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A “Radical” Problem: The Poor and the English Reformers in the Mid-Seventeenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2014
Extract
Debates about poverty in mid-seventeenth-century England have, for some years, been a staple of historical studies. In our own time, where the numbers of the dispossessed continue to challenge the success of current modes of social and economic organization, such an interest is understandable and to be welcomed. But the relevance of studies of past problems and solutions and their applicability to present purposes is more complex than is usually recognized.
The immediate benefit of studying discussions for change in mid-seventeenth-century England is that they provide an unusual insight into how members of that society conceived of it. In particular, their observations about the problems of poverty and the role of the poor offer us an understanding of the perceived social structure, the ethical bases for social differentiation, and the degree to which the future could be envisioned as differing from the past or present. Such understandings of proposed social change are invaluable for historians wishing to grasp the underlying assumptions on which past thought and action was predicated.
Past proposals for social reform, however, have also been the focus of a significantly different enquiry by historians. In order to render those past programs more comprehensible (and more directly “relevant”) to modern readers, they are often placed on a “conservative” versus “radical” continuum, one end of which has sometimes been marked “extreme left wing.” This article argues that any such classification inevitably leads to misunderstandings of the authors and of their programs and, consequently, misrepresents both to the present.
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References
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3 The authors of this article have, with John K. Graham, discussed elsewhere both how such novelties could be introduced into the languge and how new meanings could be communicated. See Mulligan, Lotte, Richards, Judith, and Graham, John K., “A Concern for Understanding: A Case of Locke's Precepts and Practice,” Historical Journal 25 (1982): 841–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Richards, Judith, Mulligan, Lotte, and Graham, John K., “‘Property’ and ‘People’: Political Usages of Locke and Some Contemporaries,” Journal of the History of Ideas 42 (1981): 29–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Although the preoccupation with midcentury “radical” democracy seems to have faded, the notion of “radical” egalitarianism at that time, in that society, is still being promoted. See Goldsmith, Maurice, “Levelling by Sword, Spade and Word: Radical Egalitarianism in the English Revolution,” in Politics and People in Revolutionary England, ed. Jones, Colin, Newitt, Malyn, and Roberts, Stephen (Oxford, 1986), pp. 65–80Google Scholar. Even if the most important qualifier “male” were added each time before “egalitarianism” or “egalitarian,” this article argues that social egalitarianism was not what any seventeenth-century writer, including Winstanley, was arguing for. Quite apart from the increased subordination of women, the presumption of household hierarchy retained authoritative heads of households, apprentices, and servants in his program set out in Winstanley, 's The Law of Freedom in a Platform in The Works of Gerrard Winstanley, ed. Sabine, J. H. (New York, 1965), pp. 545–46, 575–80Google Scholar. See below for detailed discussion and see also Davis, J. C., “Gerrard Winstanley and the Restoration of True Magistracy,” Past and Present, no. 70 (1976), pp. 76–93Google Scholar.
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6 Davis, J. C., “Radicalism in a Traditional Society: The Evaluation of Radical Thought in the English Commonwealth, 1640–1660,” History of Political Thought 3 (1982): 193–213Google Scholar, esp. 203, and “Radical Lives,” Political Science 8 (December 1985): 167–72Google Scholar. Most recently, Davis suggests that many works of “radical delegitimation were effected substantially by inversions.” See Davis, , Fear, Myth and History: The Ranters and the Historians (Cambridge, 1986), p. 58Google Scholar. This raises the issue of how far inverted images can serve to break the paradigms of normality. On most occasions, as Davis agrees, they clarify and reinforce rather than undermine them (see below for a discussion of this issue). He also iterates the difficulties “radicals” faced in trying to escape from Christian moral conceptualization (ibid., p. 112). This accurately describes the dilemmas of various would-be reformers but undercuts significantly the applicability of the term “radicalism,” which Davis earlier espoused.
7 Skinner, Quentin, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory 8 (1969): 3–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotes on 53 and 52, respectively.
8 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus logico-philosophicus (London, 1933), proposition 5.6, p. 149Google Scholar.
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12 Crick, pp. 99, 131.
13 Beier, A. L., The Problem of the Poor in Tudor and Early Stuart England (London: Lancaster Pamphlets, 1983), p. 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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15 Government intervention to control the shifting poor and to provide some alleviation of their conditions already had a long English history. Biblically based exhortations to all Christians to succor their less fortunate fellows had a much longer European one. The literature of the period is full of exemplary tales of those who had provided for the poor and admonitory tales about those who oppressed them. See, e.g., Stow, John, A Survey of London, ed. Kingsford, C. L. (Oxford, 1971), pp. 193–94, 196Google Scholar, first published in 1592 and subsequently expanded and reissued several times.
16 Indeed, Blair Worden suggests that the legislation was itself a response to possible Leveller disturbance. See “An Act for the Relief and Imployment of the Poor, and the Punishment of Vagrants and other disorderly Persons, within the City of London and the Liberties thereof (May 7, 1649),” in Firth, and Rait, , eds., 2:104–10Google Scholar, esp. 106; Worden, Blair, The Rump Parliament (Cambridge, 1974), p. 166Google Scholar.
17 The reintroduction of whipping “rogues” back to their native parishes after the otherwise similar 1647 act may have reflected, perhaps, the particular problems of demobbed soldiers and starving crowds in London in 1649. See Firth and Rait, eds., 1:1042.
18 William Harrison and other traditionalists argued, on the other hand, against the very idea of overpopulation and treated the poor as a national asset: “But if it should come to pass that any foreign invasion should be made—which the Lord God forbid for His mercy's sake:—then should these men find that a wall of men is far better than stacks of corn and bags of money” (Edelen, G., ed., The Description of England [Ithaca, N.Y., 1968], p. 182Google Scholar).
19 Beier, A. L., Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560—1640 (London, 1985), pp. 162–63Google Scholar, discusses statutory authority for transporting vagrants beginning in 1597 and a range of schemes to promote migration among the poor, as well as actual practice between 1607 and 1658.
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21 H[artlib], S[amuel], Londons Charitie stilling the Poore Orphans Cry (1649)Google Scholar, BL, Thomason Tracts, E 572 (16), passim.
22 Cook, John, Unum Necessarium, or the Poore Mans Case (February 1, 1648)Google Scholar, BL, Thomason Tracts, E 425 (1), pp. 8–9, 11, 17, 43. Very similar moral and practical advice was offered in 1632: “An essay tending to the training up of the idle poor in the town of Colchester, so as not a beggar be permitted there to wander: and also for the nursing and training up of poor orphans … until they be fit to be put into service … and likewise for the abating of that loathsome sin of drunkenness, with many other enormous vices committed in alehouses, the rendezvous of idle persons” (HMC, Verulam [1906], p. 31Google Scholar). It is curious that Peter Bowden has shown that in midcentury the average price of barley and malt was not particularly high in the home counties and southeast and suggests that it was not until the years after 1679 that the London call for increased quantities of alcoholic drink pushed the price of barley and malt beyond the national average. But annual and seasonal variations are much harder to graph; see Bowden, , “Agricultural Prices, Wages, Farm Profits and Rents,” chap. 13 in Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5, 1640–1750, ed. Thirsk, John (Cambridge, 1985), pt. 2, p. 27Google Scholar, table, pp. 23–24.
23 Chamberlen, Peter, The Poore Mans Advocate or Englands Samaritane Powring Oyle and Wyne into the Wounds of the Nation (April 25, 1650)Google Scholar, BL, Thomason Tracts, E 552 (1).
24 The great ecclesiastical and royal houses were to be used as hospitals, schools, academies, and accommodation for poor workers who would be profitably employed on the estates under the supervision of honest trustees.
25 The supporting case for his scheme included impressive calculations of financial incomings and outgoings for a joint-stock company designed to appeal to M.P.s, investors, and country gentlemen staggering under increased taxation.
26 These proposals should be seen in the context of Sparke's role as a thorn in the side of Archbishop William Laud's attempts to control print in the 1630s.
27 Chamberlen, pp. 9, 12–15.
28 Hartlib, p. 3.
29 Yonge, R., The Poores Advocate (February 11, 1654)Google Scholar, BL, Thomason Tracts, E, 452(3), pt. 2, pp. 10–11, 14; also Hartlib, passim.
30 Hartlib, passim; Cook, p. 28; Yonge, pt. 2, pp. 10, 14.
31 Cook, pp. 11, 43; Hartlib (n. 21 above), passim.
32 Chamberlen, epistle b3, p. 3.
33 For example, Yonge, pt. 2, p. 10.
34 The woodcuts at the opening of Sparke's and Hartlib's pamphlets are the most graphic in their moral thrust.
35 Yonge, pt. 1, pp. 11, 14, and pt. 2, pp. 10, 30; Hartlib, passim; Cook (n. 22 above), pp. 18–20, 36–38. Cook instanced the “caterpillar engrossers,” the “luxurious” rich, and the “swinish,“ “Antinomian” drunkard “who acknowledged no God but his belly.” See also Dent, Arthur, The Plaine Mans Pathway to Heaven (first published 1601 and in its twenty-fifth edition by 1640)Google Scholar for a comparable discussion of the crushing oppression of the poor.
36 Cook, p. 37.
37 Yonge, pt. 1, p. 14.
38 Ibid., pt. 2, p. 11.
39 Cook, p. 4.
40 Hartlib, passim.
41 Cook, pp. 5, 10, 18–20, 36–37, 44.
42 Yonge, frontispiece.
43 Cook's opening and Yonge's title page testify to the primacy of their concern for rich men's souls.
44 Hartlib saw the poor as making cloth for their own use with the help of charitable gentlemen flax growers and tradesmen to supply materials, Cook saw them as drudging agricultural laborers supplying the excesses of the rich, and Yonge treated them as a potential labor force generally.
45 Hartlib had poor men's children in workhouses “the better to be entertained in good mens services” ([n. 21 above], p. 9).
46 Chamberlen (n. 23 above), p. 30.
47 Hartlib, frontispiece and passim; Cook (n. 22 above), pp. 5, 19, and passim.
48 Chamberlen, p. 12.
49 Ibid., p. 1.
50 Cook, p. 44.
51 James, Margaret, Social Problems and Policy during the Puritan Revolution, 1640–1660 (London, 1930)Google Scholar, has been the classic study of social thought and action of the period and still has not been superseded. For the argument that there was little change in public policy see, e.g., Worden (n. 16 above), p. 166; Underdown, David, Pride's Purge (Oxford, 1971), pp. 291–93Google Scholar. Herlan's recent study has demonstrated that there was no decline in money collected to help the poor of London in these years. Moreover, public assistance was nearly three times greater than private charity in the parishes he studied. See Herland, Ronald W., “Poor Relief in London during the English Revolution,” Journal of British Studies 18, no. 2 (1979): 30–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 By his own account Chamberlen had actually presented a similar scheme for land acquisition to Charles I some years earlier (Chamberlen, epistle, unpaginated). This alone would suggest that it is not helpful to classify Chamberlen's writings as “progressive” to distinguish it from Cook's “thorough-going conservative” views with the “characteristic weakness of the conservative idealist who offers only moral reformation” as James has written (p. 281). Such a presentist judgment obscures the crucial fact that these writers also shared many basic assumptions and purposes.
53 Remonstrance of both Houses in answer to the King's Declaration (May 26, 1642). More recent events, too, stimulated Chamberlen's concerns. He equated many of the poor with the recently victorious army, insisting that the soldiers must not be forced into vagabondage and thievery (Chamberlen, p. 12).
54 An extra note of urgency was added by the contemporary millenarian expectancy: “The Devil rageth because his time is short” (Chamberlen, p. 40)Google Scholar.
55 Ibid., p. 47.
56 Moderate, nos. 58 and 59 (August 1649).
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58 Lilburne, John, Englands New Chains Discovered (1648)Google Scholar and The Bloody Project (1648) in Haller, and Davies, , ed., pp. 160Google Scholar and 144, respectively.
59 To the right Honourable and Supreme Authority, in Haller, , ed., 3:399–405Google Scholar; Petition to the Lord Mayor and Common Council, in Haller, , ed., 3:281Google Scholar. Lilburne, John, The Freemans Freedom Vindicated (1646), in Woodhouse, , ed., p. 320Google Scholar; The Large Petition (March, 1647), in Woodhouse, , ed., p. 320Google Scholar; The Humble Petition (September 11, 1648), in Haller, and Davies, , ed., p. 152Google Scholar.
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63 The New Law of Righteousness and The True Levellers Standard Advanced (in Sabine, , ed., pp. 147–266)Google Scholar represent the earlier moral reformation phase, and The Law of Freedom in a Platform the later phase, which included government action (ibid., pp. 499–640).
64 See The True Levellers Standard Advanced and A Watchword to the City of London (ibid., pp. 245–66, 313–39).
65 See Mulligan, Lotte, Graham, John K., and Richards, Judith, “Winstanley: A Case for the Man as He Said He Was,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol. 28 (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hill, Christopher, “The Religion of Gerrard Winstanley,” Past and Present Supplement, no. 5 (1978)Google Scholar; Mulligan, Lotte, Graham, John K., and Richards, Judith, “Debate: The Religion of Gerrard Winstanley,” Past and Present, no. 89 (1980)Google Scholar.
66 The True Levellers Standard Advanced and The Law of Freedom in a Platform were addressed ostensibly to the rulers of England; A Watchword to the City and the army; A New Years Gift to Parliament and the army; and Fire in the Bush to the churches (Sabine, , ed., pp. 251, 501Google Scholar, 319, 353, 445).
67 Since they were too delicate for manual labor, “we will work for you.” On other occasions Winstanley warned the rich to leave the Diggers alone (ibid., p. 266); and see A Watchword and A New Years Gift (ibid., passim).
68 Ibid., p. 263.
69 Ibid., pp. 545–46.
70 See Mulligan, Graham, and Richards, “Winstanley,” for an extended discussion of Winstanley's millenarianism.
71 Sabine, ed. (n. 4 above), p. 455.
72 Ibid., p. 549.
73 Davis, , “Gerrard Winstanley and the Restoration of True Magistracy” (n. 4 above), p. 79Google Scholar and passim.
74 Sabine, ed., pp. 538–39, 545, 549, 551–52.
75 John Lilburne, The Free-mans Freedom Vindicated, BL, Thomason Tracts, E 341 (12) (unpaginated).
76 Ibid.
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78 Chidley, Katherine, The Justification of the Independent Churches (October 1641)Google Scholar, BL, Thomason Tracts, E 174 (7), p. 26.
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80 Coppe, Abiezer, A Fiery Flying Roll and A Second Fiery Flying Route (January 4, 1650)Google Scholar, BL, Thomason Tracts, E 587 (13, 14).
81 A single sheet publication, simply headed Die Veneris, 1 Februarii, 1649 (BL, Thomason Tracts, E 669 f 15 [11]), listed the resolutions by parliament condemning the work and ordered that copies be burned or searched for throughout the country. See BL, Thomason Tracts, E 669 f 14 (78), for resolutions published October 3, 1649, as another example of this unextraordinary way of communicating parliamentary decisions without particular fervor.
82 Coppe's repudiation of the forms usually seen as bonding different groups together is exemplified in his outraged comments on the “late great London feast” and the money spent on “superfluous dishes” when “no lesse then a hundred died in one week, pined and starved with hunger.” “Howie you great ones, for all that feast daies doe, etc, heare youre doome” (A Fiery Flying Roll, pp. 11–12)Google Scholar.
83 For Davis's discussion of Coppe, see his Fear, Myth and History (n. 6 above), p. 51: “The consequences of the wholehearted pursuit would be the undermining of a property system whose moral basis was covetousness and hard heartedness. The indebtedness of Coppe to the Levellers, with their emphasis on practical Christianity, and to Winstanley's indictment of covetousness is clear.” This article has sought to demonstrate that everyone declared themselves to be against covetousness and hardheartedness in that society, but the consequences of such an abhorrence were far more wide-ranging than Davis here suggests.
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87 Coppe cited Rev. 10:6 in A Second Fiery Flying Route (p. 12), and both Rolls have several references to oaths and swearing, at least enough to give credence to contemporary charges against his swearing, like the ones cited by Morton (see n. 1 above), pp. 80–81.
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91 Coppe, , A Second Fiery Flying Roule, p. 12Google Scholar. The tensions between duty to family by accumulating resources and duty to serve God by providing for his poor is a recurrent theme in seventeenth-century literature and is succinctly expressed by Braithwait, Richard in The English Gentleman (1630)Google Scholar in “To the Reader.”
92 Coppe, , A Second Fiery Flying Roule, p. 2Google Scholar.
93 There have been several studies of the function of acts of social inversion, and the conclusion—at least in studies of early modern England—has been in each case that, however threatening to the established social order moments of inverted behavior may seem, they actually functioned to reinforce community values by castigating and caricaturing misdemeanors against prevailing values. Keith Thomas concluded, e.g., that whatever the appearance, such moments of inversion were “no frontal challenge to the social order.” See Thomas, , Rule and Misrule in the Schools of Early Modern England (Reading, 1976), p. 33Google Scholar. For other studies of inversion in English society see Underdown, David, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar, and also his “The Taming of the Scold: The Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England,” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. Fletcher, Anthony and Stevenson, John (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 116–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ingram, Martin, “Ridings, Rough Music and Mocking Rhymes in Early Modern England,” in Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Reay, Barry (Beckenham, 1985), pp. 166–97Google Scholar; Davis, , Fear, Myth and History ([n. 6 above], pp. 61–62, 119–23)Google Scholar, also discusses the inversion strategies of both Coppe and his attackers.
94 Coppe, Abiezer, Some Sweet Sips of some Spirituall Wine (London, 1649), pp. 46, 54Google Scholar.
95 For a study of the usages of “Right Reason” in the mid-seventeenth century see Mulligan, Lotte, “‘Reason,’ ‘Right Reason,’ and ‘Revelation,’” in Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, ed. Vickers, Brian (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 375–401Google Scholar.
96 Cook (n. 22 above), pp. 5, 10, 15–16, 19, 24, 36.
97 See, among others, Yonge (n. 29 above), pt. 2, pp. 10, 14.
98 Skinner (n. 7 above), p. 53.
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