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James liked to have a theory of his activities. His earliest published poems, collected as his Essays of a prentise (1584), were printed with Ane schort treatise, containing some reulis and cautelis to be observit and eschewitt in Scots poesie. Thus it was perfectly in character that after more than thirty years of reigning over Scotland, he should have written two short works about the role of kingship: The trew law of free monarchies (1598), addressed to all his subjects; and the more esoteric Basilicon Doron (1599), a treatise addressed to his elder son, Prince Henry, and entrusted to just seven courtiers (an expanded edition for general circulation was published in March 1603). The English were quite sensitive to signs that James was likely to oppress them; an episode in his earliest weeks in England when he despatched a criminal without trial was the occasion of much criticism. It thus seems quite significant that their response to these two works appears to have been rather favourable. The Form of Apology and Satisfaction, the statement produced by malcontent MPs at the end of his first parliamentary session, is famous for pronouncing that ‘the prerogatives of princes may easily and do daily grow; the privileges of the subject are for the most part at an everlasting stand’. But the Apology complimented James on ‘your Majesty's most wise, religious, just, virtuous and gracious heart, whereof not rumour but your Majesty's own writings had given us a strong and undoubted assurance’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any account of late medieval England must take some note of a surprising contrast. The kingdom's rulers were unfortunate (five out of Henry VIII's ten predecessors died violent deaths at the hands of their own subjects), but the society they tried to govern appears to have been increasingly well ordered. Its relative stability could even survive a uniquely unsuitable monarch. The regime of Henry VI suffered every disaster that could happen to a personal monarchy – foreign defeat, court faction, royal minority and lunacy, kidnapping, civil war, and usurpation – but the result was nothing like the Anarchy of Stephen. The Wars of the Roses were brief campaigns concluding in formal engagements; the houses that magnates erected were only minimally fortified; and few of them spent more than a tenth of their income on wages for retainers. There is not in fact much evidence that violence was endemic, or murder other than exceptional. What really needs to be explained is not dynastic chaos, but the resilience of social order. One cause of this resilience was surely the role of the gentry in county government. Before 1294, the senior central court, King's Bench, aspired to visit the counties on regular ‘general eyres’, thus bringing the whole panoply of royal law to the localities. After this mechanism was abandoned, the crown began to make more use of local notables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The old story which sank Starkey into oblivion after he failed to bring Pole into the fold contains some truth – Starkey did disappear from near centre-stage in the last eighteen months or two years of his life. But he did not vanish, any more than all conservatives became reactionaries. As J.-P. Moreau argues, English Catholics went through a major readjustment of attitudes between 1534 and 1539, as most came to accept the new order and only a few resisted. Starkey found himself suspended between these two positions. Manuscript evidence, some of it known but unused and some of it unknown, shows how Starkey reacted to the fiasco of 1536–7. A set of notes on the Old Testament dated 14 October 1537, another batch of jottings on Albert Pighe's (Pighius) Hierarchiae ecclesiasticae assertio probably written in mid-1538, and, finally, the records of the investigation into the Exeter conspiracy, produce a much fuller portrait of the last period of Starkey's life than previously available. They reveal that Starkey followed the turn to religion which he had announced at the end of his Dialogue and pursued ever since he decided to become a preacher. This meant major changes in his political programme, most of them probably arising from his disappointment over the failure of both his and Pole's plans, but despite some apparently strong temptation, he refused to withdraw altogether. Starkey undoubtedly found himself in a difficult position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of the True Church showed William Harrison that the human institution of perpetual monarchy was inherently unable to overcome worldly considerations in order to achieve a full reformation. Yet this bitter lesson contradicted his careful acknowledgement that the presbyterians, whose historical vision of the True Church he shared, threatened dangerous social upheaval in their attempts to reconstruct the godly society without tarrying for the magistrate. Despite his low opinion of princes in general, Harrison had dutifully to suspend his disbelief about Elizabeth's commitment to further reformation. This tension can be partly resolved by an examination of Harrison's views about England's relationship to the ideal godly commonwealth, but an element of incoherence must always be allowed for in his thought, since he belonged to that historical majority of individuals whose less than rigorous thinking allowed them to accept simultaneously a number of logically contradictory propositions. Harrison's very situation encouraged such a lack of rigour, and his subjective interpretation of his contemporary political, social and economic environment also partly explains why this tension never became a destructive element in his thought, why he never developed his views to their logical, extreme conclusion. In this connection we have seen how on different occasions the actions of the political elite both dispelled Harrison's doubts and revived them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preceding chapter concluded by drawing an important contrast between the assumptions which Harrison shared with other Elizabethan Protestants, and Richard Hooker's statements about the source of saving knowledge. Hooker's argument rested on scholastic notions about the law of nature, those fundamental principles of God's law imprinted in all human hearts, and which human reason might perceive at all times. Natural law theories also underpinned both Protestant and Catholic political debate in this period, but although we now turn to consider Harrison's political outlook and what it reflects about Protestant political theories in general, this chapter will suggest that Harrison largely disregarded the law of nature in seeking inspiration and justification for his interpretation of contemporary political institutions. It further argues that for other Protestants, at least as far as they addressed themselves to other members of the True Church, the Scriptural account of the fortunes of the Elect under God's providential direction provided a source of truth superior to the law of nature. The law of nature appears subordinate to revelation when put into the general context of sixteenth-century Protestant thought, and particularly in the context of radical Calvinist thought about the covenant and its implications for contemporary political obligations. Modern historians have quite rightly stressed the indebtedness of Calvinist political theorists such as John Ponet, Christopher Goodman and Theodore Beza to scholastic, conciliarist and Roman Law political theories, which all seemed ultimately to deduce their principles from the law of nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have already seen that other prominent members of the Elizabethan Church shared Harrison's outlook on the world, and now we must examine the wider implications of this way of thinking. Harrison believed that the covenant line had transmitted through its historical experiences, both in the Scriptures and afterwards, the doctrinal criteria by which he could assess all human knowledge. The previous chapters examined his application of those Scriptural criteria to the arcana of prophecy, chronology and historical interpretation, and in passing pointed out the intimate relationship between his thinking on those matters and his notions about the nature and role of the Church, its relationship to the worldly powers, and the proper objectives of human society and human intellect. Now we can investigate Harrison's application of those same Scriptural criteria to these human institutions, and particularly the Elizabethan Church, while subsequent chapters will follow the same course through Harrison's thinking about political power, social organisation, and the investigation of Nature. In this chapter we move away from the European sources of Harrison's developing ideas and relate his outlook more specifically to the experiences of Englishmen under Elizabeth. Here the ‘Chronology’ offers an unusually detailed insight into the historical assumptions behind Harrison's reforming ideas. For we can categorise Harrison's thoughts about the Elizabethan Church, and his activities within its institutional structure, as those of a moderate Puritan, in the descriptive sense in which modern historians use that term. Yet we can only fully understand those ideas and actions in the light of the historical interpretation of the Two Churches which simultaneously reflected and conditioned Harrison's interpretation of his contemporary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power and influence in the urban neighbourhood As we have seen, the primary position of social power derived from an individual's position as head of household. This power, however, was restricted by the size of each unit. Opportunities to influence the lives and behaviour of others were much wider in a society where wealth was divided unequally. ‘Formal’ or ‘institutional’ power derived from membership of local administrative bodies is the one usually emphasised by social historians. Possession of office of this sort gave individuals further influence over the social, economic and religious behaviour of their fellows. Before discussing the institutional aspects of individual power we should consider the informal opportunities to influence the lives of neighbours which derived from the unequal distribution of wealth discussed earlier. Unlike institutional power, however, evidence for the deployment of informal power is far less easy to come by. In a society where wealth was distributed unequally and where two thirds of all households had little money to spare, it is clear that those households which were able to do so might use surplus income as a means to power and influence. The ways in which money might be used in return for deference is a neglected form of informal social control in pre-industrial England. One of the obvious means of converting wealth into a form of social capital was to provide dinners for neighbours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hitherto all that is known about household structure in Tudor and Stuart London derives from the evidence provided by the Marriage Duty Act returns of 1695. Evidence from the Boroughside can be used to look for the first time at household structure in a part of London before this date. It is possible, using the 1622 Boroughside token book, the 1618 survey of the poor and the 1631 population count to look at household size and structure in the area in the early seventeenth century. The 1622 token book lists each household, supplying the name and surname of the household head and their marital status (defined by the Latin et uxor). Following standard procedure the household head is taken to be the person listed first in each household entry. Servants are identified by Christian name and usually labelled as such. (In some of the larger households some servants were occasionally represented by dots when their names were not known.) Inmates and lodgers are identified by Christian name and surname but are not usually labelled. Consequently some of these may, in fact, have been unlabelled servants. Children related to the household head are denoted as ‘fil’. It was possible to identify some individuals as offspring or servants from other sources, notably wills and the parish register. The 1622 entry for Ralph Babington, vintner, is set out as follows: The token book can be used to look at the household membership of all those over communicable age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]