The Materiality of Early Modern Political Texts

Advances in digital technology have distanced twenty-first century scholars from the materiality of texts and the practical realities of printing and book production. I now access most of the texts I study via a screen. There are obvious benefits to this, virtually all the early modern printed texts I need are available via resources like EEBO (Early English Books Online) and ECCO (Eighteenth-Century Collections Online), so I no longer have to travel to specialist libraries to read them. Yet, being of an age that I can remember life before EEBO, I am also conscious of what is lost as a result of the shift to digital consumption. The orange dust on my clothes from carrying a pile of old books to my desk at the British Library is something I can live without, but the wealth of information that could be gleaned from handling the book as a physical object - its size, weight, quality, appearance - is much harder to intuit through a screen.

Our second Experiencing Political Texts workshop was designed to explore these issues by focusing on the materiality of early modern texts. Practicalities meant that we were also confronted with the pros and cons of the digital in our own experience of the workshop. Owing to the threatened UCU strikes, Part 1 took place in person in York on 24 February, while Part 2 (which I will discuss in my next blogpost) was broadcast via Zoom on 28 March. While there are definite advantages to being able to hold a workshop digitally, the engagement with participants - just like that with texts - is richer and more satisfying in person.

I left York buzzing with ideas, but will restrict myself here to just three: the experience of texts by non-readers; ephemerality versus durability and the role of text in securing longevity; and the notion of hidden texts - and more especially hidden political messages within texts.

The title page of John Lilburne’s pamphlet Regall Tyrannie Discovered (EEBO).

It was Sophie Smith who raised the point that texts are experienced by those who do not read them as well as by those who do. This idea was especially resonant because Sophie's paper followed Rachel Foxley's on Leveller and Republican texts, which had already led me to reflect on the information conveyed on title pages - which would have been accessible in booksellers shops or on barrows to people who did not buy or read the full work. Rachel focused on John Lilburne's Regall Tyrannie Discovered, the title page of which is particularly striking. It consists of dense, closely printed, type which sets out the argument and structure of the work. In this regard, it reminded me of the frontispieces to works like Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and the Eikon Basilike, which convey the argument of the text in visual form. On the surface, these images are more engaging and might seem more appealing than dense type, and yet they require careful reading and interpretation. Lilburne also offered a textual equivalent of the author portrait that prefaced many early modern texts, listing his other works and offering a summary of the key events of his life.

An example of the Hugo Grotius medal from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, the reputation of an author - and an understanding of their main arguments - was often accessible to those who had never read that author's works. Niccolò Machiavelli was a case in point for the early modern period. Sophie showed that John Case's Sphaera civitatis was partly inspired by his concern that early modern citizens might derive their understanding of politics from Machiavelli (whether or not they had read him). By updating Aristotle's account of politics, Case's aim was to convince them to abandon Machiavelli as their guide. Charlotte McCallum's close reading of 'Nicholas Machiavel's Letter to Zanobius Bundelmontius' which appeared in the 1675 edition of his works, explored how Machiavelli could be drawn upon to advance arguments specific to English politics in the 1670s. Machiavelli was not the only figure whose reputation extended to audiences far beyond those who actually read his works. Ed Jones Corredera reminded us that the same is true of Hugo Grotius whose image was used to advertise air travel in the twentieth century and to celebrate individuals committed to advancing peace - via the Grotius medals, one of which was awarded to Winston Churchill in 1949.

Holy Trinity Church, York. As well as these surviving examples of early modern box pews, this church also has many tombstone inscriptions, not all of which are still visible. Image Rachel Hammersley.

The second theme I drew from the papers concerned the ephemerality versus the longevity of texts. This idea was brought into focus by Katherine Hunt's paper which began with the line from George Herbert that writing in brass is more weighty, durable, and permanent than writing with pen and ink. As Katherine's paper demonstrated, the reality is that writing in brass could be just as ephemeral as print. As anyone who has wandered around a church will know, inscriptions on tomb stones can become worn over time. On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of supposedly ephemeral texts (broadsheets, chapbooks, pamphlets) that have survived since the early modern era. Sometimes this occurs as a result of them appearing in a Sammelband collection (a group of pamphlets bound together because they all relate to a particular issue or affair). Jason McElligott discussed a couple of Sammelband volumes held at the Marsh Library in Dublin. He demonstrated why such collections are so valuable to scholars, owing to their ability to reveal how particular works were read and understood at the time.

Rachel Foxley and Marcus Nevitt also touched on the contrast between ephemeral and more durable texts. In analysing Regall Tyrannie Discovered, Rachel was forced to confront the distinction between pamphlets and books. Lilburne usually produced pamphlets, but with Regall Tyrannie Discovered he was clearly aiming (not entirely successfully) to produce something more akin to a book. As Rachel noted, ephemerality versus longevity is one of several scales on which we can contrast these two formats. Though there are of course plenty of examples of pamphlets that have transcended their supposedly ephemeral status. Marcus noted the contrast between the ephemerality of a play performance and the more durable form of a printed play text - including its dedication - which could extend the life of plays and enhance the reputation of their authors.

The contents page of the 1675 edition of Machiavelli’s works - with the letter at the bottom. (EEBO).

Closely related to the theme of longevity versus durability is that of visibility versus obscurity, and a number of papers also touched on the idea of hidden texts. This was again brought into focus by Katherine's paper on brass inscriptions. I was intrigued by the pro-monarchy sentiments that were inscribed inside bells produced in 1641 and 1650. Was this a case of communities expressing their sympathy and support for Charles I in a way that was safe, precisely because the words could not easily be read? Other papers explored the notion of hidden texts - or hidden ideas within texts - in different ways. This might be a matter of the positioning of a particular text within a volume. Charlotte McCallum noted that in the 1675 edition of Machiavelli's works the spoof letter from 'Machiavel' was placed at the end of the volume (a fact that was reflected on the contents page). In some later editions it appeared earlier in the volume, and in some a manuscript note was added drawing attention to the controversial nature of the ideas contained in the letter. The letter, then, was made more or less obscure through the materiality of the volume - its positioning within it and the addition or removal of other paratextual material. This reminded me of the practice within the Encyclopédie of hiding controversial topics in obscure places. The life and thought of the English republican James Harrington, for example, is discussed in the entry for Rutland; the English county with which the Harrington family was associated.

Papers by Marie-Louise Coulahan and Lizzie Scott-Baumann offered a gender dimension to this idea of hidden texts. Marie-Louise presented her RECIRC project to us. One of the findings of this project is that while women rarely wrote overtly political texts, that does not mean that they did not engage in politics. Rather they had to find suitable vehicles for doing so. Petitions (such as that of the Mariners' Wives and the Gentlewomen's Petition) and prophetic writings were often used to make political statements. Similarly, both Lucy Hutchinson and Margaret Cavendish wrote about their husbands as a way of expressing their own political views. It was noted too that correspondence by women is often undervalued as a political text. Where the correspondence of men is seen as important, that by women is often dismissed as mere 'gossip'. Lizzie took this notion of hidden ideas to a deeper level, exploring how the language used by Lucy Hutchinson and Anne Wharton in their poems addressed to Edmund Waller, served to subtly critique his behaviour and actions.

Image by Rachel Hammersley. Taken during the workshop with the Thin Ice Press.

Our workshop ended with us addressing the materiality of texts from a different direction. Helen Smith led a workshop with the Thin Ice Press. We were given the opportunity to type set a short sentence (which proved to be a very fiddly process) and then to print a poster of our own. This gave us all a new appreciation for the work done by early modern printers. It became apparent just what a monumental task printing a text was at that time, and it made the typographical errors that are common in early modern texts much more understandable. While I will continue to use resources such as EEBO and ECCO to read early modern texts, I left York knowing that the distance between my understanding and the practical realities of the production and consumption of early modern political texts had narrowed perceptibly as a result of the workshop.

Image by Rachel Hammersley. Taken during the workshop with the Thin Ice Press.

Republics v Monarchies

The Scottish National Party recently brought the question of the Monarchy back onto the political agenda by voting at their 2017 party conference in favour of cutting public funding for the Royal Family. Delegates supported overwhelmingly a motion calling for the repeal of the Sovereign Grant Act of 2011. While the vote will not bring immediate political change, since Westminster retains control of the Sovereign Grant, the vote has drawn attention once again to the alleged republicanism at the heart of the SNP and the idea that an independent Scotland might choose to replace the Queen as head of state. Such suggestions always produce strong views on both sides, usually labelled 'republican' and 'monarchist'.

On the surface, at least, the distinction between republics and monarchies is a crucial feature of our modern political landscape. Yet the history of these two constitutional forms is far more complex than this simple dichotomy would suggest. Indeed, according to one historical definition, Britain is and has long been a republic, whereas on the basis of another neither France nor the United States of America is worthy of that term. Monarchists and republicans alike might, therefore, benefit from a deeper understanding of the history of these political concepts.

Bust of Cicero. I am grateful to Katie East for providing the image.

The concept of republican government, in both theory and practice, dates back at least to ancient Rome. It was explored in a number of Roman texts, not least those of Marcus Tullius Cicero who was both a politician and a political thinker. In his De re publica Cicero did not define a republic or commonwealth in opposition to kingship, but instead argued 'that a commonwealth (that is the concern of the people) then truly exists when its affairs are conducted well and justly, whether by a single king, or by a few aristocrats, or by the people as a whole'. (Cicero, On the Commonwealth, ed. James. E. G. Zetzel Cambridge, 1999,  p. 59). The key distinction here, then, is between rule that serves the public interest and that which serves private interests. So, on Cicero's account, a monarchy, if properly organised and directed towards the public good, could be a kind of republic. That same idea was still being voiced as late as the mid-eighteenth century, when the Genevan-born political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his Social Contract:

I therefore call Republic any State ruled by laws, whatever be the form of administration: for then the public interest alone governs, and the public thing counts for something. Every legitimate government is republican.

The accompanying footnote might appear self-contradictory, if Cicero's position is not borne in mind:

Statue of Jean-Jacques Rousseau outside the Pantheon in Paris. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

By this word I understand not only an Aristocracy or a Democracy, but in general any government guided by the general will, which is the law. To be legitimate, the Government must be not confused with the Sovereign, but be its minister. Then monarchy itself is a republic. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, ed. Victor Gourevitch, Cambridge, 1997, p. 67)

   But while the Ciceronian understanding of a republic survived well into the eighteenth century, from the late fifteenth century onwards a second understanding was developing. This saw monarchy not as one form of republican government, but as its direct opposite. Several historians have recently traced the development of this tradition of republican thought, emphasising its debt to the writings of Italian Renaissance thinkers as well as to a tradition of Jewish Biblical scholarship that offered a distinctive take on the Israelites' plea to God in I Samuel 8 that they be given a king like other nations.

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were certainly those who saw republican government as requiring the destruction of monarchy. The English Civil War of the 1640s prompted some parliamentarians to attack not simply Charles I, or even just tyrants, but all kings. Marchamont Nedham was one of several figures who challenged the very distinction between kings and tyrants: 'Had they [the English] but once tasted the sweets of peace and liberty both together, they would soon be of the opinion of Herodotus and Demosthenes that there is no difference between king and tyrant and become as zealous as the ancient Romans were in defence of their freedom.' (Marchamont Nedham, The Case of the Commonwealth of England Stated, ed. Philip A. Knachel, Charlottesville, 1969, pp. 127-8). This view had practical import too. The 'Act Abolishing the Office of King', which was passed on 17 March 1649, declared the office of king to be 'unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of the people' and the ensuing 'Act Declaring England to be a Commonwealth and Free State', which was passed in May 1649, insisted that this government was to be 'without any King or House of Lords'.

John Milton, by unknown artist, National Portrait Gallery, NPG4222. Reproduced under a creative commons license.

Yet even this does not present the full complexity of the concept, since those who agreed that republicanism was, by definition, anti-monarchical, could nevertheless disagree over precisely what institutional form should replace the office of king. Most significant was the distinction between those who insisted merely on the absence of a monarch, and those who outlawed any form of single-person rule. Thus a third definition of republic required that the government was not headed by a single figure, but by a group or council. As John Milton asserted in The Readie and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth: 'I doubt not but all ingenuous and knowing men will easily agree with me, that a free Commonwealth without single person or house of lords, is by far the best government, if it can be had.' (John Milton, The Readie and Easy Way, in Selected Prose, ed. C. A. Parties, Harmondsworth, p. 338). Milton's formulation ruled out both monarchy (as in the reign of Charles I) and a Protectorate (as under Oliver Cromwell).

Moreover, the English revolutionaries had attempted to institute such a form a decade earlier. When Charles I was executed on 30 January 1649 he was replaced not by another single person, but rather by the Rump Parliament, which ruled together with its Council of State, until April 1653. Yet as its short life - and the rise of Oliver Cromwell - would suggest, experiments involving a purely conciliar government have often proved unsuccessful in practice. The experiments in France in the 1790s with the Committee of Public Safety, and later the Directory, further confirmed this conclusion.

Evidently, it is the second definition of a republic outlined above that is most common today, so that a republican wishes to abolish the Monarchy. According to the first definition, that of Cicero, modern Britain could, despite having a Queen as head of state, be counted as a republic so long as government decisions were made in the public interest. Indeed, there were those in the eighteenth century who made precisely that argument. In 1700, the controversial political thinker and activist John Toland declared that 'if a Commonwealth be a Government of Laws enacted for the Common good of all the People' and if they had some means to consent to those laws 'Then it is undeniably manifest that the English Government is already a Commonwealth, the most free and best constituted in all the world.' (John Toland, The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington, London, 1737, p. vii-viii). According to the third definition, by contrast, which requires that a single person must not be given considerable power, neither France nor the United States of America (both of which have a President), would be deemed worthy of that label.

Viewed historically, 'monarchy', is no easier to define than 'republic'. We can see this if we consider precisely what features make a monarch. Hereditary rule might be thought of as one key element, but this does not hold in the case of the early-modern Polish monarchy, which was elective. We might, then, say that a monarch generally holds his or her position for life. This would work for the Polish system, but it was also true of the Doge of Venice during the same period, and yet most people would argue that the Doge was the head of a republic rather than being a monarch.  Instead of thinking about the nature of the position, then, we might consider the extent of the power wielded. But this seems no more satisfactory as a basis for distinguishing monarchies from republics, since from the late eighteenth century to the present the President of the United States of America has tended to wield far greater powers than the English monarch. While part of the problem here is that the modern British Monarchy is in some ways a misnomer, since our Queen is a hereditary figurehead rather than a power-wielding head of government, even in the late eighteenth century George Washington already enjoyed greater powers in certain respects than George III. (For an interesting exploration of the royal tendencies in the American system see Eric Nelson, The Royalist Revolution, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2014).

John Lilburne, England's New Chains Discovered, London, 1649. http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/leveller-tracts-6. 18.10.17. Taken from the Online Library of Liberty [http://oll.liberty.org] hosted by Liberty Fund, Inc.

This is not to say that important differences between what are conventionally labelled as monarchies and republics do not exist. The expenditure of public money on the Royal Family and the upkeep of royal palaces has always been one of the stronger arguments in the British republican arsenal (though of course presidential systems and legislative assemblies also incur costs). But we must also be careful not to assume that all our political problems can be solved by establishing a republic. It did not take long even for those seventeenth-century English revolutionaries who had called for an end to the monarchy to realise that many problems remained in its wake. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the fact that, less than a month after the regicide, the Leveller leader John Lilburne published a pamphlet which he entitled England's New Chains Discovered.

Intellectual Biographies Workshop, Newcastle University 04.07.17

 Intellectual biography is in vogue at present. Edmund Burke, David Hume and Karl Marx have all been the subject of recent studies and these have been widely reviewed in academic journals and the popular press. There is also biographical interest in a number of seventeenth-century figures, as a workshop held at Newcastle University on 4 July testified. The aim was to explore intellectual biography as a genre or approach, and to consider the particular challenges it presents as well as the opportunities it offers. The discussion was stimulating and wide-ranging and has set me thinking about many issues.

One is the very nature of intellectual biography itself. A common approach to this, discussed at the workshop, involves a distinction between the work and the life, or perhaps even between the 'external life' and the internal 'life of the mind'. In these terms, intellectual biography can be contrasted, on the one hand, with critical commentary that focuses on published texts alone, and, on the other, with biographies focused exclusively on the private or public life of a subject who did not produce a corpus of published writings, or who is not examined in these terms. Despite this broad consensus, however, several participants at the workshop preferred to avoid the label. So Nick McDowell's study of John Milton will be an 'intellectual life' rather than an intellectual biography and Mike Braddick's biography of John Lilburne is to be titled a 'political life'.

Another issue concerns whether certain subjects are better fitted for intellectual biography than others. At the workshop it was noted that intellectual biographies are more common for the post-1800 period. One reason for this may be that in the early-modern period, generally speaking, the sources are more fragmentary, making it more difficult to recreate the inner life (and sometimes even the external life) from the source material. Sarah Hutton pointed out that this problem is frequently exacerbated where the subject is a woman, since they had fewer opportunities to express their ideas publicly and their private papers are less likely to have been preserved. This can encourage speculation in order to fill in the gaps, but another approach is to focus more on reconstructing the intellectual context around the subject from other sources, not just directly through the subject's own writings, public and private.

Also, in the case of early-modern studies the biographer is more remote from the mental world of the subject, making its reconstruction more difficult, but perhaps also requiring the biographer to build up the mental world from evidence rather than assuming that (s)he understands it. The particular character of the subject may further complicate this.

John Milton by an unknown artist c.1629, NPG4222. Reproduced under the creative commons licence from the National Portrait Gallery.

 Nick McDowell raised the common objection to intellectual biographies of poets that this approach tends to turn poems into vehicles for ideas and downplays the timeless, creative, literary spark of such works. There was also some discussion at the workshop of the idea that a woman's intellectual life might be of a different character or quality from that of most men. This is certainly true in the case of Anne Conway, who, as Hutton explained, did not philosophise in a familiar way. In part this was down to the fact that she had not had the traditional classical education enjoyed by most of her fellow philosophers. The same could, of course, be said of a man like John Lilburne who, though he attended the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle, did not go on to university or attend an inn of court. Lilburne, like Conway, had acquired his knowledge in more unconventional and autodidactic ways. Partly because of this, but also partly because of his role as an activist rather than a thinker, his thought is frequently inconsistent and his arguments are not always accurate, even when they were influential. It would be incorrect to suggest that such people as Conway and Lilburne did not have a mental life worthy of investigation, but it may be that different approaches and modes of expression are required in order to do justice to the lives and thought of such individuals.

John Locke from the 1824 edition of his works. Courtesy of the Special Collections Department at the Robinson Library, Newcastle University.

 Even in the case of those who might seem eminently suitable subjects for an intellectual biography, such as philosophers, problems still arise. There is, for example, a potential conflict between the discipline of philosophy, which explores timeless ideas, and the format of biography which is concerned precisely with setting events and ideas within a fixed chronology. Mark Goldie alluded to this problem in slightly different terms when he noted that most of those interested in leading philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke are concerned with their canonical texts rather than with their more minor works, or the minutiae of their daily lives.

A major problem with intellectual biographies that participants at the workshop kept returning to is the danger of imposing consistency or coherence where it does not exist. This can take various forms. It might be that the biographer ends up creating coherence out of fragmentary evidence and then imposing it back onto the subject. However, it could equally be that a biographer has to engage with the subject's own self-fashioning, which may have created a coherence that is not, in fact, borne out by the evidence. Gaby Mahlberg's current project adds a further dimension to this problem in that she is writing the biography not of a single individual but of three English republican thinkers. Here, as in the individual cases, it is perhaps as much about understanding or making sense of disruptions and discontinuities as seeking to find unity or coherence.

John Lilburne from The trials of Lieut. Colonel John Lilburne (London, 1649). Courtesy of the Special Collections Department at the Robinson Library, Newcastle University.

Despite the many problems facing the intellectual biographer, there was much agreement about the value of the approach. As I argued in my paper on James Harrington, this allows the relationship between the life and the works (the external and internal lives) to be explored and appreciated, and can result in revelations about the influence of an individual's life experiences on his/her thought or, conversely, the impact of their ideas on their political and social actions. Intellectual biography was also praised for encouraging the exploration not just of texts, but of the social context of their production, the networks (intellectual and practical) of their authors, as well as their audiences and reception. In this respect a contrast was drawn between those working on more well-known figures, who might want to merge the subject into the crowd, for a time, in order to be able to see and appreciate the context in which they were operating, and those working on more obscure figures, who need to be given the opportunity to stand out from the crowd. This is perhaps particularly important in the case of women, so long hidden within history. Sarah Hutton emphasised the importance of producing intellectual biographies of women in order to restore them to visibility and to demonstrate that women, even early-modern women, had mental lives worthy of exploration. It is equally important in the case of male figures too, though, and can be illuminating beyond the individual. MikeBraddick spoke of the value, to a self-confessed social historian with an interest in state formation and structures, of exploring a life such as Lilburne's within a changing sociological context and of using his life and ideas to elucidate the history of political engagement more generally. 

 Indeed if one thing was evident at our workshop it was that intellectual biography is an inherently interdisciplinary approach. Our speakers and panellists come from a range of disciplinary backgrounds (English Literature, Intellectual History, Philosophy, Social History, Modern Languages). The subjects they are working on are equally diverse (poets, political thinkers, philosophers, political activists). But, whatever the specific expertise of author and subject, it is almost impossible to produce an intellectual biography without drawing on more than one discipline.