‘To pluck bright honour from the palefaced moon’1: Gender and honour in the castlehaven story

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Volumn 6, Issue , 1996, Pages 137-159

  Herrup, Cynthia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33748463964     PISSN: 00804401     EISSN: 14740648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3679233     Document Type: Article

References (97)

1. Mervyn James, ‘English Politics and the Concept of Honour 1485-1642’ first published as Past and Present, supplement no. 3 (1978) and reprinted in Society
2. Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modem England (Cambridge, 1986), 308-415.
3. See particularly Richard Cust, ‘Honour and Politics in Early Stuart England: The Case of Beaumont v. Hastings’, Past and Present, no. 149 (November 1995), 57-94
4. Laura Gowing, ‘Gender and the Language of Insult in Early Modem London’, History Workshop Journal, 35 (Spring 1993), 1-21
5. Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modem London (Oxford, 1996)
6. Anthony Fletcher, ‘Honour, Reputation & Local Officeholding in Elizabethan and Stuart England’, in Order and Disorder in Early Modem England, ed. A. Fletcher and John Stevenson (Cambridge, 1985), 92-115
7. Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500-1800 (1995), esp. ch. 7
8. Caroline Hibbard, ‘The Theatre of Dynasty’, in The Stuart Court and Europe, ed. Malcolm Smuts (Cambridge, forthcoming)
9. Lyndal Roper, Oedipus <2? the Devil Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modem Europe (1994) ” esp. chs. 3, 5; and the essays in this volume.
10. Some of the discussions I have found most useful include John Norden, The Mirror of Honour (1587)
11. Robert Ashley, Of Honour (c. 1596), ed. Virgil B. Heltzel (San Marino, 1947)
12. William Segar, Honour Military and Civil (1602)
13. John Cleland, Institution of a Young Noble Man (1607; facsimile repr. New York, 1948)
14. Thomas Milles, The Catalogue of Honour (1610)
15. Gervase Markham, Honour in his Perfection (1624)
16. Francis Markham, The Book of Honour (1625)
17. Richard Brathwaite, The English Gentleman (1630)
18. Richard Brathwaite, The English Gentlewoman (1631)
19. Fulke Greville, ‘An Inquisition upon Fame and Honour’, and ‘A Letter to an Honourable Lady’, both in Certain Learned and Elegant Works of the Right Honourable Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1633).
20. Cleland, Institution, 10.
21. Markham, Book of Honour 25.
22. England was not an honour/shame society in the classic sense, but the insecurity of honour is one way that early modem England does fit the Mediterranean model made famous in Honour and Shame: Values of a Mediterranean Society, ed. J. G. Peristiany (1965).
23. This remains the classic anthropological discussion of honour, but for challenges to its wider applicability, see Honour and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean, ed. David Gilmore (special publication of the American Anthropological Association no. 22, 1987)
24. Frank Henderson Stewart, Honour (Chicago, 1994). Scott Lucas suggested to me that in a society such as early modem England, it might also have been dangerous for writers to deny the validity of any particular claim to honour.
25. Kristen Neuschel, Word of Honour: Interpreting Moble Culture in Sixteenth-Century France (Ithaca, 1989)
26. Ann Rosalind Jones, ‘Nets and Bridles: Early Modem Conduct Books and Sixteenth-Century Women's Lyrics’, in The Ideology of Conduct: Essays in the Literature and History of Sexuality, ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse (1987), 39-72
27. J. A. Sharpe, Defamation and Sexual Slander in Early Modem England: the Church Courts at York, Borthwick Papers 58 (York, 1980)
28. Gowing, ‘Language of Insult’
29. Laura Gowing, ‘Women, Status and the Popular Culture of Dishonour’, in this volume.
30. When Parliament was not in session, peers were tried for felony or treason in a court presided over by a Lord High Steward (who was specially appointed for the occasion) sitting with a number of peers as jurors and the judges of the common law as advisers. See Luke Owen Pike, A Constitutional History of the House of Lords (1894), ch. XI.
31. On English peers and the legal autonomy, see Public Record Office State Papers Domestic [hereafter PRO SP] 12/112/51 summarised in Penry Williams, The Council in the Marches of Wales under Elizabeth I (Cardiff, 1955), 61
32. C. Barber, The Theme of Honour's Tongue: A Study of Social Attitudes in the English Drama from Shakespeare to Diyden (Gothenburg Studies in English, 1985), 42-43
33. Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641 (Oxford, 1965), 235-239, 249ff
34. Hibbard, ‘Theatre of Dynasty’
35. V. G. Kieman, The Duel in European History: Honour and the Reign of Aristocracy (Oxford, 1986), especially c. 9.
36. See also Ellery Schalk, ‘Under the Law or Laws unto Themselves: Noble Attitudes and Absolutism in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century France’, Historical Review/Revue Historique, XV, 1 (1988), 279-292
37. Jay Smith, ‘Our Sovereign's Gaze: Kings, Nobles and State Formation in Seventeenth-Century France’, French Historical Studies, XVIII, 2 (1993), 396-415. More work needs to be done on the relationship of elites in England to the law.
38. The Crown's convenient reinterpretation of the law regarding sodomy did, in fact, come close to endangering the verdict this way. See Herrup, Law, Sex and Patriarchy. ‘6 Felicity Heal, 'Reputation and Honour in Court and Country: Lady Elizabeth Russell and Sir Thomas Hoby’
39. Faramerz Dabhoiwala, ‘The Construction of Honour, Reputation and Status in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England’
40. Garthine Walker, ‘Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour in Early Modem England’, all in this volume.
41. On the ‘problem’ of women in court, see John Hawarde, Les reportes del cases in Camera Stellata 1593-1609, ed. W.P. Baildon (1894), 39, 161
42. W. R. Prest, ‘Law and Women's Rights in Early Modem England’, The Seventeenth Century, VI (1991), 182-3
43. David Lindley, The Trials of Francis Howard: Fact and Fiction in the Court of fang James (1993), ch. 3, 185-186
44. cf. Heal, ‘Reputation and Honour’
45. Gowing, ‘Language of Insult’.
46. Pike, Constitutional History
47. Colin Rhys Lovell, ‘The Trial of Peers in Great Britain’
48. American Historical Review, LV (1949), 69-81.
49. The prerogatives of English peers were particularly focused on their status before the law. English peers could not be arrested except on allegations of felony, treason or breach of the peace, could not be imprisoned for debt, could not be subjected to torture, could not be outlawed or compelled to testify under oath. They were immune from the power of most forms of summons and could be tried only by other peers, even in civil actions. Michael Bush, Moble Privilege (New York, 1983), 66-69.
50. Acts of the Privy Coundl [hereafter APC/ entries for 29 Dec. 1630; 23 Feb. 1630/1; 20 April 1631.
51. Neuschel, Word of Honour, 16970; see also Felicity Heal, Hospitality in Early Modem England (Oxford, 1990), 24-25.
52. Historical Manuscripts Collections [hereafter HMC] Report on the Manuscripts of the Late Reginald Rawdon Hastings (1928-47), ‘Directions of Henry, 5th earl of Huntingdon for the guidance of his Son Ferdinando’, IV, 332.
53. On the family's finances, Stone, Crisis, appendices viii-ix; on precedence: G. Squibb, Precedence in England and Wales (Oxford, 1981), 32n, appendix 2.
54. Ashley, Of Honour, 30.
55. In addition to felony, Castlehaven was accused of diverting his son's inheritance and encouraging the adultery of his daughter-in-law; NRO IL MS 3339, 7-8,12; BL Hargrave MS 226/311V, 312-12V. On the particular horror of such accusations, see Barber, Honour's Tongue, 36-7; Greville, ‘Letter to an Honourable Lady’, 290.
56. Owen Feltham, Resolves: A Duple Century One New an Other of Second Edition (1628), 86. Feltham's work was originally published in 1620. The 1628 edition was dedicated to Thomas, Lord Coventry, the man later to preside over Castlehaven's trial. On loss of honour as a slippery slope to anarchy, see Gervase Markham, Honour in his Perfection, 4; Herrup, Law, Sex and Patriarchy.
57. See the trials of the duke of Somerset (ST, I, col. 520), the duke of Norfolk (ST, I, cols. 965-7, 985, 992, 1001-2) and the earl of Arundel (ST, I, cols. 1253-64). Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, accused of treason in connection with the Wyatt Rebellion in 1554, mounted the most elaborate and most successful defence of the day; see ST, I, cols. 869902, and Annabel Patterson, Reading Holinshed's Chronicles (Chicago, 1994), c. 8.
58. S On how shame could offer an opportunity to display one's sense of honour, see William Ian Miller, Humiliation and Other Essays on Honour/ Social Discomfort and Violence (Ithaca, 1993), 117-124. a British Library [hereafter BL] Cotton MS Titus B, X/210. Linda Levy Peck first suggested that I look through these papers.
59. PRO SP 14/71/39, 40.
60. He preferred a bill against high legal fees and moved to broaden restrictions on luxurious apparel; Proceedings of the Parliament 1614 ed. Maija Jansson (Philadelphia, 1988)
61. Folger MS V.b.328/20v; NRO IL MS 3339, 11-12.
62. The tensions inherent in a family structure so tied to the dissemination of property have been much studied; for important recent assessments, see Linda Pollock, ‘Domestic Dissidence: Women Versus Women and Women Versus Men in the Early Modem Elite Home’, unpublished paper presented to the North American Conference of British Studies
63. Barbara J. Harris, Of Noble and Gentle Birth: English Aristocratic Women 1450-1550, to be published by Oxford University Press; Heal, ‘Reputation and Honour’.
64. NRO IL MS 3339, 12; Folger MS V.b.328/21. On the added dishonour of making private business public, see Linda Pollock, ‘Living on the Stage of the World: Concepts of Privacy among the Elite in Early Modem England’, in Rethinking English Social History, ed. Adrian Wilson (1993), 88-89; Fletcher, Gender, 144-5.
65. Ajames, ‘Concept of Honour’, 339-340. One of the striking aspects of the Castlehaven case is that the son's honour, despite making accusations that impugned his intimates, and declared his own cuckoldry, seems not to have been permanently damaged. He regained his English tide and most of his father's property. His younger siblings married well. I have found no libels at his expense and the gossip surrounding the case generally ignores him. For his later history, colourful in its own right, see Herrup, Law, Sex and Patriarchy.
66. On the merits of those complaints, see Herrup, Law, Sex and Patriarchy. Anxiety about exposure from wives and from servants certainly had some resonance. On wives, see Fletcher, Gender, c. 1; Elizabeth Foyster, ‘A Laughing Matter? Marital Discord and Gender Control in Seventeenth-Century England’, Rural History, IV, 1 (1993), 5-21
67. Elizabeth Foyster, ‘Male Honour, Social Control and Wife Beating in Late Stuart England’, in this volume; Gowing, ‘Women’; on servants, HMC Hastings, IV, 333
68. on the view from service, Katharine Hodgkin, ‘Thomas Whythome and the Problems of Mastery’, History Workshop Journal, XXIX (1990), 20-41, and more generally, Cust, ‘Honour and Politics’, 81-3.
69. Roper, Oedipus, 61
70. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honour: Ethics and Behaviour in the Old South (New York, 1982), 303-304, for similar results in different settings.
71. HEH EL MS 7976/9V; Gowing, ‘Women’, and the sources cited above, n. 17.
72. See, for example, Dabhoiwala, ‘The Construction of Honour’, and Walker, ‘Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour’, in this volume. The circumstances of this case would have made untenable two of the alternative possibilities for claims to honour suggested by Walker, good housewifery and good mothering. Additional alternative measures of female honour might include the defence of property, the honourableness of one's children (especially sons) or the redeeming of one's spouse or child by pardon or petition. It is worth noting the greater emphasis on familial achievement than in comparable male options, although Scott Lucas has pointed out to me that literary patronage provided at least one non-familial arena for the indirect attainment of honour by a woman.
73. Barber, Honour's Tongue, 36, 47
74. Lindley, Trials; Keith Thomas, ‘The Double Standard’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XX (1959), 195-216
75. Harris, Of Noble and Gentle Birth. See also Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honour, Robert Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honour in Modem France (New York, 1993).
76. Squibb, Precedence, 62-66; appendix i. Nor did she petition for a return to her original status after her second husband's death.
77. Harris, Of Noble and Gentle Birth
78. Linda Pollock, ‘Teache her to Live under Obedience: The Making of Women in the Upper Ranks in Early Modem England’, Continuity & Change, IV (1989), 231-258
79. Alison Wall, ‘Elizabethan Precepts and Feminine Practice: The Thynne family of Longleat’, History, LXXV (1990), 23-38. Barbara Donagan reminded me of the particular exemption for acts against divine law. That claim never surfaced in contemporary comment about the case.
80. Greville, ‘Letter to an Honourable Lady’, 277, 278, 279
81. Thomas, ‘Double Standard’, 196, 214, citing the marquis of Halifax and Juan Luis Vives offering similar advice; Richard Snawsell, A Looking Glass for Married Folks … (1610; repr. 1631), n.p.; Roper, Oedipus, 109-10.
82. GreviUe, ‘Letter to an Honourable Lady’, 266
83. Hawarde, Reportes, 241; cf. Harris, Of Noble and Gentle Birth.
84. BL Additional MS. 17, 017/1-2; On the importance attached to style in death in early modem England, see Beach Langston, ‘Essex and the Art of Dying’, Huntington library Quarterly, II (1950), 109-129
85. W. L. Ustick, ‘Changing Ideals of Aristocratic Character and Conduct in Seventeenth-Century England’, Modem Philology, 30 (1932-3), 149-150.
86. For a provocative discussion of the possibilities of such a moment, see Carlin Barton, ‘Savage Miracles: The Redemption of Lost Honour in Roman Society & the Sacrament of the Gladiator and the Martyr’, Representations, XLV (Winter 1994), 41-71.
87. The Civil Conversation (1581), 30-31, cited in Lindley, Trials, 171
88. GreviUe, ‘Letter to an Honourable Lady’, chs. 2, 4
89. cf. Harris, Of Noble and Gentle Birth.
90. PRO Prob 11 /174 (70 Goare). Her income from her jointure lands was something less than 1,000 per year, a modest, but not impossible income for the wife and daughter of peers; cf. Stone, Crisis, appendices XXXI and XXXII; Amy L. Erickson ‘Common Law Versus Common Practice: The Use of Marriage Settlements in Early Modem England’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, XLIII, i (1990), 30. My colleague Bill Reddy pointed out to me how difficult it is to distinguish what in Lady Castlehaven's later actions results from shame and what from an honourable withdrawal from society.
91. BL Additional MS 69, 919; Woe to the House (1633), The Word of God to the Citie of London, from the Lady Eleanor: Of the earl of Castlehaven … 11644/5).
92. PRO Prob 11/174 (70 Goare); Katherine A. Esdaile, English Church Monuments 15101840 (1946)
93. N. Pevsner, Middlesex. Buildings of England, III (Harmondsworth, 1951). Nigel Llewellyn's presentation at the conference for which this paper was originally written inspired me to consider further the meaning of the Derby monument.
94. Dabhoiwala, ‘The Construction of Honour’, and Walker, ‘Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour’, in this volume; Gowing ‘Language of Insult.’
95. Cust, ‘Politics and Honour’
96. Hibbard, ‘Theatre of Dynasty’
97. Heal, ‘Reputation and Honour’.