Patriarchalism, Politics and Mass Attitudes in Stuart England
Author(s): Gordon J. Schochet
Source: The Historical Journal, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1969), pp. 413-441
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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The Historical yournal,
XII, 3 (I969),
pp. 4I3-441
4I3
Printed in Great Britain
II. PATRIARCHALISM,
ATTITUDES
POLITICS
IN STUART
AND MASS
ENGLAND*
GORDON J. SCHOCHET
Livingston College, Rutgers University
It is increasingly becoming a commonplace to assert that non-political
activities engaged in during childhood play determinative roles in shaping
individuals' attitudes toward and perceptions of the political order. A large
part of this early 'political socialization', as it is now called, takes place within
the family,1 which, in the words of one commentator, 'incubates the political
man ',2 whether or not there is a conscious attempt to inculcate political
beliefs.3 As T. D. Weldon remarked, 'Basic political creeds may not be
actually imbibed ... with mother's milk: but children are none the less
indoctrinated in practically every other way. '4 This socialization plus later
experiences (including reading, conversations, and direct encounters with
government) will help to implant notions of political legitimacy; that is, the
grounds on which a political authority is held to be entitled to rule. Legitimacy and the consequent public acceptance of government are among the
very foundations upon which politics rests. In the words of David Easton,
If a government... is to be capable of performing its tasks, the member of the
[particularpolitical] system must be preparedto support the particularnorms and
structuresthat organizethe way in which all politicalactivitiesare performed.That
is, they must be willing to support the 'constitutionalorder' or regime. Hence, we
are identifying the fundamentalrules of the game, as they are often described,
* I wish to thank Peter Laslett, Benjamin Lippincott, Richard Schlatter, and Judson James
for commenting upon previous versions of this article. I am especially indebted to Gerald
Pomper for his editorial assistance. The research was made possible and the manuscript has
been prepared for publication with the aid of grants from the Research Council of Rutgers
University.
1 See Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society, 2nd ed. (New York, I963), pp. 254, 270, 277,
404, 277-424 passim.
2 Robert E. Lane, Political Life: Why and How People Get Involved in Politics, paperback
ed. (New York, I 965), p. 204. The family, of course, is not the only source of political socialization. The standard work on the subject is Herbert Hyman, Political Socialization: A Study in
the Psychology of Political Behavior (Glencoe, Ill., I959). A more recent text is Richard E.
Dawson and Kenneth Prewitt, Political Socialization (Boston, I969). See also Gabriel A.
Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five
Nations, paperback ed. (Boston, I965), pp. 266-74 and refs.
3This is by no means a twentieth-century notion. To give only two examples, John Locke
and David Hume both recognized the role of the family in preparing men for politics. See
Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge, I960), ii, I05; Hume, 'Of
the Origin of Government', in Political Essays, ed. Charles W. Hendel (New York, I953),
p. 39; and Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford, i888), iII, ii,
2, p. 487.
4T. D. Weldon, States and Morals: A Study in Political Conflicts (London, I946), pp. 2I33
I4.
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GORDON
J. SCHOCHET
regulatingparticipationin politicallife and the particularway of organizingpolitical
power in a given society.5
These observations are as applicable to the problems of governance in the
seventeenth century as they are to political rule in the contemporary world.
The social and political conditions they describe are as true of absolutist and
autocratic regimes as they are of constitutional and democratic ones; they
characterize primitive, tribal, and pre-industrial politics as well as the
political systems of highly complex, technological societies. No political
authority can endure without the support of a substantial part of its population, even if that support is merely tacit acquiesence. The reasons why
people will accept the political regimes under which they live are, of course,
numerous and varied; they include social structural inducements, symbolic
reinforcement, as well as political beliefs and attitudes themselves. The propensity of an individual to accept political authority as a result of the impact
of these factors on him is often unconscious and seemingly unmotivated
behaviour. Obeying one's government is generally not a thought-out action;
except in times of revolution and unusual political stress, it is a learned and
habituated response-something one does as a result of his political 'socialization' and which he may not realize he is doing. It is possible in these terms to
account for the political behaviour of the self-conscious and reflective part
of the population as well as of the inarticulate masses. In this article, I shall
be concerned with the latent political attitudes of these masses in Stuart
England.
The reconstruction of the political attitudes and unconscious prejudices of
the rank and file in a society so remote in time from our own as that of
seventeenth-century England is virtually impossible; the direct evidence on
which such a reconstruction could be based simply does not exist. At best,
we can infer a portion of the belief system of the ordinary member of Stuart
society from our knowledge of his regular experiences and the doctrines he was
taught. The people I am talking about were the anonymous and un-schooled
masses, a group that Lawrence Stone estimates comprised 'well over go%Oof
the population perhaps as much as 9500 '.6 It was these same anonymous
masses who filled the pews of the parish churches on Sunday and tilled the
soil and did menial tasks the rest of the week. They left behind no sustained
records of their own existence-and certainly not of their social and political
attitudes-and have therefore been all but totally neglected by the cultural
and intellectual historian. Still, I shall argue that these Englishmen understood and accepted political authority in terms of the patriarchal theory of
obligation that is usually associated with the name of Sir Robert Filmer. This
ed.
5 David Easton, 'Political Anthropology', Biennial Review of Anthropology, I959,
Bernard J. Siegel (Stanford, 1959), p. 228. I owe this reference to Dr James Rosenau of
Rutgers University.
Past and Present, xxxiii
6 Lawrence Stone, 'Social Mobility in England, I500-I700',
(April, I966), 20.
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MASS
ATTITUDES
IN
STUART
ENGLAND
4I5
patriarchal belief was imparted orally; it was an explanation of social hierarchies in terms of natural (or divinely sanctioned) status. Finally, I shall
demonstrate that this patriarchalism appealed to and expanded perceptions of
the family that were shared by all members of society-its main source of
strength-and was thereby able to subsume the rival contractual account of
social relationships.
It has already been ascertained through the research of the Cambridge
Group for the History of Population and Social Structure7 and others that
the individual was confronted with a patriarchally ruled family and society
from birth; until a man became the head of his own household, he was
successively in the status of a filial inferior to his father, his master, and his
employer.8 These relationships, it must be stressed, were all familial. In
seventeenth-century England the family, or household as it was frequently
called-the terms were roughly equivalent-included more than the husband
and wife and parents and children who comprise the family in twentiethcentury Western society. Servants and apprentices who lived in were literally
members of the households where they worked. They owed their masters
and employers the same filial obedience that parents could expect from their
children. Statements to this effect from books on household government-a
particularly popular literary form in Stuart England-are easily duplicated.
In their famous Godly Forme of Household Government,John Dod and Robert
Cleaver wrote: 'The householder is called Pater Familias, that is, a father of
a familie, because he should have a fatherly care over his servants, as if they
were his children.' All 'godly servants', they further said, 'may in a few
words learne what dutie they owe their masters, mistresses, and dames:
namely to love them, and to be affectionated towards them, as a dutifull child
is towards his father. . . '.9 Thomas Cobbet, in a similar tract, urged his
'Courteous Reader' to 'remember... that under the notion of children, in
this discourse, are understood, all such as are in the relation of children,
7 See Peter Laslett, 'The History of Population and Social Structure', International Social
Science Journal, XVII (I965), 582-93, and E. A. Wrigley (ed.), An Introduction to English Historical Demography from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (London, I966).
8 See Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert
Baldick (New York, I962), pp. 366, 369; Charles H. George and Katherine George, The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation (Princeton, I96I), pp. 260, 276-89; Christopher Hill,
The Century of Revolution, I603-1714
(Edinburgh, I96I), pp. 251-2; Peter Laslett, The World
We Have Lost (London, I965); Peter Laslett and John Harrison, 'Clayworth and Cogenhoe',
Historical Essays, i600-1750, Presented to David Ogg, ed. H. E. Bell and R. L. Ollard (London,
I963), pp. I57-84; Richard Schlatter, Social Ideas of Religious Leaders, i66o-i68o (London,
I 940), pp. 27-3 I, 6o; Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, I558-I
64I (Oxford, I 965),
pp. 590, 59I (but cf. p. 669); Joan Thirsk, 'The Family' (review article), Past and Present,
xxvii (April I964), ii 6-22; and Keith Thomas, 'Women and the Civil War Sects', Past and
Present, xiii (April I958), 42.
9 John Dod and Robert Cleaver, A Godly Form of Household Government,for the Ordering
of Private Families (I598, reprinted London, I630), sigs. Z 5 and Aa 5. Original text of first
passage in Italics. For an analysis of this literary genre see Chilton L. Powell, English Domestic
Relations, I487-I653
(New York, I9I7), pp. IOI-46, I46, 234-42.
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GORDON
J. SCHOCHET
whether Adult persons, or children in Age '.10 Earlier, in I 584, Dudley Fenner
had simply said, 'The inferiours are those which are under the rest in the
household. '1'
The essential difference in this respect between children and servants was,
of course, that children were naturally born into their subordinate positions
whereas servants somehow entered into theirs. But the implications of this
distinction-which is recognizable as the classic dualism of nature and convention-were not carried very far in the literature of the period. Discussions
of the nature or content of obedience that was owed to parents and masters
suggest only slight differences between children and servants. Even the
justifications of filial duty did not rely exclusively upon natural parenthood;
generation was but one of several reasons why children had to obey their
parents. The other reasons included divine fiat, natural law, and the benefits
and protections provided by fathers; these considerations were also applicable
to servants. In addition, servants had to obey the masters who had been
placed over them as substitutesfor their natural parents. As Dod and Cleaver
wrote:
Now by parents wee understandnot onely the naturalparents, but such as by the
law of nature and of God, supply their places: as grandfathers,great grandfathers,
uncles, aunts, great uncles and aunts, brethren,sisters, kins-men, and kins-women,
Magistrates,and those to whose families the parties doe especially belong. For all
these are honouredin Scriptureby the name of parents. Neither may wee exempt
out of this number, Guardians,Masters, and such to whom the continuallcustody
and tuition is lawfully committed. For if such be commandedto provide for them,
as parts of their owne families, there is no reasonwhy they should not be especially
respected, as well in bestowing them abroadout of their families, as they were in
taking them into it.12
In their exposition of the Ten Commandments, these same authors said to
children, 'If God have made him [your father] the instrument of thy life
& maintenance, and set him over thee, thou must for this reason performe all
duties of honour unto him'. Obedience is due to parents 'not because they
be rich, or in great place, nor for any respect so much as this, because they be
thy parents'. The same was true of servants with the significant difference
that the duty to obey did come to an end with the conclusion of one's servitude:
So for servants;the point is not, whetherhe [yourmaster]be a poore man or a rich,
a simple man and ignorant,or wise and discreet, in whose service they live; but, he
10 Thomas Cobbet, A Fruitfull and Usefull Discourse Touching the Honour Due from
Children to Parents (London, I656), Epistle, sig. A 2v. Original text in Italics.
11 [Dudley Fenner], The Artes of Logike and Rhetoric, Plainlie Set Foorth (n.p., [I584]),
sig. C 2v. For additional examples of this same point, see the passages from catechism books
quoted below and throughout.
12
Dod and Cleaver, Godly Form, sig. I 2.
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MASS
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IN
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ENGLAND
4I7
is thy master: God hath made him thy governour. Then, for the time that thou
art his servant, he stands in the place of Christ unto thee, being of his familie;
and is to be obeyed, as if he were the most wise and honourable in the
world.'3
Fenner lumped children and servants together and justified their duty to
'be in subjection and obedience' to their superiors by citing Biblical passages
that dealt with the parents and children. Both groups, according to Fenner,
were obliged to perform the commandments of their superiors willingly 'and
to submit them selves to rebuke, to admonitions, corrections, & such like with
meekness'. In addition, the duties of children extended from 'their beginning
to their ending' and did not lessen 'untill by the fathers authority and consent, more ful powers be given to their children, because of years and discretion '.4 Bartholomaeous Batty included generation as well as gratitude
among the reasons why children were bound to obey their parents,15 and Peter
Aryault said that the son 'owes him [his father] a double service, the one in
respect of disparitie of yeers, between them, the other in respect of his fathers
goodness towards him'. These reasons were, of course, applicable to servants
as well, and Aryault added to them the duty that followed from having been
begotten by one's father.16
Generation explained the source of filial obedience, the precise manner in
which a child became obliged to his parents; it did not, however, define the
substance of obedience. Children and servants were usually not distinguished
in terms of that substance, and since it was the servant who entered and became
assimilated into the household, it is proper to speak of his duty as filial as well.
The notion that servants are obliged to obey their masters because they have
promised or contracted to do so is virtually absent from the literature on
household government. What is found instead is a justification of the duty of
servants as an ordinance of God or as a consequence of the benefits received
from the master, such as food, lodging, clothes, minimal Christian education,
and learning a trade in the case of apprentices-all of which were supposed to
be furnished by the master. But a man was obliged to provide these same
things for his own children, which was one of the reasons why they were
bound to obey him. The main differences were that fathers were to find professions and marriage partners for their own children. Thus, the contract
played a relatively limited role in defining the master-servant relationship; its
function was generally formal rather than substantive. It prescribed the
manner in which one became a servant and set limits on the period of
13 [John Dod and Robert Cleaver], A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandments (I604), i8th ed. (London, I632), pp. I68-9.
14 [Fenner], Artes of Logike, sigs. C3-C3v.
15 Bartholomaeous Batty, The Christian Mans Closet: Wherein is Contained a Large Discourse of the Godly Training up of Children (London, 158I), fo. 65.
16 Peter Aryault, A Discourse for Parents Honour, and Authorities, trans. John Budden
(London, I614), pp. 28-9.
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servitude. We are left with the paradoxical conclusion that servants in Stuart
England entered patriarchal relationships contractually.17
Insight into the nature of servitude is provided by the comments of
William Fleetwood, who was to be made Bishop of Ely by George I. Fleetwood, in 1705, attempted to justify to servants the apparent discomforts and
deprivations they suffered by pointing out the advantages of their lowly
status. In the process, he inadvertently provided a contemporary estimate
of the ways in which servants were insulated from the society in which they
lived; his observations are worth quoting in full:
[Servants] are only concerned in one matter, to do the work that lies before them,
whilst others have a world of things to look on, and look after. They have their
Masters only to please; their Masters, may be, are to court and humour all they
deal with: They, generally speaking, have themselves alone to provide for; Their
Masters have Wives and Children and Relations.Whatsoeverscarcity or dearness
happens, they find but little Alteration; What-ever publick mischiefs oppress a
Nation, they feel but little of them: Changesof Governmentaffect them not, that,
may be, quite undoe and overthrow their Masters; they contribute little to the
supporting the Publick, pay no Rates, nor Taxes; lose no gainful Employments,
suffer nothing by the Malice, or Insolenceof Parties,undergono Odium, Calumny,
or Slander; in a word, they are less distress'd and straitned,suffer less hardships
and misfortunesthan any sort of People else, above them. These are Conveniences
that generally attend Servantsof the lowest Condition; and which they would do
well to reflecton, now and then, as well as to keep them more easie, as to makethem
the more thankful, and that they might the better discern the kindness of Gods
Providence, in ordering matters so, that, with these Advantages,their Condition,
however mean and low it is to all appearances,is yet upon the square, for ease and
happiness of Mind, with that of many of their Masters.'8
In Stuart England, extremely large numbers of people were caught up in
this orientation. The picture that is beginning to emerge from studies of preindustrial social structure is most revealing. Communities from which information is available for the seventeenth century indicates that between 45 % and
50 % of the population was living in households of six or more at any given
time. These households were almost invariably single-family units; that is,
they included only one husband and wife, their own offspring, and their
servants. Households of this size were not the norm; they rarely accounted
for more than one-third of the units in each community. Most of their
members were servants rather than children still living with their parents,
for the average size of sibling groups was regularly between two and three. It
17 Of course, the notion of benefits is a reciprocal one, for it calls attention to the corresponding duties and obligations on both sides; in this respect it is close to the contractual theory.
Ultimately, I should say that there were two distinguishable doctrines that were combined
here in a contradictory if not sloppy manner. But the inherent tension in this conflation of
patriarchalism and the contract was virtually unnoticed. This problem is taken up below,
page 435 ff., where the interpretation sketched out here is further developed.
18 William Fleetwood, The Relative Duties of Parents, Husbands, Masters (London, 1705),
pp. 385-6.
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should not be surprising to find that the size of the household varied with
relative social status. The more prosperous and prominent members of each
community-the gentlemen, those who could afford to keep large groups of
servants-were the ones with the largest households.
To take only one example-not because it is representative or typical
(incdeed, there is no such thing as a community that typifies the whole of
England), but because the amount of information it provides is illustrative of
the points being made-Chilvers Coton, a Warwickshire village, in I684
contained 780 people living in I76 households. The mean size of the household was 4.43, but 44.I % of the population was living in households of six
or more, which were only 24 % of the total of the parish. The three families
headed by gentlemen had an average membership of I5.66,19 but the mean
size of the sibling groups in these same households was 3-66. The one
clergyman in Chilvers Coton headed a family of eight, while the mean size
for yeomen was 6&5(2 25 offspring); 6-z6 for husbandmen (4.27 offspring);
4.55 for trades- and craftsmen (2.98 offspring); and 3.92 for labourers (2.23
offspring). Those who became servants were the children of persons lower
down the social scale; they were, in other words, children whose parents
could not afford to maintain them at home and so put them into the households of their social betters where they were taught that they owed their
masters a filial obedience.20
It should not be inferred from this brief description of the Stuart household
and my necessary emphasis upon submission that all familial relationships
were authoritarian and unopposed. References to rebellious or disobedient
children and servants are not difficult to find. Bartholomaeous Batty wrote his
Christian Mans Closet to combat disrespectful and improperly trained youth.
'When I doe behold the families in these our borders and partes every where,'
he said, 'I am exceedingly moved with sorrow: for I see the youth growe up
in every place without the instruction of godliness, vertue or good manners,
as if they were the children of the most barbarous nation, nay rather of the
very Turkes and Infidels, so little regards is there of true godliness and vertue
for the most part.' 21 John Budden was motivated to translate Aryault's Discourse by 'the late experience of some defections and revolts in children of
lewd behaviour, which have contemptuously prophaned all obedience to
19 Chilvers Cotton is far from representative in precisely this respect, for one of these three
households consisted of thirty-seven people, of whom twenty-eight were servants. See Laslett,
World We Have Lost, p. 7.
20 The preceding remarks are based upon information placed at my disposal by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. Needless to say, the interpretation and use of these materials is my own and does not necessarily reflect the conclusions
of the Cambridge Group. Peter Laslett is completing a formal study of the social structure of
pre-industrial England based upon these same materials, and I have profited from discussions
with him. For an earlier statement of some of his findings, see his World We Have Lost,
passim.
21
Batty, Christian Mans Closet, fols.
27
i-i'V.
H J XII
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parents'.22 No doubt, more than one servant resisted the command of his
master to work on the sabbath, and one such instance led to an attempt to
reconcile the authority of masters with the presumed duty of all men to keep
the sabbath.23Religious conversation certainly disrupted family relationships.
After becoming a Quaker, Thomas Ellwood attributed to Satan himself the
notion that fathers were entitled to special treatment:
... so subtly and withal so powerfully did the enemy work upon the weak part in
me, as to persuademe that in these things [i.e. showing of deferenceand respect] I
ought to makea differencebetween my fatherand all other men; and that therefore,
though I did disuse these tokens of respect to others, yet I ought still to use them
towardshim, as he was my father. And so far did this wile of his prevail upon me,
througha fear least I should do amiss in withdrawingany sort of respect or honour
from my father which was due unto him, that being thereby beguiled, I continued
for a while to demeanmyself in the same mannertowardshim, with respectboth to
languageand gesture, as I had always done before.
And several days later when he finally refused to remove his hat in his father's
presence, Ellwood tells us that his father 'fell upon me with both his fists, and
having by that means somewhat vented his anger, he plucked off my hat and
threw it away'.24
These cases of disobedience can be explained in terms of the literature and
familial structure I have been discussing. It must be kept in mind that the
family obedience books-however unwittingly and unconsciously-abstracted
and described an idealized set of rules governing household relationships.
These rules-generalized as they were from the social structure itselfapproximated what Max Weber termed an 'ideal type' against which behaviour in actual families could be measured and evaluated; they provided
a perspective or context in terms of which actual households were perceived.
The presumed failure of significant numbers of families to conform to the ideal
in every respect illustrates the normative role of the abstraction. Deviations
were criticized precisely because they departed from or 'violated' the rules
or, in the case of Ellwood, justified because of the inadequacy or irrelevance
of the rules.
These familial experiences must have played a central role in the political
socialization process in Stuart England, but in the absence of specific information, we are forced to be mildly speculative. We know that large numbers of
persons were exposed to this symbolic and structural patriarchalism at
crucial periods in the development of their cultural and political awarenesses.
Aryault, Discourse, sig. A2.
See Edward Brerewood, A Learned Treatise of the Sabbath, 2nd ed. (Oxford, i63i), esp.
pp. 6-7, 24, 48, 49; and his A Second Treatise of the Sabbath: or An Explication of the Fourth
Commandment (Oxford, i632), p. 42. This specific case is discussed in Christopher Hill,
Intellectual Origins of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, i965), pp. 52-2.
24 Thomas Ellwood, The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself, ed. Henry Morley
(London, i885), pp. 34-5, 53. See also, pp. 43, 52, 54-6. I owe this reference to Mr Keith
Thomas of St John's College, Oxford.
22
23
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And it was at the time of these experiences that the symbolic 'creation' of
politics as a perceivable realm of activity took place for each individual. A
consciousness that already knew and understood the family and fatherhood
was extended to include the political order and magistracy. Children who
previously had no conception whatever of politics were introduced to the
state and told that it was identical to the household. It made no difference
that the king was not one's literal or biological father; neither was his master!
Only with great intellectual effort could this socialization have been overcome;
only through the imposition of some rival symbolization or a different set of
experiences and explanations of the political world could a person throw off
his patriarchal upbringing. One of the most important sources of alternative
social orientations was the printed word. Reasoned arguments and attempts
at intellectual persuasion as well as actual debates about the validity of
received opinion and proffered political symbols were found in books. But
this potential avenue of escape was obviously closed to the individual who
lacked the ability to read.25
The systematic study of the vital question of the literacy rate in preindustrial England is in its early stages, and conclusive figures for the seventeenth century are not yet available. However, some tentative findings can be
reported.26Preliminary research suggests that those who could do more than
merely read and write their own names accounted for only about one-third of
the population. As might be expected, literacy was far higher for men than
women and was concentrated among the more prominent and substantial
members of society. Below the level of the gentry, the degree of literacy
probably varied with the actual need for it. Two relevant factors are worth
mentioning: the complexity of an individual's work (and the technical skills
it required) and the extent to which a person's occupation brought him into
contact with gentlemen. The first case would cover merchants and gunsmiths,
for instance, as contrasted with hoopers. In the second category could be placed
drapers and their assistants. Thus, we could anticipate finding the lowest
25 As John Stuart Mill observed in his Political Economy: 'Of the working man, at least
in the more advanced countries of Europe, it may be pronounced certain that the patriarchal
or paternal system of government is one to which they will not again be subject. That question
was decided when they were taught to read, and allowed access to newspapers and political
tracts; when dissenting preachers were suffered to go among them, and appeal to their faculties and feelings in opposition to the creeds professed and countenanced by their superiors;
when they were brought together in numbers, to work socially under the same roof; when
railways enabled them to shift from place to place, and change their patrons and employers as
easily as their coats, when they were encouraged to seek a share in the government, by means
of the electoral franchise.' (Principles of Political Economy, 2 vols. (Boston, I848), II, 322-3;
quoted in Reinhard Bendix, 'The Lower Classes and the Democratic Revolution', Industrial
Relations, I (I96I-62),
io6.)
26 I am indebted to Roger Schofield of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population
and Social Structure for all of the information in this paragraph. Dr Schofield is directing the
literacy study for the Cambridge Group. A brief and preliminary description of his work is
contained in his 'Statement on a Survey of Literacy in Historical Times', Cambridge Group:
mimeographed, January I967.
27-2
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literacy rates among non-technical craftsmen, husbandmen, labourers, most
servants, and, of course, paupers and the meanest elements in society. It was
precisely these groups whose members were the rank and file or ordinary
Englishmen and who together comprised the masses.
Patriarchal socialization weighed most heavily on people in these social
statuses. They would have found it extremely difficult to understand and
rationalize a rejection of this training; it must have been much more regular
for them merely to continue in the same, familiar patterns of life. Their
familial experiences provided the initial sources of their social attitudes and
behaviour, for the family was both the basis of society and its most legitimate
and fundamental unit. It is highly unlikely that many of these ordinary people
recognized the potential conflict between the actual and the ideal household
and tried to account for or eliminate the gap. That was left to their literate
intellectual and social superiors. For as Jack Goody and Ian Watt have argued
in their important study of literacy, 'In so far as writing provides an alternative source for the transmission of cultural orientations, it favours awareness of
inconsistency. 27
Even those who did appreciate the intellectual problems in patriarchal and
familial accounts of society were trapped, as it were, by the culture in which
they lived, for patriarchalism was a fact of political life in Stuart England.
A number of contemporary references suggest that familial headship was one
of the determinants of genuine membership in the social and political community. In I645 when the Long Parliament announced the qualifications for
participating in the election of elders in the restructured Church of England,
the franchise was specifically limited to individuals who had subscribed to
the National Covenant 'and are not persons under Age, nor servants that have
no families '.28 In I647 an anonymous tract attacked the popular sovereignty
attributed to the army by arguing, inter alia, that the law of nature
gives all Authorityoriginallyto the fatherof a family, and where many of them agree
to make a City, or a Common-wealth,the residue of the family cannot avoid the
Governmentagreedupon by their Fathers and Masters, and have nothing to do to
overruleit in the least, though they be ever more in numbers than the Fathers or
Masters of families. Yet the new Doctrine of Peoples Soveraigntyextends to give
power to all servantsand childrengrown up, as well as to their parentsand masters.
And I am very much deceived, if very many in the Army (the pretendedRepresenters of the people)be not servantsand Prenticesnot yet free, and childrenunmarried,
whose parentsareyet living, but who in obedienceto the Parliament,and not for the
Publick service would never have suffered them to go from them to be Souldiers,
and do not allow of any of their dealings.29
27 Jack Goody and Ian Watt, 'The Consequences of Literacy', Comparative Studies in
Society and History, v (I962-63), 326.
28 An Ordinance ... [for] the Enabling of Congregations for the Choyce of Elders (London,
I645), p. 6. Original text in black letter. Emphasis added.
29 The Case of the Army Soberly Discussed (London, I647), p. 6. I owe this reference to
Dr Richard Schlatter, Provost of Rutgers University. In view of these and the following
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Professor Edmund Morgan has found that familial membership was so
important in Massachusetts during the Stuart period that 'If a single man
could not afford to hire servants and so set up a household or " family " of his
own, he was obliged to enter another family, either as a servant or as a boarder,
subjecting himself to the domestic government of its head. His only freedom,'
Morgan continues, 'lay in the choice of families, and if he failed to make a
choice, the selectmen [of his town] would make it for him.'30 According to
Peter Laslett, male heads of households were the only persons eligible for
local 'offices' in seventeenth-century Clayworth.31 Also instructive is James
Tyrrell's statement about the actual people who need have consented to the
original institution of government:
though there never was any Government where all the promiscuous Rabble of
Women and Childrenhad Votes, as being not capable of it, yet it does not for all
that prove all legal Civil Governmentdoes not owe its Originalto the consent of the
People, since the Fathers of Families, or Freemen at their own dispose, were really
and indeed all the People that needed to have Votes; since Women, as being concluded by their Husbands,and being commonlyunfitfor civil business,and Children
in their Fathers Families being under the notion of Servants, and without any
Property in Goods or Land, had no reason to have Votes in the Institution of the
Government.32
Tyrrell, of course, was answering Sir Robert Filmer's charge that the consent
of everyone to the original institution of government would have been impossible to obtain and that it would have been incompatible with the authority
of fathers, masters, and husbands.33 Guy Miege, who was not engaging in
polemics, reached a position very close to Tyrrell's. Miege saw no tension
between the natural subordination of wives and children and the claim of
man's free birth. 'Now tis plain, the Law of Nature has put no Difference (or
references, it is perhaps possible to qualify Professor Macpherson's compelling interpretation
of the Levellers' position on the franchise. In the context of contemporary attitudes, the crucial
factor that seems to have set servants and beggars off from the rest of society and deprived
them of political significance was not so much the alienation of their labour and their consequent economic dependence as it was their lack of familial headship. In this respect, the
Levellers might not have been vastly different from their contemporaries. Cf. C. B. Macpherson,
The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford, 1962), ch. iii. A
similar objection to Macpherson-based on social structural evidence-was made by Peter
Laslett in his extended review of Possessive Individualism: 'Market Society and Political
Theory', HistoricalJournal,vii (I964), I50-4, esp. pp. I5I-2 and n. i.
30 Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth
Century New England, paperback ed. (New York, I966), p. 27. See also pp. I44, I47.
31 Laslett, World We Have Lost, p. 74.
32 [James Tyrrell], Patriarcha non Monarcha: The Patriarch Un-monarch'd (London, i68i),
pp. 83-4, corrected according to Errata following p. 260. Tyrrell was one of the major critics
of Filmer's patriarchalism, but in this passage and throughout his tract, he revealed his acceptance of some of the assumptions on which the patriarchal theory of political obligation
rested.
33 See Sir Robert Filmer, The Anarchy of a Limited or Mixed Monarchy (I648), reprinted
in Patriarcha and Other Political Works, ed. Peter Laslett (Oxford, I949), p. 287. The relevant
passage was quoted by Tyrrell on p. 74.
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Subordination) amongst Men, except it be that of Children to their Parents,
or of Wives to their Husbands. So that, with relation to the Law of Nature,
all Men are born Free.'34
It is now possible to demonstrate that the seventeenth-century Englishman
was regularly presented an ideology that both complemented and justified
his patriarchally structured society and that he received this ideology from the
most reliable of all sources, the Church. A central element in the philosophical
and polemic patriarchal theories was the derivation of political duty from the
obligation to 'Honour thy father and thy mother'35 prescribed by the Fifth
Commandment. This interpretation was also an official doctrine of the
Church of England. In fact, the Church's position was that the Fifth Commandment placed upon the individual the obligation to obey all who were in
authority over him. The child-parent relationship was thus seen as standing
for the relations between subjects and magistrates, servants and masters,
students and teachers, laymen and clergy, wives and husbands, and youths and
elders. A traditional array of Biblical citations designed to show that God was
the author of each form of subordination was always included in these exegitic
readings of the Fifth Commandment. All of the groups that were somewhat
uncomfortably associated in the Anglican Church taught this doctrine. Even
the dissenting clergy did not disagree about the implications of the Fifth
Commandment. There were no significant variations of opinions about the
meaning of the duty to obey parents among the sects during the entire Stuart
period.
The importance of the Church and of religious teaching in general for the
extremely Bible-conscious and God-fearing seventeenth century is obvious.
The Church was most likely the only official agency encountered by the overwhelming majority of the population. Laslett remarks. 'It is true to say that
the ordinary person, especially the female, never went to a gathering larger
than could assemble in an ordinary house except when going to church. '36
The exceedingly low rate of literacy in Stuart England makes the influence of
the Church more readily apparent.
In a contemporary estimate of the intellectual level of seventeenthcentury Englishmen Simon Ford asserted:
For though a Minister thinks he expresseth himself very plain, yet it is almost
incrediblewhat strange conceits most ignorantpeople have of common notions.We
that are Ministers of the Gospel may easily guess at the profoundness of their
ignorance,by our own grosse imaginations(worse than Nicodemus of his Regeneration) when we were children, althoughwe had the advantageof educationbeyond
them; what absurd apprehensionswe had concerning the greatest and weightiest
points of Religion. And I am sure most of our hearersare not yet arrived(nor
34
Guy Miege, The New State of England (London,
35
Exod. xx.
36
Laslett, World We Have Lost, pp. 8-9.
I69I),
p. 69.
12.
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even to their dying day arrive)unto the understandingof a child of twelve or fourteen years old, bred under means of Literature.37
The man who did not know books and therefore could not argue from external
sources had little opportunity to challenge what was heard from the pulpit.
In addition there was strikingly little variation in the treatment of similar
topics by different clergymen (except of course on matters of doctrine over
which the diverse sects disagreed). The impact of this intellectual monopoly
upon the formation and development of rank-and-file or vulgar beliefs could
only have been astounding-especially when it is remembered that it was an
ideological complement to the society in which these beliefs were formed.
The most likely evidence upon which to base a study of the theological
influence on vulgar attitudes toward political obligation is not, as might be
supposed, the great volume of sermons that have survived. It is, rather, the
much neglected catechism book. Published sermons are not properly representative of the whole of England and indicate very little about what was
said in the pulpits of most of the country's churches.38 The title-pages of a
selection of seventeenth-century sermons reveal a very high correlation
between publication and one or more of the following: the status of the
preacher; his proximity to London, Cambridge, or Oxford (and a printer);
the occasion of the sermon; or the importance of the congregation to which it
was delivered. A sermon does not always have a discernible effect upon its
audience, and it is impossible to determine how a congregation responded to
it. Finally, it is not necessarily true that the versions that were printed were
the same as the sermons that were delivered in the services; the printed word,
after all, need not be designed to reach the same audience as the spoken one.39
The catechism, on the other hand, is precisely the kind of document to
consult to learn something about the content of mass education. The catechism is a series of questions and answers designed to demonstrate the basic
tenets of the faith through explications of its primary documents-the Apostles'
Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer-with an explanation
of the Sacraments appended. It is certain that no member of the Anglican
communion was able to avoid instruction in the catechism during the Stuart
period. Knowledge of the catechism was required for Confirmation, and there
was virtually no end to the clerical statements attesting to the importance
of proper catechistic instruction. Teaching a child the catechism is still the
Preface, sig. G6. Original text in
37 Simon Ford, A Sermon of Catechizing (London, I655),
Italics.
38 Godfrey Davies has estimated that perhaps 360,ooo
sermons were delivered in England
and Wales from i6oo to I640, of which only i,6oo were published ('English Political Sermons,
i). Cf. MichaelWalzer, TheRevoluHuntinigtonLibraryQuarterly,III (939-40),
I600-I640',
tion of the Saints: A Study in the Origin of Radical Politics (Cambridge, Mass., I965), p. 325.
39 The writings of Marshall McLuhan are, of course, central. See especially The Gutenberg
Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto, I962) and 'The Effect of the Printed
Book on Language in the Sixteenth Century', Explorations on Communication, ed. Edmund
Carpenter and Marshall McLuhan, paperback ed. (Boston, I966), pp. I25-35.
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means of preparing him for membership in the Church, and at the time of
his admission to full communion, at Confirmation, the candidate is examined
in order to prove his readiness. If he knows the catechism and can recite it
(or parts from it), he is regarded as trained in the fundamentals of the Church's
doctrines.
The catechism of the Church of England was drawn up in approximately
its present form in 1549, presumably by Cranmer and Ridley, and underwent
slight modifications until i66i when it was separated from the Confirmation
service in the readoption of the Book of Common Prayer. The clergy are
specifically enjoined to teach the catechism regularly by the Prayer Book
Rubric preceding the Catechism and by Canon LIX of I604, which says in
part:
Every Parson,Vicar, or Curate,upon every Sunday and Holy-day, before Evening
Prayer,shall, for half an hour or more, examineand instructthe youth and ignorant
persons of his parish in the Ten Commandments,the Articles of the Belief, and in
the Lord's Prayer;and shall diligentlyhear, instruct,and teach them the Catechism,
set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. And all fathers, mothers, masters, and
mistresses, shall cause their children, servants, and apprentices, which have not
learned the Catechism,to come to the Church, at the time appointed, obediently
to hear, and to be orderedby the Minister, until they have learned the same.
Excommunication was the penalty prescribed for continual failure either of
the clergy to teach the catechism or of adults to send their wards for instruction.40 It is, of course, doubtful that this punishment was frequently used;
persuasion and threats were probably sufficiently effective. Diligent attention
to the catechism was invariably inspected for in diocesan visitations. An
examination of over i OOdifferent visitation articles has revealed that while the
specific phrasing and the kinds of questions asked varied, there was not one
instance in which the teaching of the catechism was omitted.41 It is difficult to
determine how thoroughly and conscientiously catechizing was carried out.
Cases of neglect and expressions of discontent with the teaching of the catechism can be found throughout the period. There was clearly a gap of some
measure between the official requirements of the Church and the results that
were actually achieved. But to generalize from these negative examples to the
whole of seventeenth-century England would certainly be unwarranted, for
there are also many references to ministers who taught the catechism regularly
and faithfully.
Learning the catechism did not consist solely in memorizing questions and
40
J. V. Ballard (ed.), Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical, (1604 London,
I934),
pp. 62,
64.
41
The visitation articles examined were in the libraries of the British Museum and Cambridge University. An attempt was made to see articles from at least three diocese for each
decade and two or more sets of articles from each bishopric for the entire period under consideration. Because of the general disruption of the Civil War and the abolition of the episcopacy in I646, no visitation articles were found for the years I650-60 and very few for the
period from I64I-9.
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answers; the catechumen was also expected to understand the principles of
Christianity. Many churchmen wrote supplements to the established catechism to explain Church doctrines. These augmentations usually consisted of
subsidiary questions and answers and Biblical illustrations written in exposition of the Prayer Book Catechism. Some of them, however, were altogether
new works, designed as Richard Baxter said of his own, 'For those that are
past the common small Catechisms, and which grow to a more rooted Faith,
and to the fuller understandingof all that is commonly needful to a safe, holy,
comfortable and profitable life. '42
Many of these catechism books originated in the instruction that children
received, for the minister frequently included additional materials in his
lessons.43 Occasionally, and especially after I66I, these aids to learning and
teaching acquired some of the characteristics of polemic and propaganda,
particularly in their discussions of the Sacraments. The year i66i also witnessed the beginnings of an increase in the number of catechistic expositions.
The reasons for this new attention are the reinstitution of the Book of Common Prayer with its catechism, the consequent proscription of the Long
Parliament's Calvinistic Directory, and the relegation to unofficial status of
the Shorter Catechismof the Westminster Assembly of Divines that had been
in use since I648. With minor modifications, the Shorter Catechism is still
officially used by the Presbyterian Church. But in England between i66i and
from its having been adopted by some dissenters-it was merely
i689-aside
the most popular of several expositions of the Creed, Decalogue, Lord's
Prayer, and Sacraments that were offered as helps for the mastery of the
Prayer Book Catechism. The difference between the Assembly's Catechism
and the other unofficial works was that it had once enjoyed an authoritative
place within the Anglican liturgy and still had a cohesive group of dedicated
users. Their attitudes were probably typified by the observation of an
anonymous author of a i688 version of the Shorter Catechism, which also
explains its anomolous status: 'There are many Catechisms yet common in
several parts of the Kingdom, which have never been disallowed in the strictest
Times. It is no Derogation from the Church-Catechism, that People grow in
sound Knowledge by Larger ones, that may be used as Expositions of it.'44
The more orthodox opinion, however, was that members of the same Church
42
Richard Baxter, The Catechizing of Families: A Teacher of Householders How to Teach
Their Households (London, i683), title page. For a more detailed statement of Baxter's attitude
toward the catechism and catechizing see his Gildas Salvianus: The Reformed Pastor, Showing
the Nature of the Pastoral Work (i 656), ed. by William Brown as The ReformedPastor, Religious
Tract Society, sth ed. (London, n.d.), pp. I94, 209, 22I, 222, 226, 278. Also relevant is G. R.
Cragg, Puritanism in the Period of the GreatPersecution, i66o-i688 (Cambridge, I957), pp. I29,
I39, I78.
43 See Alexander Mitchell (ed.), Catechisms of the Second Reformation (London, i886), p. 43,
referring to William Gouge, A Short Catechisme, 7th ed. (London, i635). See also Increase
Mather's Preface to John Falvell, An Exposition of the Assemblies Catechism (London, i692).
44 The Catechism Made Practical (London, i688), Preface, sig. A 9.
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should 'all hold fast, and stick close unto ... one commonform of sound words'
for the 'maintenance of unity in the Faith '.4 This was by no means a new
objection, for as early as I630 John Mayer complained that the Prayer Book
catechism was being neglected, 'any other being preferred' in place of it.46
The existence of these various catechisms in England throughout the
Elizabethan and Stuart periods does not damage the general thesis that the
patriarchal explanation of political obligation was accepted by almost all
Englishmen because it corresponded to their experiences and was capable of
explaining other doctrines they might have encountered. In fact, the argument
is actually strengthened, for the same concept was incorporated into the
teachings of all of the Protestant sects, as a comparison of their interpretations
of the Fifth Commandment (or Fourth for Lutherans) will show. According
to Luther, the command to honour parents means 'We should so fear and
love God as not to despise nor provoke our parents and rulers, but honour,
serve, obey, love and esteem them.'47 Thomas C. McDonough has called
attention to the great importance of this Commandment to Luther, who treated
it as 'the bulwark of the family and education, and the divine foundation of
all authority, both temporal and spiritual'.48
Calvin's catechism, unofficially adopted by the Scottish Kirk about I570,
was more specific though not different. After stating that the Fifth Commandment requires that parents be loved, honoured, and obeyed, Calvin continued:
M[aster]. Is there nothing else to be understoodin this commandment?
C[atechumen]. Though no mention be made expressly but of the father and
mother, yet we must understand in them all magistrates,and superiours: for so
much as there is one manner of considerationof them all.
M. What is that?
C. Because God hath given unto them preeminence:for there is none authoritie
of Parents, of Princes, or Magistrats,Maisters, neither any other office or title of
preeminence,but such as God hath ordained. Rom. I3. I.49
In the Institutes, Calvin wrote that the Fifth Commandment's requirements
are 'that we should look up to those whom God has placed over us, and
should treat them with honour, obedience, and gratefulness'. They are entitled
to complete obedience, he said, adding his doctrine of non-resistance: 'It
makes no difference whether our superiors are worthy or unworthy of this
45
Richard Sherlock, The Principles of the Holy Christian Religion (I66I),
iith ed. (London,
I673), sigs. A4v-A5.
46 John Mayer, The English Catechisme Explained: or, A Comentarie on the Short Catechisme
Set Forth in the Booke of Common Prayer (i6zs), 4th ed. (London, I630), Epistle, sig. A3.
47 Martin Luther, Smaller Catechism (1529),
translation in Philip Schaff, A History of the
Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols. (London, I878), III, 75.
The Law and Gospel in Luther: A Study of Martin Luther's
48 Thomas C. McDonough,
Confessional Writings (Oxford, I963), p. 71.
49 John Calvin, The Catechisme or Manner to Teache Children the Christian Religion (I537;
translation of 1556), Questions 194 and 195, reprinted in Horatius Bonner (ed.), Catechisms
of the Scottish Reformation (London, i866), p. 45.
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honour, for whatever they are they attained their position through God's
providence-a proof that the Lawgiver himself would have held them in
honour. '50
The Anglican Prayer Book Catechism is characteristically brief on this
matter; in fact, it contains no specific interpretations of any of the Commandments and in this respect departed from the practices of other religions. The
catechumen merely recites the Ten Commandments in order and is then
asked, 'What dost thou chiefly learn by these Commandments?' He answers,
'I learn two things: my duty towards God and my duty towards my neighbour, ' a distinction that corresponds to the traditional interpretation of the
division of the decalogue into Two Tables. After stating his duty toward God,
the catechumen continues:
My duty towardsmy neighbouris to love him as myself, and to do all men as I would
they should do unto me: to love, honour, and succour my father and mother: to
honour and obey the King and all that are put in authorityunder him: to submit
myself to all my governors,teachers,spiritualpastors and masters: to order myself
lowly and reverentlyto all my betters: to hurt nobody by word nor deed: to be true
and just in all my dealings: to bear no malice nor hatred in my heart: to keep my
hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evil-speaking, lying and
slandering;to keep my body in temperance,soberness, and chastity: not to covet
nor desire other men's goods; but to learn and labourtruly to get mine own living,
and to do my duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call me.5'
Finally, the Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Assembly stressed the
rights and duties of station:
Q[uestion] 64. What is requiredin thefifth Commandment?
A[nswer]. The fifth Commandmentrequireth the preserving the honour, and
performingthe duties, belonging to every one in their severallplaces and relations,
as Superiors,Inferiors, or Equals.
Q. 65. Whatis forbiddenin thefifth Commandment?
A. The fifth Commandment forbiddeth the neglecting of, or doing anything
against,the honourand duty which belongethin their severallplaces and relations.52
An analysis of over 2oo Tudor and Stuart glosses upon these official texts
has revealed without exception that whenever the Decalogue was discussed,
political duty was extracted from the Fifth Commandment. Of course, the
extent of that duty, the clarity with which it was set forth, the inclusion of the
corresponding duties of superiors, and the number of relationships that were
incorporated into this Commandment were all subject to individual variation.
50 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, II, Viii, 35, ed. John T. McNeill, trans.
Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1959), I, 401, 402. The bulk of Calvin's political
and in this discussion, he neither
teaching is found in book iv, ch. xx ff. (II, 1485-15zi),
mentioned the Fifth Commandment nor dealt with the origins of government.
51 Catechism of the Church of England ( 549, etc.), reprinted in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, III, 519-20.
52 Westminster Assembly of Divines, The Shorter Catechism (I644), reprinted in Mitchell
(ed.), Second Reformation, pp. 22-3.
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What is important to note, however, is that the Fifth Commandment was
assigned the task of justifying government-a task that had largely been the
preserve of the thirteenth chapter of Romans during the Middle Ages. In
the catechism books, Romans xiii was one of the Biblical citations used in
support of the political extension of Exodus xx, verse I2.53
Seldom was the Fifth Commandment interpreted with the lucidity and
logical precision employed by Archbishop Cranmer. The same obedience and
honour that is clearly due to parents, he said, 'is dew to all them whose helpe
and labour your parents doeth oftentimes use in gouvernying and teaching
you'. Talking of the masters to whom an individual found himself apprenticed
the archbishop asserted a notion of parent-substitutes: ' . . it is the offyce of
chyldren to obey in all thynges and to honour even as theyr parentes, those
to whom they thus be committed and with whom they dwel. For unto such
theyr fathers and mothers have gyven their power and authorities.' Obedience
to magistrates arises 'when children grow to manners age, and then refuse to
be ruled by theyr parentes, masters, teachers and curates, and begynne to
waxe wylde and wanton and to hurte others. . . '. It is at this point that 'the
common officers ought to chastise them' for their disobedience to God's law.
But instead of pushing this justification of temporal enforcement of divine
commands to a more Erastian conclusion, Cranmer only stated that magistrates ought to be obeyed because they provide the conditions that allow
subjects to live in peace.54 Nonetheless, his careful demonstration of the
relation between the duty to obey parents, masters, and rulers is almost unique
in its far-sightedness and depth. It certainly must have made the demands of
the material world more intelligible to his listeners, for the in loco parentis
doctrine described precisely the kind of situation faced by the apprentice and
young servant.
More representative was the treatment in John Poynet's CatechismusBrevis,
a book that all schoolmasters were ordered to use in the name of King
Edward VI. In addition to obliging men to 'love, feare, and reverance' their
53 Romans xiii did not disappear as an independent justification of (political) authority;
it continued to provide texts for sermons throughout the period. But the coupling of Romans
xiii with the duty to obey parents as an argument for obedience was very much a product of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One of the earliest examples of such a coupling I have
found is John Hooper, Godly and Most Necessary Annotations in ye. xiii Chapyter to the Romans
sig. DiV: 'Feare is due unto GOD, the kyng, to parents, and to all others
(Worcester, I55I),
whome we be holpe [i.e. hold] in bodie or soule, and so is honour due lykewyse.' (Original
text in black letter.) See also the linking of the two justifications in Stephen Egerton's introduction to Robert Pricke, The Doctrine of Superioritie, and of Subjection, Contained in the
Fifth Commandment of the Holy Law of Almightie God (London, I609), sigs. A6-A 7V.
54 Thomas Cranmer, A Short Instruction into Christian Religion: Being a Catechism (I548),
ed. Edward Burton (Oxford, i829), pp. 52, 53. Almost as if he anticipated seventeenthcentury theories of the state of nature and social contract, the archbishop appears to have been
saying that the state would not be necessary if men were sufficiently obedient without it,
reflecting perhaps the Lutheran revival of the Augustinian attitude toward the Fall and the
need for coercive restraint. Burton, the editor of this edition of Cranmer's Catechism, has
called attention to its Lutheran content. (Introduction, p. xxii.)
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431
natural parents, Poynet said, the Fifth Commandment 'byndeth us also
most humbly, and with most natural affection to obei the magistrate: to
reverence the Minyesters of the church, oure Scholemasters, with al oure
elders, and betters'.5 Like Cranmer, Poynet failed to place any limits on the
duty to obey the civil magistrate. Thomas Becon, one of the Marian Exiles,
tried to meet this difficulty with the assertion, already a commonplace, that
temporal rulers were to be obeyed in all things except when their commands
were contrary to the word of God.56 Persons who were taught their catechism
with the assistance of Becon's commentary learned that in the Fifth Commandment:
God doeth not only require of us honour and obedience toward our fathers and
mothers, but also towardethe temporallmagistrates& the Ministers of Gods word,
and toward our elders and all suche as be our Superioursand governours.For if it
be mete and convenient, that we shoulde honour and obeye them, which are the
parentesof this oure bodye: is it not also semelye, that we do honour, & obeye the
temporallMagistrates,thorowe [i.e., through]whose benefyte this our bodye is well
governed and enjoy peace and quietness.57
An anonymous catechism published in I6I4 defined the father and mother
of the Fifth Commandment as 'Our naturall Parentes, the fathers of our
Countrie, or of our house, the aged, and our fathers in Christ'.5 Several
others described political rulers as fathers. Robert Ram, in I655, saw those to
whom obedience was due as 'i. Our naturall Parentes, Fathers and Mothers
in the flesh. 2. Our Civil Parents, Magistrates, Governours, and all authority.
[and] 3. Our spiritual Parents, Pastors, Ministers, and Teachers.'59 The very
important Whole Duty of Man, which was described in its Preface as 'a short
and plain direction to the very meanest readers ',60 provided this interpretation
of the Fifth Commandment:
. . . here it will be necessaryto considerseveralsorts of Parents,accordingto which
the duty to them is to be measured.Those are these three, the Civil, the Spiritual,
the Natural.
The Civil Parentis he whom God hath establishedthe SupremeMagistrate,who
by a just right possess the Throne of a nation. This is the common fatherof all those
that are under his authority.6'
55 [John Poynet], A Short Catechism, or Playne Instruction (London), I553, fo. viV. Original
text in black letter. (This work, a translation of the Catechismus Brevis, is also known as King
Edzvard's Catechism.)
56 Thomas Becon, A New Catechisme Sette Forth Dialogue-wise in Familiar Talk betweene
the Father and His Son, in The Workes, 3 vols. (London, I566-4), I, 3388v.
57 Ibid. fos. 357-357V58 Short Questions and Answeres, Contayning the Summe of Christian Religion (London, I6I4),
sigs. B 2v-B 3. Original text in black letter.
59 Robert Ram, The Countrymens Catechisme: or, A Helpe for Householders (London, 1655),
P. 3960 [Richard Allestree], The Whole Duty of Man Laid Down in a Plain and Familiar
Way
(i658; London, I842), Preface, p. xxvii.
61 Ibid. xiv, i and 2, p. 23 I.
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A similar distinction between natural, civil, and spiritual parents was made by
Edward Wetenhall in his exposition of the Prayer Book catechism in i678.62
John Mayer's catechism explained that magistrates and clergymen were
included within the requirements of the Fifth Commandment because 'the
word Father is diversely taken in the Scriptures, even for every Superiour in
any thing'. However, Mayer went on to say that it was human rather than
natural or divine law that extended the meaning of fathers and mothers, for
natural law requires only that natural parents be obeyed.63 After asserting
that by the Commandment 'all inferiours, must honour... and obey, their
parents, masters, and other superiours', Samuel Browne called for gentleness
on the part of those in authority: 'Magistrates [are] to governe, Ministers to
instruct the people, as carefull & tender fathers. The contrary sins, greater or
lesse, are here forbidden. '64 Archbishop James Ussher merely listed the
relationships and corresponding duties of the Fifth Commandment,65 but in
his longer and more comprehensive Body of Divinitie (I645) he explained
that all superiors were called parents for two reasons:
i. For that the name of Parentsbeing a most sweet and loving name, men might
thereby be alluredthe ratherto the duties they owe; whether they should be duties
that are to be performedto them, or which they should performeto their Inferiours.
2. For that at the first, in the beginningof the worldParentswere also Magistrates
Pastours, School Masters &c.66
Edward Boughen and William Nicholson also pointed to the patriarchal
origins of government as the reason for including political obligation within
the duty to obey parents,67but neither author incorporated a learned political
disquisition into his treatment of the Fifth Commandment.
Richard Baxter, on the other hand, ranged a considerable distance from
catechistical explanations of the relations of inferiors and superiors, but he
came to grips with some fundamental problems that had been merely raised
or altogether ignored by previous writers. Beginning with the familial origins
of government, then moving on the contractual basis of contemporary states,
Baxter attempted to provide a clear answer to the question of whether the
magistrate should be disobeyed because his commands violate the laws of
God. His conclusion was that each person must ultimately judge for himself,
62
[Edward Wetenhall], The Catechisme of the Church of England, with Marginal Notes
(London, i678), pp. 28-9.
63
Mayer, English Catechisme (n. 46, above), pp. 303-306, quotation from p. 303.
64
Samuel Browne, The Summe of Christian Religion, Shewing the Undoubted Truth, Holy
Practice, and Heavenly Comfort Therein Contained (London, I630), sig. Asv.
65 James Usher, The Principles of Christian Religion (London, i645), reprinted in Mitchell,
p.
247.
James Ussher, A Body of Divinitie, or the Summe and Substance of Christian Religion
(i645), 4th ed. (London, i635), p. 257. See also James Ussher, The Sovereignes Power, and the
Subjects Duty: Delivered in a Sermon (Oxford, i644), pp. 14-15.
67 Edward Boughen, A Short Exposition of the Catechisme of the Church of England (1663;
London, i673), p. 53; William Nicholson, A Plain, but Full Exposition of the Catechism of the
Church of England (i655; London, I663), pp. 114-15.
66
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for Baxter regarded the ability to make decisions of this nature as an essential
attribute of human beings. But the initial burden was to be upon parents,
teachers, and ministers who were to see that every man was given the necessary training for such independence of action. Proper Christian instruction,
according to Baxter, will ensure that mass confusion and anarchy do not
result from each man's determining when and how far to obey.68This detailed
analysis was undoubtedly the most far-reaching treatment of this crucial
problem in a Tudor and Stuart catechism book, and it was as meaningful as
many that appeared in tracts that were avowedly political. But then, Richard
Baxter was no mere author of catechism books; nor was he the writer of trite
polemics.
The number of catechisms quoted could be greatly increased, but the
result would seldom be more than a tiresome repetition of words such as
those employed by Humphrey Brailsford to explain the Fifth Commandment
in I689. The inclusion here of the rights of inferiors is worth noting:
These words, Father and Mother, include all superiours,as well as a Civil Parent
(the king and His Magistrates,a Master, a Mistress, or an Husband)and an Ecclesiastical Parent (the Bishop and Ministers) as the naturalParent that begat and bore
thee: To all these I owe Reveranceand Obediance,Service and Maintenance,Love
and Honour.
... And I must have from my Natural Father, Maintenance,Education,Instruction, Correcting and Blessing: From my King, Justice, Reforming Abuses in
Religions,Encouragementto the Good, Punishmentto the Bad: From my Husband,
Love, Direction, Maintenance and Protection: From my Master (or Mistress)
Instruction, Food, Correction,Wages: From my Minister, a Good Example and
wholsome Administrationof SpiritualThings.69
The position of the non-conformist was no different, even after the granting
of toleration. John Flavell wrote in explanation of the Assembly's Shorter
Catechism in I692,
All Superiours and Inferiours are concerned in it [the Fifth Commandment]:
Especially (i) Political Fathers and their Children; that is Kings and Subjects:
Mark ii. IO... (2) SpiritualFathersandtheirChildren;thatis Ministersandtheir
People: I Cor. 4. I5...
(3) Natural Parents and their Children; Ephes. 6. I...
(6) All Civil Superioursand Inferiours,as Husbands and Wives, Masters and Servants:Ephes.v. 22... AndEphes.6, 5.70
The value of the catechism and its interpretation of the Fifth Commandment as a means of strengthening the loyalties of their subjects did not escape
the notice of Kings James I and Charles I1.71 In I6I5 James ordered the
68
69
70
71
Baxter, Catechizing, pp. 29I-6.
[Humphrey Brailsford], The Poor Man's Help (London, I689), p.
Flavell, Exposition (n. 43, above), pp. 133-4.
See the discussion in n. 89 below.
40.
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publication of God and the King, an anonymous dialogue on political obligation (presumably written by Richard Mocket, Warden of All Souls, Oxford)
that opened with an unyielding insistence upon the interpretation of the
Fifth Commandment that was characteristic of the catechism book. Moreover,
the passage that follows, which is the first page and one-half of the tract,
asserts that this doctrine is virtually a commonplace and then goes on to
argue, still on the basis of the Fifth Commandment, that the duty owed to the
king is greater than that owed to a natural father.
Theodidactus.
You are well met friend Philalethes;your countenanceand gesture
import that your thoughts are much busied: what may be the occasion of these
Meditations?
Philalethes. Somewhat I heard this Evening-Prayer from our Pastor in his
CatechisticalExposition upon the fifth Commandment,Honour thy Father, and
thy Mother: who taught that under these pious and reverentappelationsof Father
and Mother are comprised not onely our natural Parents, but likewise all higher
Powers; and especiallysuch as have SoveraignAuthority,as the Kings and Princes
of the Earth.
Theodidactus.Is this Doctrine so strange unto you as to makeyou muse thereat?
Philalethes.God forbid, for I am well assuredof the truth thereof, both out of the
Word of God, and from the Light of Reason. The sacred Scripturesdo stile Kings
and Princes the nursing Fathers of the Church [Isa. xlix. 23.], and therefore the
nursing Fathers also of the Common-weal:these two Societies having so mutual
a dependence, that the welfare of the one is the prosperityof the other.
And the evidence of Reason teacheth, that there is a stronger and higher bond
of Duty between Children and the Father of their Country, than the Fathers of
privateFamilies.These [latter]procurethe good onely of a few, and not without the
assistance and protection of the other, who are the common Foster-fathers of
thousands of Families, of whole Nations and Kingdoms, that they may live under
them an honest and peaceablelife.72
But Mocket was not content to leave the matter at this point. Very near the
end of the dialogue, the same arguments were repeated as Theodidactus
compared the subservience of children and subjects:
But the duty of Subjects in obedience unto their Soveraign,is grounded upon the
Law of Nature; beginningwith our first beginning. For as we are born Sons, so we
are born Subjects,his Sons, from whose loyns; his Subjects,in whose Dominions
we are born. The same duties of Subjects are also enjoynedby the Moral Law, and
particularly(as you shewed in the very entranceunto this Conference)in the fifth
Commandment,Honourthy Father and thy Mother:where, as we are required to
honour Fathers of privateFamilies, so much more the Fatherof our Countreyand
the whole Kingdom.73
72 [Richard Mocket], God and the King: or, A Dialogue, Shewing That Our Soveraign Lord
the King of England, Being Immediate under God within His Dominions, Doth Rightly Claim
Whatsoever is Required by the Oath of Allegiance (I615; reprinted London, I663), pp. I-2.
Philalethes passages of original text in Italics.
73 Ibid. p. 35.
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James ordered that the book be studied in all the schools and universities
and that it be purchased by all householders in England and Scotland. The
command was strengthened in Scotland in i6i6 by acts of the Privy Council
and General Assembly, and it has been claimed that God and the King 'had in
consequence an enormous sale'.7 Charles II had the work republished early
in his reign, and the title-page of the reprint proudly heralded the book as
'Formerly compiled by the especial Command of King JAMES (of blessed
memory;) and now commanded to be reprinted and published by his Majesties Royal Proclamation, for the Instruction of all his Majesties Subjects in
their Duty and Allegiance. 75
There should be no question that Englishmen of all backgrounds were
taught very early in their lives that they had to obey the king because God
ordered it when He gave the Fifth Commandment to Moses. It is, of course,
impossible to determine the full significance of this fact, but it does seem
reasonable to speculate that ordinary members of Stuart society-to the extent
that the problem was one on which they were capable of reasoning-would
have been inclined to explain their political obligation by referring to the
divine duty to obey their mothers and fathers. A response based on the contract, on the other hand, would not have accorded with the experience of the
masses. There was certainly a contractual tradition of which these people
were aware; it existed alongside of and within the patriarchal explanation of
social rank. However, it is unlikely that ordinary Englishmen understood this
tradition in terms of the factors that the twentieth-century attributes to the
contract device in political theory: limits on authority and the source for
personal rights and claims. As I have already suggested, the contract seems to
have been used more as a formal explanation of how people entered relationships than as a definition of the nature and content of those stations.76 This
was certainly the case with servitude. It seems unlikely that many people
would have learned a new doctrine-or acquired the ability to place a new
interpretation on a familiar one-after leaving the households of their masters
74 DNB, 'Mocket, Richard', s.v. Cf. David H. Wilson, King James VI and I, paperback ed.
(London, I963), pp. 294-5. See also Willson, 'James I and His Literary Assistants', Hunting75 [Mocket], title-page.
ton Library Quarterly, viii (i944), 54.
76 This attitude was not peculiar to the literature on household government. It has recently
been suggested that the confusions in Locke's doctrine of the contract and consent would be
removed if his theory were interpreted as a discussion of how men become liable to preexisting political obligations rather than as a justification of that obligation or a statement of its
contents. See John Dunn, 'Consent in the Political Theory of John Locke', Historical Journal,
x (i967), 153-82. My interpretation of the significance of the contract in master-servant
relations should be contrasted with George and George, Protestant Mind (n. 8, above) pp. 295305. The Georges stress the egalitarian aspects of the contract and see a ' relationship between
individuals, each of whom is essentially free' (p. 297). T agree that the implications of the contract are individualist freedom and at least ad hoc, face to face equality, but I cannot see how the
Georges' references support their contention that seventeenth-century Englishmen understood servitude in this manner. The difficulty, I think, stems from the Georges' having
conflated the responsibilities of masters, which were duties of station, with obligations derived
from the contract. See the discussion in n. 17, above.
28
HJ XII
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and after their learning and socialization were largely completed. Moreover,
there appear to have been few inducements for them to do so.
The insistence that one must obey his master or pay his rent because he has
promised or contracted to do so and, correspondingly, that he is entitled to
certain stated rights or privileges that his master or landlord has agreed to
respect or provide are seldom encountered by themselves in the seventeenthcentury literatures on the household. Instead, we find Richard Steele telling
the husbandmen in his 'Countrey Congregation' as late as I 68 I that landlords
were their patriarchal superiors:
The Eighth Temptationof the Husbandmanis, Slavishfear of Man. It is true, he
must keep a due Reverencefor the Magistrate,for he is the Minister of God; and
thereforeto contemn him secretly; or disdain him openly, is no little crime. And a
just fear and respect he must havefor his Landlord,or the Gentlemanhis Neighbour
because God hath placed them above him, and he hath learnt that by the Father he
ought to honour, is meant all his Superiours;and himself expects the like from his
children and servants.77
Thomas Cobbett was much more direct. In his Fruitfull and Usefull Discourse
he said, 'By Father and Mother, most interpreters understand all superiours.'
He included in this category those who have authority 'by the Law of Nature,
as naturall Fathers and Mothers, who are principally here intended; Or by
way of private Contracts, as Husbands who are wives superiours: especially
Masters, whether in the Family, 2 Kings. 5. I 3. or in the School, and College,
2 Kings. 2. i2. who are as Fathers to their Servants, Scholars, and Pupils. '78
Thus, the limits on and duties of superiors flowed from the nature of fatherhood rather than from a prior and conditional agreement.
To combine these doctrines in this manner was, of course, paradoxical.
Patriarchalism, at its base, treated status as natural and supported authority
and duty without reciprocity. The contract emphasized the conventional
sources of status and ultimately led to limits on authority and the reciprocity
of rights and duties. These were precisely the terms in which these theories
confronted each other as rival accounts of political obligation, but it should
not be surprising that the inconsistency of using them together was unnoticed
in the less philosophic literature on the household. The recognition, working
out, and eventual elimination of inconsistencies is an intellectual activity that
belongs to political philosophy. It is not congruent with unconscious behaviour
or organization; nor is it generally characteristic of the kind of mind that
would devote itself to detailed analyses of social relationships. When this
specific inconsistency was noticed by thinkers who appreciated its implications
for political life, attempts were made to resolve the issue in favour of one or
the other position. Filmer, for instance, very effectively argued that an historical
77 Richard Steele, The Husbandmans Calling: Shewing the Excellencies, Temptations, Graces,
Duties, &c. of the Christian Husbandman, 3rd ed. (London, i68i), p. 104.
78 Cobbett, Fruitfull and Usefull Discourse (n. io, above), pp. I-z.
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social contract was actually a patriarchal account of politics because it
bound people to governments established by their ancestors.79 Hobbes, on
the contrary, asserted that all social relationships, including those between
parents and children, were contractual rather than natural.80 Locke tended
in the same direction and stressed the rights of children and the corresponding
duties of parents and insisted on distinguishing between literal fatherhood
and all other forms of authority.81 In strictly social and non-philosophic
terms, it remained for Bishop William Fleetwood in I705 to recognize what
had long been implicit. Fleetwood saw not just the household but the whole
of society as sets of contractual and reciprocal relationships. 'I take it for a
Rule, and granted', he wrote, 'that there is no Relation in the World, either
Natural, or Civil and agreed upon, but there is a Reciprocal duty obliging
each Party.' 'I only mention this', the Bishop continued, 'to make it very
evident that the Obligation of Children to love, honour, respect and obey
their Parents, is founded originally upon the Parents love and care of them,
and to shew that no one can requite any thing from another as a Duty, to
whom he does not also owe something, by way of Duty.'82 On this basis,
Fleetwood explained all status:
There is no thing more certain,than that Superioursareoblig'd as much in Reason,
and Justice,and by Gods Commands,to dischargewhat they owe to their Inferiours,
as Inferioursare to dischargewhat they owe to their Superiours.For every Relation
being built, and dependingupon a Contract,eithersuppos'din Nature and Reason,
or actuallyagreedupon and made betwixt the Partiesrelated,upon what termsthey
found it convenient;it must needs be, that each Party is oblig'd to performhis part
of that Contractupon which the Relationstands: For Justice and Reasonknow no
differencesof Parties or Relations; with them (as with their everlastingFountain)
there is no respect of Persons: They only have regardto what the agreementis, and
how it is perform'd.83
What all of this reveals is a gradually changing attitude toward the family.
The household itself eventually changed, and it was the resolution of the
paradoxical combination of patriarchal and contractual doctrines in favour
of the contract and the slow movement away from status relationships that
marks the emergence of mass society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When both the household and the way in which it was perceived had
altered, explanations of politics derived from the patriarchal family were no
79 Filmer, Anarchy, Political Works (n. 33, above), p. 289.
See any modern reprint of Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, & Power
of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (London, I65I), chs. xiii and xx; and my
'Thomas Hobbes on the Family and the State of Nature', Political Science Quarterly, LXXXII
80
(I967),
427-45.
See Locke, Two Treatises (n. 3, above), II, 56, 58, 6o, 65, 69, in conjunction with sections
2, 71, I69, 173. r have examined this problem in 'The Family and the Origins of the State in
Locke's Political Philosophy', John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. John W. Yolton
(Cambridge, I969), pp. 8I-98.
82 Fleetwood, Relative Duties (n. i8, above), pp. 86, 88-9.
83 Ibid. p. 394.
81
28-2
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longer relevant. But for the vast majority of seventeenth-century Englishmen
any other account could hardly have made very much sense, though we shall
never fully succeed in reconstructing the unconscious social and political
prejudices of these people.
On a level of overt political awareness, some men-presumably including
the authors of catechistical expositions-did allow the political patriarchalism
extracted from the Fifth Commandment to become a part of their regular
intellectual responses. Chief Justice Coke, in the important case of Postnati
(i6o6), demonstrated that the catechism was not necessarily forgotten after
confirmation by the literate and educated members of society. Combining
the law of nature, Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and the Fifth Commandment
into a single basis for political obligation, the Chief Justice said:
The Law of Nature is that which God at the Time of Creationof the Nature of
Man infused into his Heart, for his Preservationand Direction; and this is Lex
Eterna, the MoralLaw, calledalso the Law of Nature.And by this Law, writtenwith
the Finger of God in the Heart of Man, were the People of God a long Time
governed, before the Law was written by Moses, who was the first Reporter or
Writer of Law in the World. The Apostle in the second Chapter to the Romans
saith, Cum enimgentes quae legemnon habentnaturaliteres quae legessuntfaciunt.
And this is within that Commandof the Moral Law, Honora Patrem, which doubtless doth extend to him that is pater patriae.84
These same sentiments were echoed by Arthur, Lord Capel, Baron of
Hadham, before he was executed in I649; he justified his having followed
Charles I on the basis of God's command to obey parents. It was because he
had kept the Fifth Commandment, Capel said, that he was going to his
death:
I die, I take it, for maintainingthe fifth Commandment,enjoin'd by God himself,
which enjoins Reveranceand Obedienceto Parents.All Divines, on all hands, tho'
they contradictone anotherin many severalOpinions,yet most Divines do acknowledge that there is intended Magistracyand Order; and certainlyI have obey'd that
Magistracyand that Order under which I have lived, which I was bound to obey;
and truly, I do say very confidently, that I do die here for keeping, for obeying
that Fifth Commandmentgiven by God himself, and written by his own Finger.85
In Sudbury, Massachusetts, in I656, John Ruddock, the head selectman,
was charged with violating the Fifth Commandment because of his refusal
to co-operate with an investigating committee appointed by the Colony
Council of Massachusetts.86 The relevance of the Fifth Commandment to
political obligation was called into question at the Putney Debates during one
84 Edward Coke, Postnati, Calvin's Case, VII Coke Reports i2 (i6o6); text from London
printing of I727. The Biblical passage is from Rom. ii. I4, q.v.
85 Arthur Capel, Scaffold Paper
(I649), in The Dying Speeches and Behaviour of the Several
State Prisoners that Have Been Executed in the Last 300 Years (London, I720), p. i66.
86
Sumner C. Powell, Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town, paperback
ed. (New York, I965), pp. I68-9.
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of the exchanges between Ireton and Rainborough. After discussing the
Eighth Commandment's prohibition of theft, Ireton asserted of the Decalogue itself, '[But] the same law says, Honour thy father and [thy] mother,
and that law doth likewise hold out that it doth extend to all that (and in that
place where we are in) are governors; so that there is a forbidding of breaking
a civil law when we may live quietly under it, and [that by] a divine law.'
Colonel Rainborough replied:
... the great dispute is, who is a right father and a right mother? I am bound to
know who is my father and my mother, and-I take it in the same sense you do-I
would have a distinction,a characterwhereby God commandsme to honour [them].
And for my part I look upon the people of Englandso, that wherein they have not
voices in the choosing of their [governors-their civil] fathers and mothers-they
are not bound to that commandment.87
By adding this notion of participation to the Fifth Commandment, Rainborough sharpened the paradox and implicitly rejected at least a part of his
childhood education. The same rejection is characteristic of men who wrote
against the patriarchal theory and defended the right of resistance in terms of
a vague and mystical contract that the government was alleged to have broken.
But even in these cases, the escape from childhood was far from complete, for
when we merely begin to probe into the structure and assumptions of Stuart
political thought, we find patriarchalism very near the surface of even the
contract theories. This partiarchalism expressed itself in several forms. Some
writers held that the original contract of government had been agreed to by
independent fathers who had previously ruled their families as sovereigns;
some asserted that fatherhood continued to be the basis of active membership
in the political community; and still others contended that the Fifth Commandment was a capsule statement of social and political obligation.88
This use of the catechism, then, is a fascinating illustration of the manner
in which political argument proceeds. At first glance, the question of how to
make an inexperienced and illiterate peasant loyal to a political regime that
he rarely if ever encountered89seems to pose insuperable obstacles-obstacles
87 A. S. P. Woodhouse (ed.), Puritanism and Liberty: Being the Army Debates (i647-9)from
the Clark Manuscripts (London, I938), pp. 6o, 6i. Brackets in Woodhouse's text.
88
See, for instance, Edward Gee, The Divine Right and Original of the Civill Magistrate
From God (London, I658), pp. I58-9, I83, and sig. (a7), respectively, for examples of each of
these notions. Their having been used by Gee is significant, for he included in this lengthy
treatise what is probably the first extensive criticism of Filmer's patriarchalism.
89 The manner in which I have raised this problem obviously begs the question. My purpose
is to call attention again to some of the issues discussed in the introductory portions of this
essay, particularly political legitimacy and the functional inescapability of mass supporthowever unconscious and even if the masses are inert and outside of a society's political selfperception-in order for a political system to persist. In these terms, the burden of my argument is that catechistical instruction performed an important part of this function of making
the rank and file loyal. The other side of this same problem is conscious indoctrination. The
the masses must be encouraged or
recognition by someone-a member of the 'elite'-that
' taught' to be obedient and the systematization of that instruction do not change or eliminate
the functional necessity of loyalty. They do illustrate an appreciation of sociological facts and
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440
GORDON
J. SCHOCHET
that could not have been overcome until the political order was brought
within the knowledge and experience of the rank and file member of society.
The parent-child relationship served precisely the function of making
government intelligible.
As A. I. Melden, a twentieth-century philosopher, has observed, there is a
special moral right which as we all recognize depends in some way upon an
individual's status as a parent and with respect to which his son has the correlative obligation to his parent to favour him in his conduct. How is it
possible', Melden asks, 'that a right of this kind can "derive" from one's
status as a parent and how is it possible for a right so " derived " to function as
a consideration that justifies the conduct of the parties concerned? '90Melden's
question would not have occurred to the ordinary seventeenth-century
Englishman. One of the 'givens' of his mental equipment was the superiority
of parents over their children and the corresponding parental right to certain
favourable treatment.91But the rank-and-file members of Stuart Society were
not alone, for patriarchalism was one of the standard justifying categories (or
'modes of legitimation' as J. G. A. Pocock has recently called them92) of
seventeenth-century English political thought and was the major alternative
to the contractual theory of political obligation throughout the period.93
perhaps something about a society's having developed to a 'level' on which this appreciation
would be both possible and relevant. Plato's 'myth of the metals', Rousseau's 'civic religion',
and the role of capitalist ideology as explained by Marx are all cases in point. But for Stuart
England the argument need not turn solely or even primarily on whether resistance was
anticipated and therefore staved off by ideological persuasives to obedience. This was undoubtedly an important factor, as the tone and content of many of the previous quotations
indicate, but structuring the question exclusively in these terms makes the evidence much more
puzzling than it need be. On these grounds, overt inducements to obedience must be regarded
as relatively unimportant in the seventeenth century because so much of the population was
politically invisible-unless, of course, the fear and likelihood of large-scale disobedience were
genuine and widespread. But if that were the case, we should expect to find repressive social
policies and 'terror' rather than mere indoctrination. Thus, the historical explanation does not
go far enough, for the evidence is still puzzling. This puzzle, I am suggesting, can be solvedor at least clarified-by providing a sociological framework within which the historical phenomena are accounted for.
90 A. I. Melden, Rights and Right Conduct (Oxford, I959),
p. 6.
91 The virtual self-evidence of familial relationships and their value in explaining other sets
of rights and duties have been assumed by a number of twentieth-century commentators.
See for instance, J. M. Cameron, Images of Authority: A Consideration of the Concepts of
Regnum and Sacredotum (New Haven, I966), pp. 22-3; Carl J. Friedrich, Man and His
Government: An Empirical Theory of Politics (New York, I963), pp. 220, 24I; and Bertrand
de Jouvenal, The Pure Theory of Politics (Cambridge, I963), pp. 45-54.
92 J. G. A. Pocock, "'The
Onely Politician": Machiavelli, Harrington and Felix Raab',
Historical Studies Australia and New Zealand, xii (I966), 272. Pocock is speaking methodologically and has not identified patriarchalism as a specific 'mode of legitimation'. For other
such methodological statements-on which my argument at this point is heavily dependentsee C. Wright Mills, Power, Politics and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills, ed.
Irving L. Horowitz, paperback ed. (New York, I963), pp. 423-52, and esp. pp. 429, 434, 443,
452. Also relevant is Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy
(London, I958), p. 8I.
93 This interpretation of patriarchalism is developed at length in my forthcoming book
Patriarchalism in Stuart Political Thought.
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MASS ATTITUDES
IN STUART
ENGLAND
44I
On the level of mass communication, creating positive attitudes toward the
political order was relatively simple: all that had to be done was to expand the
experienced and comprehensible and therefore acceptable category of
relationships subsumed under the parent-child rubric to include that between
ruler and subject.94An individual who was in the habit of accepting without
question most of what he heard from the pulpit would hardly have been
disturbed by this doctrine. In addition to coming from a respected and reliable
source, it corresponded to his personal experiences, was reinforced by the
structure of his society, and was supported by what must have been intelligible
and valid reasoning.95
94 This expansion was accomplished in part by analogy, a most important method of
reasoning in seventeenth-century English political thinking. See W. H. Greenleaf, Order,
Empiricism, andPolitics: Two Traditions of EnglishPolitical Thought, I500-I700 (Oxford, i964),
pp. 2i-6, et passim (index, 'Correspondence', s.v.). See in general, Michael Walzer, 'On the
Role of Symbolism in Political Thought', Political Science Quarterly, LXXXII (i967), I9I-204.
95 The methodology presupposed in the two previous paragraphs is part of an analysis of
the nature of political philosophy in which I am now engaged. I owe much to Stephen E.
Toulmin, An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge, I950).
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