There was very little out and
abouting during December partly because everyone needs a run up at
Christmas and partly because I had been charged with the task of
writing some history... to see if I could really. You can judge for
yourself if you like. Here is the text of a few ideas relating the role
of the gentry in the seventeenth century and the way in which they were
a stabilising influence during troubled times and also provided the
social and intellectual springboard from which scientific developments
took off in the 1650s and 1660s.
Time for the Gentry: Stability and Change during the Seventeenth Century
In 1676 Sir Anthony Cope of Hanwell Castle, Oxfordshire is
recorded by Robert Plot (1677: 240) as being the owner of a
remarkable water clock designed after the pattern of one Mario
Bettini. What differentiated this clock from others of the period was
its unusual mechanism for regulating the passage of time. Most
contemporary clocks did this by means of a mechanical escapement but
Sir Anthony’s example was controlled by a paddle rotating within a drum
of water. The downward force applied by weights was moderated by
the pressure of water against this paddle which was turning through the
body of water in the drum. The presence of a small hole in the paddle
allowed this by permitting a small flow of water through it. Thus
whilst there was local turbulence around the aperture the overall
motion of the mechanism was smooth.
Sir Anthony’s ownership of this clock confirmed him in his status as a
virtuoso, an appellation given to those members of the gentry who had
shown particular application to the pursuit of natural philosophy and
who were, perhaps more to the point, able to support their interest
financially. The curious nature of the clock, however, would have set
him apart from most of his neighbours for whom time was measured more
conventionally. Indeed the measurement of time and hence the ownership
of clocks became an increasingly important aspect of the lives of the
gentry through the seventeenth century, especially following the
introduction of Huygen’s pendulum regulator in 1657 after which London
became ‘the horological centre of Europe’ (Sherman 1996: 8). Like any
aspect of material culture, owning a clock expressed several aspects of
elite preoccupations. On the one hand a fine clock was a status symbol
demonstrating a certain capacity to spend; in the following century the
typical cost of a long case clock was 45 shillings, nearly two months
pay for an agricultural labourer (Glennie and Thrift 2009: 221). On the
other hand the clock was a practical tool for those with an interest in
efficient management of time and by extension their household and
estate. Beyond that it can be argued the possession of a clock also
demonstrated a commitment to a certain world view in which there was an
imperative to make good use of ‘each fleeting hour’ for spiritual or
economic advancement. The gurgling rotation of Sir Anthony’s
clock was not as good an evocation of ‘times winged
chariot’ flitting by as the regular tick from a swinging pendulum. He
reserved that imperative for the clock he donated to the parishioners
of Hanwell in 1676.
In this essay we will examine the social, economic and political
fortunes of the gentry through the course of the seventeenth century
and argue that they constituted a powerful mechanism for stability
which protected England from the worst excesses of a century of crisis
that brought so much turmoil to continental Europe. Furthermore
we will suggest that the resilience embodied in this class
enabled significant developments to occur, particularly in the second
half of the century, in the field of science and technology. We will
first address issues of definition and then examine the factors behind
the increasing economic and social influence of the gentry before
touching on their role in the Civil War, Commonwealth and Restoration.
Finally we will take a look at the period up to 1688 which culminated
in ‘the glorious revolution’ which has been described, not
without question, as ‘the triumph of the gentry’ (Heal and Holmes 1994:
234).
Of course it would have take more than simply possessing a clock to
establish one’s credentials as a gentleman, although by 1675 around
half of them did so (Weatherill 1986: 199). However, any
attempt to define the gentry in the seventeenth century must take into
account their material circumstances which in turn reflected their
wealth. Expressions of wealth were what gave the gentry the external
trappings of respectability and so identified them in their own eyes
and the eyes of their neighbours as belonging to that class. First and
foremost amongst these was a grand house of sufficient size to set it
aside from those of yeomen and lesser freeholders with appropriate
fittings and furnishings occasionally graced with a touch of what Peck
(2005: 13) refers to as a ‘”New Luxury” [… ] based on innumerable
choices presented by a growing economy’. A necessary adjunct to
the house was a garden and park of some pretentions. Gardens
offered opportunities for intellectual stimulation, spiritual
refreshment and a above all a fine setting for the house itself
(Cliffe, 1999: 55). All of this was based on the ownership of
land and on an ability to generate income without the necessity to get
one’s hands dirty. In addition as Wrightson puts it (2003: 38) land
ownership conveyed ‘superior prestige and cultural force’ and
quantifies it for the period by suggesting that the 2% of the
population classified as gentry owned 50% of the land (2003: 32).
A sub-set of the class of gentry who were not quite so closely tied to
the land were those with professional interests, for example
lawyers, physicians of the better sort, and clergy. These would
normally be drawn from amongst the ranks of younger sons and were often
in possession of a university education or had been through one of the
Inns of Court or both. Being largely an urban group patterns of income
and expenditure differed from their country cousins as did their social
make-up. Most authors now stress movement and diversity within
the ranks of the gentry (for example Wrightson 2003: 27), this was not
a monolithic institution, so it is apposite to consider an example of
social mobility. Someone with such professional interests, who
hovered on the boundaries of the gentry, was the mining engineer Thomas
Bushell.
The career of Bushell, originator of the ornamental waterworks known as
the Enstone Marvels and erstwhile gentleman, illustrates aspects of the
struggle to acquire and hold onto wealth both on the way up and the way
down. Despite claims to have been of gentle birth he probably came from
Worcestershire yeoman stock. Fleeing the family home in disgrace
around the age of fourteen he took service in the household of Sir
Francis Bacon. According to the great gossip Aubrey his propensity to
over dress his part lead to the nickname ‘Buttond Bushell’ (Dick 1957:
42). The precise nature of his relationship with Bacon remains a matter
for speculation, whatever the case he was well provided for and on
Bacon’s death he was in a position to marry an Oxfordshire heiress and
take control of a small estate at Enstone. Here he spent extravagantly
to create a fine garden with attached grotto and banqueting hall as the
natural appurtenances of a gentleman. His status as a member of the
gentry would have been confirmed if his scheme, by royal warrant, to
mine silver in Wales had not been over-taken by the Civil War. By
the time of the Restoration Bushell had been on the run and imprisoned
for debt and was, By Aubrey’s account, ‘ the greatest master of the art
of running into debt (perhaps) in the world’ (Dick 1957: 42).
Nevertheless in 1663 he was appointed ‘gentleman of the privy
chamber extraordinary’ (DNB) a post which permitted him some small
measure of financial security and finally gave him the affirmation he
had sought.
Through a combination of self-identification and patronage Bushell
managed to create, and against all the odds, maintain a gentlemanly
condition. Although this is an unusual case it illustrates the
permeable boundaries that existed around the status of gentlemen
and that the confident expectation of wealth was almost as good as cash
in hand. What Bushell lacked was a lineage and official recognition of
his right to bear arms. Both at the time were considered reliable
pointers to a family’s standing but Heal and Holmes are less
convinced (1994: 21) pointing out that of the new baronets
created by James I nearly a third of the titles had died out by 1700,
genetic weaknesses made a way for the ‘new men’ of the later
seventeenth century. Shakespeare’s quest for arms for his family is
well known but the various abuses on the occasions of herald’s county
visitations did much to devalue their bearing (Heal and
Holmes 1994: 28).
The trappings of worldly wealth acted almost as a theatrical backdrop
against which the gentleman gave expression to those intangible
qualities of virtue and godliness which many, particularly later in the
period (Heal and Holmes 19945:30), argued were the true markers of
status. On riches the cleric and part-time secret agent Richard
Allestree wrote ‘without these how can we have men of parts and quality
to direct us in the way of virtue and learning?’ (Allestree mss M.3.12:
13). This direction was expressed on many levels from their
leadership of their own households to patronage of the church,
participation in local government and justice, and periodically
taking a role managing local militias. We see all of this
embodied in the careers of several generations of the Cope family so,
for example, we have the case of the first baronet, Sir Anthony. In
addition to his sitting in a number of parliaments he was appointed to
the role of county sheriff on three occasions. Acting as a justice of
the peace and deputy lieutenant of Oxfordshire, he also was responsible
for selecting a number of well known puritan preachers to those
livings he had influence over (DNB). The Copes and the Bushells were
poles apart.
From this we can see that, as with so many social categories, there is
no one single definition that matches all cases. Bryson (1995:
136) sums up the debate ‘gentlemanly identity in early modern England
was not a simple matter or wealth or blood but involved complex
considerations of style of life and social image’. A gentleman or
perhaps more correctly a gentleman’s family had to have certain
attributes drawn from a variety of social and economic expectations, on
occasions the absence of a single attribute may have been overlooked
but the loss of more could be fatal to one’s standing. The gentry
were the product of a particular kind of cultural cohesion which
Wrightson ( 2003: 20) views as an ‘expression of an equilibrium between
dynamic forces’ an idea which we will return to later.
It appears that few historical subjects have generated more controversy
than the rise of the gentry in the early modern period. Indeed the
historiography of the period seems to echo the internecine strife of
the original epoch. In the 1940s Professor E.H. Tawney’s thesis,
published in The Rise of the Gentry 1558 – 1640 and summarised by
Coleman (1966: 166 ), was that ‘the gentry were rising on the ruins of
an impoverished crown, a plundered clergy and a nobility enfeebled by
personal extravagance and political ineptitude’. H. R. Trevor Roper
lead a spirited attack on what had become an orthodox view in
particular by questioning the statistical basis of these conclusions
and indicating that the gentry were more disaffected than dictatorial
(Trevor-Roper 1951). Then things got nasty. It seems odd to begin an
account of the fortunes of the seventeenth-century gentry with an
outline of the controversies of twentieth-century scholars but it is a
dispute which appears to rumble on and colour most subsequent
accounts. As noted, the position expressed here is that the
gentry did achieve a kind of economic and social hegemony, transmuted
into political influence which, despite local turbulence, ultimately
enhanced long term stability and promoted further progress. This
cause is advanced in the certain knowledge that it can be challenged on
virtually every front but advance we must.
The main thrust of the argument was that a rising population through
the previous century put pressure on resources and especially
food prices. The consequent market effects and particularly inflation
enabled those members of the land-owning classes with significant
holdings to profit and further expand the amount of land under their
control. It was a climate in which ‘the opportunities for landowners to
increase their wealth far outweighed the difficulties that might cause
a landowner’s wealth to be drastically reduced’ (Coward 1987: 41).
This bullish market was not without its own pressures created by
rising demand, however, the erosion of income did stimulate many
members of the gentry to invest in new farming methods predicated on
improvements to the terms on which they granted leases and particularly
on the enclosure of open fields. Hughes (1998: 124) cuts through the
controversy and sums it all up, ‘economic historians have quietly
concluded that there was a ‘rise in the gentry’ both in numbers and
overall prosperity’.
This focus on the land and its productive benefits brought about a kind
of localism which manifested itself in a variety of ways. At the
heart of this was the nuclear family and the associated kinship links.
Whilst patriarchy was the rule for families and paternalism the rule
for estates this was tempered, in many if not most instances, by a
strong sense of duty and an appropriate set of moral principles.
Allestree (M.3.10) underscores this idea of being cognisant of
greater things, ‘what is a great estate but a kind of inn, where a man
lodgeth for a span of tyme and whence once gon we heare of him no
more’. The imperative towards ‘ godly conduct’ was articulated in
a range of self help manuals and written advice from fathers to sons.
In most families ‘the lady of the house’ whilst far from an equal
partner did have an important role, ‘a household could not
survive without a woman’s work. At the same time, women’s work in and
out of the household was continually underestimated and devalued’
(Crawford and Gowing 200: 4). Despite this inequality the family unit
‘existed as the primary focus of reproduction, consumption and
socialisation’ (Heal and Holmes
1994:50).
Within their immediate community of kin and neighbours the gentry were
powerful and influential, sometimes in practical ways such as offering
easy access to finance, largely it must be said to each other but
sometimes to the yeoman classes. The Cope family papers as preserved in
the Hampshire County Record Office contain a series of bonds and
related defeasances for sums varying between £45 and £3,000. (For
example 43M48/333 Bond of Sir Lewis Tresame of Livedon, Northants, to
Sir William Cope, Bt, in £300). On a smaller scale they were also
important sources of alms giving and charitable offerings in kind.
Social and economic stability was further promoted by the relationships
the gentry maintained with their tenants. Heal and Holmes ( 1994: 102 )
maintain that whilst there were greedy landlords the majority of gentry
were spurred to act with forbearance and consideration both out of a
desire to preserve their reputation and in anticipation of divine
rewards.
Beyond questions of finance the gentry’s sponsorship of and
participation in the seasonal cycle of community events from Whitsun
Ales to Christmas festivities were also factors. Wrightson (2003: 199),
amongst others, suggested that there had been a ‘reformation of
manners’ creating a growing gulf between the gentry and the poor, ‘ the
poor had become not simply poor but to a significant degree culturally
different’, whilst Underdown (1987) argued that growing cultural
diversity lead to growing political diversity and ultimately rising
local tensions. Hutton, however, posits a more nuanced view of what he
labels the ‘merry equilibrium’, that whilst there were undoubted
changes, especially in the perceptions of the increasingly educated and
sophisticated gentry, that on the whole they were able to subscribe to
‘ a profound ethic of hierarchy as well as communality’ (1994: 241).
This continued a tradition of social cohesiveness albeit based on a
recognition of and accommodation to growing social divergence. Of
course we have instances where families such as the Copes with their
puritan leanings took on popular culture and advanced causes such as
the burning of the Neithrop Maypole towards the end of the previous
century (Potts 1958:164 ) nevertheless the prevailing climate seemed to
be one of tolerance to the provision of ‘cakes and ale’ which,
following specific royal support with The Book of Sports of 1634,
extended in many areas right up to the outbreak of war (Hutton
1994: 198).
At a more formal level the gentry’s participation in the administration
of both justice and local politics again seems to have been,
within the limitations of the times, an influence for moderation. As
Wrightson notes, ‘government directives had to pass through the filter
of local interests’ (2003: 113) and whilst that interest could often be
self-interest it was also subject to genuine instances of
compromise and mediation between different social groups and
within the ranks of the gentry themselves. He further points out that
there are frequent instances of members of the local gentry intervening
in disputes and acting to resolve matters before they could be subject
to the full rigour of the law (2003: 165).
The maintenance of good order was certainly a preoccupation of the
gentry and they ensured this by a combination of preaching, punishing
and the alleviation of distress (Wrightson 2003:159). As we see in the
case of the Copes many local families had a good deal of influence over
the appointment of ministers whose preaching emphasised that ‘ the
attributes of a good life – love of God and monarch, belief in
obedience and neighbourliness – were the traits that ensured social
quiet’ (Herrup 1989: 4). The prospect of punishment in the world to
come would have seemed to have been a good deal more certain than
punishment upon the ‘mortal coil’ given that only around an estimated
20% of felonious crimes were detected and brought to trial, and amongst
those charged around a third were convicted and around a third of them
were hanged (Herrup 1985: 112). Despite the presence of some harsh laws
on the statute books the administration of justice was tempered with a
good deal of practical mercy and a measure of common sense. Even if
this was simply another expression of the gentry’s ‘will to
power’ it still acted as a moderating influence and did much to ensure
that the ‘crisis in order’ (Underdown 1987:40) was a crisis in
perception rather than actuality. From the start of the century the
gentry had a role in administering the poor law on which, by the 1630s,
Heal and Holmes (1994: 184) are able to comment ‘the general record is
one of compliance and efficiency’. When this is coupled with a social
and religious imperative towards alms giving we have some
explanation as to why it was, even in years of bad harvests, the
early 1620s and the 1630s, the instances of wide-spread starvation
amongst the poor were limited (Coward 1987: 58).
Although some areas were notoriously prone to rioting, Kent for example
(Smith 1997: 192), levels of public disorder for the first half
of the century appear to be comparatively low, only forty five major
outbreaks of rioting were recorded between 1585 and 1660 (Walter and
Wrightson 1976: 26) and they were rarely violent. Hindle describes an
exception in a series of anti-enclosure riots known as the Midland
Rising of 1607 which ended in pitched battle at Newton in Rockingham
Forest on June 8th. During the course of this a crowd of several
hundred were driven off and around fifty dispatched on spot.
There are few instances of these ‘rebellions of the belly’ (Hindle
2003: 137) resulting in direct attacks on the gentry, indeed, as far as
one can see the English riot was a peculiarly ordered affair and was
about petitioning those who ran the system to make it work fairly
rather than tearing the whole edifice of local government apart.
Conflict there was but Wrightson’s analysis (2003: 69) seems compelling
‘ such equilibrium as society possessed was the product of a constant
dynamism in its social relations and the impetus of this dynamic came,
as often as not, from conflict’. The ‘beast with many heads’, was fed
and to a certain extent tamed by the good husbandry of local elites.
This is not to say that everything was entirely parochial or
provincial; part of the dynamism referred to above lay in the tension
between the local and the distant, Heal and Holmes (1995: 93) itemise
the factors tending to a less introspective view of the world as being
greater mobility, especially in terms of access to London, a growing
appetite for luxury goods, often foreign in origin, and increasing
literary and cultural sophistication derived from greater access
to education. There were plenty of incentives to ‘go beyond the spungie
braine of common knowledge’, as Bushell put it (1628:124). It is clear
that educational opportunities for the gentry had expanded enormously
with admissions to the universities rising from around 800 a year in
the 1560s to 1,200 a year by the 1630s. (Coward 1987:60).
Similarly admissions to Oxford for the propertied elite rose from an
average of seven in the 1570s to forty five in the 1630s (Heal and
Holmes 1994: 264). As well as a growth in places at Oxford and
Cambridge there were many additional choices for schooling at a lower
level although only, of course, for those who could afford to pay for
it and manage without the consequent loss of a working pair of
hands. The curriculum was of less consequence to most than the
social connections that were formed and the cultural cohesion that this
promoted. Of course there were some who took aspects of their learning
very seriously and as a result ‘the English intelligentsia
[… came ] to incorporate a significant proportion of
the propertied laity’ (Wrightson 2003: 201). A further effect of
an improved education system was a growing number of graduate
clergy.
By the fourth decade of the century the gentry were a well established
and identifiable feature of most communities with their roots firmly
anchored in whatever constituted their native soil. One result of this
localism was that it impelled many of the gentry to stand up for local
interests against aristocratic and notably royal interference. Those
who were active in parliament are described by Coward thus, ‘the
usual type of seventeenth-century MP: university and Inns of Court
educated, drawing their wealth mainly from the land and serving on the
commissions of the peace in their home counties’ (1987:223).
Whatever part the gentry played in the political machinations of the
reign of Charles I it tended to be intermittent as parliaments were
called and dismissed and it did little to shift their attention away
from county affairs. This level of divided attention may be one of the
reasons why in Coward’s phrase ‘the constitution continued
to work until 1640’ (1987: 81) .
This is not the occasion to examine in detail the causes of the Civil
War, the contents of any powder keg require a number of ingredients and
a good deal of mixing before one or more sparks shower down upon it.
What is striking is the degree to which in the opening months of the
war many members of the county gentry struggled to maintain
neutrality. As Heal and Holmes put it (1994; 216) ‘ in 1642 a
minority of parliamentarian gentlemen confronted another minority, the
Royalists’. In the middle stood a cautious majority who at the outset
wished to preserve the ‘peace of the county’ or as Sir John Holland
memorably expressed it ‘upon noe Commissions or directions whatsoever
the noyse of drum might for present be heard in Norfolk’ (Quoted in
Holmes 1974:57). However, this neutrality was hard to maintain and, as
has been seen in many modern conflicts, as hostilities mounted the
remainder of the population almost inevitably got drawn in.
The earlier view of the war on the part of some historians and
criticised by Tennant (1992:xi) was one ‘in which a number of
set-piece battles did admittedly take place [… but] left the bulk of
the population relatively unscathed’. This perspective has been
untenable for some time. Indeed more recent views of the conflict
emphasise the large number of small scale skirmishes and campaigns, the
on-going contest for resources and the sieges carried out against many
towns and cities. The first two in particular struck at the heart of
the gentry’s interests and there is evidence that commanders, the
majority of who were gentlemen, on occasions actively worked to limit
damage to property even if it belonged to those allied with the
opposing side (for example Porter 1994: 45, Tennant 1992: 210).
This is not to say that the scale of destruction, primarily the result
of looting and pillaging, was not vast and the degree of suffering
immense, but it could have been much worse. It seems likely that there
were considerable efforts made by some gentry families to call on past
friendships and alliances and to steer a path between the two factions
as appears to be the case with Lady Elizabeth Cope who during the
minority of her son Anthony started out a puritan, ended up a Royalist
and preserved the castle largely intact. The ties that bound the gentry
together were in some ways stronger that the political divisions that
forced them apart and as Donagan (1988: 31) explains, the ‘social
links between participants[… and] the shared interest among many on
both sides inhibited dangerous opportunities for unrest and disorder’.
All of which contributed to some easing of the otherwise terrible
impact of civil war. If we consider the scale of destruction as applied
to country houses it appears that something between 150 and 200 were
completely destroyed whilst the total for all dwelling places,
including those in towns, may be in the region of 11,200 with a total
of around 55,000 people being rendered homeless at some point (Porter
1995:66), a fearsome total but a total which represents something like
10% of the total population.
As the country became polarised into Royalist and non-Royalist areas
the role of the gentry, in terms of local administration, changed as
those with particular political leanings were eased out of their posts
(Heal and Holmes 1994:220). Sir John Oglander, an avowed Royalist
summed up the position, ‘O the tyrannical misery that the
gentlemen of England did endure [… ] they could call nothing their own,
and lived in slavery and submission to the unruly base multitude’.
(1936:110). This may be an unduly bleak assessment but what does appear
to be the case is that many, perhaps the majority, of the gentry
withdrew from the conflict and in the later 1640s faded back into the
countryside and to their fractured estates. Despite Cromwell’s
assertion that the nation’s best interests were served by the
maintenance of the existing hierarchy with the gentleman being neatly
sandwiched between the nobleman and the yeoman it seems that those
individuals who constituted the new ruling elite became increasingly
detached from regional and local concerns (Woolrych 1982: 395
-97). Their properties provided the gentry with a constituency to which
they could retreat during the difficult years of the 1650s and from
which they could emerge renewed post-1660. Heal and Holmes (1994: 224)
suggest that they gave themselves over to rural pursuits which included
significantly both the improvement of their holdings and the
advancement of their learning . This period of consolidation during the
uncertainties of the Commonwealth enabled the practical expression of
an ‘eagerness amongst the propertied classes for the restoration of
political order’ (Coward 1987: 193) as well as providing the setting
from which a new generation of academics arose.
The events involving scholars and divines at the University of Oxford
are a particularly interesting parallel to the course of the rural
gentry from whose ranks they were largely drawn. For much of the
war Oxford had been the King’s capital and hence had attracted
intellectuals with Royalist sympathies. After the war Parliament
instituted an order whereby from 1647 onwards a series of visitations
were made and many individuals were removed from their university
posts. They went on to constitute an academic elite who were
effectively banned from any formal participation in university life.
Gouk (1996) contends that these individuals, freed from their usual
responsibilities, came together to form a rather amorphous group who
nevertheless shared an interest in natural philosophy in all its
branches. Initially these meetings were striking in their ‘extreme
social diversity’ but as time went on the social exclusivity of the
university elite reasserted itself (1996:281). The names of some
of the individuals participating in these gatherings: Wren, Hooke,
Harvey, Boyle read like a ‘Who’s Who’ of early modern science. The
impetuous that they gave collectively to the development of scientific
thinking and practice was enormous. They represent perhaps a pinnacle
of scientific achievement yet one which rests on the broad foundations
derived from that section of the gentry who had had the leisure and the
opportunity to embrace intellectual pursuits.
Some authors stress the notion that far from being a revolutionary
period there was a high degree of continuity from the 1630s to the
1660s especially amongst the landed gentry and that this contributed
much to economic and social recovery after the Interregnum (For example
Hughes 1998: 116 and Harris, Seaward and Goldie 1990: 6). Not that the
path had not been a rocky one and Hutton (1993:219) comments on,
as a legacy of the period, the ‘tremendous unifying force
[… that was] the determination of the English and Welsh gentry that
never again would they go through an experience such as the civil wars
and Interregnum’.
Given that ‘over the past generation powerful trends in historical
study have discouraged historians from thinking big’ (Benedict and
Guttman 2005: 11) it seems a little rash to end this essay by giving a
little thought to these two big questions. Firstly did the English
gentry act as a factor to ameliorate the worst effects of the century’s
turmoil and secondly coming out of this did the gentry form the seedbed
from which a scientific revolution grew? What is known as the ‘general
crisis theory’ of the period has been a cause of contention for well
over half a century and like ‘the rise of the gentry’ has generated a
huge amount of literature. Parker and Smith describe this crisis as ‘a
major hiatus in the demographic and economic evolution of the world
which increased the probability that political tensions would escalate
into violence’. There is some agreement that the root cause was climate
change, the arrival of a ‘little ice age’ which started towards
the end of the fourteenth century and peaked in the middle of the
seventeenth century. There is less agreement as to the precise
geo-political consequences of this. Parker and Smith further note that
‘the transition from world economic crisis to individual political
upheavals depended upon personal decisions, local conditions and
unforeseen accidents to a degree that makes generalisation hazardous’
(1985: 6). One generalisation that one can make with a degree of
confidence was that it was a time of appalling suffering on a global
scale both as a result of widespread starvation, epidemics, huge
movements of population and the exercise of military might, all
conspiring to create a life for many which Hobbes famously described as
‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’ (1651:xiii), yet in many
ways England remained insulated from total catastrophe. The huge
epidemics which swept Italian towns and cities ( Alfani 2013), the
massive scale of rioting in southern France between 1623 and 1648 (Beik
1985 ) and the untold horrors of the Thirty Years War that left much of
central Europe a wasteland (Wilson 2009) all found parallels in England
during the period but not on the same scale. Of course it makes perfect
sense to argue that it all appears to be on a smaller scale because
events in England simply involved fewer people but there is more to it
than that. As we have seen the gentry by means of the supervision
of poor relief, the administration of justice and an adherence to
certain codes of behaviour were positive forces which helped stave off
the kinds of cataclysmic events which wracked continental
Europe. Whilst much of this behaviour was motivated by
self-interest and there are many instances of abuses, in general, we
can pronounce that the conduct of the English gentry was largely to the
good.
Despite Harry Lime’s jibe in The Third Man that the only thing of note
produced by the peace-loving Swiss was the cuckoo clock the fact that
Britain had not suffered the wide scale dislocation and population loss
seen across the Channel meant that conditions were right for an
out-pouring of creativity albeit in terms of advances in science and
technology. We have already seen how the rather unusual circumstances
at Oxford produced something of a hot house for scientific endeavour
but the whole chain of events which lead to the founding of the Royal
Society was dependent not only on an intellectual climate established
within the ranks of the gentry but also by the economic recovery and
political stability they contributed towards (Purver 1967 :237) . In
the 1660s particularly local elites acted as a fulcrum about which the
various parties of Crown, Church and state could work to establish
balance (Hutton 2000: 133) and with that balance came the eventual
nativity and advancement of the industrial revolution. If one
were looking for a sobriquet for the seventeenth century it could well
be the century of the gentry.
Afterword.
Metaphors for the period are abundant and seductive. For instance the
progress of the English body politic was like a tight rope walker
wobbling between the tyranny of absolute monarchy and the anarchy of
populist unrest only able to maintain balance with the long pole of
gentlemen’s enlightened self-interest. Wrightson’s descriptions
of a dynamic equilibrium puts one in mind of two children hands joined
swinging each other round at high speed yet staying in one place. For
my part I prefer to contemplate the slow gurgling progress of Sir
Anthony’s water clock but perhaps we should leave the last word to
Allestree ‘In matters of controversy away with metaphors they are like
pictures in a window which obscure the light’ (Allestree M.3.7).
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