Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: points of departure
- Introduction An uncommon tradition
- Part I The emergent commonalty
- Part II Accumulating a tradition: popular resistance and rebellion, 1327–1549
- 4 Discords, quarrels and factions of the commonalty: an ensemble of popular demands, 1328–1381
- 5 The spectre of commonalty: popular rebellion and the commonweal, 1381–1549
- Part III The English explosion
- Part IV The empowered community
- Index
- References
5 - The spectre of commonalty: popular rebellion and the commonweal, 1381–1549
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: points of departure
- Introduction An uncommon tradition
- Part I The emergent commonalty
- Part II Accumulating a tradition: popular resistance and rebellion, 1327–1549
- 4 Discords, quarrels and factions of the commonalty: an ensemble of popular demands, 1328–1381
- 5 The spectre of commonalty: popular rebellion and the commonweal, 1381–1549
- Part III The English explosion
- Part IV The empowered community
- Index
- References
Summary
Whan the comuynes began to ryse,
Was non so gret lord, as I gesse,
That thei in hert bigon to gryse,
And leide heore jolite in presse,
Wher was thenne heore worthinesse,
Of alle wyse men I take witnesse,
This was a warnynge to be ware.
(‘On the Earthquake of 1382’, anon., c.1400)It is a purpos'd thing, and grows by plot,
To curb the will of the nobility.
(Shakespeare, Coriolanus III, i)Haunting belongs to the structure of every hegemony.
(Jacques Derrida)Res plebeia
Debate on the meaning and significance of commonweal/th jargon has focused on the coming into existence of a literature that burst onto the public stage from the third to the fifth decades of the sixteenth century. It took the form of a body of texts which discussed and expanded upon the idea, and partook to some degree of the populist program of Protector Somerset. An elitist, classical-humanist (‘Renaissance’) provenance has usually been assumed. Steve Hindle describes ‘commonwealth’ as ‘a term derived from classical republicanism and mediated through Christian humanism’. Diarmaid MacCulloch writes that ‘talk of commonwealth had been pioneered by Thomas Cromwell's circle in the 1530s and not until Edward VI's reign’ do we find ‘it had spread down the social scale, and had become the property of humble people who were excited by it and yearned for justice and fairness in society’. This chapter argues that the top-down or ‘clerical authority’ provenance of ‘commonweal’ is wrong.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Commonwealth of the PeoplePopular Politics and England's Long Social Revolution, 1066–1649, pp. 236 - 292Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
, The Tudor Commonwealth 1529–1559: a Study of the Impact of the Social and Economic Developments of Mid-Tudor England upon Contemporary Concepts of the Nature and Duties of the Commonwealth (London 1970)Google Scholar
, ‘Protector Somerset and the 1549 Rebellions: New Sources and New Perspectives’, English Historical Review 144 (1999), 34–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The Concept of a Language and the métier d'historien: Some Considerations on Practice’, in (ed.), The Language of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge 1987), 19–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(ed.), The Boke of Noblesse Addressed to King Edward the Fourth…in 1475 (New York 1975)
, From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England (Oxford 1999), 6–7Google Scholar
, ‘Reform and the “Commonwealth-Men” of Edward VI's Reign’, in , and (ed.), The English Commonwealth 1547–1640: Essays Presented to Joel Hurstfield (Leicester 1979), 23–38Google Scholar
, ‘The Tudor Commonwealth: Revising Thomas Cromwell’, The Historical Journal 23: 3 (1980), 681–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Which Age of Reform?’, in and (ed.), Revolution Reassessed: Revisions in the History of Tudor Government and Administration (Oxford 1986)Google Scholar
, An Information Against the Oppressors of the Poor Commons (London 1548, facs. ed. Amsterdam 1979)Google Scholar
(ed.), Four Political Treatises by Sir Thomas Elyot (Gainesville, Fla. 1967), 186–7
, De Republica Anglorum; Or, History with the Politics Put Back (Cambridge 1990), 15–16Google Scholar
, ‘The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England,’ in , and (ed.), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (Basingstoke 1996), 10–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (Basingstoke 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Subordination, Solidarity and the Limits of Popular Agency in a Yorkshire Valley c.1596–1615’, Past and Present 193 (November 2006), 41–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Fear, Hatred and the Hidden Injuries of Class in Early Modern England’, Journal of Social History 39:3 (Spring 2006), 803–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley: Gossip, Gender and the Experience of Authority in Early Modern England’, Continuity and Change 9 (1994), 391–419CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, On the Parish? The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England, c.1550–1750 (Oxford 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (ed.), Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge 2001)CrossRef
, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: the Colchester Plunderers (Cambridge 1999)Google Scholar
, ‘The Formation of the English Gentry’, Past and Present 147 (May 1995), 38–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Knights and Esquires: the Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford 1981), esp. 170–7Google Scholar
and , ‘The Yeomanry of Robin Hood and Social Terminology in Fifteenth-Century England’, Past and Present 170 (February 2001), 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘The Descryuing of Mannes Membres’, in (ed.), Twenty-Six Political Poems from the Oxford Mss Digby 102 and Douce 322 (London 1904), 64–8
, The Local Origins of Modern Society: Gloucestershire 1500–1800 (London and New York 1992), 258–60Google Scholar
, The Politics of Social Conflict: the Peak Country 1520–1770 (Cambridge 1999), 260CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Governance of England: Otherwise called the difference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy, ed. (1885; repr. London 1926)Google Scholar
(ed.), Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor, Mich. 1959)
, ‘The Economic and Social Roots of Medieval Popular Rebellion: Sussex in 1450–51’, Economic History Review, new series, 46:2 (May 1993), 663–4Google Scholar
, ‘The Spider, the Fly, and the Commonwealth: Merrie John Heywood and Agrarian Class Struggle’, English Literary History 71:1 (2004), 53–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Theory and Practice of Revolt in Medieval England (Aldershot 2003), 163–6, 170, 242Google Scholar
(ed.), The Difference between Absolute and Limited Monarchy…being a treatise written by Sir John Fortescue (London 1714), 19–21
and , ‘England: Popular Politics and Social Conflict’, in (ed.), A Companion to Britain in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford 2003), 72Google Scholar
, A Rural Society after the Black Death: Essex 1350–1525 (Cambridge 1991), 229, 231, 233CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knighton's Chronicle 1337–1396, ed. and trans. (Oxford 1995), 208–9
, ‘Norfolk 1382: a Sequel to the Peasants Revolt’, English Historical Review, 114:456 (April 1999), 370–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (ed.), Select Cases Before the King's Council (Cambridge 1918), xcvii–xcviii
, Life and Times of John Trevisa, Medieval Scholar (Seattle and London 1995), 190, 196–7Google Scholar
(ed.), Select Cases in the Court of King's Bench under Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V (London 1971), 91–2
The Chronicle of Adam of Usk, ed. and trans. (Oxford 1991), 88–9
(ed.), The Brut or The Chronicles of England (London 1906), 361
, ‘Ideology and Social Order in Late Medieval England’, in , Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism (London 1985).Google Scholar
, Preaching in Medieval England: an Introduction to Sermon Manuscripts of the Period c.1350–1450 (New York 1965)Google Scholar
Wimbledon's Sermon, Redde Rationem Villicationis Tue: a Middle English Sermon of the Fourteenth Century, ed. (Pittsburgh Pa. 1967), 1
(ed.), Historical Poems of the 14th and 15th Centuries (New York 1959), xlii
, England's Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation 1399–1422 (New Haven 1998)Google Scholar
‘tradition of revolt’ in (ed.), Orders and Hierarchies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Basingstoke 1999), pp. 109–125CrossRef
, ‘Rumour, Sedition and Popular Protest in the Reign of Henry IV’, Past and Present 106 (February 2000)Google Scholar
The Great Chronicle of London, ed. and (London 1938), 138
and (ed.), Two Cartularies of Abingdon Abbey (Oxford 1995), 327–9
, ‘The Great Rumour of 1377 and Peasant Ideology’, in and (ed.), The English Rising of 1381 (Cambridge 1984), 72Google Scholar
, ‘William Wawe and his Gang’, in , England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (London 1991), 227Google Scholar
(ed.), Select Cases in the Court of King's Bench under Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V (London 1971)
, The Constitutional History of England: a Course of Lectures, ed. (Cambridge 1961), 194Google Scholar
, ‘Polemic and Politics in the 1450s’, in , , , , (ed.), The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale's Book (Stroud 1995), 3–4Google Scholar
, ‘Conclusions’, in The End of the Middle Ages: England in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Stroud 1998), 270Google Scholar
, ‘The Economic and Social Roots of Medieval Popular Rebellion: Sussex in 1450–1451’, Economic History Review, new series, 45:4 (November 1992)Google Scholar
, ‘Armed Force and Civic Legitimacy in Jack Cade's Revolt’, English Historical Review 118:471 (June 2003), 563CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘John Ball seynte marie prist greteth wele alle maner men…’, transcribed in , Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley 1994), 14
, ‘Deconstructing Cade's Rebellion: Discourse and Politics in the Mid-Fifteenth Century’, in The Fifteenth Century, vol. 6 (2006), 12Google Scholar
The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, ed. , (London 1876)
, ‘Henry VII and the Northern Rising of 1489’, English Historical Review 105:414 (January 1990), 40, 45, 55Google Scholar
The Tree of Commonwealth: a Treatise written by Edmund Dudley (1509–10), ed. (Cambridge 1948), 91–3
(ed.), Four Political Treatises by Sir Thomas Elyot (Gainesville, Fla. 1967), 186–7
, ‘From the State of Princes to the Person of the State’, in , Visions of Politics (Cambridge 2002), 368–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Dialogus inter Militem et Clericum, ed. , Early English Text Society (London 1925), 34Google Scholar
(ed.), Writing Early Modern History (Oxford 2005), 3–24
, Knights and Esquires: the Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford 1981)Google Scholar
, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (New Haven 2000), 198, 200, 201Google Scholar
(ed.), Divine Right and Democracy: an Anthology of Political Writings in Stuart England (Harmondsworth 1986)