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Procrustean Feudalism: An Interpretative Dilemma in English Historical Narration, 1700–1725

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

D. W. L. Earl
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Extract

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’.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , March 1976 , pp. 33 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

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

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11 Ibid.

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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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26 Ibid., vvv.

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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.

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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.

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55 Ibid.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid., xcv.

58 Ibid., xcvi.

59 Ibid., xcvii.

60 Ibid., xcviii.

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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.

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69 Ibid.

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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.