Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- List of contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction The 1590s: the second reign of Elizabeth I?
- 1 The patronage of the crown in Elizabethan politics: the 1590s in perspective
- 2 Regnum Cecilianum? A Cecilian perspective of the Court
- 3 Patronage at Court, faction and the earl of Essex
- 4 Peers, patronage and the politics of history
- 5 The fall of Sir John Perrot
- 6 The Elizabethan establishment and the ecclesiastical polity
- 7 Ecclesiastical vitriol: religious satire in the 1590s and the invention of puritanism
- 8 Ecclesiastical vitriol: the kirk, the puritans and the future king of England
- 9 Social strain and social dislocation, 1585–1603
- 10 Lord of Liberty: Francis Davison and the cult of Elizabeth
- 11 The complaint of poetry for the death of liberality: the decline of literary patronage in the 1590s
- 12 Summer's Last Will and Testament: revels' end
- 13 The theatre and the Court in the 1590s
- Index
3 - Patronage at Court, faction and the earl of Essex
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- List of contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction The 1590s: the second reign of Elizabeth I?
- 1 The patronage of the crown in Elizabethan politics: the 1590s in perspective
- 2 Regnum Cecilianum? A Cecilian perspective of the Court
- 3 Patronage at Court, faction and the earl of Essex
- 4 Peers, patronage and the politics of history
- 5 The fall of Sir John Perrot
- 6 The Elizabethan establishment and the ecclesiastical polity
- 7 Ecclesiastical vitriol: religious satire in the 1590s and the invention of puritanism
- 8 Ecclesiastical vitriol: the kirk, the puritans and the future king of England
- 9 Social strain and social dislocation, 1585–1603
- 10 Lord of Liberty: Francis Davison and the cult of Elizabeth
- 11 The complaint of poetry for the death of liberality: the decline of literary patronage in the 1590s
- 12 Summer's Last Will and Testament: revels' end
- 13 The theatre and the Court in the 1590s
- Index
Summary
Since the time of Queen Elizabeth I herself, notions of ‘faction’ have been considered profoundly important for understanding Elizabethan high politics. Perhaps the most vitriolic piece of political criticism of the reign, Leicester's Commonwealth, accused the earl of Leicester of deliberately building up a ‘faction’ to control the realm and ensure that his brother-in-law, the earl of Huntingdon, became Elizabeth's successor. In the early seventeenth century, a number of writers, such as William Camden and Sir Robert Naunton, looked back on Elizabeth's reign and lauded the queen for her ‘princely’ skill in ‘balancing’ factions. Although such praise was bestowed with more than half an eye to the political controversies of their own day about the monopolizing of royal favour, this view of Elizabeth proved to be highly influential over the succeeding centuries. In modern times, Conyers Read re-emphasized the notion of faction when he suggested that the foreign policy of Elizabeth's reign needed to be understood as the product of a long-term struggle between rival ‘factions’ on the Privy Council. In the late 1940s, J. E. Neale refocussed the terms of debate over faction. Influenced by the views of Naunton and by his own research into the politics of parliamentary elections, Neale reasserted the link between faction and patronage, rather than with matters of policy. In the words of a subsequent essay by Wallace MacCaffrey which elaborated on Neale's theme, Elizabethan political life was seen to be centred on an unending struggle between rival factions for ‘place and patronage’.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Reign of Elizabeth ICourt and Culture in the Last Decade, pp. 65 - 86Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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