Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History (9 page)

Indeed, for any creature to attack its superiors in the Chain – for example, for a son to strike a father or for a subject to compass rebellion against the king – was tantamount to Lucifer’s infamous revolt against his Creator. To do so was to disrupt the delicate balance of the universe, as, a century later, Shakespeare has one of his characters imply in
Troilus and Cressida:

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,

Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office and custom, in all line of order: …

… but when the planets,

In evil mixture, to disorder wander,

What plagues, and what portents, what mutiny,

What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,

Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,

Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

The unity and married calm of states

Quite from their fixture!

Shakespeare refers here to the common contemporary belief in astrology, the notion that changes in the heavenly bodies can affect order upon earth. In the next few lines, he moves from the celestial level to the earthly:

O! when degree is shak’d,

Which is the ladder to all high designs,

The enterprise is sick. How could communities,

Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

The primogenitive and due of birth,

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,

But by degree, stand in authentic place?

Take but degree away, untune that string,

And, hark, what discord follows!

What discord?

Strength should be the lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead.

Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong

Between whose endless jar justice resides –

Should lose their names and so should justice too.

(
Troilus and Cressida
1.3)

Clearly, this system was designed to maintain order at all costs. Which means that it was intended to keep the upper 0.5 percent of the population on top and the remaining 99.5 percent subordinate to them. To return to our earlier question: why did the lower 99.5 percent put up with it? Why did they not rebel against its constraints? One explanation for this is that the Great Chain of Being was taught, sometimes overtly, usually implicitly, from every pulpit in the land. Having had it hammered home to them on a weekly basis since childhood, having grown up being told that it was God’s plan, few early modern English men and women have left evidence of questioning it. After all, it explained their universe; and, as Shakespeare argues, the alternative might be disastrous. Indeed, imagine what such a person would think of our world. Would he or she not find it crowded, noisy, violent, disordered, chaotic? Would he or she not find plenty of confirmation of Shakespeare’s prediction of anarchy and misery?

Another explanation for the apparent widespread acceptance of the Great Chain of Being was that the system’s potential harshness was supposed to be mitigated by two conjoined beliefs: paternalism and deference. Paternalism, or, as it was usually known in the Middle Ages, good lordship, was the notion, instilled in great and humble alike, that those at the upper end of the human Chain had a moral responsibility to care for and protect those below them. After all, if a father was like God, God was also like a loving father. If the anointed king or the landed nobleman or the father of a family were God-like, then they not only bore God’s power, they also bore his responsibility to look after those of His creatures over whom they ruled. Just as God and the angels were thought to watch, paternally, over and assist His children, so privileged men were expected to watch, paternally, over those without privilege. The king had a responsibility to protect his subjects; to rule them justly and to keep their burdens of taxation and service reasonable. The landlord may have had immense economic and legal power over his tenants, but he also had the responsibility to protect them from enemies; to give them fair justice; and to look after them in hard times. If he was a great man, with a court office, he was expected to provide subordinate offices for his followers. On holidays, he was expected to open his house in a show of hospitality: thus in 1509 Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham (1478–1521) fed over 500 for dinner. At all times, he was expected to redress their grievances. In reality, the degree of paternalism exercised by landlords varied according to their individual consciences, but the expectation was very high and the ability of a great patron to look out for his own enhanced his prestige. A good king, a good lord was, like God, a good father.

In return, those at the lower ranks of the Chain were expected, like children, to pay obedience, allegiance, and respect – deference – to those above them. All humanity owed these things to God; all subjects, to the king; all tenants, to their landlord; all members of a household (including apprentices and servants), to its head. The people of England paid their debt to God by attending services on Sundays and holidays; by paying annates and tithes (that is, a tenth of their income) to the Church; and by obeying God’s law as expressed in the Ten Commandments and the laws of the Church (canon law). The Church even had its own ecclesiastical courts to prosecute those who failed by blaspheming, getting drunk, fornicating, committing adultery, or not paying their debts. The king’s subjects, similarly, paid their debt to him by acting respectfully in his presence (by standing while he sat and by removing their hats while he remained “covered”), by paying their taxes, and by obeying his law (which also had its series of courts). The tenant tendered his respects to his landlord by paying his rents, by giving military service when demanded, and by gestures such as tipping his cap or bowing (if a man), or curtseying (if a woman), or giving the wall to
any
person of superior rank. Giving the wall meant that if one was approached by a social superior while walking along a side pavement, one stepped into the street to allow that person to pass. If we recall that this was an age before underground sewers and that the streets were full of trash, mud, and the excrement of man and beast, it should be obvious just how powerful a force the Great Chain of Being and its call for deference really were! Finally, the members of a household – whether related by blood or, in the case of a large, extended household, ties of employment and interest – were expected to show the same deference to its head as they would do to God or king in the wider world.

So, in the universe of late-fifteenth-century English men and women, God was in his heaven; the king sat on his throne; the landlord lived in his manor house; and everybody else knew exactly where they stood – and stand they would, out of respect for their betters. No one could have had any doubt about the rights and responsibilities of his or her position. Or could they? When contemporaries write about hierarchy or paternalism and deference they always sound anxious, as if the whole, delicate system were under threat. The reason for their anxious tone is that this system
was
under threat – by reality. Life is never neat and fifteenth-century life refused to fit tidily into the little boxes designed for it by the Great Chain of Being. For starters, the people at the bottom of the Chain did not always do what they were told by those at the top. The most obvious example of this is the widespread resort to riot whenever a particular group thought its rights abused: tenants rioted over enclosure, women over the price of bread, Londoners over the presence of foreigners, and apprentices seemingly at the drop of a hat. At a deeper level, the Chain stood for permanency, and yet fifteenth-century English men and women were experiencing social and economic changes which would persist to the end of the period covered by this book. For example, the nobility were supposed to comprise the oldest and most distinguished families in England, having earned their titles in military service to the king. But by the end of the Middle Ages, such titles were increasingly won through peaceful service to, or simple friendship with, the monarch. This led to a great deal of resentment toward “upstarts,” “courtiers,” and “favorites.” Moreover, noble status, far from being permanent, could be taken away on proof of high treason or a
bill of attainder
by Parliament which, in effect, voted the same thing without the formality of a trial. This happened with some frequency at the end of the Middle Ages. More commonly, great families simply died out for lack of an heir. It has been estimated that something like one-quarter of all noble families vanished every 25 years. Therefore, the “ancient nobility of England” was constantly changing, continually replenishing itself.

“New” noble families were drawn from the gentry. Here, too, there was a great deal of change and ambiguity, for throughout the late medieval and early modern period it was never precisely clear just who was a gentleman. A nobleman could at least point to a royal document, called a patent, in which his title and the terms of its inheritance were spelt out. Theoretically, a knight could be identified by the act of having been knighted by the king – but some claimed the honor who had never met the king. As for esquires and gentlemen, they were supposed to register for coats of arms with the Office of Heralds, who made periodic visitations to specific counties for this purpose. But not every gentle family bothered. Others defined gentleness by an ancient pedigree. But pedigrees could be faked. As we have seen, gentle status was also thought to require the ownership of land providing a certain income. But what about a poor gentleman who, because of the recession of the late fifteenth century, had lost most of his land? Did his gentle status cease? What of a prosperous yeoman who began to amass land, as many did in the second quarter of the sixteenth century? When could he claim to be gentle? Most commentators thought that it took three generations of landed prosperity to justify appending the designation “gent.” to the family name. But this is very close to saying that the only requirement to being a gentleman was the ability to call oneself gentle without anyone laughing. So much for the unchanging, God-ordained hierarchy.

Moreover, the categories set up by the Chain were increasingly inadequate to describe the variety of ranks and occupations in late medieval and early modern England. Those categories were either military or rural; they defined individuals by their relationship to land. But, as we have seen, not all English men and women lived on the land or in the country. Increasingly after 1500, English people migrated to the cities, London especially, where they could pursue greater economic opportunity. Between 1520 and 1720 the percentage of urban dwellers in England and Wales would double, to about 20 percent. London’s population would rise from about 50,000 in 1485 to 700,000 by 1750.

The growth of cities and economic opportunity posed many problems for the Great Chain of Being. First, this was a system which depended upon people knowing each other, which was easy enough in the village. But once people began moving to cities they no longer experienced personal connections with all of their neighbors. In the city they could lose themselves in the anonymity which urban areas characteristically bestow – and claim a status to which they were not born. Moreover, cities had their own hierarchy which did not fit into that of the Great Chain. Major cities had mayors (in London, a lord mayor), a council of aldermen, and citizens, not nobles, gentry, and yeomen. This urban hierarchy gave fits to those who wrote about status and rank: where did one place the mayor of Bristol in the Chain? Did he rank with a gentleman? Worse, remember that most people came to the city to make money, that is, to
rise
in wealth. Some did; many others fell. But the Chain was based on birth and could accommodate neither change nor status measured in anything but land. It had no place for the rich merchant, the prosperous attorney, the struggling tailor, or the ambitious apprentice. Normally, no one would have said that a merchant should outrank a gentleman, but what if that merchant made hundreds of pounds a year, the gentleman only a few score? Nor would anyone have said that one could change one’s rank; but what if one grew rich, or poor?

The question of where the urban hierarchy fit in the Chain was not the only such problem facing its adherents. The Roman Catholic Church had
two
parallel hierarchies, one for its secular clergy, the other for regular (i.e., regulated) clergy: