¹ These points are based on the works of Bossy, John, Peace in the Post-Reformation (Cambridge, 1998), chap. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McIntosh, Marjorie Keniston, Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370–1600 (Cambridge, 1998), 7, 24, 109, 189CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Archer, Ian W., The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991), 58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, conclusion; Patterson, Catherine F., Urban Patronage in Early Modern England: Corporate Boroughs, the Landed Elite, and the Crown, 1580–1640 (Stanford, CA, 1999), 88–89, 116Google Scholar, and “Conflict Resolution and Patronage in Provincial Towns, 1590–1640,” Journal of British Studies 37, no. 1 (1998): 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Muldrew, Craig, “Culture of Reconciliation: Community and the Settlement of Economic Disputes in Early Modern England,” Historical Journal 39 (1996): 915–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cust, Richard, “Honour, Rhetoric and Political Culture: The Earl of Huntingdon and His Enemies,” in Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England, ed. Amussen, Susan D. and Kishlansky, Mark A. (Manchester, 1995), 84–111Google Scholar.

² For example, Neuschel, Kristen B. (Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth-Century France [Ithaca, NY, 1989], 18Google Scholar) claims that honor “legitimated the right to private violence.”

³ James, Mervyn, “English Politics and the Concept of Honour,” in his Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England, Past and Present Publications, ed. Slack, Paul (Cambridge, 1986), 308–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This model has been most notably challenged in the works of Richard Cust, who argues that blood and lineage remained fundamental to the English elite's understanding of honor throughout the seventeenth century and that this view could coexist with an emphasis on virtue and service to the crown; see his “Honour and Politics in Early Stuart England: The Case of Beaumont v. Hastings,” Past and Present, no. 149 (1995): 57–94Google Scholar.

⁴ Wall, Alison, Power and Protest in England, 1525–1640 (London, 2000), chaps. 6–7, 125Google Scholar.

⁵ Hibbard, Caroline, “The Theatre of Dynasty,” in The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays in Politics and Political Culture, ed. Smuts, R. Malcolm (Cambridge, 1996), 156–76Google Scholar; Brown, Keith, “Gentlemen and Thugs in 17th-Century Britain,” History Today 40 (October 1990): 27–32Google Scholar; Beaver, Dan, “‘Bragging and Daring Words’: Honour, Property and the Symbolism of the Hunt in Stowe, 1590–1642,” in Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland, ed. Braddick, Michael J. and Walter, John (Cambridge, 2001), 149–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. R. Malcolm Smuts argues that Stuart landed society persisted in viewing honorable virtues as traits transmitted through biological inheritance and that most gentry were intensely conscious of an obligation to uphold the reputation of their lineage; see Smuts, , The Stuart Court and Europe, 10Google Scholar, and Culture and Power in England, 1585–1685 (New York, 1999), 13Google Scholar. See also the earlier work of Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), 223–34Google Scholar, which portrays English gentlemen as irascible, ferocious, and lacking in self-control.

⁶ Asch, Ronald G., Nobilities in Transition, 1550–1700: Courtiers and Rebels in Britain and Europe (London, 2003), 70–78.Google Scholar

⁷ Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenic and Psychogenic Investigations, trans. Jephcott, Edmund (Oxford, 1994).Google Scholar

⁸ Fletcher, Anthony, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven, CT, 1995), 147–48, 148Google Scholar. Also see Muir, Edward, Mad Blood Stirring: Vendettas and Factions in Friuli during the Renaissance (Baltimore, 1993), 280Google Scholar.

⁹ Fletcher, , Gender, Sex and Subordination, 323, 332, 411Google Scholar. See also Foyster, Elizabeth A., “Boys Will Be Boys? Manhood and Aggression, 1660–1800,” in English Masculinities, 1660–1800, ed. Hitchcock, Tim and Cohen, Michèle (London, 1999), 151–66, 161, 164.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Burke, Peter, “A Civil Tongue: Language and Politeness in Early Modern Europe,” in Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas, ed. Burke, Peter, Harrison, Brian, and Slack, Paul (Oxford, 2000), 31–48, 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ This departs from the previous understanding that a man was dishonored only when he recognized that this was so. See Pitt-Rivers, Julian, “Honour and Social Status,” in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, ed. Pitt-Rivers, Julian and Gellner, Ernest (Chicago, 1966), 19–77, esp. 28Google Scholar. See also Cohen, Elizabeth S., “Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 22 (1991): 597–625CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Farr, James R., “The Death of a Judge: Performance, Honor and Legitimacy in Seventeenth-Century France,” Journal of Modern History 75 (2003): 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Thomas V., “Three Forms of Jeopardy: Honor, Pain, and Truth-Telling in a Sixteenth-Century Italian Courtroom,” Sixteenth Century Journal 29 (1998): 975–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fletcher, Anthony, “Honour, Reputation and Local Office Holding in Elizabethan and Stuart England,” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. Fletcher, Anthony and Stevenson, John (Cambridge, 1985), 92–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Strocchia, Sharon T., “Gender and the Rites of Honour in Italian Renaissance Cities,” in Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. Brown, Judith C. and Davis, Robert C. (London, 1998), 39–60Google Scholar; Cust, “Honour, Rhetoric and Political Culture,” 59.

¹² Cust, “Honour and Politics in Early Stuart England,” 59–60, 94; Herrup, Cynthia, “‘To Pluck Bright Honour from the Pale-Faced Moon’: Gender and Honour in the Castlehaven Story,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 6 (1996): 137–59, 138CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, “Honor and Gender,” 601; Farr, “Death of a Judge,” 3; Cohen, “Three Forms of Jeopardy,” 983; Neuschel, Word of Honor, 93; Walker, Garthine, “Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour in Early Modern England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 6 (1996): 235–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ Cust, “Honour, Rhetoric and Political Culture,” 94. See also Smuts, Culture and Power, 12–13, for a similar analysis of honor.

¹⁴ Cust, Richard, “Catholicism, Antiquarianism and Gentry Honour: The Writings of Sir Thomas Shirley,” Midland History 23 (1998): 40–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ On the increased frequency of duels, see Stater, Victor, Duke Hamilton Is Dead: A Story of Aristocratic Life and Death in Stuart Britain (London, 1999)Google Scholar; Kelly, James, “That Damn’d Thing Called Honor”: Duelling in Ireland, 1570–1860 (Cork, 1995), 282Google Scholar; Andrews, Donna, “The Code of Honour and Its Critics: The Opposition to Duelling in England, 1700–1850,” Social History 5 (1980): 409–34, 410CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kiernan, V. G., The Duel in European History (Oxford, 1988), 102Google Scholar. The homicide rate, however, did decrease; see Shoemaker, Robert, “Male Honour and the Decline of Public Violence in Eighteenth-Century London,” Social History 26 (2001): 190–2081CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

¹⁶ Peltonen, Markuu, The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness and Honour (Cambridge, 2003), 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In France, the nineteenth century was the great age of dueling; see Reddy, William M., The Invisible Code: Honor and Sentiment in Postrevolutionary France, 1814–1848 (Berkeley, 1997), 12Google Scholar.

¹⁷ As has been claimed by Fletcher (Gender, Sex and Subordination, 148).

¹⁸ Brooks, C. W., “Interpersonal Conflict and Social Tensions: Civil Litigation in England, 1640–1830,” in The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone, ed. Beier, A. L., Cannadine, David, and Rosenheim, James M. (Cambridge, 1989), 357–400Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Williams, Penry, The Tudor Regime (Oxford, 1979), 238Google Scholar. For Star Chamber examples, see Brooks, “Interpersonal Conflict.”

²⁰ In 1595, for example, E. S. Baddelsey asked her brother for assistance with a problem between her and her son-in-law and daughter. She was “loth … to enter into sutes … especially in regard of the enmitie that might therby grow amongst my children hardly ever to be reconciled”; Essex Record Office (RO), Dawtrey MS, D/DFa F22.

²¹ Peltonen, Duel in Early Modern England, 52. See also the examination of the relationship between honor and civility in Bryson, Anna, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1998), 232–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² Smith, A. Hassell (County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk, 1558–1603 [Oxford, 1974], 166–67, 184, 193, 197)Google Scholar uncovered plenty of quarrels among the landed ranks but few duels, and those who did engage in duels were viewed as unstable. Hoyle, R. W. (“Faction, Feud and Reconciliation amongst the Northern English Nobility, 1525–1569,” History 84 [1999]: 590–613)CrossRefGoogle Scholar portrays a world of many small disputes and frequent attempts at arbitration, with little actual violence. Fletcher (“Honour, Reputation and Local Office Holding”) surveyed many quarrels and discovered that the vast majority did not end in duels.

²³ Peltonen, Duel in Early Modern England, 82, 202–3, 205. Lawrence Stone (Crisis of the Aristocracy, 245) found that the number of duels mentioned in private letters and newsletters rose from five in the 1580s to thirty-five in the 1610s. Keith Brown (“Gentlemen and Thugs”) has uncovered only four gentlemen killed in duels in the seventeenth century. More duels appear to have been fought in France than anywhere else in Western Europe; see Asch, Nobilities in Transition, 73.

²⁴ Andrews, “Code of Honour and Its Critics.”

²⁵ Peltonen, Duel in Early Modern England, 203.

²⁶ Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 121; Becket, J. V., The Aristocracy in England, 1660–1914 (Oxford, 1986), 27, 28Google Scholar.

²⁷ Heal, Felicity and Holmes, Clive, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700 (Stanford, CA, 1994), 11, 12Google Scholar; Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1981), 207Google Scholar; Becket, Aristocracy in England, 32–33, 38, 40.

²⁸ For recent studies of dueling, see Stater, Duke Hamilton Is Dead; Kiernan, Duel in European History; Quint, David, “Duelling and Civility in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 7 (1997): 231–75Google Scholar; Kelly, “That Damn’d Thing Called Honour”; Peltonen, Duel in Early Modern England; Low, Jennifer, Manhood and the Duel: Masculinity in Early Modern Drama and Culture (London, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ Even elite subcultures that would seem to be plausible candidates for favoring violence, such as that of the rakes, in practice did not engage in more duels than English culture at large; see Peltonen, Duel in Early Modern England, 204.

³⁰ Low, Manhood and the Duel, vii.

³¹ Recent scholarship has questioned the transition from a culture based on honor to one founded on civility. Anna Bryson (From Courtesy to Civility, 18) points out that Elias's vision of a linear progression in early modern Europe from an earlier era of unregulated human passions to one in which drives and desires were controlled and contained, ignores the tension, debate, and conflict surrounding the new notions of civil behavior.

³² Gowing, Laura, “Women, Status and the Popular Culture of Dishonour,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 6 (1996): 225–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roper, Lyndal, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London, 1994), 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pitt-Rivers, “Honour and Social Status,” 46; Cohen, “Honor and Gender,” 617.

³³ Some scholars are beginning to question the prevailing paradigm, pointing out that personal integrity along with an adherence to an internal code of accepted values could be influential in gaining external respect and reputation. Honor also had a more positive aspect than merely that of responding to injury or of avoiding shame; see Donagan, Barbara, “The Web of Honour: Soldiers, Christians, and Gentlemen in the English Civil War,” Historical Journal 44 (2002): 365–89Google Scholar; Maddern, Philippa, “Honour among the Pastons: Gender and Integrity in Fifteenth-Century English Society,” Journal of Medieval History 14 (1988): 357–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ Hassell Smith, County and Court, 181, 302; Fletcher, “Honour, Reputation and Local Office Holding”; Cust, “Honour, Rhetoric and Political Culture.”

³⁵ Searle, Arthur, ed., “Barrington Family Letters, 1628–1632,” Camden Society, 4th ser., 28 (1983): 236Google Scholar.

³⁶ Northampton RO, Isham MSS, IC 459. The gentleman in question was found guilty at the assizes for this act and fined £40.

³⁷ James I condemned the practice in his “Proclamation against Private Challenges and Combats” of 1614; see Baldick, Robert, The Duel: A History of Duelling (New York, 1965), 65Google Scholar. The Star Chamber imposed fines on those who issued challenges, drew swords, or attacked another; see Gardiner, Samuel Rawson, ed., Reports of Cases in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission (London, 1886), 109, 112, 145–46Google Scholar. See, e.g., the stance of the members of Parliament to the proposed duel between the earls of Middlesex and Bridgewater. Both men were roundly reprimanded and had to kneel “as a delinqt” before the bar; see Huntington Library, Ellesmere MSS, EL 8092. Louis XIII tried similar tactics to dishonor those who fought in duels, even exposing the bodies of those who died in duels in the very place where the bodies of executed criminals were left to public view; see Herr, Richard, “Honor versus Absolutism: Richelieu's Fight against Dueling,” Journal of Modern History 27 (1955): 281–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ English courtesy manuals, while claiming that it was dishonorable to let honor be damaged by unavenged slights from others, remained ambivalent about the duel; see Peltonen, Duel in Early Modern England, 43–44.

³⁹ See The Laws of Honor or an Account of the Suppression of Duels in France (London, 1685), A3–A4Google Scholar; Middleton, Thomas, The Peacemaker or Great Britaines Blessing (London, 1619), D2, D3Google Scholar; Bacon, Francis, The Charge Touching Duells (London, 1614), 55–56Google Scholar. For a fuller discussion of the antidueling campaign, see Peltonen, Markuu, “Francis Bacon, the Earl of Northampton, and the Jacobean Anti-Duelling Campaign,” Historical Journal 44 (2001): 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A Word in Season; or, an Essay to Promote Good-Husbandry in Hard and Difficult Times (London, 1697), 21Google Scholar; Dufour, Philippe, Moral Instructions of a Father to His Son Upon His Departure for a Long Voyage or an Easie Way to Guide a Young Man Towards All Sorts of Virtues (London, 1683), 41Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ The Booke of Honor and Armes (London, 1590), 16, 18Google Scholar. See also Saviolo, Vincentio, “A Discourse of Single Combats: with some Necessarie Consideration of the Causes for which they are Undertaken,” in bk. 2 of His Practise in Two Bookes. The First Intreating of the Use of the Rapier and Dagger. The Second, of Honor and Honorable Quarrels (London, 1595)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Markham, Francis, The Booke of Honour or Five Decades of Epistles of Honour (London, 1625), 1, 50–52Google Scholar; see also Booke of Honor and Armes, A2, A3, 16, 18, 43.

⁴² Lodge, Edmund, Illustrations of British History, Biography and Manners, in the Reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth and James I, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (London, 1838), 2:463–64Google Scholar.

⁴³ Lodge, Illustrations of British History, 2:465.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 2:464.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 2:467.

⁴⁷ Ibid. This is quite unlike the situation on the continent where noble men were concerned that, if they restrained themselves when provoked, then they were not fully men; see Muir, Edward, “The Double Binds of Manly Revenge in Renaissance Italy,” in Gender Rhetorics: Postures of Dominance and Submission in History, ed. Trexler, Richard C. (Binghamton, NY, 1994), 65–82Google Scholar; Strocchia, “Gender and the Rites of Honour,” 59.

⁴⁸ Lodge, Illustrations of British History, 2:468.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 2:471.

⁵⁰ This example contradicts the assertion, at least for elite women, that the words of women lacked the power and prestige to injure; see Cohen, T., “The Lay Liturgy of Affront in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” Journal of Social History 25 (1992): 857–77, 865–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the vulnerability of lower-ranking women, see Hindle, Steve, “The Shaming of Margery: Gossip, Gender, and the Experience of Authority in Early Modern England,” Continuity and Change 9 (1994): 391–419CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵¹ Essex RO, Neville MSS, D/DBy C23/1, fol. 56.

⁵² Essex RO, Neville MSS, D/DBy C25, fol. 71; see D/DBy C23/1 for details of the quarrel.

⁵³ See also the case of Sir Edward Flowerdew, who was attacked in 1583 and beaten on the head by Sir Arthur Heveningham and yet refused to fight a duel; see Fletcher, “Honour, Reputation and Local Office Holding,” 100.

⁵⁴ Bodleian Library, Herrick MSS, Eng. hist. c.476, vol. 3, fol. 32. It was Lady Herrick rather than her husband who fought back. She, “littel regarding my oen life,” moved to defend her husband, by punching Danvers as hard as she could.

⁵⁵ Bodleian Library, Herrick MSS, Eng. hist. c.476, vol. 3, fol. 33.

⁵⁶ This is in contrast to continental Europe where it was honorable to feel and act on resentment to the fullest extent one could in the heat of anger; see Quint, “Duelling and Civility in Sixteenth-Century Italy.”

⁵⁷ The earl of Huntington stepped in to try and resolve the dispute between the Herricks and the Barford family. He ordered the letters William Herrick wrote to Elizabeth Barford to be returned to him and forbade their contents to be made public; see Bodleian Library, Herrick MSS, Eng. hist. c.476, vol. 3, fol. 50.

⁵⁸ For example, see the advice to contain emotions in Thomas Grantham to William Legge, Stafford RO, Legge MSS, D(W) 1778/1/I; and William, Earl of Cowper to his wife, Judith, Hertford RO, Cowper MSS, D/EP F 81, 16 June 1691.

⁵⁹ Sir Edward Flowerdew, for example, urged on Arthur Heveningham “good honest and quiett behaviour” that would earn the good will of others; see Hassell Smith, County and Court, 193, 197.

⁶⁰ The Private Correspondence of Jane, Lady Cornwallis, 1613–44 (London, 1842), 290Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Parents and teachers in seventeenth-century France also tried to contain disputes because of the danger of conflict escalating into a duel; see Motley, Mark, Becoming a French Aristocrat: The Education of the Court Nobility, 1580–1715 (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 97Google Scholar.

⁶² Sheffield Central Library, Wentworth-Woodhouse Muniments, Strafford Papers, vol. 21, fol. 147. See too the warnings against angry behavior in the letter of advice from Sir Gavin Hervy to his son, Somerset RO, Taunton Mildmay MSS, DD/M1, box 18/68, and in the letters of advice to children and grandchildren in Northamptonshire RO, Westmoreland MSS, W(A) vol. 9, fols. 4–11.

⁶³ Somerset RO, Taunton Mildmay MSS, Hervy Papers, DD/M1, box 18/68, item 18, 1620s.

⁶⁴ Sheffield Central Library, Bacon Frank Muniments, Talbot letters, vol. 2, fol. 187. Similarly, Colin Lindsay, third earl of Balcarres, was told by his mother in 1670, that it was a weakness to be too much moved by injury; see John Rylands Library, Earls of Crawford Muniments, Lindsay MSS, Advice to Colin, third Earl of Balcarres, from his mother, 1670, 17/5/1, fol. 19.

⁶⁵ See also Foyster, Elizabeth, “Male Honour, Social Control and Wife Beating in Late Stuart England.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 6 (1996): 215–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁶ Sheffield Central Library, Wentworth-Woodhouse Muniments, Strafford Papers, vol. 2, fols. 117–18. One of the key components in being viewed as fully adult was the ability to govern emotions. In the opinion of Katherine Austen, until a man was no longer “guided by irregular passions and … til he has relinquishet his vices and makes use of that refined faculty reason he is noe man”; see British Library, Book of Katherine Austen, 1664–68, Add. MSS 4454, fol. 49.

⁶⁷ Somerset RO, Phelips MSS, DD/PH, vol. 224, fol. 6, 1588.

⁶⁸ Northampton RO, Isham MSS, IC 918.

⁶⁹ Somerset RO, Phelips MSS, DD/PH, vol. 228, fol. 18.

⁷⁰ Searle, “Barrington Family Letters,” 47.

⁷¹ Northampton Archive Office, Montagu of Boughton MSS, Duke of Bucleuch Papers, vol. 6, fol. 163. Similarly, Colin Lindsay was warned by his mother not to quarrel with siblings because “a family divided cannot stand”; see John Rylands Library, Earls of Crawford Muniments, Lindsay MSS, Advice to Colin, third Earl of Balcarres, from his mother, 1670, 17/5/1, fol. 5.

⁷² Hoyle, “Faction, Feud and Reconciliation”; Fletcher, “Honour, Reputation and Local Office Holding.”

⁷³ Latham, R. C. and Matthews, William, eds., Diary of Samuel Pepys, 10 vols. (London, 1970–83), 8:164Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Leigh, Dorothy, The Mother's Blessing or the Godly Counsaile of a Gentelwoman, Not Long Since Deceased, 4th ed. (London, 1618), 47, 56, 61Google Scholar; Snawsel, Robert, A Looking-glasse for Maried Folkes (London, 1631), 51, 105Google Scholar; Whately, William, A Bride-Bush or a Wedding Sermon (London, 1617), 44Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Bodleian Library, Herrick MSS, Eng. hist. c.476, vol. 2, fol. 115.

⁷⁶ Searle, “Barrington Family Letters,” 47.

⁷⁷ Derbyshire RO, Chandos-Pole-Gell MSS, D258, box 29/3.

⁷⁸ Thompson, Edward Maunde, ed., Correspondence of the Family of Hatton, 2 vols., Works of the Camden Society (London, 1878), 1:1, 19Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Foyster (“Boys Will Be Boys?” 156) has claimed that language for referring to and condemning emotions such as anger appeared in the eighteenth century, but such language clearly existed before.

⁸⁰ An exception is Swett, Katherine (“‘The Account between Us’”: Honor, Reciprocity and Companionship in Male Friendship in the Later Seventeenth Century,” Albion 31 [1999]: 1–30)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who points out in her study of the Welsh gentry that the concept of honor had to do with more than insults and duels—it also came into play in friendly relations and in taking care to not to damage a friend's good name. Reddy (Invisible Code, 72) argues that honor was a collective family state, but by this he means that families concealed the scandalous behavior of family members rather than that they strove to increase collective honor.

⁸¹ See, e.g., Cust, “Honour, Rhetoric and Political Culture”; Pollock, Linda A., “Younger Sons in Tudor and Stuart England,” History Today 39 (June 1989): 23–29Google Scholar; Patterson, “Conflict Resolution and Patronage.”

⁸² British Library, Gawdy Papers, Add. MSS 27, 395, fol. 180.

⁸³ Somerset RO, Phelips MSS, DD/PH, vol. 224, fol. 5.

⁸⁴ Huntington Library, Hastings MSS, HAP, box 26/7.

⁸⁵ Buckinghamshire RO, Johnson MSS, D/X 827/1, fols. 45, 48.

⁸⁶ Townshend, Dorothea, The Life and Letters of Mr. Endymion Porter: Sometime Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King Charles the First (London, 1897), 58Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ Pollock, “Younger Sons in Tudor and Stuart England.”

⁸⁸ Huntington Library, Temple Papers, Stowe MSS, STT 1910. See also Henry Talbot, who in 1591 commented to his elder brother Gilbert Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, that their father had divided the family estate “by an honourable distribution to mantayne your estate & our callinges. And I for my parte (as a branche of the same roote) have endevored to bee thankefull, and sought by all meanes to effecte that unetie, for better establyshinge your honor”; Lambeth Palace Library, Shrewsbury and Talbot Papers, MS 3199, vol. H, fol. 345.

⁸⁹ Huntington Library, Temple Papers, Stowe MSS, STT 538.

⁹⁰ Muldrew, Craig, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (New York, 1998), chap. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹¹ Staffordshire RO, Bagot MSS, microfilm 9, l.a.67.

⁹² Farr, “Death of a Judge,” 3; Herrup, “To Pluck Bright Honour from the Pale-Faced Moon,” 139.

⁹³ The papers of Marjorie McIntosh, “Women, Credit and Family Relationship in England, 1300–1620,” and Jennifer McNabb, “Family Credit in the North-West of England, 1560–1610,” presented at the North East Conference on British Studies, Montreal, October 2004, supplied a great deal of evidence on this point.

⁹⁴ Staffordshire RO, Bagot MSS, microfilm 9, l.a.162.

⁹⁵ British Library, Gawdy Papers, Add. MSS 27, 395, fol. 218, ca. 1659.

⁹⁶ British Library, Gawdy Papers, Add. MSS 27, 397, fol. 54.

⁹⁷ Muldrew, “Culture of Reconciliation”; Patterson, “Conflict Resolution and Patronage”; Goldgar, Anne, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750 (New Haven, CT, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keith Wrightson, “The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England,” 10–46, and Hindle, Steve, “The Keeping of the Public Peace,” 213–46, both in The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England, ed. Griffiths, Paul, Fox, Adam, and Hindle, Steve (Basingstoke, 1996)Google Scholar; Cust, “Honour, Rhetoric and Political Culture,” 89, 103; Barnes, Thomas, Somerset, 1625–1640: A County's Government during the “Personal Rule” (Cambridge, MA, 1961), 36–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁸ Cleaver, Robert and Dod, John, A Godly Forme of Houshold Government, for the Ordering of Private Families, According to the Direction of God's Word (London, 1630), F4Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ See the advice of the fifth earl of Huntington to his son to forgive and forget his own injuries and help solve disputes of others in Cust, “Honour and Politics in Early Stuart England,” 92–93. Because conflict was always a possibility in any elite family, heads of households took what steps they could to prevent or minimize this (e.g., by setting up arbitrators in their wills); see Lambeth Palace Library, Shrewsbury and Talbot Papers, MS 3202, vol. 50, 169; Northampton RO, Isham MSS, IL 1237, IL 1407.

¹⁰⁰ Northampton Archive Office, Duke of Bucleuch Papers, Montagu of Boughton MSS, vol. 3, fol. 138.

¹⁰¹ Staffordshire RO, Bagot MSS, microfilm 9, L.a.121.

¹⁰² See Barton, Richard, “‘Zealous Anger’ and the Renegotiation of Aristocratic Relationships in Eleventh and Twelfth-Century France,” in Anger's Past: the Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. Rosenwein, Barbara H. (Ithaca, NY, 1998), 127–52Google Scholar, for a similar point that it was not anger itself that was the problem but rather the inability to reach a settlement.

¹⁰³ Staffordshire RO, Bagot MSS, microfilm 9, L.a.240.

¹⁰⁴ Northampton Archive Office, Duke of Bucleuch Papers, Montagu of Boughton MSS, vol. 3, fol. 138.

¹⁰⁵ Nottingham RO, Savile MSS, DDSR 212/24/1–7, Mayday 1640.

¹⁰⁶ Northampton Archive Office, Duke of Bucleuch Papers, Montagu of Boughton MSS, vol. 3, fol. 95.

¹⁰⁷ Somerset RO, Phelips MSS, DD/PH, vol. 224, fol. 6. Sir Thomas Phelips was also admonished by Sir Henry Berkeley to end the conflict with his son John, who was married to a member of the Berkeley family; see Somerset RO, Phelips MSS, DD/PH, vol. 224, fol. 5.

¹⁰⁸ Lambeth Palace Library, Shrewsbury and Talbot Papers, MS 3200, vol. 1, fol. 210. Similarly, Michael Stanhope sought peace between Gilbert Talbot and Stanhope's brother, Sir Thomas Stanhope; Lambeth Palace Library, Shrewsbury and Talbot Papers, MS 3199, vol. H, fol. 135.

¹⁰⁹ Northampton RO, Isham MSS, IC 927. See also the example of Zacchary Isham, who warned Thomas Isham in 1675 not to prolong the dispute with his sisters “besides the dirt that will be thrown upon you that are engag’d in such a scuffle, what a base imputation some may be apt to reflect on your incomparable Father's blessed memory, on whose honourable name you should not suffer the least stain to be cast”; Northampton RO, Isham MSS, IC 912.

¹¹⁰ Isham, Gyles, ed., “The Correspondence of Bishop Brian Duppa and Sir Justinian Isham, 1650–1660,” Northamptonshire Record Society 17 (1955): 156Google Scholar.

¹¹¹ Somerset RO, Phelips MSS, DD/PH, vol. 224, fol. 45.

¹¹² Pollock, Linda A., “Anger and the Negotiation of Relationships in Early Modern England,” Historical Journal 47 (2004): 567–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹³ Even when deep hostility had existed, reconciliation could still be achieved; see Forster, G. C. F., “Faction and County Government in Early Stuart Yorkshire,” Northern History 11 (1975): 70–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹⁴ Carlton, Charles, Going to the Wars: The Experiences of the British Civil Wars, 1638–1651 (London, 1992), 305CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹⁵ Donagan, “Web of Honour,” 389.

¹¹⁶ Gowing, “Women, Status and the Popular Culture of Dishonour,” 225–34; Kelly, “That Damn’d Thing Called Honor,” 15; Lucia Ferrante, “Honor Regained: Women in the Casa del Soccorso di San Paolo in Sixteenth-Century Bologna,” 46–72, and Cavallo, Sandra and Cerutti, Simona, “Female Honor and the Social Control of Reproduction in Piedmont between 1600–1800,” 73–109, both in Sex and Gender in a Historical Perspective, ed. Muir, Edward and Ruggiero, Guido (Baltimore, 1990)Google Scholar; Roper, Oedipus and the Devil, 65; Pitt-Rivers, “Honour and Social Status,” 46; Cohen, “Honor and Gender,” 617; Cohen, “Lay Liturgy of Affront,” 863, 866; Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility, 233; Smuts, Culture and Power, 8. As McIntosh (Controlling Misbehavior in England, 121) and Walker (“Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour”) point out, the evidence from the church courts about the almost exclusive importance of chastity to women must be used with caution since ecclesiastical courts dealt with sexual slanders but not, for example, with economic matters.

¹¹⁷ Gowing, “Women, Status and the Popular Culture of Dishonour,” 225–26; Herrup, “To Pluck Bright Honour from the Pale-Faced Moon,” 152–55; Cohen, “Lay Liturgy of Affront,” 865, 866; Smuts, Culture and Power, 8.

¹¹⁸ Court cases testifying to the importance of sexual reputation to women lower down the social scale abound. See Gowing, Laura, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Capp, Bernard, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹⁹ Elizabeth Bourne to Anthony Bourne, British Library, Conway Papers, Add. MSS 23,212, fol. 14, 1590s.

¹²⁰ Gowing, Domestic Dangers, chap. 4; Capp, When Gossips Meet, 189–94.

¹²¹ Recent work on the topic of female honor in early modern England is beginning to correct some of the misplaced assumptions of the prevailing paradigm. For instance, Capp, Bernard (“The Double Standard Revisited: Plebeian Women and Male Sexual Reputation in Early Modern England,” Past and Present, no. 162 [1999]: 70–100)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed argues that male honor was also bound up with issues of sexuality. Other scholars have taken issue with the claim that women's honor was based on sexual probity alone; see Walker, “Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour”; Dabhoiwala, Faramerz, “The Construction of Honour, Reputation and Status in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 6 (1996): 201–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maddern, “Honour among the Pastons.” And even elite women, who, it has been argued, had fewer options than elite men to pursue or reclaim honor, did display a more complex understanding of honor than that of maintaining sexual purity; see Heal, Felicity, “Reputation and Honour in Court and Country,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 6 (1996): 161–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harris, Barbara J., English Aristocratic Women, 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers (Oxford, 2002), 6Google Scholar.

¹²² British Library, Carew Papers, Add. MSS 29, 598, fol. 34.

¹²³ Folger Shakespeare Library, Bradborne Papers, Tamworth MSS, LE, fol. 763, ca. 1600.

¹²⁴ British Library, Carew Papers, Add. MSS 29, 598, fol. 34.

¹²⁵ John Rylands Library, Legh MSS, Anne Bold to Francis Legh, 23 March 1639.

¹²⁶ Folger Shakespeare Library, Ferrers Papers, Tamworth MSS LE, fol. 503, ca. 1600. Bridget Eyre does not specify what her brother objected to.

¹²⁷ For a recent analysis of this issue, see Gowing, Laura, Common Bodies: Women, Touch, and Power in Seventeenth-Century England (New Haven, CT, 2003)Google Scholar.

¹²⁸ See, e.g., the advice to sons compiled by Dame Sarah Cowper, Commonplace book of Dame Sarah, Hertford RO, Cowper MSS, D/EP/F37, fols. 49–55, or the advice given to Mildmay Fane by his grandmother, Lady Grace Mildmay, cited in Pollock, Linda, With Faith and Physic: The Life of a Tudor Gentlewoman; Lady Grace Mildmay, 1552–1620 (London, 1993), 42–44Google Scholar.

¹²⁹ Northampton Archive Office, Cockayne MSS, C2873. See also the reprimands given by Agnes Throckmorton to her son Robert (Warwick RO, Throckmorton MSS, CR 1998, box 60, folder 1) and by Lady Ann Bacon to her son Anthony in 1592 (Lambeth Palace Library, Papers of Anthony Bacon, MS 649/15).

¹³⁰ Warwick RO, Fielding MSS, CR 2017, vol. C2, fol. 131.

¹³¹ Huntington Library, Hastings MSS, HA, box 33, 7903.

¹³² For scholarship emphasizing honor as a resource or entitlement, see Cohen, “Three Forms of Jeopardy”; Cohen, “Honor and Gender”; Farr, “The Death of a Judge”; Herrup, “To Pluck Bright Honour from the Pale-Faced Moon.”

¹³³ Somerset RO, Phelips MSS, DD/PH, vol 229, fol. 16a.

¹³⁴ Ibid.

¹³⁵ Folger Shakespeare Library, Bradborne MSS, Tamworth MSS, L.e., fol. 763.

¹³⁶ British Library, Hatton Papers, Add. MSS 29571, fol. 158, ca. 1670. Sir Edward Aston also complained of the divisive tactics employed by his mother-in-law Lady Lucy in 1590; see Staffordshire RO, Bagot MSS, microfilm 9, L.a. 21

¹³⁷ Private Diary of Elizabeth, Viscountess Mordaunt (Duncair, 1856), 236Google Scholar. Similar coping skills were exhibited by Mary Rich (see Mendelson, Sara Heller, The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies [Brighton, 1987], 66–79)Google Scholar and Grace Mildmay (Pollock, With Faith and Physic, 10–11).

¹³⁸ Bray, William, ed., Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn (London, 1850–52), 4:36Google Scholar.

¹³⁹ Wall, Alison, ed., “Two Elizabethan Women: Correspondence of Joan and Maria Thynne, 1575–1611,” Wiltshire Record Society 38 (1983): 3Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁰ Warwick RO, Throckmorton Papers, CR 1998, box 60, folder 52, early seventeenth century.

¹⁴¹ Though I would not argue that men and women had distinctly different concepts of honor, nor that women preferred emotional fulfillment at the expense of appearances or family honor, as claimed by Reddy (Invisible Code, 111).

¹⁴² Williams, Tudor Regime, 237.

¹⁴³ Hoyle, “Faction, Feud and Reconciliation.” As Hoyle has pointed out, rather than claiming that the north of England was incorrigibly violent, we should ask in what circumstances disputes did arise. Shoemaker (“Male Honour”) shows that violence for some men was an acceptable method of affirming their gender identity. But, as recent work has demonstrated, there was more than one version of manhood; see Shepard, Alexandra, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar; Motley, Becoming a French Aristocrat, 198; Hendrix, Scott, “Masculinity and Patriarchy in Reformation Germany,” Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (1995): 177–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴⁴ Muir, “Double Binds of Manly Revenge,” 77.

¹⁴⁵ Richard C. McCoy (“Old English Honour in an Evil Time: Aristocratic Principle in the 1620s,” in Smuts, Stuart Court and Europe, 133–55) argues that honor was a principle, not just one of many legitimations that could be used to justify inherently prudential political maneuvers.

¹⁴⁶ This point is reinforced by the fact that the critics of dueling themselves had different points of view and offered different solutions.

¹⁴⁷ In this, England was unlike France; see Reddy, Invisible Code, 14.

¹⁴⁸ Cust (“Honour and Politics in Early Stuart England,” 61) claims that Star Chamber cases provide one of the most effective means of exploring concepts of honor among the elite. Though these cases do supply a great deal of insight, we need to look also at the practice of honor beyond the courtroom. Families, occupying “these uncomfortable blank spaces somewhere between the social and the natural” and acting as a bridge and mediator between public and private, friends and enemies, social rules and private bonds, emotions and interest, as well as entitlement and obligation, offer a means to appreciate the lived understanding of and application of honor; see Doolittle, Megan, “Close Relations? Bringing Together Gender and Family in English History,” Gender and History 11 (1999): 542–54CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

¹⁴⁹ The communal ethos held throughout the eighteenth century; see Finn, Margot C., The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740–1914 (New York, 2003)Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁰ Muldrew, “Culture of Reconciliation,” 919–20; Herrup, Cynthia, “Negotiating Grace,” in Politics, Religion and Popularity: Essays for Conrad Russell, ed. Cogswell, Thomas, Cust, Richard, and Lake, Peter (Cambridge, 2002): 124–40, 140Google Scholar; Sommerville, J. P., Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640 (London, 1986), 131Google Scholar; Cust, “Honour, Rhetoric and Political Culture,” 99–100.