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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles was the most ambitious English historical work of the sixteenth century. It was also the last work in the English chronicle tradition, and as such has remained relatively unappreciated both as an achievement in its own right and by its influence on contemporaries. Yet in its construction of national identity and its parsing of the proper relation between the royal estate and the commonwealth, it has much to say about the assumptions of late Tudor culture.
The reasons for Holinshed's historical neglect are not far to seek. Compared to newer Renaissance models such as Polydore Vergil's Anglicae Historiae that were already replacing it, it lacked the narrative cogency that characterized the best Continental historiography. As the product of several hands—Reyner (or Reginald) Wolfe, the printer-scholar who first conceived it as a universal geography-cum-history; Holinshed himself, Wolfe's former assistant, who produced the histories of England and Scotland; Richard Stanyhurst, whose history of Ireland was based on the work of Edmund Campion; and William Harrison, whose prefatory Description of England has received far more attention from scholars than the work it was meant to introduce—it lacked the unity that a single author could bring to disparate materials. Moreover, it was, like other chronicles, a composite that incorporated the work of earlier authors, a palimpsest that presented as history what was in good part uncritical historiography.
1 DNB, s.v. Wolfe, Reyner or Reginald; Blayney, Peter, The Bookshops in Paul's Cross Churchyard (London, 1990)Google Scholar.
2 Ibid. Holinshed died in April 1582, midway between the first and second editions of the Chronicles. Details of his life are scanty, though he claimed a close connection to Lord Burghley.
3 For Stanyhurst, see Lennon, Colm, Richard Stanihurst the Dubliner, 1547–1618 (Blackrock, County Dublin, 1981)Google Scholar.
4 Harrison, William, The Description of England, ed. Edelen, Georges (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968)Google Scholar; Parry, G. J. R., A Protestant Vision: William Harrison and the Reformation of Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 On Fleming, see the DNB; Dodson, Sarah C., “Abraham Fleming, Writer and Editor,” University of Texas Studies in English 34 (1955): 51–66Google Scholar; Miller, William E., “Abraham Fleming: Editor of Shakespeare's Holinshed,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 1 (1959): 89–100Google Scholar; Donno, Elizabeth Story, “Abraham Fleming: A Learned Corrector in 1586–87,” Studies in Bibliography 42 (1989): 200–11Google Scholar.
6 For Hooker, a lawyer and M.P., see Snow, Vernon, ed., Parliament in Elizabethan England: John Hooker's Order and Usage (New Haven, 1977)Google Scholar.
7 DNB, s.v. Thynne; Evans, Joan, A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956)Google Scholar. A collective study of the authors and editors of the Chronicles would be well worth doing. Various other figures were associated with it, notably the famous London chronicler John Stow, who assumed chief credit for producing the second edition in his Annals (1605), though Annabel Patterson's analysis of the evidence does not support his claim (see below, n. 10).
8 On the censor's role in shaping the text, see Castanian, Anne, “Censorship and Historiography in Elizabethan England: The Expurgation of Holinshed's Chronicles” (Ph.D. Diss., University of California, Davis, 1970)Google Scholar, and Patterson, Annabel, Reading Holinshed's Chronicles (Chicago, 1994), ch. 11 and passimGoogle Scholar. On the more general question of literary censorship in early modern England, see Patterson, , Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Reading and Writing in Early Modern England (Madison, Wisc., 1984)Google Scholar, and Hill, Christopher, “Censorship and English Literature,” in The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, Vol. I: Writing and Revolution in Seventeenth Century England (Brighton, 1985), pp. 32–71Google Scholar. The censorship of drama has received much attention, notably in Clare, Janet, “Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority”: Elizabethan and Dramatic Censorship (Manchester, 1990)Google Scholar and Dutton, Richard, Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama (London, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Patterson, Reading Holinshed's Chronicles; see also her “Foul, His Wife, the Mayor, and Foul's Mare: The Power of Anecdote in Tudor History,” in Kelley, Donald R. and Sacks, David Harris, eds., The Historical Imagination in Early Modern Britain: History, Rhetoric, and Fiction, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1997), 159–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Richard Helgerson, “Murder in Faversham: Holinshed's Impertinent History,” ibid., pp. 133–58. Among earlier studies, see Benbow, R. Mark, “The Providential Theory of Historical Causation in Holinshed's Chronicles: 1577 and 1587,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 1 (1959): 264–76Google Scholar.
10 On the chronicle tradition in Tudor England, see Gransden, Antonia, Historical Writing in England, Vol. II: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (Ithaca, 1982)Google Scholar; Levy, F. J., Tudor Historical Thought (San Marino, Calif., 1967), ch. 5Google Scholar; Woolf, D. R., “Genre into Artifact: The Decline of the English Chronicle in the Sixteenth Century,” Sixteenth Century Journal 19 (1988): 321–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Hall's Chronicle, Containing the History of England from the Reign of Henry the Fourth…to the End of the Reign of Henry the Eighth (New York, 1965 [1548]), p. 45Google Scholar.
12 Holinshed's Chronicle of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 6 vols., ed. Ellis, Henry (London, 1888Google Scholar; AMS Reprint, 1976), 3: 57–58. This edition is based on the 1587 text. All subsequent references will be indicated by volume and page number in the text below.
13 On the Lancastrian legitimation crisis, see, most recently, Strohm, Paul, England's Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399–1422 (New Haven, 1998)Google Scholar.
14 Ferguson, Arthur, The Articulate Citizen and the English Renaissance (Durham, N.C., 1965)Google Scholar.
15 Sylvester, Richard, ed., The History of King Richard III (New Haven, 1976), pp. 70–79Google Scholar.
16 Here is a prime example of the pattern of polyvalent meaning in Holinshed stressed by Patterson, in which the reader is left to judge among various significations, each contributory to the whole but none determinative or prescriptive.
17 Franklin, Julian H., ed. and trans., Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by Hotman, Beza, and Mornay (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Kelley, Donald R., François Hotman: A Revolutionary's Ordeal (Princeton, 1973)Google Scholar; cf. Ponet, John, A Shorte Treatise of Politike Power ([Strasbourg?], 1556)Google Scholar; Kelley, Donald R., “Ideas of Resistance before Elizabeth,” in Dubrow, Heather and Strier, Richard, eds., The Historical Renaissance: New Essays on Tudor and Stuart Literature and Culture (Chicago, 1988), pp. 48–76Google Scholar; Bowler, G. W., “English Protestant and Resistance Writings, 1553–1603” (Ph.D. Diss., University of London, 1981)Google Scholar; idem., “‘An Axe or an Acte’: The Parliament of 1572 and Resistance Theory in Early Elizabethan England,” Canadian Journal of History 19 (1984): 349–59.
18 Scarisbrick, J. J., Henry VIII (London, 1968), p. 338Google Scholar, quoted in Elton, G. R., “Politics and the Pilgrimage of Grace,” in Malament, Barbara C., ed., After the Reformation: Essays in Honor of J. H. Hexter (Philadelphia, 1980): pp. 25–56, at p. 30Google Scholar.
19 Elton, , “Politics and Pilgrimage,” pp. 31–37Google Scholar. Lord Darcy and Sir Thomas Percy were among those executed at Tyburn in June 1537.
20 Cf. Bowker, Margaret, “Lincolnshire 1536: Heresy, Schism or Religious Discontent,” in Baker, Derek, ed., Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest (Oxford, 1972), pp. 195–212Google Scholar; Davies, C. S. L., “Popular Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace,” in Fletcher, Anthony and Stevenson, John, eds., Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 58–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James, Mervyn E., “Obedience and Dissent in Henrician England: The Lincolnshire Rebellion, 1536,” in his Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 188–269CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoyle, R.W., The Pilgrimage of Grace and Politics of the 1530s (Oxford, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 Cf. the allegorical, shape-changing character of Sedition in John Bale's King Johan, a play of the 1530s that reflects the Pilgrimage of Grace.
22 Rose-Troup, Frances, The Western Rebellion of 1549 (London, 1913)Google Scholar; Cornwall, Julian, Revolt of the Peasantry 1549 (Totowa, N.J., 1977)Google Scholar; Land, Stephen K., Kett's Rebellion: The Norfolk Rising of 1549 (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Bush, M. L., The Government Policy of Protector Somerset (London, 1979)Google Scholar; Youings, Joyce, “The South-Western Rebellion of 1549,” Southern History 1 (1979): 99–122Google Scholar; Beer, Barrett L., Rebellion and Riot: Popular Disorder in England During the Reign of Edward VI (Kent, Ohio, 1982)Google Scholar.
23 Compare this account with the comment of John Hayward in his contemporaneous description of Kett's Rebellion: “Assuredly the vulgar multitude is not vnfairly termed a beast, with many heads not guided, I will not say with any proportion but portion of reason, violence and obstinacy like two vntamed horses, draw their desire in ablindefold Carriere. They intend most foolishly what they never put in action, and often act most madly what they never intended, all that they know to doe, is that they know not what to doe, all that they meane to determine proues a determination and meaning to doe nothing” (Beer, Barrett L., ed., The Life and Raigne of King Edward the Sixth [Kent, Ohio, 1993], p. 76Google Scholar). Hayward's text was first published in 1630, three years after his death, but Professor Beer suggests it may have been begun as early as the 1580s.
24 On the siege of Exeter, see Cornwall, , Revolt of the Peasantry, pp. 98–113Google Scholar; MacCaffrey, Wallace T., Exeter, 1540–1640: The Growth of an English Country Town (Cambridge, Mass., 1958)Google Scholar; cf. Hayward's, account in Beer, Life and Raigne, p. 80Google Scholar, which barely mentions the citizens determined resistance. Youings, Joyce, “The South-Western Rebellion of 1549,” Southern History 1 (1979): 99–122Google Scholar; H. M. Speight, “Local Government in the South-Westerm Rebellion of 1549,” ibid., 18 (1996): 1-23.
25 Cf. Jones, W. R. D., The Tudor Commonwealth, 1529–1559 (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Eccleshall, Robert, Order and Reason in Politics: Theories of Absolute and Limited Monarchy in Early Modern England (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Greenleaf, W. H., Order, Empiricism, and Politics: Two Traditions of English Political Thought, 1500–1700 (Westport, Conn., 1980 [1964])Google Scholar; Collins, Stephen L., From Divine Cosmos to Sovereign State: An Intellectual History of Consciousness and the Idea of Order in Renaissance England (New York, 1989)Google Scholar.
26 On medieval parliamentary petitions and their relation to the legislative process, see Pollard, A. F., The Evolution of Parliament (2d ed.; New York, 1964 [1926])Google Scholar; McIlwain, C. H., The High Court of Parliament and Its Supremacy (New Haven, 1963 [1910]Google Scholar; Fryde, E. B. and Miller, Edward, eds., Historical Studies of the English Parliament, Vol. I: Origins to 1399 (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar; SirEdwards, Goronwy, The Second Century of the English Parliament (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar; idem., “Some Petitions in Richard II's First Parliament,” Bulletin of the Institute for Historical Research 26 (1953): 200–13; Davies, R. G. and Denton, J. H., eds., The English Parliament in the Middle Ages (Manchester, 1981)Google Scholar; Myers, A. R., Crown, Household and Parliament in Fifteenth-Century England (London, 1985)Google Scholar; Bett, Ronald, A History of Parliament: The Middle Ages (London, 1989)Google Scholar; Haskins, G. L., “The Petitions of Representatives in the Parliaments of Edward I,” English Historical Review 53 (1938): 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harriss, G. L., “The Commons Petitions of 1340,” English Historical Review 78 (1963): 625–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For petitioning in other courts, see Harding, Alan, The Law Courts of Medieval England (London, 1973)Google Scholar. The monarchy itself encouraged petitions after 1270, with the result that courts and assizes were nearly overwhelmed by them: Kaeuper, Richard W., “Law and Order in Fourteenth-Century England: The Evidence of Special Commissions of Oyer and Terminer,” Speculum 54 (1979): 734–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Petitioning was thenceforth an integral part of the constitutional bond between Crown and and commonwealth, and a vital element in the development of parliamentary government and statute law.
27 Holinshed suggests that the magistrates were also “affected” with the popish ceremonies that the people had been taught to defend (p. 940).
28 SirSmith, Thomas, De Republicum Anglorum: A Discourse on the Commonwealth of England, ed. Alston, L. (Cambridge, 1906), pp. 46–47Google Scholar; for Smith, see Dewar, Mary, Sir Thomas Smith: A Tudor Intellectual in Office (London, 1964)Google Scholar.
29 On the evolution of the early modern English jury, see Green, Thomas Andrew, Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury, 1200–1800 (Chicago, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cockbum, J. S. and Green, T. A., eds., Twelve Good Men and True: The English Criminal Trial Jury, 1200–1800 (Princeton, 1988)Google Scholar.
30 For suggestive comments on this point, see Benedict, Barbara M., Making the Modern Reader: Cultural Mediation in Early Modem Literary Anthologies (Princeton, 1996)Google Scholar; Wheale, Nigel, Writing and Society: Print and Politics in Britain, 1590–1660 (London, 1999)Google Scholar. For seventeenth-century readers of Holinshed, see Patterson, Reading Holinshed's Chronicles, ch.12.
31 Cook, Ann Jennalie, The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare's London, 1576–1642 (Princeton, 1981)Google Scholar; Gurr, Andrew, Playgoing in Shakespeare's London (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar; Mullaney, Steven, The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England (Chicago, 1988)Google Scholar.
32 Cf. More's far more passive account of political (and theatrical) engagement, quoted by Sylvester: “And so they said that these matters be kings' games, as it were, stage plays, and for the more part played upon scaffolds, in which poor men be but the lookers-on. And they that wise be, will meddle no farther. For they that sometime step up and play with them, when they cannot play their parts, they disorder the play and do themselves no good” (The History of King Richard III, pp. xviii–xix). More's comment suggests how his own (and others') texts, incorporated into Holinshed, reveal new facets and dimensions under changing historical circumstances.
