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How Information Spread Among the Gentry, 1550-1640

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

F. J. Levy
F. J. Levy*
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Extract

During the first half of the sixteenth century, the English gentry came to realize that its continued access to the controls of power would depend less on birth and military prowess and more on literacy and learning. As a result, the sons of gentlemen flooded into the grammar schools, where they acquired a good knowledge of classical Latin and, rather less commonly, the rudiments of Greek. Together with the languages of the ancients, the schoolboys imbibed at least something of classical ideals. Principally they learned the duty of service to the common weal, a service to be expressed politically. That ideal had permeated Roman education and, through the writings of humanist educational theorists such as Erasmus, was embodied in the curricula of the English grammar schools and universities. Young men were trained in the arts of argument. They learned the trick of compiling a commonplace book, under whose artfully devised headings they entered the “flowers” of their reading. Then, when occasion demanded it, in conversation or letter, in the law courts or parliament, they could search out the appropriate topos, in their memories or in their notes, and bring to bear the weight of classical (and even modern) wisdom. So much, indeed, might be learned by all grammar school boys. Those who proceeded to the universities added further weapons to their armories. Since the universities existed principally to train theologians and preachers, a function whose importance increased as it became necessary to defend English Protestantism from the attacks of Catholics and separatists, they emphasized dialectic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , Spring 1982 , pp. 11 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1983

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References

An earlier, much shorter version of this essay was read at the Past and Present Society meeting in 1979. The subsequent expansion was much assisted by a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

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24 Palliser, D.M. and Selwyn, D.G., “The Stock of a York Stationer, 1538,” The Library, 5th ser., XXVII (1972), 207–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the total number of titles listed was 60+.

25 Davies, R., A Memoir of the York Press (Westminster, 1868), pp. 342–71Google Scholar. See also, Palliser, D.M., Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), pp. 170–71Google Scholar.

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31 On the mechanisms by which news was disseminated, I have had much help from Mr. Richard Cust's admirable paper, “The Circulation of News in the 1620's.” I am most grateful to Mr. Cust for sending me a copy of his manuscript. Pory's, John letters are in The Court and Times of Charles the First, ed. Birch, Thomas (London, 1848)Google Scholar; there is an account of his career as a newswriter in Powell, William S., John Pory 1572-1636 (Chapel Hill, 1977), pp. 55–56Google Scholar.

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40 The Court and Times of James the First, II, 272Google Scholar. The passion for news soon became the butt for satire. Not only did Ben Jonson set a play in a news-office (The Staple of Newes, acted 1625, published 1631), but the entire first part of Alexandrinus, Clitus [Brathwaite, Richard], Whimzies (1631)Google Scholar concerned itself with almanac-makers, ballad-mongers and coranto-coiners, while the last of Donald Lupton's country characters was “Currantoes or weekly Newes” (London and the Countrey Carbonadoed [1632], 140–43)Google Scholar.

41 Bohannon, Mary Elizabeth, “A London Bookseller's Bill: 1635-1639,” The Library, 4th ser., XVIII (1938), 417–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 423, 428, 437.

42 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1637-8, pp. 444, 594; ibid., 1638-9, pp. 371, 420, 474; ibid., 1639, p. 325; ibid., 1640, p. 87; on Calley, Huxley, Gervas, Endymion Porter (London, 1959), pp. 27–31Google Scholar.

43 Sharpe, Kevin, Sir Robert Cotton 1586-1631 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 73–80Google Scholar.

44 The Parochial Libraries of the Church of England, Central Council for the Care of Churches (1959), pp. 16–17Google Scholar; Edwards, E., Memoirs of Libraries, (London, 1859), I, 757–58Google Scholar; Stephen, George A., Three Centuries of a City Library (Norwich, 1917), pp. 4–5Google Scholar.

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49 P.R.O., S.P. 20/7, ff. 35v-36r. Others of his goods and chattels were valued in B.L., Add. MS. 28, 191.

50 P.R.O., S.P. 20/7, ff. 64r-65r. Captain Brocas's more diverse collection of 125 volumes, valued at £16 0 s. 7 d. contained fewer very expensive books and sets.

51 Ibid., ff. 9v-11r. Some of the biographical detail derives from Pearl, Keeler, Long Parliament, pp. 205–6Google Scholar, and from Valerie, , London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1961), p. 101Google Scholar.

52 The percentages given here can be taken only as indicators. Not every book in a collection was listed separately—the least valuable were simply lumped together in bundles. The definition of “religious books” inevitably raises problems, e.g. whether to consider Eusebius as religion or history. Some books have resisted every effort at identification.

53 It should be noted, however, that newsbooks and corantoes would be included in the bundles of miscellaneous and unnamed pamphlets.

54 The system of distribution was lubricated by the extension of credit, not only from publisher to bookseller but from bookseller to customer. John Foster and Christopher Hunt were owed money by their customers; Hunt, indeed, was selling one book on the installment plan. See also Plomer, “Some Elizabethan Book Sales”.

55 Holdsworth, Richard, “Directions for a Student in the Universitie,” printed in Fletcher, H.F., The Intellectual Development of John Milton, II (Urbana, 1961), 623–55Google Scholar, esp. 647-48; the authorship and date have been discussed by Trentman, John A., “The authorship of Directions for a student in the Universitie,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, VII, 2 (1978), 170–83Google Scholar. See also Curtis, Mark H., Oxford and Cambridge in Transition, 1558-1642 (Oxford, 1959), pp. 131–34Google Scholar.

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57 Clark, Peter, “Thomas Scott and the Growth of the Urban Opposition to the Early Stuart Regime,” Historical Journal, XXI, 1 (1978), 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morrill, J.S., “William Davenport and the ‘silent majority’ of early Stuart England,” Journal of the Chester Archaeological Soceity, LVIII (1975), 115–29Google Scholar, and his Cheshire, 1630-1660 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 21ff, 39ff.Google Scholar

58 Brown, R. Stewart, “The Stationers, Booksellers and Printers of Chester to about 1800,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, LXXXIII (1932 for 1931), 131Google Scholar. A list of the booksellers suspected of handling the book appears in Gardiner, S.R. (ed.) Documents relating to the Proceedings against William Prynne, in 1634 and 1637, [Camden Society], n.s., XVIII (1877), 58–60Google Scholar.

59 Holmes, Clive, “The County Community in Stuart Historiography,” Journal of British Studies, XIX, 2 (1980), 54–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Everitt, Alan, Change in the Provinces: the Seventeenth Century (Leicester, 1972)Google Scholar emphasizes the insularity of provincial life.