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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
The emergence of a coherent narrative history of England, based upon the critical use of authorities, and written in a connected fashion rather than assembled from reproduced earlier materials, is a much slower process than such a simple statement or its requirements might suggest. The process begins in earnest in the late seventeenth century, after the historian ceases being a principal protagonist in the political pamphlet warfare of the time. The narrator must take account of advances in source criticism, and he must also cope, on the level of interpretation, with national myths that his forbears among the Tudor chroniclers and the seventeenth-century contenders had created. Miss Thompson has remarked that the main purpose of Tudor chroniclers, notably Hall and Holinshed, was to praise ‘the king's illustrious ancestors, reign by reign’.
1 Thompson, FaithA Short History of Parliament (Minneapolis, 1953), p. 196.Google Scholar
2 Pocock, J. G. A.The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge, 1957), passim.Google Scholar
3 Huppert, GeorgeThe Idea of Perfect History (Urbana, Illinois, 1970).Google Scholar
4 Gilmore, Myron P.Humanists and Jurists (Cambridge (Mass.), 1963), p. 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 Ibid.
6 Descartes, René‘Meditations’ in The Philosophical Works, ed. Haldane, E. S and Ross, G. R. T., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1931), I, 171–9.Google Scholar
7 McKisack, MayMedieval History in the Tudor Age (Oxford, 1971), p. 169.Google Scholar
8 Pocock, , Ancient Constitution, p. 31.Google Scholar
9 Clanchy, M. T. ‘Remembering the Past and the Good Old Law’, History, LV (1970), 167–8.Google Scholar
10 Skinner, Quentin ‘History and Ideology in the English Revolution’, The Historical Journal, VIII (1965), 151–78, esp. at 171–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 Ibid.
12 Pocock, Ancient Constitution, p. III.
13 Brady, RobertComplete History of England…, vol. 1 [London] 1685; vol. II [London] 1700.Google Scholar
14 Sir Temple, William ‘Introduction to the History of England’ (Works, 4 vols., London, 1770), III, 68.Google Scholar
15 Sir Temple, William (1628–99)Google Scholar himself tried to solve the dilemma in interpreting English history, which obviously appealed to him in his self-appointed task of resolving the intellectual paradoxes of his time. He discusses the problems raised for traditionalists by feudal scholarship in ‘Of the Original and Nature of Governmentl’ (1672)‘Of Heroic 5 Virtue’ (1682). and ‘Introduction to English History’ (1695). His lead, however, was not 1 followed by the narrative historians. Brady and his successors do not use Temple nor refute him, nor do they take account of the even more sophisticated historical philosophy contained in Peter Paxton&s Of Civil Polity (1700). (See Gunn, J. A. W. ‘The Civil Polityof Peter Paxton’, Past and Present, XL (07 1968), 42–57.) As Bacon adopted the ideas of French Renaissance historical scholarship, so Temple and Paxton adopted ideas of change worked out in contemporary France, which, nevertheless, seem to have come to English historiography directly from France in the work of Paul Rapin de Thoyras (1660–1725). The latest work on Temple as an historian (Joseph M. Levine, ‘Ancients, Moderns, and History: The Continuity of English Historical Writing in the Later Seventeenth Century’, Studies in Change and Revolution, ed. Korshin, London, 1972) raises more questions than it answers in making its basically important denial of an ‘historical revolution’ in the period.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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19 Gunn, , Past and Present, XL, 42.Google Scholar Locke also, much more wisely, commends Paxton, who an tries to organize a discipline rather than, as Temple and Tyrrell, to print sources. On Tyrrell see Douglas, David C.English Scholars, 1650–1730, 2nd ed. (London, 1951)Google Scholar; and especially Maurice Cranston, Locke, JohnA Bibliography (London, 1961).Google Scholar
20 Although Pocock, (Ancient Constitution) does not consider Tyrrell one of the major in contenders in this exercise, it is his work that consolidates that of many scholars, both in in Bibliotheca Politico and the General History, and so carries the argument forward into the generations of the Whig ascendancy.Google Scholar
21 Tyrrell, History…, 1, xxxiii.
22 Ibid., 761.
23 Ibid., vii.
24 Ibid., xv–xvi.
25 The latter, for some reason, is bound at the very beginning of volume 1 in most copies of Tyrrell&s work.
26 Ibid., vvv.
27 Ibid.
28 Thoyras, Paul Rapin de (also Rapin-Thoyras and Thoyras-Rapin), The History of England, as well Ecclesiastical as Civil (15 vols. London, 1723–31), trans. Nicholas Tindal.Google Scholar
29 Amand, George St An Historical Essay on the Legislative Power in England… In A Complete Collection of the Lords‘ Protests (London, 1767), vol. II (first published, 1725)Google Scholar:‘Q…(W)herein the Origin of both Houses of Parliament, their Ancient Constitution, and the Changes that have Happened in the Persons that Composed them, with the Occasions thereof, are Relates in Chronological Order. And many Things concerning the English Government, the Antiquities of the Laws of England, and the Feudal Law, are occasionally Illustrated and Explained.& St Amand was apparently born in 1686 or 1687, for he matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 17 March 1703, aged sixteen. (Joseph, Foster, Alumni oxoniensis, 1500–1714 (Oxford, 1892), IV, 1300.Google Scholar) The Lincoln&s Inn Admissions Register (London, 1896, 1, 361) has him admitted there on 13 February of the same year. He was probably brother to the antiquarian, James St Amand (1687–1754). If he were the elder (his age in March 1703 would suggest he was born early in the year, or even in 1686), he was the first son of James St Amand, apothecary to the family of James II. George St Amand became barrister-at-law in 171 o, and is described in his obituary as having been ‘judge of the court within the jurisdiction of the Tower of London’. He died in London on 5 August 1727. (Sir Musgrave, William Obituary prior to 1800, ed. Sir Armitage, George J. (London, 1899, Harleian Society Pubs. 44); see also Abel Boyer el al. (eds.), Political State of Great Britain, Sunday, 6 August 1727.)Google Scholar
30 Rapin de Thoyras was of a Huguenot landowning and professional family. He was born at Toulouse in 1660, and fled to England and then to Holland in 1685. He came as an officer to Ireland and England in the armies of William of Orange, and became governor to Lord Woodstock, heir to the duke of Portland. Rapin occupied a respected position in Portland&s household (see: Nottingham University. Department of Manuscripts. Portland Papers; 30 A.L.S.: Paul Rapin de Thoyras to Hans Willem Bentinck, first earl of Portland; March 1701 to October 1702 (O.S.)). In 1701 he retired to Amsterdam where he became a leading member of the intellectual community, and subsequently to Cleves. Here he prepared a translation, abridgement, and commentary on Rymer&s Foedera, a history of the English political parties and of English constitutional development, and finally his posthumously published Histoire d&Angleterre. In Nicholas Tindal&s translation, especially the second, folio, edition of 1732, this work was one of the two largest-selling English works of the eighteenth century (see: Wiles, T. M.Serial Publication in England before 1750 (Cambridge, 1957). The English translation was continuously in print for a century.Google Scholar
31 Tyrrell, History, xi.
32 Ibid., Ixxxvii.
33 Ibid., ccxxvii.
34 George St Amand Historical Essay.
35 Madox, ThomasHistory and Antiquities of the Exchequer…(London, 1711)Google Scholar, passim: the Rt. Rev. Nicolson, WilliamThe English Historical Library…(London, 1696–9). Levine, oddly, does not mention this work as an attempt to carry out Sir William Temple&s design for a history of England. It is of a higher standard of scholarship than Hughes&s Complete History…, the attempt he does discuss.Google Scholar
36 A curious omission in this entire argument is any use of the legal dictum that ‘time out of mind’ began in 1189.
37 Tyrrell, , History, I, xxxiv (Introduction to vol. II).Google Scholar
38 Temple, Introduction…
39 Tvrrell, History.
40 Amand, St, Historical Essay, xxxii.Google Scholar
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 The standard French edition of Rapin&s works is: LefebvredeSaint-Maro(ed.), Histone d&Angleterre (Paris, 1749), 16 volumes. All references to Rapin&s work are taken from this edition. The reference here is to II, 31.
44 Ibid., 54.
45 Ibid., 56–7.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid., 1, 504.
48 Tindal&s translation, 2nd edn, 1, 155. William I had made England ‘his own by Right’. This undefended denial of the Conquest runs clear counter to Rapin, whose work Tindal is supposed to be expounding. The affirmation is not necessary to Tindal&s case, which rests on the use made by William of the Anglo-Saxon social structure, but it is a good example of how closely pre-establishment historical thought adhered to ancient constitutional forms.
49 Ibid.
50 Tyrrell, , History, II, 1040.Google Scholar
51 ‘The Appendix; A Brief and Impartial Disquisition, Whether the Commons of England ever had any Representatives in Parliament, than the Tenants - in Capite, before the 49th of Henry III?…’, vol. III.
52 Tyrrell, History, III, 2.
53 Ibid., 5.
54 Amand, St, Historical Essay, xl.Google Scholar
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., xcv.
58 Ibid., xcvi.
59 Ibid., xcvii.
60 Ibid., xcviii.
61 Rapin, , I, 501.Google Scholar
62 Ibid., 496–7.
63 Ibid., 510.
64 Tindal&s translation, 2nd edn., 1, 155.Google Scholar
65 Ibid.
66 Rapin, , I, 500.Google Scholar
67 Ibid.
68 Tindal, loc. cit.Google Scholar
69 Ibid.
70 Rapin, , I, 501.Google Scholar
71 Ibid., 497.
72 Ibid., 496.
73 Ibid., III, 2.
74 Ibid., 90.
75 Levine, Studies in Change and Revolution (see n. 15).
76 Rapin, , I, 500.Google Scholar
77 Ibid., 148.
78 Ibid., II, 25.
79 Ibid., I, 514.
