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“For a King not to be bountiful were a fault”: Perspectives on Court Patronage in Early Stuart England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Linda Levy Peck
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Extract

In an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of the work of William Dobson entitled “The Royalists at War,” one portrait among the Cavalier soldiers and commanders was that of Sir Thomas Aylesbury. Aylesbury holds in his hand a document that begins, “To the King's most Excellent Majesty The Humble Petition.” By posing in his official black robes that evoke the solemnity of the law and by giving the petition prominence, Aylesbury celebrates his position as a master of requests. As a master of requests even at Oxford in the 1640s, it was his role to present petitions to the king asking for redress of grievances or for personal advancement, in short, asking for royal bounty. As Dobson's portrait signifies, such petitions were not merely the seedy clamorings of early Stuart courtiers but an open and important link between the monarch and the subject, one suitable for commemoration in portraiture. The painting makes concrete, even in the midst of civil war, the king's traditional role as guarantor of justice and giver of favor. While the king's promise of justice goes back to early Anglo-Saxon dooms and tenth-century coronation oaths, his giving of largesse had expanded with the Renaissance monarchy of the Tudors.

Historians of early modern Europe have become interested in court patronage as they have analyzed politics and political elites. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, from the work of MacFarlane to Namier, the study of relationships between patrons and clients has been at the forefront of modern historiography.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , January 1986 , pp. 31 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1986

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References

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46 Holles to Lord Norris, July 1, 1617, Seddon, ed., 2:171–72; Holles suggested that this rule is “all the religion, and state discipline in this age: as our neighbors of Spain, and France, especially in the murder of Marquess d'Ancre do tell us.”

47 Holles to Sir Thomas Lake, July 26, 1617, Seddon, ed., 2:180–81.

48 Holles to the earl of Somerset, July 18, 1617, ibid., p. 174.

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53 Holles to the duke of Buckingham, July 17, 1617, ibid., 2:173.

54 Holles to the duke of Lennox, July 25, 1617, ibid., pp. 178–79.

55 HMC, Portland, 9:41–42Google Scholar. Holles discussed Sir Arthur Ingram's appointment to the household through payment (Holles to Lord Norris, [March 1615], Seddon, ed., 1:63–65).

56 Lockyer (n. 26 above), pp. 39–41.

57 Cust, Richard, The Forced Loan and English Potties, 1626–28 (Oxford, in press)Google Scholar; see also Cust, Richard, “The Forced Loan and English Politics, 1626–8” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1983)Google Scholar. Holles to Lord Vere, July 2, 1628, NUL, Newcastle MS NEC 15405, Holles Letters, no. 38, pp. 56 ff.

58 Lockyer, pp. 39–41. Lockyer also suggests thai Buckingham saw the patronclient relationship as a contract (pp. 45, 70), although the nature of that contract may have differed from earlier Stuart patrons.

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65 House of Lords RO, MS LJ, pp. 613–14, May 15, 1626 (Yale transcript, pp. 731, 734).

66 House of Lords RO, MS LJ, p. 657, June 8, 1626 (Yale transcript, pp. 930–31). In the Basilikon Doron (n. 17 above), James had explicitly advised against a favorite: “Use not one in all things lest he wax proud, and be envied of his fellows” (pp. 32–33).

67 House of Lords RO, MS LJ, pp. 661–62, June 8, 1626 (Yale transcript, p. 948).

68 House of Lords RO, MS LJ, p. 662, June 8, 1626 (Yale transcript, pp. 949–50, 962).

69 Russell, pp. 291, 319.

70 J. G. A. Pocock, “Propriety, Liberty and Valour: Ideology, Rhetoric and Speech in the 1628 Debates” (paper delivered at the conference on the Petition of Right, Washington University, October 20–21, 1978).

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73 Akrigg, ed. (n. 20 above), pp. 339–40, 367. In Basilikon Doron, James urged his son to choose for his service “men of known wisdom, honesty and good conscience … free of all factions and partialities” (pp. 32–33).

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75 Slaughter, Thomas P., ed., Ideology and Politics on the Eve of Restoration: Newcastle's Advice to Charles II (Philadelphia, 1984)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Elizabeth Read Foster for bringing Newcastle's Advice to my attention. Stone (n. 62 above), p. 120, draws attention to royalists in the 1650s who regarded the sale of titles as a political mistake.

76 Slaughter, ed., pp. 52–56, 58–59.

77 Ibid., pp. 47–51. By making too many lords, the early Stuarts made the House of Lords more factious than the House of Commons, indeed “all the great mischief in parliaments came out of the king's house for the weaker faction in court did strive always to pull down the stronger by a parliament, where they did not only make their friends and servants of the House to do what they could to pack a parliament, but also did poison the country gentlemen.”

78 Ibid., pp. 47–48. Newcastle recalled that, in his time, William, earl of Pembroke, and Thomas, earl of Arundel, had both tried, without success, to be named to the king's bedchamber during the reigns of both King James and King Charles.