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IV. Robert Brady, 1627–1700. A Cambridge Historian of the Restoration

Part of: Retrospect: The Ancient Constitution and the Languages of Political Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

J. G. A. Pocock
J. G. A. Pocock
Affiliation:
University of Durham

Extract

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In the first great age of English scholarship, to write history was to write polemics. England was a legal, not a geographical expression; to write her history was to interpret her law, or the relation of that law to the Crown, and so to take sides in the battle of parties. The law was timeless; its principles were the same in all ages; the past was a storehouse, not of mere examples, but of authoritative precedents. A statute whose making was ‘beyond memory’ was of greater authority than one whose beginnings were known. What the constitution was it had always been and to define its past was to define its true nature in the present. No scholar wrote more openly to support a cause than Dr Robert Brady, who was Master of Caius College from 1660 to 1700 and defended the Stuart monarchy with his learning in the last ten years of its existence; but the paradox of his career is that no man did more to bring to an end the climate of thought in which his work had been born. An interpreter of history in an age remembered rather for great textual scholars, he was a principal agent in bringing English historical method out of its medieval and into its modern period. For the student of English historiography in its peculiar and intimate connexions with legal and political thought he is, therefore, a notable figure.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , 1951 , pp. 186 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1951

References

1 A debt must be acknowledged here to a chapter in Douglas's, Prof. D. C.English Scholars (1939)Google Scholar and to passages in Prof. Butterfield's, The Englishman and his History (1944)Google Scholar; these appear to be the only serious notices of Brady written in modern times.

2 ‘Mr Lightwin(e), Fellow of Caius College, Executor to Dr Brady, possest of his papers, died here this week, after he had liv'd some years an animal life. I will enquire after his Papers, but I am told, he us'd to entertain his vacant houres in burning Papers, and had burnt a Bond of 500 1., had he not been accidentally prevented. This makes me affraid of living too long.’ Thomas Baker to Thomas Hearne, June 14, 1729, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson Letters, 23,47 (and Hearne's Collections, x, 149). The story told Hearne (Collections, x, 85), that Brady's widow burnt an unpublished volume of his History, is presumably a distorted fragment of gossip concerning Lightwin; Brady died a widower.

3 There are three biographical sources for Brady: (i) Baker to Hearne, Rawlinson Letters 22, 22; (2) Brady's account of his life under the Commonwealth, [Public Record Office] S[tate] P[apers] D[omestic], Car. II, 287, 204 (1); (3) Venn, Biographical History of Gonville and Caius College, iii, 105 f., 351. The D.N.B. account is not very reliable. The quotations in the following passage are all from the State Papers document.

4 Blomefield, History of Norfolk (2nd. ed.), iii, 400–401 n.

5 His account of his war record is certified by the hands of Sir Horatio Townshend, Sir Thomas Hare (with whom he seems to have been in close relations), Sir Ralph Skipwith and other Norfolk notables. The Cal[endar] of S[tate] P[apers] D[omestic], 1671, p. 78, tentatively dates this document in February 1671, when Brady applied for the Professorship of Physic; but internal evidence places it decisively in the Restoration year and earlier than September.

6 Venn is the authority for the episode of Brady's election. The royal letter is in Caius College MSS. 602, fol. 19.

7 A letter concerning a Caius election, dated 17 January 1678, survives in Cal. S.P.D., 1677–78, p. 580; and a royal letter to the Vice-chancellor and Senate, dated 8 April 1681, (ibid. 1680–81, p. 234) shows him concerned in modifying the mode of admission to the degree of M.B. An obscure letter to Arthur Charlett(?) (signed by St Gardiner, respecting the resistance of Sidney Sussex College to the imposition of a master, May 3, 1687, Bodleian Library, Ballard Letters, xxiii, 28) shows Brady involved in what seems to have been an academic-political intrigue. Venn (loc. cit.) says that his mastership was uneventful. It can only occasion speculation that Henry Wharton and Jeremy Collier, two of the most brilliant historians of the next generation—in ecclesiastical rather than constitutional studies—were undergraduates at Caius in his time.

8 Thomas Sydenham's Epistolae responsoriae duae records a discussion with Brady on the incidence of epidemic disease between 1675 and 1680.

9 Correspondence (involving John Carr, Glisson's deputy, who thought he had a prior claim) in Cal. S.P.D. 1671, p. 78 (February 11).

10 There are three documents in this correspondence: Brady to Williamson, 3 April 1675, S.P.D. Car. II, 369, 155 (printed in Cal. S.P.D., under date); and two drafts of ‘The Designe of the Historie to be presented to Sir Joseph Williamson’, S.P.D. Car. II, 442, 2, 3, from the second of which the quotation just following is taken.

11 All that is known of his life in these years is that his wife Jane, daughter of Luke Constable of Swaffham, died without surviving children in 1679. A copy of her epitaph in St Michael's Church is in Brit. Mus. Harleian MS. 6121.

12 ‘Admit a Conquest, and the Inheritance which every one claims in the Laws will be maintainable only as a naked Right, and naked Rights are thin and metaphysical Notions, which few are Masters or Judges of.’ William Atwood, The Lord Holles his Remains (1681), p. 293. It was rare for Whigs of this school to admit that rights, if their antiquity was denied, could find other justification; cf. Petyt, Miscellanea Parliamentaria (1681), passim.

13 This version of history is chiefly to be found in the works of Brady's adversaries, William Petyt, William Atwood and James Tyrrell; for a statement written under the Commonwealth see Nathaniel Bacon's Historical Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England (1647–51).

14 In his Survey of Leviathan (1676), pp. 109–110, 148–9. For a later statement of the same view, see Antidotum Britannicum, by ‘W.W.’ (1681).

15 The sub-title of the Historical Discourse.

16 Complete History of England, I, 182; cf. pp. vi and 180.

17 Maitland, Constitutional History, pp. 142–3.

18 The text employed here is that of Dugdale's edition of 1664.

19 Prynne's opinions on this subject are to be found chiefly in the four parts (1658–1664) of his Brief Register of Parliamentary Writs; in the last he cites the complete edition of the Glossarium without referring to ‘Parliamentum’.

20 Origines, pp. 14–19. Spelman had used language suggestive of this—‘quisque inferior consentire visus est’—but Dugdale employed it to restore ideas which Spelman had abandoned.

21 The genesis of Petyt's work may be traced in his correspondence; Inner Temple MSS. 583 (17), passim. As early as 1676 he was endeavouring to prove that Dugdale, and not Spelman, had written ‘Parliamentum’. Prof. Douglas seems to be mistaken in treating this question (English Scholars, pp. 54–5) in connexion with Dugdale's tendency to claim other men's work as his own; forgery, not plagiarism, was the charge against him, and he was entirely innocent. See Hamper, Life and Writings of Sir William Dugdale, p. 16 and elsewhere.

22 Brady's correspondence with Sancroft comprises two letters, dated 11 May and 17 June 1680, Bodleian Library, Tanner MS. 37, fols. 22, 70. The possibility that Sancroft was behind the republication of Filmer is mentioned by Mr Laslett in his edition of Patriarcha (1949), p. 36. Petyt added an appendix to his work controverting the possible objection that the subtenants were represented by their overlords; Dugdale intended to make this suggestion, and we may have here the explanation both of the withholding of Dugdale's work from the press and of Brady's anxiety that Petyt should not anticipate his arguments.

23 Brady had promised to be guided by Sancroft in choosing a date for publication, but there may have been delay due to his decision to add an appendix in reply to Atwood's Jani Anglorum Facies Nova.

24 Bodleian Library (Ashmole MSS.), Dugdale MS. 10, fol. 94.

25 Introduction to the Old English History, pp. 14, 16, 18–20 and passim. References are given to the 1684 text of the Answer to Petyt (which formed part of the Introduction) rather than to that of 1681, because of the latter's rarity. The revisions of 1684 do not affect the main argument.

26 Introduction (1684), ‘Epistle to the Candid Reader’.

27 Perhaps this is why the notice of the Brady family in the Harleian Society's edition of the Visitation of Norfolk describes him as representing Oxford University, an error which has somehow found its way into the pages of Venn. He was the junior representative; Sir William Temple the first.

28 Cobbett's Parliamentary History, sub 25 March 1680–81; cf. Anthony Wood, Life and Times, 11, 533, for the opinion that had the House sat longer, it would have ordered the burning of both Brady's book and Dugdale's Civil War history, A Short View of the Late Troubles. Prof. Douglas, however, is perhaps a little dramatic in telling us (p. 368) that Brady, ‘faced the ire of parliament’, for t he records of debate show no references to t he matter except Jones’s.

29 The Lord Holies his Remains (1681) and Jus Anglorum ab Antiquo (1682). Their principal theme is an alleged distinction between the king's council of feudal tenants and the council of the realm, consisting of non-feudal freemen or ‘barones regni’.

30 See Brady's Introduction, p. 326: ‘not without suspicion, that … one of these Popular, Seditious Pieces … did mightily contribute to the Seduction, and Rebellious and Traiterous Practises of a great Man, who laid violent hands upon himself, to prevent the Hand and Stroke of Justice.’

31 This is sometimes confused with The Great Point of Succession Truly Stated, a Filmerian work published in the same year. Both were replies to The Brief History of the Succession, now ascribed to Somers but at the time thought by some to be t he work of Sir William Jones.

32 ‘And like to this Piece, are Jani Anglorum facies Nova, Jus Anglorum ab Antiquo, Reflections upon Antidotum Britannicum [part of The Lord Holies his Remains}, Londinum Triumphans, etc., with many others of the same Batch. All written and tim’d, with design to promote Sedition, and in expectation of Rebellion, and the destruction of the Established Government.’ Introduction, p. 326.

33 Caius College MSS. 580, passim.

34 His warrants for payments covering these periods (signed by Arlington) are in Caius College MSS. 602, fols. 13–18. For his appointment at a salary of £100 a year, see Cal. S.P.D., 1682, pp. 546–7 (tentatively dated November). He had been a member of the College of Physicians since November 1680.

35 Cal. S.P.D., 1683 (i), pp. 350, 351, 365 (June 26 and 28).

36 Ibid. May 1684–Feb. 1685, p. 23 (17 May 1684). The full list runs: ‘Dukes of Norfolk, Newcastle, Albemarle; Archbishop of York; Earls of Peterborough, Gainsborough, Bristol, Bath and Ailesbury; Bishops of Durham, Exeter and Bath and Wells; Lord Stawell; Sir William Portman, Sir Roger Norris, Sir Peter Shakerley; Dr Brady; the Lord Great Chamberlain.’

37 Commons Journals, 26 May and 26 June 1685. H e was on other committees of a routine nature.

38 Public Record Office, Signet Office Docquet Book for July 1686. It may be observed that Brady was now drawing salaries from four sources, as Master of Caius, as Professor of Physic, as Court Physician and as records administrator; while his papers contain (Caius College MSS. 707) a list of precedents to show that the Master of Caius may discharge the office and enjoy the emoluments of bursar.

39 See also Douglas, op. cit. p. 156.

40 For May's appointment see Cal. S.P.D., 1670, p. 36 (Jan. 26, 1669–70); for his later career a note in vol. 1 of the Nicholson MSS (Carlisle Cathedral).

41 Letters from Dugdale congratulating Brady on the Introduction and the Complete History have been printed by Hamper, op, cit.; they are dated 6 October 1684 and late in 1685. Their tone is friendly but not intimate; Dugdale calls the Introduction ‘a high piece of service to his Majesty and the Government’.

42 Caius College MSS. 607, fol. 5; 2 August 1684.

43 Philipps was 82 or 83 in 1685, Dugdale 80.

44 Only two contributors to historical argument in these years did so: Needham, Marchmont in Second Pacquet to the Men of Shaftesbury (1677)Google Scholar and Hunt, Thomas in Argument for the Bishops’ Right in Judging in Capital Causes in Parliament (1682)Google Scholar. It is a curious fact that both were political turncoats.

45 ‘The Preface to the Reader’; ‘The General Preface’; ‘The First Part of the Saxon History’ (pp. 51–91); ‘The Preface to the Norman History’ (pp. 139–184). There are some seven hundred pages in the whole volume.

46 Introduction,’ Epistle to the Reader’; Complete History,’ Preface to the Reader’,’ General Preface’, pp. xxx, liii and lxiii.

47 In the ‘Preface to the Reader’.

48 Compare the Answer to Petyt (1681), pp. 225–9, with the Introduction, pp. 144–51. See also the General Preface to the Complete History.

49 Introduction, pp. 19–20.

50 See especially a curious passage (Complete History, ‘General Preface’, lv) contrasting the natural simplicity of Glanvill with the canonist sophistications of Bracton. The interpolations to Bracton brought his whole work under some royalist suspicions at this time.

51 The Halsted correspondence shows that Brady was collecting material on this subject as early as 1682. This is the only one of Brady's works to have been republished (in 1704 and 1777). Merryweather and Stephens, ‘On Boroughs’, show that it was regarded as a standard if unsatisfactory work as late as 1835.

52 Brit. Mus. Stowe MSS. 360. This once formed part of the Ashburnham collection made by Thomas Astle, an eighteenth-century Keeper of Records, from miscellaneous documents he found at the Tower, and was probably left behind by Brady when he quitted the Office of Records in 1689.

53 Ballard Letters, xxi, 4, 5; Sykes to Charlett, 28 August and 4 September 1687. The sentence is heavily underlined.

54 Brady's letter to Johnston may be found in the Johnston MSS., now at Magdalen College, Oxford, dated 6 July 1688. Johnston's, The Excellency of Monarchical Government (1686)Google Scholar openly follows Brady and is a good illustration of how every idea he expressed might be taken by a royalist reader for an expression of simple absolutism.

55 Diary of the Second Earl of Clarendon (in Clarendon Correspondence, 1828) for 21 December; Clarke, Life of James II (1816), 11, p. 270.

56 Cal. S.P.D. February 1689–April 1690, p. 22 (S.P. Dom. Warrant Book 34, p. 216) Petyt's formal appointment dated 25 July, ibid. p. 198.

57 Notes of his speech as one of the Assistants are in H[istorical] M[anuscripts] C[omission] Twelfth Report, Appendix VI, p. 14.

58 H.M.C. Eleventh Report, pt. v, p. 253.

59 Caius College MSS. 602, fol. 9.

60 Thomas Hearne, whose nose for apostasy was notoriously keen, repeatedly calls him ‘an honest man’, a term which he always uses in the special sense of a legitimist and enemy of the Revolution.

61 The remark of Dr Smith, one of Hearne's correspondents (Collections, ii, 225), that he told Tyrrell’ on his publishing his Bibliotheca Politica that neither Dr Brady nor himself had a mind to be hanged’ for answering him, need not be taken very seriously.

62 Bohun was dismissed from the office of censor of books for allowing the publication of an argument that William and Mary ruled by right of conquest; Bedford was imprisoned for the supposed authorship of a non-juring work, The Hereditary Succession to the Crown of England.

63 An anonymous work of non-juring character, entitled An Inquiry into the Remarkable Instances of History and Parliamentary Records used by the Author of the Unreasonableness of a New Separation (i.e. Stillingfleet), published in 1690 or 1691, is widely attributed to Brady (see D.N.B. and Douglas, op. cit. p. 164). The only contemporary authority for the attribution so far discovered is a marginal note in Theophilus Downes's preface to Joseph Harbin's Hereditary Succession to the Crown of England (1713; Downes lost an Oxford fellowship for refusing the oaths in 1690); but A Vindication of the Discourse Concerning the Unreasonableness, etc. (said to be by Williams, bishop of Chichester) says that the author of the Inquiry is ‘a downright Plagiary from Dr Brady's Writings’. Such language is often a means of hinting at a concealed authorship. The work may well be by Brady; most of the arguments and material, and one or two turns of phrase, are consistent with his authorship; but the ascription does not appear entirely certain. The tract is not printed by Brady's usual bookseller (Samuel Lowndes), but if he wished to remain anonymous—and intended, despite his arguments, to take the oaths himself—this is intelligible.

64 Ballard Letters, v, 20–36; Gibson's letters to Charlett between May and August 1694, recording his difficulties in keeping in touch with Brady, who was moving between Cambridge and London, and the ultimate delivery of a catalogue of Caius manuscripts whose ‘fairness, largeness and exactness’ he praises.

66 H.M.C. Thirteenth Report, Appendix v, pp. 429–32, House of Lords MSS. 9 January 1694–5.

66 D.N.B. ‘Robert Walpole’.

67 Wanley to Charlett, Ballard Letters, xin, 47.

68 Douglas (op. cit. pp. 158–9) compares Brady's views on different topics with those of Chadwick, G. B. Adams and Bigelow.

69 Madox's posthumous Baronia Anglica (1736) refers to Brady as having proved the Norman descent of the medieval aristocracy.