians have dealt with the gender issues associated with the accession of William and Mary, most recently Rachel Weil, Political Passions:

Notes 221 Gender, Family, and Political Argument in England 1680–1714 (Manchester, 1999) 2. Steven Zwicker, “Representing the Revolution: politics and high culture in 1689,” in The Revolution of 1688–89. Changing Perspectives, ed. Lois Schwoerer (Cambridge, 1992) p. 171. 3. Anna Clark is one of many who discuss women and radical working class movements; see The Struggle for the Breeches. Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995) pp. 141–145. 4. Susan Groag Bell and Karen M. Offen, eds., Women, the Family, and Freedom. The Debate in Documents. Volume One, 1750–1880 (Stanford, 1983) pp. 228–229.

Bibliography Manuscripts: British Library Additional manuscripts: 29,493 Sidman, Jonathan, trans. “Il Pastor Fido.” 60,273 Manuche, Cosmo. “The Banished Shepherdess.” 60,275 Compton, James, Earl of Northampton. Untitled play. Harlein manuscript 7003, fols. 64–134 (Arabella Stuart).

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Bibliography 229 Gentles, Ian, John Morrill, and Blair Worden, ed. Soldiers, Writers, and Statesmen of the English Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Gillis, John. For Better, For Worse: British Marriages 1600–Present. Oxford: 1985. Goldie, Mark. “John Locke’s Circle and James II,” The Historical Journal, 35, 3 (1992) pp. 557–586. Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Hackett, Helen. Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen. Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary. Basingstoke, London: Macmillan, 1995. Haller, William and Malleville. “The Puritan Art of Love,” Huntington Library Quarterly 5, 2 (January 1942) 235–272. Hanley, Sarah. “Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France.” French Historical Studies 16:1 (Spring 1989): 4–27. Harris, Tim, ed. Popular Culture in England, c. 1500–1850. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995. ——. Politics under the later Stuarts. London, New York: Longman, 1993. ——. “Order and Authority: Creating Party in Restoration England,” Albion 25, 4, pp. 581–590, 645–648. Helgerson, Richard. Adulterous Alliances. Home, State, and History in Early Modern European Drama and Painting. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down. Radical Ideas during the English Revolution. London, New York: Penguin Books, 1972. Hirst, Derek. The Representative of the People? Voters and Voting in England under the Early Stuarts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Houston, Alan, and Steve Pincus, ed. A Nation Transformed: England After the Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Hull, Suzanne W. Chaste, Silent, and Obedient: English Books for Women 1475–1640. San Marino: The Huntington Library, 1982. Hunt, Margaret R. The Middling Sort. Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996. James, Mervyn. English Politics and the Concept of Honour. Past and Present, Suppl. iii. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Jed, Stephanie. Chaste Thinking: The rape of Lucretia and the birth of humanism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Lockyer, Roger. The Early Stuarts. A Political History of England 1603–1642. London & New York: Longman, 1989. Kahn, Victoria. Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1985. Kawachi, Yoshiko. Calendar of English Renaissance Drama 1558–1642. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1986. Knights, Mark. Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ——. “Petitioning and the Political Theorists: John Locke, Algernon Sidney, and London’s ‘Monster’ Petition of 1680,” Past and Present 138 (February 1993): 94–111. Kishlansky, Mark. A Monarchy Transformed. Britain 1603–1714. New York: Penguin, 1996.

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Index abduction, see conquest Abigail, 173–4, 180 Abimelech, 105, 154–5, 166, 169, 190 Abraham, 71, 105, 154, 166 Absalom, 188–9, 192 absolutism, see also authority, contract, power, 1, 2, 4, 5, 25, 40, 48, 50, 60–62, 72 and France, 59 Adam, 14, 26–7, 46–7, 52–3, 58, 60, 62, 64, 66–7, 70–1, 83–4, 86, 104–5, 116–20, 131, 137 adultery, 36–8, 64, 67, 90, 115, 132, 144–5, 155, 167–8, 176–8, 187, 189–91, 198 advice, see counsel apprentices and apprenticeship, 81, 83, 93 arbitrary rule, 36, 58–59, 69–70, 72–3, 87, 127, 132–4 aristocracy, see nobility Aristophanes, (Ecclesiazusae), 191 Aristotle/Aristotelian, 6, 28, 65, 116–18, 145 army, 33, 108–9, 113, 135, 179, 192 New Model, 44–5, 69, 110–11, 114, 171–2 standing, 59, 69 Asham, Anthony, 117, 119, 122 Ashcraft, Richard, 60, 135 Astell, Mary, 72–3, 140, 202 authority, see also government, power, 42, 47, 53, 55, 97, 100–1, 106, 113, 132, 140, 145, 152, 201 contractual, 35, 44, 49–50 of fathers, 28, 48, 55, 62–3, 67–8, 70, 87–8, 116, 130–3, 135, 145 legitimate, 17, 20–1, 23, 31, 34, 40–2, 48, 55–6, 72, 79, 106, 132, 144, 186–7 marital, 44–6, 62, 66–7, 81, 90, 97, 102, 103, 107, 112, 136, 138,

140, 144, 151, 157, 164, 178, 192, 202 natural, 40, 44, 46, 48, 50, 53, 55, 63, 65, 70–1, 77, 100, 103–5, 109, 111, 134–5 political, 35, 38, 45, 62, 66, 81, 87, 89, 97, 105, 107–8, 116, 136, 138, 140, 144, 151, 164, 166, 173–4, 178, 182, 192, 202 sovereign, 51–52, 68, 96 Bacon, Sir Francis, 22–3, 83, 85–6, 131, 136, 145 baronetcies, 159–60 Bathsheba, 154–5, 180, 189, 192 Baxter, Richard (Holy Commonwealth), 55, 57–8, 70, 190–1, 193 beasts, 104–5, 124, 144, 194 Beaumont, Francis, 80, 156, 170, 182, 193 Bill (Declaration) of Rights, 72 bishops, see also clergy, 20, 23, 25–6, 30, 33, 44, 100, 102, 109, 113, 149, 158 Bishops’ War, 98 Bodin, Jean, 26, 64, 137 body, 14, 37–8, 42, 51, 83, 146–7 of church, 15, 17 in marriage, 3, 90, 92, 97, 132, 146, 152, 157, 162, 173, 177 oeconomic, 86, 97, 104, 147, 173, 181, 189 politic, 11–12, 14, 17, 22, 24, 42, 45, 51, 77, 79, 81–2, 85–6, 95, 97, 104, 106–7, 110, 131, 154, 172–6, 184–5, 188 in Union of Crowns, 19, 51 Book of Common Prayer English, 86 Scottish (1637), 33, 98 Brady, Robert, 62 Breda, Declaration of, 123, 184, 186 Bridge, William, 36 232

Index 233 Brome, Richard, 88–9 brothers, 67, 88, 117, 126, 130, 135, 144, 174, 193–5, 197 Brutus, Lucius Junius, 153–4, 194 Buckingham, George Villiers, duke of, 149, 160 Butler, Martin, 161 Cambridge University, 126, 174, 195 Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II, 123 Catholics and Roman Catholic Church, 12, 21, 26, 28, 29, 59, 91, 99–101, 108–9, 114, 123, 137, 143, 147–152, 162, 168, 185, 195 anti-Catholicism, 3, 28, 33, 114, 132, 147, 149, 162, 168 pope and papacy, 3, 21, 23, 25, 58–9, 69, 72, 91, 100, 102, 106, 109, 114, 124, 143, 147–9, 162–3, 168 Cecil, Robert, earl of Salisbury, 18, 29 celibacy, 28, 143, 145, 147 Chapman, George, 80–81 charity, 91, 111, 118 Charles I, 1, 3, 32, 33–34, 35, 41, 44, 46, 77, 85, 98–9, 108–9, 111, 114–15, 139, 149, 160–2, 166, 171, 173–4, 177, 180, 182, 186, 188, 195 “personal rule,” 32, 34, 88, 99, 160 Charles II, 1, 3, 55, 58, 59, 65, 69, 115, 123–4, 139–40, 178, 182, 184–9, 192, 195 Chartists, 201–2 chastity, 89, 91–2, 105, 143–8, 150, 152–5, 157, 162–5, 167–9, 174, 179–81, 185, 188–9, 191, 194 children, 17, 27, 29, 40, 42, 46, 49, 56, 61, 63–5, 67–8, 86–8, 90, 92, 97, 100, 106, 111–12, 114, 116–20, 123, 129–35, 144–5, 147, 152, 179–80, 186, 188, 199, 201 Christ, 186 as husband and head of church, 12–15, 31, 43, 79, 90, 93, 95, 100, 107, 143, 146–7, 164, 168, 173

Christians and Christianity, see also church, Christ, 105, 116, 118, 145, 149, 152, 154, 156–7, 165, 168, 192, 197–8 unchristian, 188 church, see also episcopal, presbyterian, 13–14, 17, 30, 79, 90, 100, 137, 145–8, 151, 154, 157, 169, 186 Church of England, 33, 59, 86, 99–102, 114, 125, 143, 147, 152, 161, 168, 186 Church of Scotland (Kirk), 20, 33, 114 English Presbyterian Church, 44, 111 citizen, 71, 92, 105, 112–13, 131–2, 135, 155–7 citizenship, 139, 201 civil society, see also contract, social, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 55–7, 62, 65, 70, 72–3, 121, 126–7, 131–5, 201 civil wars, 34, 39, 49, 58, 60, 97, 103–4, 110, 115, 124–6, 140, 160–2, 170–2, 199 class, see also gentry, laboring class, middle class, nobility, 102–3, 115, 126 clergy, see also bishops, 14, 17, 26, 28, 34, 90, 95, 97, 99–102, 137, 145, 149, 160, 168, 173 Clytemnestra, 174–8 Coke, Sir Edward, 92 collateral male, 128–30 colonies, 81, 119, 132, 151 comedy, see also plays, 7, 78, 80–1, 88, 90, 123, 139, 171 commerce, see also middle class, 127, 130–1, 169 Commission for Union, 19 common good, 36–8, 43, 53, 64–5, 104, 114, 125, 127, 132, 134–6, 158, 202 common law, see law communal rights, 95, 188, 120 commonwealth, see also Interregnum, 47, 49, 51, 57, 58, 61, 64, 83–4, 91, 94, 100, 109, 116–19, 121, 124, 126–7, 135, 138–9, 154, 167, 181–2, 190

234 Index composite state, 11, 33 conquest, 11–12, 16, 19–20, 26, 28, 30–2, 40, 51, 55, 59, 61–3, 106, 109, 119, 121, 148, 151, 156, 193, 200–1 as abduction, 21–4, 32, 40–2, 49–50, 152, 169 conscience, 58, 97, 107, 178, 187 freedom of, 45, 112, 139 consent, 1, 16, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27–28, 29–30, 32, 39, 40–41, 42, 44, 47, 49, 51, 53–54, 55, 56, 58, 60–62, 63, 65, 73, 77, 86–7, 93, 95, 96, 104, 107, 111, 121, 125, 156, 169, 173, 178, 181, 184, 201 as mark of freedom, 48, 58, 69, 78, 85, 88–9, 112, 126, 131–2 contract, 39, 41, 49, 71, 121 absolute, 11, 13, 15–16, 18, 21–2, 26–30, 35, 39–41, 44, 48–54, 57–8, 61, 65, 68, 86, 103, 116, 118, 120–2, 190 as covenant, 36 marriage as, 1, 11–12, 16–17, 26–7, 32, 35–6, 38, 42, 44, 47, 49, 53–4, 56–8, 60–2, 65, 67–8, 72–3, 103, 117, 121, 127, 134, 139, 172, 181, 202 political, 35–6, 37–8, 41, 43–5, 48–63, 69, 71–3, 86, 103–4, 107, 112, 116–19, 121–2, 127, 134, 139, 169, 172, 202 social, 1, 2, 4, 35, 47, 48, 53, 69, 72, 73, 116, 122, 127, 130, 134 Cornwallis, Sir William, 15 coronation, 25, 27–9, 77, 80, 123, 125, 137, 184, 192 counsel, 37, 96–7, 104, 155 court, royal, 59, 85, 108, 160 courtiers, 20, 140, 164, 198–9 courts (of law), 98, 128 High Court of Justice, 171–4 coverture, see also property, 13, 21, 84, 91, 109, 119, 127–8, 173, 179 Craig, Sir Thomas, 19 Cromwell, Oliver, 34, 69, 111–12, 116, 140, 171, 182 Cromwell, Richard, 182

cuckold, 92, 93, 102–3, 115, 171 Cust, Richard, 83 daughters, 71, 80–1, 87, 89, 93, 96, 109, 115, 128, 131, 139, 165, 167, 176–7, 182, 190, 198 David (biblical king), 2, 31, 154–9, 165, 169, 173–4, 180, 187–90, 192 Dekker, Thomas, 147, 168 democracy, 101, 106, 111, 167 Denny, Sir Edward, 20 Denny, Honora, 20 devil, 87, 106, 167 Diggers (True Levellers), 48, 170 Digges, Sir Dudley, 38, 40–41, 51, 167 Dissenters, 58, 65, 196 divine right, see also law, divine, 1, 4, 21, 42, 45, 53, 125–6, 186, 188–192, 194, 200 divorce, 17, 35–9, 43–4, 49, 84, 87, 90, 103, 107–8, 110, 115, 145, 167, 173–4, 179 dower and dowry, see also property, 25, 85–6, 89, 119, 129–31, 136 Downing, Calybute, 31–32 Dryden, John, 185, 192, 195–201 Dudley, Robert, 1st earl of Leicester, 148 economics, 135–6, 202 Eden, see also Paradise, 12, 26, 42, 52, 62, 66, 70, 84, 107 education, 68–69, 73, 134–6, 139, 172, 175, 197 Edward IV, 155–6 Edward VI, 15 Edwards, Thomas (Gangrena), 110, 171 election of monarch, 40, 41, 60, 61 of parliaments, 45, 85 Electra, 174–80 Elizabeth I, 19, 20, 24–25, 29, 32, 66, 120, 147–9, 151, 155–6 Elizabeth, princess, daughter of James I, 149 Elizabeth, princess, daughter of Charles I, 174–5

Index 235 England and English, see also Union of Crowns, 18–19, 22–6, 29–31, 33–4, 51, 53, 55, 58, 59, 66, 69, 71, 78–9, 86, 88, 98–102, 109, 113, 119, 125, 128–9, 131–2, 139 143–4, 147–8, 150–3, 155, 157–8, 163, 165, 168, 170–1, 174–5, 178–9, 184–5, 187–8, 195 episcopal, 20, 33, 44, 58, 99–100, 114, 169 equality between father and son, 69, 135 between men in civil society, 70, 71, 73 in marriage, 13, 35, 40, 48, 70, 90–3, 110, 136, 138, 202–3 Erickson, Amy, 84 Europe, 59, 69, 103, 130, 132, 143, 145 Eve, 26–7, 32, 42, 46, 52–3, 66–7, 71, 78, 83, 94, 104, 106–7, 115–20, 137 Exclusion Crisis, 59, 65, 69, 123, 125–7 faction, 29, 160, 170, 181 Fall, the, 26, 46, 52, 58, 62, 70, 115–18, 120 family, see also daughters, fathers, husbands, marriage, masters, servants, sons, wives, 26, 28, 42, 46, 56, 60–2, 66, 67–8, 72–3, 78, 90, 95, 107, 119–20, 122, 127–31, 139–40, 145, 153, 164, 169, 171, 175, 181, 197, 200–1 Fanshawe, Lady Ann, 139–40 Fanshawe, Sir Richard, 139–40, 170 fathers, 2–3, 22, 26–9, 40–2, 46–51, 60–4, 68–9, 71, 73, 77, 80–1, 87–9, 99–101, 106, 111, 115, 119–21, 125, 127, 130–1 contract and, 56–7 as first rulers, 66–68, 116–14 and civil society, 128, 130–3, 136, 181, 197, 201–2 natural authority of, 35, 40, 44, 47, 48, 60–2, 65–8, 78, 89, 116–18, 123, 125, 133, 145, 188–9, 192–3, 202

femme covert, 84, 200 Field, Richard, 144 Filmer, Sir Robert, 46, 55, 58, 60–75, 88, 115–17, 119, 125–6, 133, 135 Patriarcha, 60, 88, 116 Fletcher, John, 79, 156, 170, 193 Ford, John, 79, 160–1, 167 fornication, 14, 28,67, 90, 143–4, 147 France and French, 25, 59, 108–9, 137, 148, 161, 174, 184–5 franchise parliamentary, 44–5, 85, 94, 111–13, 117, 119, 127, 139, 180, 192, 201 urban, 85 freedom, see also liberty, rights, 1, 44–5, 47, 53, 57, 59, 70, 73, 81, 85, 87–8, 104–5, 112–13, 115–16, 119, 124, 126, 154, 186–8, 192, 197, 201 free men, 85, 110, 112, 114, 119, 123, 132, 151 friends, 16–18, 23–4, 92 Gee, Edward, 55–8 gender, 5, 102, 115, 121, 126, 178–9 generation (age–group), 64, 90, 95, 99, 110, 127–8, 130, 134, 156, 173, 176, 197 gentry, 81, 85, 87–8, 98, 102, 110, 129, 151, 169 Glorious Revolution, 65, 66, 69, 195–6, 200–1 God, see also law, divine, 11–15, 17, 24, 26–8, 45–6, 51–3, 57–8, 60–1, 64, 77, 79, 86–7, 90, 93, 96–7, 100, 104–6, 110, 117, 124, 131, 133–4, 144–5, 151–2, 154–5, 157–60, 162, 164–6, 170, 173–6, 184, 186–9, 191, 202 godly, 25, 48, 118, 144, 147, 164 Goodman, Godfrey, bishop of Gloucester, 26, 30, 53, 78, 107, 159 gossips, 114, 169, 188 Gouge, William, 14, 90, 97, 146

236 Index government, see also household, 48, 57, 90, 106, 175, 180 legitimate, 17, 20–1, 23, 31, 34, 40, 48, 55–6, 61, 72, 79, 106, 143, 145–6, 151–2, 169, 178–9, 191, 193, 199–200 origins of, 26–8, 34, 66, 86, 104, 117–18, 131, 133 political, 5–6, 26, 32, 34–40, 42–9, 51, 53–7, 61, 68, 69–72, 80, 82, 86, 88, 94, 102–9, 110–14, 117–18, 120–1, 126–7, 131, 133, 135, 138, 143, 145, 148, 154, 160–1, 163–5, 168, 172, 177–9, 183, 184, 197 representative, 46, 105, 109, 111 governor, see also father, husband, monarch, magistrate, wife, 42, 47, 92, 101–2, 104, 106, 145, 166, 177–8 Great Britain, see also Union of Crowns, 16, 19, 21–24, 30, 41, 185 British empire, 21, 22 Gunpowder Plot, 148 Hall, John, 47 Hampden, John, 98 Harrington, James, 55, 58, 70, 135; heiresses-at-law, 128–30 Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, 108–10, 167, 176 Henry I, 71 Henry IV (Bolingbroke), 166 Henry VI, 156 Henry VII, 15–16, 30, 77 Henry VIII, 15, 29 Henry, prince of Wales, son of James I, 94, 151 heresy and heretics, 59, 145, 152 Heywood, Thomas, 22, 83, 92, 144, 153, 155 Hill, Christopher, 170 Hirst, Derek, 85 Hobbes, Thomas (Leviathan), 36, 48–53, 63, 116, 120–2, 127, 189–91 on conquest, 49–50 on Generation, 49–50, 117, 121, 189

on heaven and hell, 52–3 on metaphor, 50 honor, 82, 92, 124, 131, 139, 143–5, 152, 154, 160–1, 168, 176, 180, 185, 193–4 House of Commons, see also parliament(s), 98–9, 101–2, 108, 112–13 House of Lords, see also parliament(s), 30 household (oeconomy), 2, 6, 28, 70, 78, 89–90, 110, 119–21, 129, 134–6, 138, 140, 143, 152, 154, 165, 168, 174, 175, 177–8, 192, 201 government, 22, 32, 34–40, 42–6, 53–4, 57–8, 61, 63, 65, 66, 69, 70–2, 77, 88–9, 91, 95–6, 100–3, 106, 109, 111–12, 130–4, 137–8, 143, 145, 157, 167 organization and order in, 62, 121–2, 127–8, 131, 136, 163, 165–6, 169, 201–2 householding, see also father, husband, 4, 85, 96, 112–13, 117, 119, 156–7, 180, 201 Hughes, Ann, 112 humanism, 82, 153 Hunt, Thomas, 72 husband, 1, 3, 13, 18–21, 24–7, 29, 31–2, 36–8, 40–4, 46, 51–2, 55–8, 61–2, 67–9, 73, 78, 80–3, 86–7, 89, 90, 92–3, 96, 113, 115, 117–18, 128–9, 150, 154–6, 159, 164, 167, 169, 173–4, 179–81, 200 as head of household (oeconomic body), 3, 12, 18, 27–8, 34, 38, 40, 47, 50–2, 66–8, 72–3, 77–8, 83–6, 91–7, 100, 102–3, 105–7, 111–13, 115, 128, 130, 140, 152, 156, 161, 164–5, 173–6, 180–1, 191–2 natural authority of, 55, 56, 64, 69–71, 132–3, 135, 202 as political subject, 47, 80, 84, 94, 96–7, 102, 107, 111–14, 120–1, 123, 126, 136–40, 145, 152, 157, 161–5, 180, 192, 201–2

Index 237 as reflection of Christ, 146, 164, 173, 186 as subordinate magistrate, 5, 95 incest, 67, 80, 145, 147, 176, 198–9 Independents, 44, 111, 114, 171 individual, 77, 83, 85–6, 91, 94–5, 97, 111–12, 120, 127–8, 132, 134–5, 139, 145, 147, 152 individualism, 134, 136, 201 inheritance, 16, 29–32, 60, 64, 66–7, 70–71, 77, 86, 88, 92, 117, 120, 128–9, 134–5, 139, 179, 184–5, 188, 195 injustice, 152–7, 159–60, 166, 181, 189–90, 194 Inns of Court, 126 Interregnum, 3, 47, 53, 55, 126–7 Ireland, 44, 184 Ireton, Henry, 171 Italy, 64, 132 Italian, 148, 153 James VI and I, 4, 11, 12, 13–25, 29–31, 33, 41, 51, 61, 77, 80, 85, 93–4, 148–51, 155, 157–60, 196 James II, 59, 65–6, 72, 123, 195, 200 James, Lord Hay, 20 James, Mervyn, 83 Jed, Stephanie, 153 Jesuits, 102, 150–1 Jevon, Rachel, 185–6 Jews, 38, 145 Joab, 190 jointure, see also dower and dowry, property, strict settlement, 16, 128–30 Johnson, Samuel, 72 Jonson, Ben, 80–1, 88–9, 171 judges and justices, 30–1, 89, 98, 133 Kahn, Victoria, 50 king, see monarch kingdom, see also government, monarchy, polity, 28, 34, 47, 60–1, 77, 101, 105, 108, 127–8, 132, 136–7, 140, 143, 148, 151, 154, 157, 160, 165, 167, 173, 177, 185, 192, 197, 202

labor, see also production, property, 48, 66, 132, 134–5, 139 laboring class, 82, 85, 96, 102, 110, 126–7, 130, 201 L’Estrange, Sir Roger, 125 Lacquer, Thomas, 72 land, see also property, 128–30, 135 Laud, William, archbishop of Canterbury, 99, 161 law, 18, 20, 27, 42, 47, 49, 59, 61, 64, 69, 70, 96, 102, 106, 109, 120, 125, 131–2, 144, 170, 176, 190–1, 196, 201 civil, 43, 50, 153 common, 4, 13, 21, 22, 24, 29, 30–1, 83, 85, 92, 119, 128–9 divine, 4, 12, 14, 49, 60, 62–4, 73, 77–8, 87, 96, 104, 124, 126, 144–5, 159, 162, 165–6, 173–4, 188–9 feudal, 125 and monarch, 41, 59, 124–5, 157, 160, 169, 184, 190–1, 194–5, 200 of nations, 63 of nature, 4, 11, 12, 13–14, 28, 43, 59–64, 70–3, 77, 85–6, 104, 124, 126, 132, 144, 159, 188–9 of reason, 68 Levack, Brian, 19 Levellers, 4, 45, 111–12, 117, 119, 171, 179–80, 192, 201 liberals, 135–6 liberty, see also freedom, property, rights, 3, 6, 13, 18, 21, 24, 32, 34, 41, 45, 47–8, 50, 56–7, 59, 64–6, 68–9, 77, 80, 85–6, 88, 96–9, 107, 109, 112–13, 117, 119, 121, 123–8, 131, 133, 136, 143, 145, 151–2, 154, 157, 161–3, 177–8, 180–1, 187, 189, 191–2, 195–7, 202 licentiousness, 113, 123, 146, 181–2, 187, 189, 191–2 Lilburne, Elizabeth, 112–13, 201 Lilburne, John, 45, 110–13, 171, 180 Locke, John, 3, 4, 65–72, 73, 127–8, 132–4, 139, 195–7, 202–3 as political radical, 65–6, 135, 202 Two Treatises of Government, 65–6, 72

238 Index London, 29, 34, 77, 82, 88, 99, 109, 112, 126, 149, 155–6, 159, 171–2, 189 love, 48, 64, 79, 80, 88, 94, 146, 150, 152, 168, 179, 182, 184–6, 192–4, 198, 200 Lucrece (Lucretia), 153, 180–1, 187 lust, 88, 92, 114, 124, 132, 143–4, 150, 152, 154–5, 157, 161–2, 165–9, 171–3, 177–8, 182, 189–94 Luther, Martin, 143 magistrate, see also governors, husbands, wives, 82, 95, 97, 100–1, 105, 177, 120, 131–2, 138, 156, 167, 190 The Maid’s Tragedy, 156–7, 193–4 Marlowe, Christopher, 182 marriage, 22–4, 28–31, 45, 52–3, 58, 62, 66, 69–70, 73, 78, 81, 83, 87–9, 90, 92, 108, 117, 119, 123, 125, 127, 129, 134, 139–40, 144–50, 151–3, 155–6, 158, 163–4, 169, 188, 193, 197, 200 choice in, 78, 86–9, 131–2, 178, 200–1 companionate, 136–8 as contract, 1, 3, 4, 11, 16 24–5, 27, 34–9, 42, 44, 47–50, 53, 57, 59, 60, 62–5, 67–8, 73, 78–9, 82–3, 86, 103, 107, 120, 127, 130–4 172, 181, 202 enforced, 87–8, 92, 131–2, 160 equality and inequality in, 81–2, 91–3, 102, 119, 129–30, 136, 145, 148–9, 154, 163 as first government, 26, 32, 42, 43, 53, 66, 86–7, 104, 118, 144, 163–4 as mark of political status, 2, 45, 47, 73, 77, 79, 81–4, 86–7, 90, 93, 103, 111–13, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125, 127, 131, 134 136, 138, 154, 157, 161, 191–3 as model for political government, 48–9, 53, 55, 56, 60, 74, 78, 86, 108, 115, 117, 119, 121, 140, 172, 182, 200–1

of monarch to kingdom, 77–8, 123, 143, 158, 163, 169, 177–9, 182, 184–6, 191, 200 as sign of freedom, 64–5, 83, 86–9, 90, 130–3 Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, 15, 29 Marston, John, 80–1 Mary I, 66 Mary II, 65, 195–6, 200 Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, 29 Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, 16, 21 masques, 108 Massinger, Philip, 79 master, 49, 70, 77, 81–3, 87, 90, 93, 105–6, 119, 125, 165, 202 Matilda, 71 middle class, 82, 96, 101–2, 126–7, 129–30, 202 artisans, 139 commercial and trading class, 131, 135 Middleton, Thomas, 149–50, 156 militia, 99 Milton, John, 35, 37–8, 48–9, 53, 135, 179 mistresses, 156–7, 177, 193 Mocket, Richard, 27 monarch, 1, 2, 38, 42–3, 46, 55, 58–63, 66, 71, 85, 87, 91, 95–6, 98, 100–1, 103, 105, 108, 110, 115–17, 123, 126, 132–3, 140, 143, 145, 148, 151–2, 154–60, 163–4, 166–8, 170–2, 175–6, 178, 182, 187–92, 196–7 and contract of government, 35–7, 40, 41, 52, 56–7, 59, 62–3, 78, 100, 104 as father, 26–9, 35, 41–2, 44, 46, 48, 55–6, 59–62, 65, 67, 88, 123, 169, 173 as God’s vice–regent, 152, 154, 157–8, 165–6, 179, 184, 194 as husband and head of body politic, 3–4, 12, 13, 25, 26–8, 30–1, 34, 38, 40, 77–80, 83, 94–5, 97, 104–6, 108–9, 115, 136–8, 140, 150, 161, 166, 169, 172–5, 184–5, 188–9, 191

Index 239 monarchy, 26–7, 40, 45–7, 55, 71–2, 100, 104–5, 167, 182, 189 women and, 70–3, 105, 121 More, Sir Thomas, 155 mothers, 4, 5, 22, 27, 49, 53, 60, 62–5, 67–8, 80, 90, 96, 99–102, 117, 130–1, 133–6, 177–8, 197–8, 202 murder, 64, 80, 87, 102, 125, 151, 153, 155–6, 160, 167, 176–7, 179, 187–8, 190, 197 Nabal, 173–4 nation, see polity natural, see authority, fathers, freedom, husbands, rights, subjection, unnatural nature, see also law of nature, 25, 28, 43, 57, 61–2, 82, 138, 184, 186 state of, 49–50, 52, 62–3, 132, 134, 189 Noah, 46, 186 nobility, 101–3, 110, 113, 128–9, 151, 159, 165, 179, 190 non-conformity, 58 obedience, 40, 77–8, 81, 90–1, 94, 96, 103–5, 107, 137, 140, 146, 149, 152, 157, 158, 161–2, 166, 172–4, 192 oeconomy, see household Overton, Richard, 111 Oxford, city of, 34, 36, 38 university, 126, 174, 195 pamphlets, see also plays, prophecy, 87, 105, 113–14, 124–6, 130, 170–1, 174–5, 179, 182 parents, 17, 46, 48, 56, 67–8, 87, 92, 99–100, 119, 133–35, 198–9 Paradise, see also Eden, 78, 104–5, 137 Parker, Henry, 42, 135 parliament(s)12, 18–19, 20, 23, 29, 30–1, 34, 40, 56, 58, 59, 65–6, 69, 77, 98–9, 103–4, 106–11, 113, 115, 126–7, 159–60, 162, 164, 166–8, 170–3, 175, 180, 184, 189, 195–6

Long Parliament, 98 Rump Parliament, 111, 188–9 of women, 99, 101–3, 109, 113–14, 126, 176, 201 Parliamentarians, 35, 36, 99, 103–4, 106–8, 110, 163, 165–8 parties, see Tories, Whigs, faction Pateman, Carol, 49–50 patriarchy and patriarchal theory, 40, 66–8, 87, 89 people, 36, 38, 39, 41, 56, 108, 121, 153, 174, 181, 187, 200 and contract of government, 39, 41, 43, 116, 125–6 Perry, Ruth, 73 petitions and petitioning, 112, 126, 179 “Monster” petition, 65 petty treason, 91, 177 Philip of Macedon, 168 piety, 90, 92, 124 Pincus, Steven, 135–6 Plato, 83, 116 neo-Platonism, 108 plays, see also comedy, tragedy, tragicomedy, 6, 7, 22, 34, 78–81, 103, 123, 130, 147, 149, 160, 170–1, 174–9, 182, 192–5 Caroline, 160, 163, 167, 189 Jacobean, 130, 156, 160–1, 165, 171, 189 playwrights, 78, 81–2, 87, 91–2, 101, 156, 173, 181–2, 192 Pocock, J. G. A., 110 political, see authority, contract, government, subjects political economy, 136 polity, 6, 13, 14, 28, 35, 66, 70, 78, 82, 85, 91, 95, 99–101, 105–108, 113, 119, 122–3, 131, 134–6, 139, 146, 148, 152, 177–8, 201–2 polygamy, 143, 185 pope and papacy, see Catholics Poole, Elizabeth, 171–5 population, 113, 119, 130, 134, 136 pornography, 183, 191 Portugal, 197–8 Potter, Lois, 170 poverty, 88, 169, 172, 201

240 Index power, see also authority, 39–40, 124, 161 coercive 42–3, 64–5, 68, 72, 132–3, 164–5 forms of, 42, 46, 56, 64, 67, 68, 71, 117 marital, 26, 38, 40, 42, 96 natural, 43, 56, 133, 188 political, 34–6, 39, 117, 120–1, 124, 129, 133, 138, 166, 200 sources of, 39–44, 55, 117 preaching and preachers, 110, 149–50 prerogative, royal, 13, 21, 30–1, 34, 35, 41, 42, 44, 50, 60, 78, 98–9, 103, 105, 125, 154, 161–3, 188–92 presbyterian, see also church, 20, 33, 55, 58, 110–12, 114, 163, 168–9, 171 primogeniture, 66, 128 prince, see monarch private, 5–6, 62, 66, 69, 73, 120, 134–5, 153, 192, 194 Privy Council, 85, 159 procreation, 52, 63–4, 67–9, 78, 86, 89–92, 102, 113–14, 116–17, 119, 122, 130–1, 133–4, 136, 139, 144–5 of government, 49–50, 117, 121 illegitimate, 31, 56, 63, 132 of law, 30–1 legitimate, 14, 31, 71, 92, 119, 131–2, 147 production, 111, 119, 121, 134, 136, 139, 164, 197, 201–2 property, 18, 59, 68, 69, 88, 101–2, 113, 117–18, 121, 125, 127–30, 132–3, 137, 164–5, 173, 201 and franchise, 48, 85, 132, 201 and the individual, 77, 83–4, 94, 112, 120, 128, 130–3, 135–6, 138–9 and liberty, 3, 45, 85–6, 91–2, 98, 117–19, 121, 128, 130, 133–5, 152, 163, 196–7 and marriage rights, 3, 48, 89, 91–2, 131 prophecy, 170–4, 181

prostitution, 143, 150 Protestant, see also church, 3, 12–15, 19–21, 25, 28, 59, 69, 82, 90–1, 97, 108–9, 114, 121, 132, 143, 147–151, 200 providence, 4, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19, 151, 170, 185 Prynne, William, (Histriomastix), 108 public, 5–6, 62, 69, 73, 134, 138, 151, 153, 181, 192, 194 public good, see common good punishment, 27, 32, 42, 52–3, 57, 60, 64, 66, 68, 133, 154, 156, 164–6, 173–4, 188, 190, 199 puritan, 20, 36, 89, 97, 100, 114, 168 puritanism, 170 queen, see monarch radicals, 4, 65–6, 69–70, 72, 112, 126, 135, 170, 172, 196, 202 Rainsborough, Colonel Thomas, 111 rape, see also self-preservation, tyranny, 21–3, 41, 79–80, 105, 140, 148, 150–2, 161, 165–9, 173, 176, 180–1, 187, 191, 194 rebellion, 41, 89, 102, 106–7, 115, 124–5, 155–6, 160–1, 163–4, 168, 177, 188, 191, 193 Reformation, 143, 164 regicide, 174, 179, 188 religion, see also Catholic, Christianity, church, Protestant, 18, 20, 65, 73, 90–1, 94, 97, 99, 102–3, 106–7, 109, 113–14, 143, 148, 163, 200 reproduction, see procreation republicans and republicanism, 2, 3, 5, 47–8, 55, 57–9, 70, 72, 113, 121, 131–2, 135–6, 153, 189, 192, 202 republic, 135, 153–4, 186 resistance, 38–9, 163–7, 178, 180, 191 Restoration, 4, 58, 69, 115, 123, 130, 136, 156, 174, 181–2, 184–6, 195 revolt, 39, 89 revolution, 58, 104, 171, 199 Richard III, 30

Index 241 rights, see also freedom, liberty, property, 4, 44, 50, 70, 101, 103–4, 110, 120, 126, 133, 153, 163, 165–7, 178, 184, 187, 193 riot, 95–6 Rome and Romans, 22–4, 99, 101, 153, 157, 181, 186–7 Royalists, 2, 3, 35, 99, 103–7, 110, 113–14, 120–1, 125, 163–4, 166, 168–9, 170–1, 181, 192, 199 Russell, Conrad, 103 Sabines, 22–4, 41, 50 St. Paul, 105, 146 Sarah, 105–6, 155, 166 Saunderson, Robert, 154–5, 190 Sandys, Sir Edwin, 21, 23 Saye and Sele, William Fiennes, viscount, 98 schism, 106–7 Schochet, Gordon, 62 scold, 96, 99 Scotland and Scots, 11–26, 44, 46, 51, 58, 81, 86, 111, 171, 184 Scottish rebellion (1638), 33–4, 98 sects, 44, 48, 90, 100, 106, 110, 143, 146, 163, 168, 170–1 self-preservation, 116, 152, 162–9, 171, 173–4 sermons, 20, 136–8 servants, see also slaves and slavery, 50, 83, 90, 93, 97, 105–6, 111–12, 118–121, 125, 140, 152, 161, 165–6, 168, 177, 179–80 sexuality, see also procreation, 6, 101–3, 113–14, 117, 123, 183, 191–2 seduction, 165, 171, 178 sodomy, 165 Seymour, William, 158 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st earl of, 59, 62, 65, 195 Shakespeare, William, 39, 79, 81, 153, 155, 182, 192 shaming rituals, 5, 94, 96 Shanley, Mary Lyndon, 2, 35–7, 39, 65, 68 Ship Money, 34, 98 Shirley, James, 160–1, 167, 182

Shore, Jane and Matthew, 155–6 Sidney, Algernon, 62, 65, 69–75, 127, 202 Sidney, Sir Philip, 70 sin, 14, 46, 52–3, 57, 66, 80, 84, 87, 97, 99–100, 107, 118, 140, 144, 147, 154–5, 167, 178, 187–9, 194, 198–9 single, see unmarried sisters, 144, 198 slaves and slavery, see also servants, villeinage, 3, 26–7, 41–2, 50, 59, 63, 71, 73, 78, 85, 88, 105–6, 109, 116–19, 124, 131, 137, 149, 151–2, 154, 157, 161–2, 165, 169, 177, 179–80, 194, 197 Solemn Engagement, 45 Solomon, 186 Sophocles (Electra), 174–9 sons, 2–3, 42, 47, 53, 60, 62, 64, 67, 69, 71, 73, 80–1, 87–9, 117, 120, 125, 128–31, 134–5, 139, 154, 161, 165, 181, 184, 188–9, 197 sovereignty, 35, 57, 61, 67, 71–2, 96, 103, 121, 124, 154, 189–90 Spain and Spanish, 64, 132, 140, 148–50, 174, 185, 197 Spanish Match, 149–52 Spring, Eileen, 128–9 state, see polity status, 48, 72, 77, 84, 86, 89–93, 102–3, 112, 115, 140, 151, 159, 161, 185 Stone, Lawrence, 136–8 Streater, John, 118–19, 122, 135 strict settlement, see also dower, inheritance, jointure, property, 128–9, 135, 137 Stuart, Arabella, 29, 158–60 subjection, 32, 38, 39, 42, 72, 78, 103, 108, 112, 115, 127, 135, 137, 146, 164, 166, 169, 179, 181, 186, 194–5 as absolute, 62–3, 66, 116, 134 and contract, 39–41 as natural, 45–7, 53, 57, 60–1, 71, 73, 78, 104, 115–121, 124–7, 134–5, 138, 177, 181, 186–7, 189 necessity of, 57–8, 78, 104–5, 152

242 Index subjects, political, see also servants, slaves, sons, wives, 27–9, 32, 34, 36, 38–40, 42, 44, 46–7, 52, 57–9, 77, 79, 85, 91, 95–6, 99–101, 103–9, 112, 118, 121, 123, 125, 132, 134, 140, 143, 145, 147, 148, 152–6, 158, 160–7, 169, 173, 178, 180, 184, 186–93 subsidies, 34 succession, royal, 28, 30–2, 40, 59, 62, 71–2, 120, 123, 125, 184, 200 Swan, John, 99–102 Tarquin, 2, 153–5, 157, 165, 180–1, 186–8, 194 Tate, Nahum (King Lear), 192–3 taxation, 98–100 theaters, 114, 126, 115, 160, 170, 175, 183 theft, see also tyranny, 167, 180, 196–7 Thirty Years War, 149 tithes, 99 toleration, see conscience, religion, Tories, 58–9, 69, 125, 140, 194, 199 trade, 127, 135 tragedy, 77, 79, 87, 150, 155–7, 160–1, 165, 171, 182, 192–3, 198–9 tragicomedy, 7, 78–80, 160, 171, 182, 185, 192–3, 197–9 treason, 91, 111, 145, 161, 177, 179, 182 Triennial Act, 58 tyranny, 30, 37, 45, 47, 53, 59, 80, 87, 89, 93, 99–100, 105, 116, 140, 143, 151–4, 160, 166, 169–70, 171, 173–4, 176–9, 186–8, 193, 201 as assault on marriage, 151–2, 154–61, 163, 165–8, 175, 181–2, 189–90, 196, 198 as rape, 2, 148, 159, 163, 165, 178–80, 182, 187, 191, 197 as rapine, 3, 180, 191, 196–7 tyrant, 21, 31, 80, 100, 140, 148, 155–7, 162, 165, 172, 174–6, 178, 180, 184, 187–9, 192, 197 Tyrell, John, 62–5, 67, 70–2, 130–1, 134 Patriarcha non Monarcha, 62, 65

Union of Crowns, 2, 11–25, 29–31, 51, 58 universal monarchy, 59, 66, 151 unmarried, 83, 87, 144–5, 147 unnatural, see also nature, 80, 87, 104, 109–10, 115–16, 123, 143, 177, 187–8, 198 Uriah the Hittite, 154, 156, 159, 180, 187–90 usurpation, 39, 41, 46, 79, 93, 99, 101, 106–7, 110, 118, 125, 140, 145, 147, 152, 154, 156, 161, 166, 173, 175–7, 179, 187–9, 191–3, 197–8 villeinage, see also slavery, 3, 85, 118 virginity and virgins, 22, 117, 126, 137, 144, 147, 151, 193 virtue, see also honor, piety, 93, 131, 135, 144, 161, 185 Wales, 16, 30 Waller, Edmund (The Maid’s Tragedy), 192–3 war, see also civil wars, conquest, 69, 117, 171 Wars of the Roses, 30 Wase, Christopher, 174–9, 186 wealth, 90–3, 119, 128, 130, 132, 135–6, 138, 139, 145 Webster, John, 156 Weil, Rachel, 130 Wentworth, Thomas, earl of Strafford, 98–9 Whately, William, 144 Whigs, 58–9, 65, 69, 72, 125, 127, 130, 140, 195 widows, 91, 119, 128–30, 140, 185 William I (the Conqueror), 23, 30–1, 41 William III, 65, 66, 69, 195–6, 200 Winstanley, Gerrard, (The Law of Freedom), 47–8, 110, 112, 170 Wiseman, Susan, 113 witches, 96, 103, 109 wives, 4–5, 36–8, 40, 42–3, 46, 51, 56, 62–3, 78–9, 83–8, 90–3, 96, 109, 113–15, 117, 120, 125–6,

Index 243 128–31, 148, 155, 162, 165–9, 171, 180–1, 186–7, 189, 191–2, 199–202 as fellow governors, 2, 63, 77, 90, 94–7, 99–104, 106, 110, 113, 115, 127, 130–2, 137, 173, 180–1 as models for political subjection, 99–104, 106–8, 111, 119–20, 123, 126–7, 136, 140, 162, 172–3, 192 as subjects, 1, 5, 13, 18–19, 24–8, 32, 34, 39–43, 47, 49, 57, 60–2, 65–67, 69–71, 73, 77, 80, 84, 89, 91–2, 94–7, 99, 101–8, 111–12, 115, 119–21, 135, 137, 146–7, 152, 176, 192, 197

women, see also daughters, mothers, widows, witches, wives, 5, 12–14, 16, 20, 22, 25, 39, 58, 64, 66, 70–3, 81, 84, 91, 93, 95–6, 99–105, 108, 110, 113–14, 118–21, 124–6, 129, 131–2, 138–9, 143, 146, 167–9, 171–2, 174, 179, 183, 191, 193, 197, 201 whores, 81, 102, 114–15, 144–5, 168, 181, 188 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 139 Wootton, David, 111–12 Worden, Blair, 71 youth, 91 Zwicker, Steven, 200

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