Court, Country, and Culture PDF
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Page i Court, Country and Culture Essays on Early Modern British History in Honor of Perez Zagorin Page ii Perez Zagorin Wilson Professor Emeritus of History — University of Rochester Photograph by James Montanus, University of Rochester Page iii Court, Country and Culture Essays on Early Modern British History in Honor of Perez Zagorin Edited by Bonnelyn Young Kunze and Dwight D. Brautigam with a preface by Donald R. Kelley Page iv Copyright © Contributors 1992 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 1992 University of Rochester Press 200 Administration Building, University of Rochester Rochester, New York 14627, USA and at PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK ISBN 1 878822 05 5 Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Court, country, and cultured: essays on early modern British history in honor of Perez Zagorin/ edited by Bonnelyn Young Kunze and Dwight D/ Brautigam; with a preface by Donald R. Kelley p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1878822055 (alk. paper) 1. Great Britain — History — Tudors, 1485–1603. 2. Great Britain — History — Stuarts, 1603–1714. I. Zagorin, Perez. II. Kunze, Bonnelyn Young. III. Brautigam, Dwight D., 1956. DA300.C78 1992 942.05dc20 922727 British Library CataloguinginPublication Data Court, Country and Culture: Essays on Early Modern British History in Honor of Perez Zagorin I. Kunze, Bonnelyn Young II. Brautigam, Dwight D. 941 ISBN 1878822055 This publication is printed on acidfree paper Printed in the United States of America Page v Contents Preface vii by Donald R. Kelley Introduction xi by Bonnelyn Young Kunze and Dwight D. Brautigam The English Revolution in the History of Political Thought 1 Gordon J. Schochet Causes, Individuals and Ideas in Christopher Hill's Interpretation of the English 21 Revolution William H. Dray A View from the Vistula on the English Revolution 41 William Hunt The Court and the Country Revisited 55 Dwight D. Brautigam The "Imperial Crown" and the Liberty of the Subject: The English Constitution 65 from Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights John Guy Sir Walter Ralegh and the Ancient Wisdom 89 Joseph M. Levine Benefits, Brokers and Beneficiaries: The Culture of Exchange in Seventeenth 109 Century England Linda Levy Peck Declining Status in an Aspiring Age: The Problem of the Gentle Apprentice in 129 SeventeenthCentury London Paul S. Seaver The Laudians and the Argument from Authority 149 Peter Lake "vesells fitt for the masters us[e]": A Transatlantic Community of Religious 177 Women, The Quakers 1675–1753 Bonnelyn Young Kunze Metaphysical Implications in Hobbes's Theory of Passions 199 Paulo Pasqualucci Aspiring Minds: A Machiavellian Motif from Marlowe to Milton 211 Antonio D'Andrea Page vi Performing the Enlightenment Self: Henry Fielding and the History of Identity 223 Edward Hundert Selected Publications of Perez Zagorin 245 Notes on Contributors 247 Page vii Preface Dear Perez: When I met you over twenty years ago (at that memorable and, for some, revolutionary meeting of the American Historical Association in Washington in December 1969), I had no idea that I would soon be joining you at the University of Rochester as colleague and (shortly thereafter) friend who would share the ups and downs of life in the Rochester history department. Before then I had heard of you only in two connections. First, I knew that you were the author of A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution, a pioneering survey of radical, "communist," and republican ideas which had impressed not only American novices like myself but also some of the most exacting of English historians (from left to right). Second, I had heard of you as a scholar who had made his own trek across the ideological spectrum of midcentury America. Even then I wondered how these two Zagorins fit together. The answer to this question came in part in the new book that you were just finishing at this time — The Court and the Country, which broadened your exploration of seventeenthcentury English history and joined it to more theoretical questions, especially the "causes of the English Revolution." In this connection you were also confronting the larger issue of the nature of revolution in general, which you see both as a central topic of early modern history and as the dominant myth of our own century. Your conclusions about this double question, together with a treasurelode of insights drawn from a lifetime of teaching, are the basis of your Rebels and Rulers (1500–1660), which offered both a synthesis of modern European history and a nominalist critique of the modern concept of revolution, portrayed by you as a longterm western phenomenon predating the "industrial Revolution," eluding simple class analysis, and transcending the French and Russian models. So you not only moved across the channel but also raised your conceptual sights and, I think, drew us closer together. A further, more unexpected expansion of your aims appeared more recently, as you left the terra firma of sociopolitical history for a largely unexamined aspect of European underground culture — that is, the mysteries of human behavior, thought, and selfjustification under conditions of repression and persecution. Like your earlier work on revolutions, Ways of Lying reflects and provides a deeper perspective on one of the central predicaments of twentiethcentury society in an age disfigured by totalitarian regimes — and specifically Page viii how outlawed minorities survive and preserve their integrity against ethnic and ideological assault. Besides throwing light on my initial question, I think you have added a new dimension to our view of early modern history by an original and sensitive study of deep structure, probing beneath the surface of the historical process, examining what is to many historians (by definition) an almost inaccessible and unintelligible aspect of human behavior. I was moved by the adventurousness as well as the acumen of your explorations, and I'm almost ready to accept your redefinition of an "age of Revolution" as an "age of dissimulation." Your work had always reflected a spirit of adventure and willingness to take on large challenges, including those in the philosophy of history. Nor have you avoided the role of polemicist, having published in Science and Society as well as that austere organ of the historical profession, the American Historical Review. You have opposed, in public and in private, vulgar Marxist interpretations of the historical process, intellectual surrender to destructive attitudes of relativism, indulgence in the textualist excesses of new fashions in intellectual history — and indeed any position that, on epistemological grounds, would deny the intelligibility or accessibility of the human past. In particular you have taken Carl Becker to task for unreflective skepticism, Christopher Hill for his partisan readings of English texts, Sir Isaiah Berlin for a lack of rigor in his analysis of Vico's famous identification of the scientifically true (verum) and the humanly created (factum), and Frank Ankersmit for his reduction of history to "discourse." Yet you have done this with unfailing good humor and wit as well as impressive learning and acumen, and you have taught many younger scholars, myself included, not only how to argue but also how to behave. At Rochester our lives have intersected at many points. We started out by sharing a few of our Harvard recollections — some of your teachers I had heard (Wilbur K. Jordan, Crane Brinton, Carl Friedrich, David Owen, and of course Myron Gilmore), others I had only heard about (C. H. McIlwain, A. P. Ussher) — and I'm sure these overlapping experiences contributed to the common ground we cultivated, including mutual interests in philosophy, history, and literature. Not that we agreed on all issues, as our students in the philosophy of history course we shared soon found out. Yet this served only to enhance the cooperative and (what I, but certainly not you, might call the) dialogical character of history. I think this was further in the colloquium we shared for fifteen years and in the Friday evening seminar on early modern history which (with the unpaid support of colleagues and friends) we maintained in the 1970s and '80s. Over the years we have also read each other's work, served on committees, attended scholarly conferences, seminars, and Ph. D. exams together, discussed editorial problems, competed in the writing of limericks,* and, with our wives, Honoré Sharrer and Bonnie Smith, travelled together in strange and warmer places. You have instructed my students in the "ways of lying," and I have Page ix retaliated by telling yours about the mysteries of Postmodernism; you have made me read Hilary Putnam, as I have tried to turn you to Heidegger — and through it all neither of us has ever given up on the other. If we have not spoken much about our childhood experiences in Chicago or our respective encounters with workingclass culture, we have endlessly argued (and sometimes agreed) about Hegel and Marx, Proust and Pound, Vico and Wittgenstein, Deconstruction and the Covering Law, Geoffrey Elton and Lawrence Stone, Gene Genovese and Hayden White, Wagner and Surrealism (though here I defer to you and especially to Honoré) — though never (I think) have we argued about politics, religion, editorial policy, or how to bring up children. All this is in the way of not of farewell but only of fond recollection, for I have no doubt that this friendship, dialogue, and collaboration will continue for many years. So, of course, will your work, and we all look forward to your new book, which goes back to your first investigations — the political face of Milton. I hope you like this volume, as I know you enjoyed the scholarly conference on which it is based; both of these tributes do no more than justice to a distinguished career and to a superlative human being. Stay in touch with all of us. In all congeniality and friendship, DON KELLY * I have an old friend named Zagorin, Who knows the familiar and foreign, He's learned and he's taught and written a lot: Than he takes out, he always puts more in.
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