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Reputation and Honour in Court and Country: Lady Elizabeth Russell and Sir Thomas Hoby

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Felicity Heal
Felicity Heal
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Extract

In 1576 William Cecil, Lord Burghley, was engaged in one of the most painful disputes of his distinguished career: a bitter conflict with the earl of Oxford who had married, and then repudiated, his beloved daughter Anne. Cecil's distress erupted in a series of memoranda enumerating die injuries inflicted by die earl. At the end of the most comprehensive of these documents he briefly resumed his other role, as mentor and Polonius to the young de Vere. Remember, he begged him, who he was and what the world expected of him: above all remember that ‘the gretest possession that any man can have is honor, good name, good will of many and of the best sort’. This appeal to honour as good reputation among the wisest and best was unlikely to move his renegade son-in-law, whose understanding of the honour code, if we may judge by his actions, is that it provided justification for the wilful individualism of the nobleman. But Cecil's choice of language has resonance in the broader context of thinking about reputation in the late sixteenth century. It eschews excessive personal pride in favour of a balanced appeal to the judgment of one's peers, yet it is scarcely an elevated perception of virtuous Protestant honour of the kind associated with another of Cecil's protègès, Philip Sidney.

Type
Honour and Reputation in Early-Modern England
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 6 , December 1996 , pp. 161 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1996

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References

1 Historical Manuscripts Commission: Salisbury MSS [hereafterHMC Salisbury], II, 145. Cecil, William, Certain Precepts (1618), 13–15Google Scholar. On Sidney and honour see James, M., Culture, Society and Politics in Early Modem England (Cambridge, 1986) [hereafter James, Culture], 387–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Essex, for example, accused Francis Bacon of failure to act nobly, despite the latter's initial support for him; on this and the Essex revolt see James, , Culture, 416–65Google Scholar.The Letters of John Holles, 1587–1637, Seddon, ed. P. 3 vols., Thoroton Record Society, 31, 35, 36, 1975–1986), II, 175Google Scholar.

3 The best evaluation of the two individuals, together with much relevant material on their disputes, is in the introduction toThe Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, ed. Meads, D. M. (1930) [hereafterHoby], 13–22, 40–3Google Scholar. See also Gladstone, H.M., ‘Building an Identity: Two Noblewomen in England, 1566–1666’ (Ph.D. thesis, Open University, 1989) [hereafter Gladstone, ‘Building an Identity’]. I am grateful to Dr. Nigel Llewelwyn for drawing my attention to this dissertation.Google ScholarRowse, A.L., ‘Bisham and the Hobys’ in his Times, Persons, Places: Essays in Literature (1965), 188–218Google Scholar.

4 On Hoby see Heal, F. and Holmes, C., The Gentry in England and Wales: 1500–1700 (1994), 1–5Google Scholar. The Russell case is Public Record Office [hereafter PRO], STAC8/245/7, with preliminary disputes at PRO STAC5/R15/31 and R36/31; the Hoby case is PRO STAC5/H16/2, H22/21, H42/12 and H50/4.

5 On female honour see Brathwait, R., The English Gentlewoman (1631)Google Scholar. Good examples of the manipulation of the ideal are in Wall, A., ‘Elizabethan Precept and Feminine Practice’, History, LXXV (1990), 23–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar. HMC Salisbury, VII, 296–7.

6 ladstone, , ‘Building an Identity’, 194Google Scholar. G.E. Cockayne, Complete Peerage: Bedford. Russell was summoned to the 1580 Parliament and sat regularly as a baron thereafter. Bodleian Library Rawlinson MS B.146, fo. 87V.

7 HMC Salisbury, XIV, 192; XI, 563.

8 Calendar of State Papers Domestic [hereafter CSPD] 1591–94, 379. HMC Salisbury, XVII, 436–7; XIV, 192; XI, 423–4. , P.Bourdieu, ‘Rites as Acts of Justification’, in Honour and Grace in Anthropology, ed. Peristiany, J.G. and Pitt-Rivers, J., (Cambridge, 1992), 84–5Google Scholar. Hawarde, J., Les Reports del Cases in Camera Stelkda, Baildon, ed. W.P. (1894) ], 273Google Scholar.

9 HMC Salisbury, X, 51–2. CSPD 1595–7, 147–8. Hawarde, Les Reportes, 276. There is a good account of the marriage of Anne to the son of the earl of Worcester in Strong, R., The Cult of Elizabeth (1977), 23–30Google Scholar.

10 Moore(K.B.) 786–7, in The English Reports (178 vols., 1900–1930), LXXII, 906Google Scholar.Hawarde, , Les Reportes, 271–8Google Scholar. The Star Chamber threat, taken from Merry Wives of Windsor, act 1 sc. I, has been linked with Lady Russell's Windsor disputes. The play is usually dated to 1597 or 1600 so any connection, if it does exist, must be with the Lovelace disputes.

11 British Library Lansdowne MS [hereafter BL Lans.] 10/38; 33/85. CSPD 1595–7, 148.HMC Salisbury, V, 7; XIV, 192.

12 Hawarde, , Les Reportes,275–7, 309–12Google Scholar.

13 Hoby, 8–12, 27–32; The Fortescue Papers, ed. Gardiner, S.R. (Camden Soc., n.s., 1,1871), vi–xxiiGoogle Scholar. Aveling, H., The Catholic Recusants of the North Riding of Yorkshire 1585–1790 (1966), 118–20.Google ScholarForster, G.C.F., ‘North Ridingjustices and their Sessions, 1603–25’ Northern History, X (1975), 108–11Google Scholar. Brooke, T.H., ‘The Memoirs of Sir Hugh Cholmley’ (B.Iitt Oxford University, 1937) [hereafter Brooke, ‘Cholmley’], 43–6Google Scholar.

14 On the nature and significance of charivari in England see Ingram, M., ‘Ridings, Rough Music and “the Reform of Popular Culture” in Early Modern England’, Past and Present CV (1984), 79–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 PRO, STAC5/H16/2. HMC Salisbury, X, 303. PRO, STAC5/H22/21.

16 PRO, STAC5/H22/21, testimony of Michael Wharton.

17 PRO, STAC5/H50/4, testimony of John Reynes. Lady Margaret's diary is rich in references to care for the community, and it is known from other sources that the Hobys repaired their parish church and that Sir Thomas later built a separate upland chapel dedicated to St Margaret: Victoria County History: Yorkshire: North Riding, II, 531.

18 PRO, STAC5/H50/4, testimony of Robert Nettleton; H50/4, testimony of William Jordan and Peter Campelman.

19 PRO STAC5/H22/21. BL Lans. 10/38. Another insult was that he ‘useth to draw up his Breeches with a shooing-horn’, PRO STAC5/H50/4.

20 Venn identifies a Richard Roodes who matriculated as a sizar at St John's in 1591, was an MA in 1598 and had been ordained in 1597. Rhodes was at Hackness in 1598, evidently at an early stage of his career: J, . and Venn, J. A., Alumni Cantabrigimsis to 1751, III, 447Google Scholar. Hoby, 267, andpassim for the presence of Rhodes in the household. HMC Salisbury, X, 325. PRO STAC5/H50/4.

21 Hoby, 142–3. HMC Salisbury, X, 302, 325; XI, 11–12, 456, 546; XII, 22. PRO STAC5/H22/21. Hoby, 185, 189, 197–8.

22 PRO STAC5/H22/21, from the series of interrogatories designed by Hoby to be administered to Henry Cholmley. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigiensis, II, III. Two of Ralph's younger brothers attended Cambridge and a William Eure, who may well be the brother in the 1600 story, was at Queen's, Oxford: Foster, J., Alumni Oxoniensis 1500–1714, II, 468Google Scholar. CSPD Add. 1580–1625, 53, 85, 98. Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. McClure, N.E. (2 vols., American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1939), I, 36–7Google Scholar.

23 PRO, SP12/270/99. HMC Salisbury, XI, 14–15, 39–40, 198. Letters of Chamberlain, I, 113. Cecil, Certain Precepts, 13.

24 PRO STAC8/12/11. Brooke, ‘Cholmley’, 249.

25 Peristiany, and Pitt-Rivers, , Honour and Grace in Anthropology, 4Google Scholar. There are two good descriptions of the Russell tomb: , P./Begent, The Heraldry of the Hoby Memorials in the Parish Church of All Saints, Bisham, in the Royal County of Berkshire (Maidenhead, 1979Google Scholar), and Gladstone, , ‘Building an Identity’, 301–12Google Scholar. Gladstone suggests that the portrait, which still hangs at Bisham, was done in preparation for work on the tomb. It does not include a coronet, though in other respects the clothing worn by Lady Russell is the same in both cases.