Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, c.1400-1688

Matthew Ward, Matthew Hefferan, Matthew Ward, Matthew Hefferan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783030377663
• eBook ISBN: 9783030377670
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book explores the place of loyalty in the relationship between the monarchy and their subjects in late medieval and early modern Britain. It focuses on a period in which political and religious upheaval tested the bonds of loyalty between ruler and ruled. The era also witnessed changes in how loyalty was developed and expressed. The first section focuses on royal propaganda and expressions of loyalty from the gentry and nobility under the Yorkist and early Tudor monarchs, as well as the fifteenth-century Scottish monarchy. The chapters illustrate late-medieval conceptions of loyalty, exploring how they manifested themselves and how they persisted and developed into early modernity. Loyalty to the later Tudors and early Stuarts is scrutinised in the second section, gauging the growing level of dissent in the build-up to the British Civil Wars of the seventeenth century. The final section dissects the role that the concept of loyalty played during and after the Civil Wars, looking at how divergent groups navigated this turbulent period and examining the ways in which loyalty could be used as a means of surviving the upheaval.

© The Author(s) 2020

M. Ward, M. Hefferan (eds.)Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, c.1400-1688https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37767-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain

Matthew Ward¹ and Matthew Hefferan¹

(1)

Department of History, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

Matthew Ward (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Matthew Hefferan

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Throughout the late medieval and early modern periods, loyalty to the monarchy remained a salient concept. In c. 1400, the Alliterative Morte Arthure recounted how King Arthur’s ‘lele lege-men’ were prepared to follow him unflinchingly, while in 1667 readers of John Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis were treated to a portrayal of London’s ‘true Loyalty, invincible Courage, and unshaken Constancy’ in the face of naval warfare and the Great Fire.¹ These two quotes, separated by more than 250 years, come from different contexts and epochs. The first is couched in terms of the feudal bond between lord and vassal, while the second focuses on municipal fidelity. Yet they share a common broad theme: that of demonstrating loyalty to the monarch, whilst perhaps also intimating a unifying effect which the virtue can engender. Scholars have suggested that ‘the core of loyalty does not change, but its shape is conformed’.² It is axiomatic that any concept can evolve and be subjected to challenges over a period of three centuries, and the period between 1400 and 1688 was certainly a challenging one for the rulers of the British Isles: there was the Hundred Years War to contend with, two major civil wars, two Acts of Supremacy (three if one includes the Irish Act), countless rebellions and a multitude of depositions, in addition to numerous failed attempts.³ The purpose of this collection of chapters is to examine how the concept of loyalty to the monarchy in England and Scotland was encouraged, expressed and challenged in such a turbulent period. In doing so, readers will be encouraged to consider both continuity and change in this ever-present concept.

Loyalty in History

The English word ‘loyalty’ stems from the Old French loialté.⁴ The noun ‘loyalty’ and adjective ‘loyal’ could have several interpretations, not least in the late medieval period when they were associated with faithfulness, alongside other concepts such as justice, truth, honour and lawfulness.⁵ Loyalty was intrinsically associated with legality—the French loial comes from the Latin legalis (from lex)—and the link between loyalty and legality continued into the early modern period.⁶ Contemporaries used the term in connection with individuals (friends, comrades, lords), groups (a military body), institutions (a monastic community) and even principles (the commonweal), but loyalty was not infrequently discussed in terms of the monarch, or indeed the monarchy.⁷ This is true just as much for the end of our period as the beginning. In the mid-eighteenth century, when compiling the first dictionary, Samuel Johnson interpreted ‘loyalty’ firstly as ‘Firm and faithful adherence to a prince’, and secondly as ‘Fidelity to a lady, or lover’. The adverb ‘loyally’ he described as ‘With fidelity; with true adherence to a king’.⁸

Rulers did not shy away from appealing to the loyalty owed to them by their subjects; indeed, their very existence depended on it. At the opening of Edward IV’s 1478 parliament, the chancellor Thomas Rotherham, bishop of Lincoln, chose as his theme ‘The Lord rules me and I shall lack nothing’. He reminded members of the faithfulness which subjects owed their king and the penalties for disobedience, quoting St Paul: ‘The king does not carry the sword without cause’. Rotherham also used his address to refer to the reciprocity involved in a loyalty transaction, stressing that King Edward had brought many benefits to his subjects.⁹ Yet there were circumstances when the apparent ultimate act of disloyalty to the sovereign, in the form of tyrannicide, was permitted and even considered an act of ‘loyalty’ itself. The idea has classical precedents, but one of the most significant contributions came in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus in the mid-twelfth century. Although his theory is incoherent and he did not actively encourage it, the writer suggested tyrannicide was a legitimate act if the monarch had acted unjustly and failed to perform their due responsibilities. In these circumstances a tyrant has no right to claim loyalty; it was deemed a duty imposed by God and the common good to remove them.¹⁰ The work was cited by subsequent political thinkers and was being published well into the sixteenth century. The aforementioned John Dryden referred to the subject of removing the monarch in The Cock and the Fox, first printed in 1700 and based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Nun’s Priest’s Tale:

So loyal subjects often seize their prince,

Forced (for his good) to seeming violence,

Yet mean his sacred person not the least offence.¹¹

The author no doubt had the forced abdications of Charles I and James II in mind, the former of course an altogether more violent episode than the latter.

Richard III also appealed to the sentiment of loyalty in adopting Loyaulte me lie, ‘loyalty binds me’, as his motto in c. 1483.¹² ‘Loyalty’ mottoes were common throughout the late medieval and early modern periods: Henry VIII’s close confidant Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk (d. 1545), used Loyaulte me oblige (loyalty obliges/obligates me) as one of his mottoes.¹³ It is likely that King Richard used Loyaulte me lie for a number of connotations, including loyalty to his brother Edward IV, loyalty to his lady, to his people, to justice and to the law, as befitting his duties as a prince.¹⁴ The issue of loyalty was a conspicuous presence throughout Richard’s life. By his late teens he had witnessed Henry VI lose his throne to Edward IV, then briefly reclaim it, only for Edward to win it back in 1471 with Richard fighting by his side. Richard worked tirelessly over the next decade to help Edward establish some kind of order in his kingdom, becoming ‘Lord of the North’ of England. It was in light of this loyal service that Edward apparently appointed Richard as Protector for his son and heir, Edward V. As it was, Richard’s loyalty to the young king was not boundless, and on 6 July 1483 Richard was himself crowned king having seen Edward V first set aside as illegitimate, and then disappear with his younger brother while they were residing in the Tower of London. Although the notion of loyalty remained a key aspect of Richard’s life, ultimately loyalty to Richard as king was lacking and he was deserted by some of his supporters, including Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, who failed to fight for Richard at the battle of Bosworth in 1485.

Richard III was far from the only monarch in late medieval or early modern Britain to accentuate the value of loyalty, nor was the Wars of the Roses the only period that offered a substantial challenge to the loyalty that a monarch could expect or demand of their subjects. The British Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century were equally tumultuous. Unlike any other time in the last millennium, the period from 1649 to 1660 saw an interregnum during which England was ruled as a republic under a variety of different forms of government, most famously the Protectorate of Oliver (and then Richard) Cromwell from 1653 to 1659. Such a momentous and unique occurrence had a profound impact on the nature of loyalty: some subjects remained loyal to an absent and powerless monarchy, while others chose to focus their loyal directly towards a new, kingless state.¹⁵

There were comparatively significant developments under the Tudors in the previous century. Henry VIII’s break from the Catholic church in Rome in the early 1530s saw secular and religious authority combine in a way that had never before been seen. As a consequence, loyalty to the monarchy became inescapably entwined with religious belief. Such divisions were particularly prevalent in the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, who had the added complexity of being the first women to rule England in their own right.

Loyalty in Historiography

One does not have to look far before coming across the subject of loyalty in the secondary literature. It would be surprising if a book examining the social or political history of the late medieval and early modern periods failed to bring up the topic at some point. Yet studies devoted to the concept are harder to find. Fidelité and loialté were at the root of the chivalric code, and some medieval scholars have approached loyalty as a chivalric concept and knightly attribute. Both Maurice Keen and, more recently, Richard Kaeuper have stressed the centrality of loyalty to the way in which the medieval nobility were expected to conduct themselves.¹⁶ Likewise, historical thinking on kingship and the power relations between the monarchy, nobility and gentry have approached loyalty as one aspect of this dynamic. Historians in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were quick to portray the Middle Ages as an ongoing power struggle between the king and his nobility (or, more accurately, the crown and parliament), in which loyalty had to be actively sought and encouraged by the monarchy, such as through the liberal distribution of financial reward.¹⁷ Such a reading of the period was challenged by...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain
• Part I. Loyalty to Late Medieval and Early Tudor Monarchs
• Part II. Loyalty to the Later Tudors and Early Stuarts
• Part III. Loyalty, Civil War and Restoration in the Seventeenth Century
• Correction to: Loyalty and Insecurity in Charles II’s Virginia
• Back Matter