Renaissance Forum: Volume 1, Number 1, March 1996: Mark Stoyle

Susan D. Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky. Eds. 1995. Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press. vii + 369 pp. ISBN 0-7190-4695-5. Ł50.00.

'Whenever I hear the word culture ... I release the safety catch on my pistol'. There may still be historians who retain a certain amount of sympathy for the words of Hanns Johst but not even the most dogged of traditionalists could fail to enjoy this splendid collection of essays, which have been presented to Professor David Underdown by his colleagues, students and friends.
As its title suggests, the book focuses on the interconnections between culture and politics, an intersection which -- as the editors observe in the introductory chapter -- has long been a central concern of Underdown's own work. Having provided a short, but very illuminating account of the way in which Underdown's ideas have developed over the past thirty years, Amussen and Kishlansky go on to introduce the thirteen individual contributors. First of these are John Morrill and Peter Lake, both of whom provide stimulating reappraisals of well-known players on the early Stuart political scene. Morrill's piece on John Pym -- an essay which challenges Jack Hexter's view of Pym as the supreme political tactician -- gets the collection off to a rousing start and is surely destined to become a classic. Vividly written and formidably researched, it leaves one in little doubt that, to use Morrill's own words, 'Hexter's King Pym is an Emperor with no clothes'. Lake's essay deals with the religious philosophy of Bishop Joseph Hall, and is a characteristically subtle and intricate piece, demonstrating how the rhetoric of 'moderation' could be used to advance very definite political ends.
The next three essays are more diverse. Richard Cust supplies an interesting discussion of honour among the Leicestershire gentry; Molly McClain explores the neglected subject of post-Restoration enclosure riots; and Carl Eastabrook provides an account of the relationship between the cathedral and city authorities in David Underdown's home town, Wells. All three chapters contain much of interest. Thus Eastabrook shows how, thanks to a slow but steady increase in the power of the local citizenry at the expense of the cathedral establishment, the medieval 'cathedral at Wells' was gradually transformed into the eighteenth-century 'cathedral of Wells'. McClain, in a very enjoyable piece, introduces the reader to a cast of intriguing characters from late-seventeenth-century Monmouthshire, including Sir Trevor Williams, who -- having acted as a Clubman leader during the Civil War -- later attempted to exploit traditional forms of protest once again, this time by organising an 'enclosure riot'. As McClain goes on to show, the disturbance which followed was by no means a simple agrarian protest, but was rather part of a concerted attempt by Williams and his local gentry allies to humble the Marquis of Worcester.
If there is a general theme which runs through the first six chapters of this book, indeed, it is that things were seldom as they appeared in early modern England; that there was inevitably a gap between the rhetoric and the reality. Thus Cust, echoing Lake, emphasises the extent to which 'the theme of unity and reconciliation' was used by the Leicestershire gentry 'to marginalize opponents and to reinforce or deflect charges of factiousness', while Morrill shows that, despite appearances to the contrary, John Pym's 'visibility' was by no means proof of his leadership of the Parliamentary cause. This theme of appearance versus reality is followed up by Anne Hughes in her thoughtful piece on 'Gender and Politics', which not only questions the supposed political independence of Leveller women, but also suggests that the picture of these women which emerges from their husbands' writings may have been designed as much to construct a respectable public image for the movement as to provide an accurate depiction of the women themselves.
Hughes's chapter is one of four gender-related essays grouped towards the middle of the book, much the most enjoyable of which are Hughes' own piece and Susan Amussen's excellent, sharply observed account of 'what it meant to be a man in early modern England', a chapter which is full of especially vivid examples and insights. The high standard set by Amussen is maintained throughout the rest of the collection. In 'Remembering Marston Moor' Maiija Jannson tells the story of three Dutch artists of the Interregnum period who offered to create a grand pictorial representation of Parliament's military victory -- and puts forward some suggestions as to why their proposal failed. In 'Wit in a Roundhead' -- a superbly elegant and well-written piece -- Blair Worden traces the polemical career of Marchamont Nedham, the prince of pamphleteers, while in 'Underground Verse and Early Stuart Culture', Thomas Cogswell gives a brilliant account of how the circulation of manuscript libels helped to polarise English public opinion during the run up to the Civil War. Finally, in 'Turning Frogs into Princes', Mark Kishlansky demonstrates how the underlying message of one of Aesop's fables became subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) politicized as the seventeenth century wore on.
'Turning Frogs into Princes' ... the title seems an apposite one, not only for Kishlansky's chapter but for the book as a whole. To David Underdown, the common people of England have always merited at least as much attention as kings, lords or bishops, and the contributors to this volume clearly share his point of view. By reconstructing the cultural and political perspectives of relatively humble individuals -- the Leveller women of the 1640s, for example, or the libellers of the 1630s -- the contributors have invested their subjects with a new status, have even, one might say, transformed them retrospectively from 'frogs into princes'. In this sense, as in so many others, Political Culture and Cultural Politics, is a worthy tribute to the great scholar who inspired it.

MARK STOYLE
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON