Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England: Literary and Political Influences from the Reformation to the Restoration [1 ed.] 1409436721, 9781409436720

Citation preview

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England Literary and Political Influences from the Reformation to the Restoration

Edited by Alessandro Arienzo and Alessandra Petrina

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies Series Series Editors General Editor: Michele Marrapodi, University of Palermo, Italy Advisory Editors: Keir Elam, University of Bologna, Italy Robert Henke, Washington University, USA This series aims to place early modern English drama within the context of the European Renaissance and, more specifically, within the context of Italian cultural, dramatic, and literary traditions, with reference to the impact and influence of both classical and contemporary culture. Among the various forms of influence, the series considers early modern Italian novellas, theatre, and discourses as direct or indirect sources, analogues and paralogues for the construction of Shakespeare’s drama, particularly in the comedies, romances, and other Italianate plays. Critical analysis focusing on other cultural transactions, such as travel and courtesy books, the arts, fencing, dancing, and fashion, will also be encompassed within the scope of the series. Special attention is paid to the manner in which early modern English dramatists adapted Italian materials to suit their theatrical agendas, creating new forms, and stretching the Renaissance practice of contaminatio to achieve, even if unconsciously, a process of rewriting, remaking, and refashioning of ‘alien’ cultures. The series welcomes both single-author studies and collections of essays and invites proposals that take into account the transition of cultures between the two countries as a bilateral process, paying attention also to the penetration of early modern English culture into the Italian world. OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES Shakespeare Among the Courtesans Prostitution, Literature, and Drama, 1500–1650 Duncan Salkeld Shakespeare and Renaissance Literary Theories Anglo-Italian Transactions Edited by Michele Marrapodi Visions of Venice in Shakespeare Edited by Laura Tosi and Shaul Bassi Shakespeare and Venice Graham Holderness Pollastra and the Origins of Twelfth Night Parthenio, commedia (1516) with an English Translation Louise George Clubb

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England Literary and Political Influences from the Reformation to the Restoration

Edited by Alessandro Arienzo The University of Naples, ‘Federico II’ and Alessandra Petrina The Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy

First published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Alessandro Arienzo and Alessandra Petrina 2013 Alessandro Arienzo and Alessandra Petrina have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Machiavellian encounters in Tudor and Stuart England : literary and political influences from the Reformation to the Restoration. – (Anglo-Italian Renaissance studies series) 1. Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527 – Influence. 2. Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527 – Appreciation – England – History – 16th century. 3. Machiavelli, Niccolò 1469-1527 – Appreciation – England – History – 17th century. 4. English literature – Italian influences. 5. English literature – Early modern, 1500-1700 – History and criticism. 6. Political science – England – History – 16th century. 7. Political science – England – History – 17th century. 8. Politics and literature – England – History – 16th century. 9. Politics and literature – England – History – 17th century. I. Series II. Arienzo, Alessandro. III. Petrina, Alessandra. 820.9'3581'09031-dc23 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Machiavellian encounters in Tudor and Stuart England : literary and political influences from the reformation to the restoration / edited by Alessandro Arienzo and Alessandra Petrina. p. cm. – (Anglo-Italian Renaissance studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4094-3672-0 (hardcover) 1. Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527 – Influence. 2. Political science – Great Britain – History – 16th century. 3. Political science – Great Britain – History – 17th century. I. Arienzo, Alessandro. II. Petrina, Alessandra. JC143.M4M3227 2013 320.0942'09031 – dc23 ISBN 9781409436720 (hbk) ISBN 9781315593159 (ebk)

Contents List of Figures   List of Contributors   Acknowledgements   Introduction: Introducing Machiavelli in Tudor and Stuart England   Alessandra Petrina and Alessandro Arienzo

vii ix xiii 1

Reginald Pole and the Reception of the Principe in Henrician England   Alessandra Petrina

13

Stolen Words to Train a Boy King: William Thomas Translates Machiavelli   Maria Grazia Dongu

29



Machiavelli in The Quintesence of Wit and his English Military Readers   Valentina Lepri

45

4

Sir Walter Raleigh’s Machiavelli   Ioannis D. Evrigenis

5

Machiavellianism in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta   75 Enrico Stanic

6

When Pretence Rules over Essence: Shakespeare’s Bastard in King John   Conny Loder

7

Henry V and the Just War: Shakespeare, Gentili and Machiavelli   103 Rosanna Camerlingo

8

Republicanism and Religious Dissent: Machiavelli and the Italian Protestant Reformers   Diego Pirillo

1 2 3



59

89

121

vi

9 10

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

From Machiavellian Policy to Parliamentary Reason of State: Sketches in Early Stuart Political Culture   Alessandro Arienzo

141

Order, Conflict and Liberty: Machiavellianism in English Political Thought, 1649–1660   Marco Barducci

157

11 Machiavelli’s Discorsi and Hobbes’s Leviathan: Religion as Ideology   Fabio Raimondi

173

Epilogue: Was England Different?   Jacob Soll

185

Bibliography   Index  

189 199

List of Figures Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (English translation, c. 1588, Houghton Library, Harvard, MS Eng 1014), title page. © Houghton Library, Harvard  

122

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (English translation, c. 1588, Houghton Library, Harvard, MS Eng 1014), endpage with marginalia. © Houghton Library, Harvard  

123

8.3

Niccolò Machiavelli, Il prencipe (London: John Wolfe, 1584), first two chapters. © Houghton Library, Harvard  

125

8.4

Niccolò Machiavelli, I Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (London: John Wolfe, 1584), title page. © Houghton Library, Harvard  

126

8.1

8.2

This page has been left blank intentionally

List of Contributors Alessandro Arienzo is senior lecturer in Political Philosophy and History of Political Thought at the University of Naples ‘Federico II’. He has published on early modern theories of reason of state in England and he is the author of a book on George Savile, Marquis of Halifax. He is also editor of a volume dedicated to the theme of conflict in modern and contemporary political theory and of AngloAmerican Faces of Machiavelli: Machiavelli e machiavellismi nella cultura anglo-americana (secoli XVI–XX) (2009). He has published several articles on contemporary theories of democracy and political governance, and is currently involved in the translation into Italian of Henry Parker’s writings. Marco Barducci (PhD in History of European Political Thought, University of Perugia) currently teaches History of Political Thought at the University of Florence. His research interests span from seventeenth-century English political thought to the nineteenth-century debate on democracy in Europe. He has published three monographs: Oliver Cromwell negli scritti italiani del Seicento (Florence, 2005), Anthony Ascham ed il pensiero politico inglese, 1648–1650 (Florence, 2008), and Grozio ed il pensiero politico e religioso inglese with a preface by Glenn Burgess (Florence, 2010). He has edited Mazzini ed il repubblicanesimo inglese, 1840–1855. Da Carlyle a Linton (Florence, 2007), Mazzini e la democrazia europea: commenti e riflessioni metodologiche (Florence, 2008), Mazzini: la Democrazia in Italia e in Europa (1845) (Florence, 2010), and co-edited (with V. Conti) Da Savonarola ad Adam Smith. Ideologie in Europa (Florence, 2011). He is currently preparing a monograph on Anthony Ascham, to be published by Manchester University Press. He is a member of the international research project ‘HyperMachiavellism’. Rosanna Camerlingo is Professor of English Literature at the University of Perugia. She graduated from the University of Naples and obtained a PhD in Comparative Literature at New York University in New York. She has been the recipient of a one-year fellowship at the Italian Academy for advanced studies at Columbia University in New York in 2002–2003. She is the author of From the Courtly World to the Infinite Universe. Philip Sidney’s Two Arcadias (Alessandria, 1995) and Teatro e Teologia. Marlowe, Bruno e i Puritani (Naples, 1999). She has written extensively on Christopher Marlowe, John Milton, Giordano Bruno and William Shakespeare. She is currently writing a book on the effects of the European transformation of the sacrament of auricular confession on the Shakespearean

x

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

tragedy (Hamlet in particular). Her research focuses on the relationship between literature, religion and political philosophy in sixteenth-century Europe. Maria Grazia Dongu is Associate Professor at the University of Cagliari. Her principal research areas are travel literature, Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline theatre, translation studies and eighteenth-century literature. She co-authored a book on William Thomas (Deidda, Dongu, Sanna, Lezioni ai potenti, 2002). She has also published: Naufragi, approdi e ritorni (2004), an essay on Spanish and English plays on the discovery of America. Her publications include articles on Gray’s poetry and letters, on Jacobean theatre and on Donne’s sermons. Ioannis D. Evrigenis is Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, with a secondary appointment in Classics. He is the author of Fear of Enemies and Collective Action, which received the 2009 Delba Winthrop Award for Excellence in Political Science, and of articles on a wide range of issues in political thought. He is also co-editor of Johann Gottfried Herder’s Another Philosophy of History & Selected Political Writings, and of a special issue of History of European Ideas on Anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism. He holds a PhD from Harvard University, which awarded him the Herrnstein Prize for his doctoral dissertation. Evrigenis has received grants and fellowships from Princeton University’s Center for Human Values, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the Earhart Foundation. Valentina Lepri (PhD in Civilisation of the Humanism and Renaissance, Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Florence), works at the National Institute for Renaissance Studies and collaborates with the Centre for Computer Research in the Humanities of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa (Signum). Her research focuses on the history of book and on the late-sixteenth-century circulation of collections of political precepts. She has published several articles on these and other issues, as well as a monograph (with Maria Elena Severini), Viaggio e metamorfosi di un testo: I ‘Ricordi’ di Francesco Guicciardini tra XVI e XVII secolo (Geneva, Droz, 2011). Thanks to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs she was recently a fellow at the Instytut Badań Interdyscyplinarnych ‘Artes Liberales’ of Warsaw University, working on the relationship between Italian and Polish political texts at the end of the sixteenth century. She is a postdoctoral fellow at The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Conny Loder took a MLitt at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK. She is currently pursuing her PhD; her research focuses on Elizabethan and Jacobean reception of Machiavelli’s works, in particular drama and pamphlets. She has published theatre reviews for Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, Cahiers Élisabéthains and Penumbra Magazine. Her articles include

List of Contributors

xi

‘The Perverted Machiavel: Richard III’, in Pete Orford’s ‘Divining Thoughts’: Future Directions in Shakespeare Studies (2007) and ‘Tyranny, Theatricality and Machiavelli’ in Alessandra Petrina’s Queen and Country (2011). She is a member of the Renaissance Drama Research Group, Shakespeare Institute, Stratford upon Avon. In another life, she was on a Fulbright grant, teaching German at Pacific University, Oregon, USA. Alessandra Petrina is Associate Professor of English Literature at the Università di Padova, Italy. She has published a monograph on The Kingis Quair (1997) and articles on late-medieval and Renaissance literature and intellectual history, as well as on modern children’s literature. She has co-edited the volume Imperi moderni: l’eroe tra apoteosi e parodia (2002), and published with Brill her monograph Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-century England: The Case of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (2004). More recently, she has published Machiavelli in the British Isles: Two Early Modern Translations of the Prince (2009), Queen and Country (2011) and Representations of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Culture (2011). She is currently working on Elizabeth I’s foreign correspondence, and on the circulation of Petrarch’s Trionfi in sixteenth-century England. Diego Pirillo (PhD Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa) is Assistant Professor of Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the Italian Protestant Reformation with a special attention on its impact on early modern England. Along with several articles, he is the author of Filosofia ed eresia nell’Inghilterra del Cinquecento. Bruno, Sidney e i dissidenti religiosi italiani (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2010) and the editor (with Olivia Catanorchi) of Favole, metafore, storie. Un seminario su Giordano Bruno (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2007). He is currently working on a study on the cultural contributions of the Italian reformers in the early modern British Isles. Fabio Raimondi is Senior Lecturer at University of Salerno, Department of Political, Social and Communication Sciences. He has published numerous essays on Machiavelli and an anthology of Machiavelli’s political writings (Carocci, 2002). He has written two volumes on Giordano Bruno (Il sigillo della vicissitudine. Giordano Bruno e la liberazione della potenza, Unipress, 1999; La repubblica dell’assoluta giustizia. La politica di Giordano Bruno in Inghilterra, Ets, 2003). He has also published a book on Louis Althusser (Il custode del vuoto. Ideologia e contingenza nel materialismo radicale di L. Althusser, Ombre Corte, 2011) and has translated into Italian Marx dans ses limites (Mimesis, 2004). Jacob Soll is Professor of History of Early Modern Europe at Rutgers University-Camden. Among his publications are Publishing ‘The Prince’ (2005) and The Information Master (2009). He has published several articles on early modern France, information culture and French Tacitism. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009, and, in 2011, a MacArthur Fellowship.

xii

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

He is currently researching the intellectual and practical history of accounting and its role in governance in the modern world, and is preparing a study of the composition of library catalogues during the Enlightenment. Enrico Stanic graduated from the Università degli Studi di Padova in February 2008, receiving his MA degree with a dissertation titled ‘Machiavellianism and the Evil Jew in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’.

Acknowledgements The editors gratefully acknowledge the help of the international research project ‘HyperMachiavellism’, coordinated by Enzo Baldini: Enzo’s indefatigable work, and the numerous meetings and conferences organized within this project, have made it possible for this group of writers to meet and plan the book together. William Connell has been a friend and patient listener throughout; Sydney Anglo has offered careful and welcome comments to some of the chapters; to both, our heartfelt thanks, as to Gianfranco Borrelli for his teaching and advice on Machiavelli, reason of state and academic survival. We would also like to thank the editorial team at Ashgate for their constant support, and their never-ending patience, and all our contributors for their cooperation and enthusiasm.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Introduction

Introducing Machiavelli in Tudor and Stuart England Alessandra Petrina and Alessandro Arienzo Come hither Son, and learn thy Fathers Lore, It is not now as hath been heretofore: For in my Youth no Man would read to me That now in Age I can deliver thee.1

Thus begins a late seventeenth-century poem, Machiavil’s Advice to his Son, parodying the early modern vogue for educational treatises and babees books by proposing, in Machiavelli’s name, advice on being crafty, unscrupulous, greedy and ambitious. The poem, as can be seen from these few lines, has no literary merit; but, given its late date of publication, it can be set here, at the end of the first, powerful wave of the European vogue for Machiavelli, as symbolizing and summing up some of the recurrent traits of the English reaction to the Florentine’s writings, as well as its loss of focus in the generic attribution of evil traits to a ‘Machiavil’, without any attention to what the writer had actually proposed in his books of political theory. Texts such as Machiavil’s Advice to his Son or the earlier Unmasking of a Feminine Machiavel (composed by Thomas Andrewe and printed in 1604) represent extreme cases of a generalized attitude that saw in Machiavelli a modern, possibly lay version of the Vice of medieval drama. But it would be a mistake to consider this attitude exclusive, or even predominant, in the English intellectual world. Niccolò Machiavelli was considered, in early modern England, mainly a political writer, and this in spite of the early dissemination of his military treatise The Art of War, and of the (more muted) presence of his historical works: whether the reaction to his writings was founded on well-informed study or simply based on rumour, he was seen mainly as the author of The Prince and Discourses, two complex and often contradictory books which appeared to conceal a secret lore, applicable both to the private individual and the state. He was no inventor of a new theory or doctrine, but simply the propagandist of what had been kept hidden thus far. He had opened Pandora’s box: as he says to his son in the quotation above, none had dared tell him, when he was a child, what he now would tell his son. In the fictional situation created by the poem, Machiavelli therefore passes   Machiavil’s Advice to his Son (London: Burrel, 1681), p. 1.

1

2

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

on to his son, and implicitly to future generations, what has always been (even if imperfectly) known. The English reaction to Machiavelli is similar to the wider European response in that it often forgets the writer’s biography, his individual personality, sometimes even his writings in the creation of a figure transcending time and historical circumstances, a devil or an evil spirit bringing contagion to the world: what Machiavil’s Advice to his Son seems to imply is that the whole world has lost its childlike innocence thanks to Machiavelli’s revelations, and has been brought a step nearer to disenchanted old age. This is part of the paradox around which is built the English (and, by extension, the European) response to the writer: on the one hand, he transcends in popular and cultural imagination his own life and works to become the symbol of a new era, appearing on the Elizabethan stage as a recognizable persona for libertinism, political craft, greed, vice; on the other, he is read, translated, annotated and commented on, but, it would seem, only partly and imperfectly understood, so that his influence on the intellectual life of the country becomes very difficult to assess. Besides, his nonpolitical works appear to enjoy a circulation of their own, often a separate life from his best-known works. Interest in Machiavelli is evident in all spheres of English intellectual life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the responses are often contradictory: English Machiavellianism is a far from systematic effort, and its very articulateness and diversity may be at the basis of its extraordinarily long life. This is also the paradox this book intends to explore, by taking into consideration English philosophers, historians and dramatists who struggled to make sense of the Machiavelli demon and of the import of his writings. This book therefore analyses the political and literary issues hanging upon the circulation of Machiavelli’s works in England. Taking into consideration a number of Machiavelli’s political works, and marking, through the different readings, the passage from Elizabethan to Jacobean to republican attitudes. In a way, the Florentine writer becomes a litmus test: the reactions his works triggered allow us to gauge the role of theories of statecraft in two of the most turbulent centuries of English history. A form of continuity is suggested between the fragmented and often isolated reactions occurring during the reign of Henry VIII and the more systematic response during the Stuart era, the Commonwealth and the early years of the Restoration. The volume highlights how topics and ideas stemming from Machiavelli’s books created a multifaceted corpus of themes in early modern England, which strongly influenced contemporary political debate. The first part discusses early reactions to Machiavelli’s works, focusing on authors such as Reginald Pole and William Thomas, depicting their complex interaction with Machiavelli as political theorist and historian. In the second part, different features of the reading of Machiavelli in Tudor literary and political culture are discussed, moving well beyond the traditional image of the Machiavellian tyrant or of the evil Machiavel. Machiavelli’s historiography and republicanism and their influences on Tudor culture are discussed with reference to topical authors such as Walter Raleigh, Alberico Gentili and Philip Sidney; his role in contemporary dramatic writing, especially as concerns Christopher

Introduction: Introducing Machiavelli in Tudor and Stuart England

3

Marlowe and William Shakespeare, is also taken into consideration. The last section explores Machiavelli’s influence on English political culture in early Stuart and revolutionary decades, focusing on political prudence and virtue, monarchical and republican statecraft, policy and reason of state and discussing writers such as Llodovick Lloyd, Francis Bacon, Henry Parker, Anthony Ascham, Marchamont Nedham, James Harrington and Thomas Hobbes. Overall, Machiavelli’s image in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England is put into perspective: the chapters analyse his role and influence within courtly, derogatory and prudential politics, as well as the importance of his ideological proposal in the traditions of monarchy, republicanism and parliamentarianism. Traditionally, the beginning of critical interest in the early English response to Machiavelli is Edward Meyer’s Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama, published in 1897.2 Meyer’s pioneering work was an infinitely painstaking account of allusions, references and (more rarely) direct quotations from the Florentine’s works, as they appeared in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. It established beyond doubt the major role played by Machiavelli in English culture but it also helped to suggest a strong link with one literary genre, namely drama, possibly to the exclusion of everything else; more dangerously, it also appeared to imply that, since English translations of Discourses and The Prince only appeared in print respectively in 1636 and 1640, Elizabethan and Jacobean acquaintance with these works was only second-hand, filtered through the battle of books then raging in Europe, and particularly through Innocent Gentillet’s attack upon the Machiavellian doctrine as expounded in The Prince.3 Later criticism has helped to correct this view, and the chapters in the present volume are indebted not only to Meyer, but to the fundamental and wide-ranging contributions of Mario Praz, Felix Raab, Robert Bireley, Victoria Kahn and Sydney Anglo,4 among many others, as shown by the Bibliography. The dates of publication of the three last-mentioned studies, in particular, show the great scholarly interest in the topic in the last two decades, an interest that spans   Edward Meyer, Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama (Weimar: Felber, 1897).   (Anti-Machiavel. Edition de 1586) Innocent Gentillet. Discours sur les Moyens de bien gouverner et maintenir en bon paix vn Royaume ou autre Principauté. Divisez en trois parties: asauoir, du Conseil, de la Religion & Police que doit tenir un Prince. Contre Nicolas Machiauel, Florentin. A Treshaut & Tres-illustre Prince François Duc d’Alençon, fils & frere de Roy (Paris, 1576), ed. C. Edward Rathé (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1968). 4   Mario Praz, ‘Machiavelli and the Elizabethans’, Proceedings of the British Academy 13 (1928): pp. 3–51; Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500–1700 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965); Robert Bireley, The Counter-Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); Victoria Kahn, Machiavellian Rhetoric: From the Counter-Reformation to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Sydney Anglo, Machiavelli – The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 2 3

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

4

philosophy, cultural history, literary criticism and the history of book circulation. In the intersection of these different disciplines we can set significant facts and establish working hypotheses in our exploration of English Machiavellianism. Paleography and the study of the circulations of manuscripts and printed books takes pride of place here, as it has allowed us to establish beyond doubt that Machiavelli’s influence on sixteenth-century English thought and writing was due in some measure to a direct knowledge of his works, whether in the original Italian or in translation. We have acquired proof of ownership of Machiavelli’s works in Latin, French and even in English, and it has been possible, as concerns The Prince, to trace the web of vernacular translation throughout Europe, as shown in the recent collection of essays edited by Roberto De Pol;5 while Sergio Bertelli and Piero Innocenti’s invaluable Bibliografia Machiavelliana6 provides a guide to the proliferation of printed texts throughout Europe, the work of John Wesley Horrocks,7 Napoleone Orsini,8 Hardin Craig9 and, more recently, Sydney Anglo10 and Alessandra Petrina11 has offered an overview of a significant manuscript circulation, particularly as concerns the controversial political works. The thread is taken up here by the contributions of Alessandra Petrina and Diego Pirillo. The former goes back to the earliest circulation of The Prince, shortly after its early scribal publication, interlacing intellectual history and close reading in a critical proposal that presents elements of absolute novelty. The latter takes us to the late sixteenth century, analysing the contribution offered to the circulation of Machiavelli’s works by enterprising printers such as John Wolfe, who in 1584   Roberto De Pol (ed.), The First Translations of Machiavelli’s Prince: From the Sixteenth to the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2010). 6   Sergio Bertelli and Piero Innocenti, Bibliografia Machiavelliana (Verona: Edizioni Valdonega, 1979). 7   John Wesley Horrocks, ‘Machiavelli in Tudor Political Opinion and Discussion’ (DLitt dissertation, University of London, 1908). 8   Napoleone Orsini, Bacone e Machiavelli (Genoa: Emiliano degli Orfini, 1936); ‘Elizabethan Manuscript Translations of Machiavelli’s Prince’, Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937): pp. 166–9; Studii sul rinascimento italiano in Inghilterra con alcuni testi inglesi inediti (Florence: Sansoni, 1937); ‘Nuove ricerche intorno al machiavellismo nel Rinascimento inglese I: machiavellismo e polemiche politiche nel manoscritto harleiano 967’, Rinascita 1 (1938): pp. 92–101; ‘Nuove ricerche sul machiavellismo nel Rinascimento inglese II: appunti inediti dalle “Storie” del Machiavelli e del Guicciardini’, Rinascita 6 (1939): pp. 299–304. 9   Hardin Craig (ed.), Machiavelli’s The Prince: An Elizabethan Translation. Edited with an Introduction and Notes from a Manuscript in the Collection of Mr Jules Furthman (Chapel Hill: University of Carolina Press, 1944). 10   See the already mentioned Machiavelli – The First Century, and the less recent Machiavelli: A Dissection (London: Gollancz, 1969). 11   Machiavelli in the British Isles: Two Early Modern Translations of The Prince (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). 5

Introduction: Introducing Machiavelli in Tudor and Stuart England

5

issued surreptitious editions of Discourses and The Prince, and by the community of Italian refugees in London. In both cases, one of the results is to offer new insights into the European dimension of a writer that, at least as concerns The Prince, would seem almost exclusively concerned with very local politics. Such a supranational dimension was quickly perceived by readers shortly after Machiavelli’s death: allusions to The Prince in early Tudor England are present as early as 1539, and though one traditional critical stance has been to consider Machiavelli’s influence in sixteenth-century England as starting from Christopher Marlowe’s early works, two diametrically opposed evaluations of this controversial work belong to the reign of Henry VIII, and are indeed directly linked to the policy of the King: in his Apologia ad Carolum Quintum Cardinal Reginald Pole refers to the book as ‘scriptum ab hoste humani generis […] Satanae digito scriptum’;12 on the other hand, in a letter dated 13 February 1539 which accompanied the gift of an Italian copy of the Florentine History, Henry Parker, Lord Morley, urged Thomas Cromwell to read both this book and The Prince, adding a short description of both, and noting how The Prince in particular was ‘surely a good thing for your Lordship and for our Sovereign Lord in Council’.13 The two reactions spring from an attentive and detailed knowledge of Machiavelli’s works: both Pole and Parker were scrupulous readers and excellent linguists, and their knowledge of The Prince is evident if we examine their writings, as Petrina shows. Their diametrically opposite reactions thus become symptoms of an interesting phenomenon: though they remain isolated instances, they help us to gauge the extent to which Machiavelli’s works, then as now, could be used by their readers, variously interpreted to suit different ideological purposes or opposite political manoeuvres. Maria Grazia Dongu analyses William Thomas’s indebtedness with Machiavelli’s historical writings, adding a further element to a survey of early Tudor Machiavellianism, and forcefully suggesting the far from straightforward path traced by the Florentine writer in England. Once again, the Florentine History underlined Machiavelli’s interest in the local, in the past and present of his own, rather small country; Thomas’s History of Italy and Discourses were among the early texts presenting a contemporary vision of Italy to an English audience, news from a foreign country that was becoming, more and more, part of the early modern English imagination. Many scholars have highlighted the importance of William Thomas as a go-between, who studied the Italian language and culture and endeavoured to convey it to his own country. English culture was enriched 12   ‘Written by an enemy of mankind […] written by the finger of Satan’. Apologia Reginaldi Poli ad Carolum V. Caesarem, in Epistularium Reginaldi Poli S.R.E. Cardinalis Et aliorum ad ipsum Collection. Pars I (Brixiae: Excudebat Joannes-Maria Rizzardi, 1744), pp. 66–171. The quotation appears on pp. 136–7. 13   The letter is printed as item 285 in James Gairdner and R.H. Brodie (eds), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, vol. XIV, part 1 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1864), p. 111. See also Anglo, Machiavelli – The First Century, p. 97.

6

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

thanks to the imitation of new genres that Thomas attempted in his Grammar, a reworking of Alunno, Acharisio and Bembo’s well-known discourses on the Italian language. In his History of Italy and in his Discourses, as shown by Dongu, he was certainly drawing on the best examples of Italian historiography and on the essay on factual politics, first created by Machiavelli. Thanks to Thomas, key words in Machiavelli’s political thought were brought to England. Such responses were still sporadic, and the reign of Mary Tudor appears to have obliterated all traces of Machiavelli in England, if only temporarily. Only with Elizabeth’s ascent to the throne did the Florentine’s works enjoy a widespread circulation, and the English response became in consequence much more articulate and wide-ranging. The first complete work of Machiavelli to be translated into English appears to have been The Art of War, published in 1560 in Peter Whitehorne’s translation and dedicated to the Queen,14 but there is little doubt that other works, especially the most controversial ones, were read and discussed, whether in Latin (the first Latin version of The Prince also appeared in 1560, and enjoyed immediate and international success),15 in French or in Italian, a language the English scholarly and aristocratic community was approaching with more and more interest. Though literary criticism has been concerned to a great extent with the twin giants Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, in recent years there has been more and more interest in the exploration of minor writers, such as the already mentioned William Thomas or the author of The Quintesence of Wit. Recent works by John Roe, Tim Spiekerman, Catherine Minshull or Joseph Khoury have updated our perception of Machiavelli’s presence in works such as Richard II, Henry V, Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta;16 but at the same time our Elizabethan library has grown immeasurably, thanks to manuscript discoveries as well as to the resources put at our disposal by all-encompassing databases such as Early English Books Online (EEBO). This means that we are now able to appreciate the contribution to 14   The Arte of Warre. Certain Waies for the ordering of Souldiers in battelray, & settyng of battailes, after diuers fashions, with their maner of marchyng: And also fygures of certaine new plattes for fortificacion of townes: And more ouer, howe to make Saltpeter, Gumpoulder, and diuers sortes of Fireworkes or wilde Fyre, with other thynges apertaining to the warres. Gathered and set foorthe by Peter Whitehorne (London: Ihon Kingston for Nicolas Englande, 1560). 15   Nicolai Machiavelli reip. florentinae a secretis, ad Laurentium Medicem de Principe libellus: nostro quidem seculo apprimé vtilis & necessarius, non modò ad principatum adipiscendum, sed & regendum & conseruandum: Nunc primum ex Italico in Latinum sermonem uersus per Syluestrum Telium Fulginatem (Basileae: apud Petrum Pernam, 1560). 16   John Roe, Shakespeare and Machiavelli (Cambridge: Brewer, 2002); Tim Spiekerman, Shakespeare’s Political Realism: The English History Plays (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001); Catherine Minshull, ‘Marlowe’s “Sound Machevil”’, Renaissance Drama 13 (1982): pp. 35–53; Joseph Khoury, ‘Marlowe’s Tamburlaine: Idealized Machiavellian Prince’, in Seeking Real Truths: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Machiavelli, ed. Patricia Vilches and Gerald Seaman (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 329–56.

Introduction: Introducing Machiavelli in Tudor and Stuart England

7

early modern intellectual life offered by pamphlets, sermons, anonymous works and other allegedly ‘minor’ literature, as well as the interaction between different genres. The implications for literary and intellectual history are obvious, since we are now beginning to see Elizabethan literature no longer as a succession of isolated peaks, but as a network of interrelated forces. This is the hypothesis Valentina Lepri works on in her analysis of The Quintesence of Wit, a collection of maxims printed in London towards the end of the sixteenth century. The production and popularity of several editions of political maxims played an influential part in the circulation and assimilation of Machiavelli’s thought in English culture in the late sixteenth century. The anthologies were subject to intensive editing: the maxims were frequently selected, or even censured, and elsewhere provided with glosses. To an even more significant degree, Machiavelli’s thought was contaminated by the maxims of other classical and modern authors. By reconstructing the genesis of the text and the many sources behind it, Lepri offers a pivotal contribution to our understanding of a popular perception of Machiavelli: a gnomic author, quickly entered into the rostrum of auctoritates of classical tradition, along with his own sources – Tacitus, Livy, Polybius. At the same time, it is interesting to observe how, through the printing of these heterogeneous collections of political maxims, in Italian and in translation, numerous fragments taken from Machiavelli’s works were juxtaposed with a similar quantity of aphorisms extrapolated from the works of another famous Florentine historian: Francesco Guicciardini. Setting Lepri’s contribution side to side with Ioannis Evrigenis’s work on Sir Walter Raleigh’s Machiavelli means offering the reader a variegated spectrum of responses. In the case of Raleigh we are given a completely different challenge: here is no anonymous compiler, but a well-known writer, politician, courtier and explorer; besides, Raleigh’s canon is as yet an undecided issue, and his attitude towards the Florentine writer is very difficult to define. Evrigenis copes with this thorny question by identifying some recurring political themes in Raleigh’s works and discussing them against the background of Machiavelli’s theory. By focusing in particular on the History of The World, Evrigenis sheds welcome light on the question of reason of state and its relation to what is expounded in The Prince. Interestingly, Evrigenis’s contribution becomes then strongly related to the chapters in the third part of the volume, by marking in Raleigh’s works the emergence of a reaction to Machiavelli in terms of political theory – a trend that is certainly minor in Elizabethan literature, but will be of major import in the seventeenth century. The central chapters of the book turn to the Marlovian–Shakespearean question, but rather than treading old ground they explore lesser-known texts, or offer new insights with the help of contemporary literature. Enrico Stanic’s analysis of Marlowe’s Jew of Malta eschews the received doctrine of the identification of the Jew of the play with the Machiavel of the Prologue in order to concentrate on another, less obvious but certainly more successful villain, the Christian Ferneze – such a Machiavellian villain that he seems to escape even critical attention. Stanic’s study is helped by a prima manu reading of The Prince and his

8

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

comparison of this text with chosen passages from The Jew of Malta, a practice which helps him to identify a number of close analogies and to hypothesize a second, less evident layer of meaning in Marlowe’s tragedy of the Jew. As in the case of the relevance of Machiavelli’s doctrine in Christopher Marlowe’s play, where truly Machiavellian elements are represented, William Shakespeare himself offers a positive reading of Machiavelli at a time when most writers still vilified the Italian writer; thus in King John the Bastard employs Machiavellian thinking, albeit subversively, to stabilize the state, not to cause chaos. This is Conny Loder’s hypothesis, in a chapter exploring this allegedly minor play and once more using Machiavelli’s Prince as the main treatise of political theory against which to test this play. Loder charts the changes made to the character of the Bastard in the passage from the play that predated Shakespeare’s, the anonymous Troublesome Reign of King John, and identifies surprising echoes of Chapter 26 of The Prince in the conclusion of King John. Rosanna Camerlingo’s chapter deals with a Shakespearean play that is both more famous and more explicitly Machiavellian, Henry V. Here, however, there is a third writer at play: Alberico Gentili, an Italian refugee and Oxford jurist. In his De Iure Belli, Gentili, building from the Machiavellian doctrine, elaborates on the concept of just law in the new scenario of sixteenth-century Europe, just as Shakespeare does in the theatrical context of the Hundred Years’ War. Despite the fact that antiMachiavellianism became more violent in late sixteenth-century England, and more explicit in popular literary genres such as drama, Machiavelli enjoyed a growing popularity in Elizabethan intellectual life. In 1584 John Wolfe had published The Discourses in Italian in London together with The Prince,17 and announced the successive publishing of several other Machiavellian works, such as The Art of War and the Florentine Histories, which appeared in London in the following years. Pietro Perna, the printer of the Latin version of The Prince, had positioned himself against the black legend diffused in Huguenot and Calvinist circles, which had transformed Machiavelli into the counsellor of tyrants. The same opinion was shared by Alberico Gentili who, in De legationibus, a tract on the perfect ambassador, suggested a careful reading of The Discourses. Machiavelli was not a counsellor of tyrants so much as a defender of democracy and of republican values, who with his works had intended to unmask the tricks of the arcana imperii. As the conspicuous traces of his work in Henry V show, Gentili’s ideas were spread out and helped to shape the identity of England as one of the most powerful European nations, opening the way for the debate of the following century. 17   I Discorsi di Nicolo Machiavelli, sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio. Con due Tauole, l’una de capitoli, & l’altra delle cose principali: & con le stesse parole di Tito Liuio a luoghi loro, ridotte nella volgar Lingua. Nouellamente emmendati, & con somma cura ristampati (Palermo: Appresso gli heredi d’Antoniello degli Antonielli, 1584); Il prencipe di Nicolo Machiavelli. Al Magnifico Lorenzo di Piero de Medici. Con alcune altre operette, i titoli delle quali trouerai nella seguente facciata (Palermo: Appresso gli heredi d’Antoniello degli Antonielli, 1584).

Introduction: Introducing Machiavelli in Tudor and Stuart England

9

England’s increasing relevance on the European stage during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and its extended influence among Protestant communities, counteracted by the growing financial difficulties of the Crown, mark the passage from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century.18 In the early years of his English reign, James I tried to legitimize his rule, affirming explicitly the divine derivation of his power, thus raising a growing concern over his intentions of limiting instead of preserving traditional liberties. As his successor, Charles I attempted a thorough process of state-building in order to face the growing political and religious instability, the deficiencies of the army and the weakness of the fiscal state. His plea for necessity and reason of state marks the beginning of the political, juridical and religious struggles that led to the Revolution. Thus, the passage from Tudor to Stuart was no mere change of dynasty, but the beginning of a deep transformation in English political theory, within which Machiavellian influences played a relevant role that cannot be limited to the response to The Prince, and in which the uses of themes and references to the Florentine writer were combined with the influences exercised by other political writers such as Lipsius, Botero, Grotius and Hobbes. Indeed, much of the philosophical discussion on political theory was still concerned with the grounds, limits and aims of royal kingship rather than with policy, and Machiavelli contributed primarily to a new approach to statecraft (both royalist and republican) and policy. Thus his influence should be evaluated carefully in a description of the thematic lines characterizing Stuart political cultures. A relevant issue was indeed the idea of policy, described by Napoleone Orsini as the Machiavellian theme in England,19 and placed even by Felix Raab at the core of English Machiavellianism in its conflicting and shifting relation with religion.20 Machiavellianism has been sometimes equated with reason of state within the wider influence exercised by French and Italian writers, mainly Bodin and Botero. The aim of Alessandro Arienzo’s contribution is to shed light on the differences and analogies in the concept of reason of state in England in the first decades of the seventeenth century, an issue with strong but not exclusive references to Machiavelli. Focusing on policy and on the idea of prerogative, as well as on their relation, may contribute to put in its proper place, and somehow to clarify, the contribution of Machiavelli to the debate on political prudence in the early Stuart decades. This may also shed light on a notion of reason of state closely referring to the juridical concept of prerogative rather than to policy. In the last part of his contribution, dedicated to Henry Parker’s parliamentary raison d’état, Arienzo argues that, once the idea of a common interest of the nation assembled   See Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, c.1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 19   Napoleone Orsini, ‘“Policy”: Or the Language of Elizabethan Machiavellianism’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 9 (1946): pp. 122–34. 20   Raab, pp. 78–101. 18

10

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

in a representative institution emerged in England, a new reason of the sovereign state took the place of the old Machiavellian policy. This leads us to the emergence, during the civil wars, of a theory of de facto power among republicans and parliamentary supporters, in which Machiavelli played a significant role, together with Grotius. This point is taken up by Marco Barducci, who highlights originally English political issues, developed within a broader European context. More particularly, Barducci deals with the works of Anthony Ascham, Marchamont Nedham and James Harrington, exploring the influence exercised on their theories by both Machiavelli and Grotius. His contribution focuses on Machiavellianism and republicanism in English political thought from 1649 to 1660, examining how the three English political writers confronted the issues of the State’s stability in the context of the post-1649 search for constitutional and religious settlement. Machiavelli’s analysis of change and stability was combined with Grotius’s and Hobbes’s theories of war and state order; Barducci’s point is that both Machiavelli’s ideas on change and stability and Renaissance republicanism influenced the English political debate of the late 1650s concerning the survival of the republic and the restoration of the monarchy. The last contribution focuses on the theme of religion in Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes, describing how the Florentine reflection on religion and politics could be debated and rejected in the search for a stable and absolute sovereignty. A number of recent works have been dedicated to the complex issue of the relation between Thomas Hobbes and Machiavelli, highlighting for instance the much discussed attribution of the Three Discourses as proposed in 1995 by Arlene W. Saxonhouse and Noel B. Reynolds.21 In his contribution Fabio Raimondi deals with the ideological role of religion in Machiavelli and in Thomas Hobbes’s theory of the Commonwealth, arguing that in both writers religion is a social link that structures and keeps together the various parts of the City and of the Commonwealth. In fact, neither could exist without religion, because neither rationality nor violence alone is sufficient for a government to function. The difference between Machiavelli’s and Hobbes’s concepts of religion lies, rather, in their purpose: while for Machiavelli religion has the aim of supporting the good order of a city promoting political innovation through conflicts, Hobbes, on the contrary, supports the hypothesis that religion must maintain the status quo. Significantly, Jacob Soll’s epilogue poses, in fact, a further, unanswerable question on the uniqueness of England in the Machiavellian debate. There is no point at which a discussion on Machiavelli’s role in English political thought 21   Arlene W. Saxonhouse, ‘Hobbes and the Horae Subsecivae’, Polity 13 (1981), pp. 541–67; Noel B. Reynolds and Arlene W. Saxonhouse (eds), Thomas Hobbes: Three Discourses: A Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Works of the Young Hobbes (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 1995). On Hobbes and Machiavelli see also Noel Malcolm, Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years’ War: An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007); Daniela Coli, Hobbes, Roma e Machiavelli nell’Inghilterra degli Stuart (Florence, Le Lettere, 2009).

Introduction: Introducing Machiavelli in Tudor and Stuart England

11

might be said to conclude, but the interaction of Machiavellian and Hobbesian philosophy certainly marks the end of a particularly fraught moment in the political debate, and shows to a modern reader the progress of the reception of Machiavelli in England in the first century and a half of the Florentine’s afterlife. The Tudor bogey has by now disappeared – to find its place once more, perhaps, in twenty-first-century popular fiction; but by the end of the seventeenth century Machiavelli has definitely become part of an ongoing political debate, entered the English vocabulary and left an indelible mark in English intellectual life.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 1

Reginald Pole and the Reception of the Principe in Henrician England Alessandra Petrina

The standard critical attitude on Machiavelli’s reception in sixteenth-century England privileges the responses of the Elizabethan age, taking into consideration playwrights and poets more readily than booksellers and printers. Already in 1928 Mario Praz, though acknowledging the existence of readers who would study the Principe and discuss it as a political manual or a denunciation of the excesses of tyrants, preferred to devote his discussion to ‘the popular legend of Machiavelli, the wicked politician’.1 The Machiavelli appearing in Christopher Marlowe’s plays or in occasional allusions in Shakespeare, denounced by Thomas Nashe and fearfully evoked by John Case, is also the figure that has established itself more clearly in popular imagination, but is either the result of wilful misreading or of ignorance. Throughout the twentieth century and more thoroughly in recent years, scholars have also investigated the lesser-known side of the circulation of Machiavelli’s works in early modern England, but even in this case the standard attitude seems to have been based on the conviction that, as stated by L. Arnold Weissberger, English readers were introduced to the works of the Florentine writer only with Gabriel Harvey in the last decades of the sixteenth century.2 Recent studies have also taken into consideration the circulation of works that either imitated or directly engaged with the Principe, such as Agostino Nifo’s De Regnandi Peritia (1521), nowadays considered an outright act of plagiarism,3 or Jeronimo Osorio’s De Nobilitate Civili et Christiana (1542), a work whose widespread circulation may have contributed to the growing fame of Machiavelli’s name.4 In both cases the language used might have constituted an advantage for international circulation, in comparison with Machiavelli’s use of the vernacular. It is of course true that the greater circulation of Machiavelli’s works in Elizabethan England, the diversified   Mario Praz, ‘Machiavelli and the Elizabethans’, Proceedings of the British Academy 13 (1928): pp. 3–51. 2   L. Arnold Weissberger, ‘Machiavelli and Tudor England’, Political Science Quarterly 42 (1927): pp. 589–607 (p. 589). 3   But on this point see Sydney Anglo’s spirited defence of Nifo’s work as ‘Creative Plagiarism’ in his Machiavelli – The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 43–84. 4   Anglo, pp. 143–63. 1

14

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

reception and the proliferation of translations in various European languages allows for a more systematic discussion. It is also true, however, that what traces remain of Machiavelli’s reception in Henrician England may offer an interesting touchstone for the more articulated response of the latter half of the sixteenth century. The present chapter investigates the reception of Machiavelli’s Principe in the early decades after its composition, focusing in particular on Reginald Pole and his spirited attack against the book and its writer. The first years after the completion of the Principe show evidence of manuscript circulation, albeit of a limited and possibly idiosyncratic nature: at least seven of the extant manuscripts are datable before the first printed editions, and their spread is such as to show that, beyond the rather puzzling episode connected with the dedication and presentation to Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, Machiavelli had in mind a decidedly larger readership.5 Manuscript circulation in the early sixteenth century comes as no surprise, especially in the case of Machiavelli: of all his nonliterary works, only L’Arte della Guerra was printed in his lifetime. Interestingly, one of the early codices of the Principe found its way to England: it is the so-called Charlecote manuscript, now in Charlecote Park, Warwickshire. John Humphrey Whitfield dates the manuscript to the very early years of the literary life of the text, believing it to have been composed between 1513, when the treatise was actually completed, and 1532, the year of the first printed publication. The manuscript is probably related to the scribe Ludovico degli Arrighi, though not in his own hand. Working in Rome in the 1520s, he was perhaps the most important of the scribes associated with Machiavelli’s work, and had the commission for an early codex (now Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Barb.lat.5093), probably made for a wealthy owner and uniquely in parchment.6 This sets the origin of the Charlecote manuscript at the very centre of the scribal publication of the Principe. The Charlecote version has no dedicatory letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici and no table of contents, and begins directly with ‘Incomincia il Libro del gouerno di uno Principe’.7 It also closes with the sentence ‘Fine del Libro de Principe’.8 The manuscript has, besides, one distinguishing feature: an ownership inscription written on the vellum guardsheet preceding the text. The inscription is in English, in a sixteenth-century hand, and reads:

5   Brian Richardson, ‘The Prince and its Early Italian Readers’, in Niccolò Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’: New Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. Martin Coyle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 18–39. 6   Charlecote Park, Warwickshire, MS L.2. See John Humphreys Whitfield, ‘The Charlecote Manuscript of Machiavelli’s Prince’, Italian Studies 22 (1967): pp. 6–25 (the dating is discussed on p. 8). A facsimile of the manuscript appears in Niccolò Machiavelli: Il Principe, with an Essay on The Prince, ed. J.H. Whitfield (Paris-La Haye: Mouton, 1969). 7   ‘Here begins the book of the government of a Prince’. 8   ‘End of the book of the Prince’. Quoted in Whitfield, ‘The Charlecote Manuscript’ (1967), p. 8.

Reginald Pole and the Reception of the Principe in Henrician England

15

This Boke is Nicholas Jonays With his louing Frindis mareuelus wity to be hade in Rememberance.9

There is of course no proof that the inscription should be connected directly with the Machiavelli manuscript – John Humphreys Whitfield rather supposes that the inscription might be earlier, as the guardsheet might have been applied to this codex after being used for another. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has no entry or reference for Nicholas Jonays, even taking into account possible vagaries of spelling. The presence of the manuscript in England at such an early date remains a puzzle, though it constitutes proof that Machiavelli’s most controversial work was not unknown to Henrician England. Another point of interest is the second half of the inscription in the guardsheet: if we accept the interpretation suggested by Whitfield and read ‘mareuelus wity to be hade in Rememberance’ as a description of Machiavelli’s book,10 what is evoked is wonder at the quality of the book: an aesthetic appreciation perhaps overriding political and moral considerations, which was indeed one of the standard reactions to the Principe in the early years after his composition. The second Italian edition, published by Bernardo di Giunta, seemed to allude to the contemporary debate on the purity of the Italian language in its celebration of Machiavelli’s style and especially vocabulary, free of regional taint;11 and one of the first French translators, Guillaume Cappel, wrote in his preface that among the qualities that had prompted him to undertake the translations were ‘vn bon moyen de proceder, vn stile propre a la matiere’.12 An English reader might share the same admiration for the beautifully clear prose of the text, brilliantly offsetting the startling contents.13 Apart from this solitary manuscript, copies of the early Italian editions of the Principe may have been circulating fairly soon in the sixteenth century: prior to the insertion of Machiavelli’s name in the Papal Index Librorum Prohibitorum, in 1557,14 at least 15 editions of the original version had appeared, starting from

9

  Quoted in Whitfield, ‘The Charlecote Manuscript’ (1967), p. 9.   See Whitfield, ‘The Charlecote Manuscript’ (1967), pp. 211–12. 11   See Bertelli, Sergio and Piero Innocenti, Bibliografia Machiavelliana (Verona: Edizioni Valdonega, 1979), p. xxxv. The edition referred to is Il Principe di Niccolo Machiauelli al Magnifico Lorenzo di Piero de Medici (Florence: Bernardo di Giunta, 1532). 12   ‘An excellent manner of proceeding, a style appropriate to the matter’. Le Prince de Nicolas Machiavelle secretaire et citoien de Florence. Traduit d’Italien en Françoys Par Guillavme Cappel (Paris: Chez Charles Estienne Imprimeur du Roy, 1553), sig. IIIv. 13   Whitfield reads the solitary word in the inner margin of a.x.v, ‘Nota’ as evidence of an Italian reader. I would argue that the Latin word is merely evidence of a literate reader. 14   Index auctorum et librorum qui tanquam haeretici, aut suspecti, aut perniciosi, ab officio S. Ro. Inquisitionis reprobantur, et in universa Christiana republica interdicuntur (Rome: Antonio Blado, 1557). 10

16

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Antonio Blado’s edition, published in Rome in 1532.15 On the other hand, though readers would have to wait until 1560 for a Latin translation,16 two French versions appeared in print in 1553 (while a manuscript version had been composed in 1546).17 English readers of the first half of the sixteenth century would have to rely on their knowledge of Italian, which helps explain the few references to the book we find under the reign of Henry VIII. Among the earliest allusions to Machiavelli and his Principe in England is a famous passage in Reginald Pole’s Apologia ad Carolum Quintum, written in 1539 and meant as a defence for his earlier De Unitate, a violent attack against Henry VIII which had been published in Italy three years earlier.18 With these works, Pole plunged into the controversy over the English King’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and, by resolutely appealing to Charles V, King of Spain and ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, unequivocally declared his allegiance and was counted among England’s enemies. The Cardinal was then at the court of the Emperor during his second legation. The Apologia was never actually presented to Charles (and was only published two centuries after its composition), and Pole’s strictures against Machiavelli might have received a poor welcome if it had been, as the Emperor seems to have appreciated the Principe; but the passage has been central to later assessments of the impact of Machiavelli’s work in sixteenth-century England. Though, as has been noted, incidental to the overall purpose of the work,19 Pole’s view of the Principe acquires more significance if seen in context, and appears to have been seminal, setting the tone for the Elizabethan reaction. Reginald Pole had lived many years in Italy, and had played a relevant role in the Council of Trent. His close relationship with Henry VIII made him an ideal candidate to mediate between England and Rome in the controversy arising from the King’s decision to divorce, and as such he was appealed to by Henry: as a theologian, his views both on the validity of the King’s marriage and on papal supremacy would carry much weight. De Unitate, however, was very far from suggesting the pacifying mediation Henry had hoped, and offered no support 15   Il Principe di Niccholo Machiauello al Magnifico Lorenzo di Piero de Medici (Rome: Antonio Blado d’Asola, 1532). 16   Nicolai Machiavelli Reip. Florentinae a Secretis, ad Laurentium Medicem de Principe Libellus (Basileae: apud Petrum Pernam, 1560). 17   Le Prince de Nicholas Macchiauelli Secretaire & Citoien de Florence Traduit d’Italien en Francois, trans. Gaspard d’Auvergne (Poitiers: Enguilbert de Marnef, 1553); and Le Prince de Nicolas Machiavelle Secretaire et Citoien de Florence. Traduit d’Italien en Françoys Par Guillavme Cappel (Paris: Estienne, 1553). The manuscript is Chantilly, Château de Chantilly, MS 315 (Jacques de Vintemille’s translation). 18   ‘Apologia Reginaldi Poli ad Carolum V. Caesarem’, in Epistolarum Reginaldi Poli S.R.E. Cardinalis et aliorum ad ipsum collectio. Pars I, ed. Angelo M. Quirini (Brixiae: Excudebat Joannes-Maria Rizzardi, 1744), pp. 66–171 (this is the text I use throughout the present discussion). The title is the editor’s, rather than the author’s. 19   Anglo, p. 115.

Reginald Pole and the Reception of the Principe in Henrician England

17

to the King’s cause. Scholars’ opinions diverge as far as Pole’s motivations are concerned: in the early years of the twentieth century Paul van Dyke would write of the Cardinal’s ‘great affection for Henry’ and of the grief he must have felt while being obliged to accuse him,20 but in more recent years it has been pointed out that, though Pole might not have intended De Unitate for publication, this work was far from being a private communication for the King’s eyes, and indeed was addressing the whole English nation.21 Thomas F. Mayer, Pole’s most recent and authoritative biographer, speaks of an articulate campaign against Henry VIII, of which De Unitate, and Pole himself, were only a part; there were letters for the Pope, suggesting a campaign against the English King, and the treatise itself was drafted in several versions, depending on the different addressees.22 While De Unitate contained no reference to the Florentine writer, the Apologia, which did, was only one of three possible prefaces; another was addressed to the King of Scotland (probably written in 1540, shortly after the fall of Thomas Cromwell), while the third, never completed, rather boldly addressed Henry VIII’s own son, Edward VI, once he became King.23 Taken together, these three intended prefaces show both the wide range of Pole’s campaign, and his difficulty with a text that was undergoing only scribal publication, following the author’s own wishes: actual publication, as Pole was well aware, might have rendered the Cardinal’s position extremely precarious. Pole’s hesitation over the issue of printing should be read against the uncertainty generated by the uncontrollable consequences of the circulation prompted by this relatively new medium: elsewhere he expressed his anxiety on the topic, as for instance in a letter dated 1540, in which he noted that up to this time he had published none of his writings, a decision indicative of his worry at the unwanted circulation of his works.24 At the same time, his composing three prefaces shows his eagerness to direct his work towards a selected readership: addressing Charles V and the King of Scotland, Pole hinted at the possibility of publishing with the respective king’s auspices. The complex relationship of the Cardinal with book publication and circulation is reflected in his words on the Florentine writer. The Apologia contains Pole’s only articulate discussion of Machiavelli,25 so we may read it as a topical allusion, born of the sudden notoriety of the Principe, which would irresistibly prompt uncontrollable publication. The notoriety that thus struck Pole may not have 20

  Paul van Dyke, ‘Reginald Pole and Thomas Cromwell: An Examination of the Apologia ad Carolum Quintum’, The American Historical Review 9 (1904): 696–724, p. 697. 21   Anglo, p. 117. 22   Thomas F. Mayer, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 62–102. 23   Van Dyke, p. 700. The scholar notes that the latter must have been written between 1547 and 1553, and was probably interrupted by Edward’s death. 24   The letter, to Damianus a Goes, is published in the third volume of Pole’s Epistolary (p. 37), and discussed in van Dyke, pp. 700–1. 25   For other references in Pole’s writings, see Mayer, pp. 88–91, and Anglo, p. 117.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

18

been European, but confined to his country: although addressed to Charles V, the Apologia develops its argument in a wholly English context, referring to the events surrounding Henry’s Act of Supremacy and setting the betrayal of the monarchic ideal on the part of the English sovereign against a background that was at the same time intensely national and supernatural. Satan makes his appearance rather early in the text, and recent critical discussions have underlined the role of the devil as almost a character with his own personality: the adversary of mankind becomes Henry’s evil advisor, acting through a number of different instruments, that is to say, those very counsellors who are closest to the King.26 The lures Satan uses to tempt Henry are power, honour and gain, and the imagery is strongly reminiscent of the biblical temptation of Christ: the writer explicitly notes that Henry’s policy shows his desire to be elevated ‘quasi in pinnaculum Templi, vel in montem excelsum’ (p. 121).27 Overall, Pole’s writing is dramatic, personifications abound, and the early stages of the English reforming process are acted out as an epic battle. But Pole’s first preoccupation seems to be with the very act of writing, as can be seen in the opening lines of the Apologia: Grave est, Caesar, homini non maligno contra alium quemlibet scribere, gravius contra eum, cuius honorem tuendum & dignitatem cohonestandam officia aliqua praecedentia, legum item & naturae praecepta tibi commendarunt; gravissimum vero omnium, ut ille Orator existimabat, ac periculosissimum contra eum scribere, qui possit proscribere (p. 66).28

Playing between scribere and proscribere, Pole suggests an active role for the written word, and his argument, occupying the whole incipit of the work, underlines the paradox of his own writing: ‘Scribo enim, Caesar, contra Regem Angliae, qui sum ipse Anglus’ (p. 67).29 Not only is Pole forswearing his allegiance and even his blood ties by attacking the King: a further, insidious paradox is revealed as the writer tells us how the King not only gave him protection and love, but also the very means of writing, being instrumental to his education. The treason is first of all Pole’s, and writing is a painful yet necessary act: ‘quid ergo illud est, quod me invitum ad scribendum compellit?’ (p. 68).30 Writing, whether prompted by Satan or by a higher necessity, is more than a function of the writer’s will: it is an act 26

  Anglo, pp. 119–21.   ‘As if on the pinnacle of the Temple, or on a high mountain’. 28   ‘It is a serious business, Caesar, to write anything against somebody when you do not do it with malice; it is much more serious to write against someone of clear honour and worthy dignity, somebody whom previous offices and the law themselves of man and nature taught you to respect; among all these things the most serious, as the famous orator believed, and the most dangerous is to write against him, who may persecute you’. 29   ‘I write, Caesar, against the King of England, who am myself English’. 30   ‘What is it then, that forces me to write against my will?’ 27

Reginald Pole and the Reception of the Principe in Henrician England

19

that is undertaken only under compulsion, since, once completed, the text lives a life of its own. To the irrevocability of the act of writing, highlighted here, is added the contagious perniciousness of uncontrolled circulation: the written word becomes almost possessed of independent life. The pages immediately preceding Pole’s attack against the Principe insist on the strength of the neglected Evangelium Christi & doctrina, opposing two books representing the radical extremes of good and bad teaching. Pole’s regard for books and the role they may play in contemporary politics is extremely high: under the pretext of reporting Cromwell’s persuasive words to him, he discusses the issue, with references to Plato’s Republic, to the latter’s detriment, since a long and articulated but theoretical work may have, in the interlocutor’s (and, given the tortuous syntax at this point, the writer’s) eyes, less influence than a short treatise wholly based on first-hand experience: Qui cum ipsi nunquam Rempublicam attigere, quid solidum de ea scribere possunt, cujus gerendi ratio tota in experientia est posita? In qua plus valet unius hominis experti brevis oratio, quam multorum voluminum sermo Philosophorum, qui nullam experientiam habuere. Quia si ex libris haec ratio discenda esset, saltem eos libros legerem, qui plus adhaerent experientiae, quam speculationi. Quo in genere se librum scriptum habere hominis moderni quidem, sed ingeniosissimi & acutissimi, qui non sua somnia est persecutus, ut ea, quae Plato scribit de Civitate sua, quae post tot saecula locum inter homines non invenit, sed ea, quae quotidiana rerum experientia comprobat, ac vera esse ostendit (p. 135).31

Read with the benefit of hindsight, this surprisingly underlines the efficacy and practical usefulness of the Principe – based on first-hand, contemporary experience, short and practical, Machiavelli’s text is far from the utopian overtones of Plato’s classical treatise (though the derogatory allusion to books based on the writers’ dreams, and to imaginary cities that are not to be found, might also be read as a reference to Thomas More’s Utopia, first published in 1516). The very qualities of the Principe, identified here, add to its perniciousness. The analysis of the traits of the speculum principis, thus clashing with secular tradition, indicates Machiavelli’s

31

  ‘As they never concerned themselves with the state, what can they write about it that is true and verifiable, as their art of government is wholly based on experience? A short speech by one expert man is of far more value than the reasoning of the philosophers’ many books, if they have no experience. If I must learn the art of government from books, at least I would read books connected with experience rather than speculation. He who followed not his own dreams, as Plato did in his Republic – which finds no place in the world – but what has been proved by daily experience, and is true, shows he has written the book not only of a modern man, but of a very ingenious and cunning one’.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

20

work as the first true example of the genre,32 and underlines the novelty of the text. Pole’s decision to have the section on political books immediately preceding his encounter with the Principe is a shrewd rhetorical move, but also an indication of the ambiguity of the writer’s response, since as a political writer he obviously admires the text he is ideologically condemning. The same ambiguity is shown later, when Pole, raising the tone of his impassioned peroration (there are a number of variations on the ‘Audite ergo, & auscultate’ formula, pp. 137–8), implores both princes and people to listen to him reciting the iniquities of the book: the reader’s attention might be captured by the very precepts Pole is warning us against. Given this ambivalent response, the evocation of Satan as true author of the work can be explained in these terms: none but the Evil One could thus beguile readers, offering pernicious advice in the most convincing form: Talem autem librum illum inveni scriptum ab hoste humani generis, in quo omnia hostis consilia explicantur, & modi, quibus religio, pietas, & omnes virtutis indoles, facilius destrui possent (p. 136).33

Pole can thus defuse the potential of the text, by pointing out its capacity for undermining rather than building the principality: the book is written by the enemy of mankind, and helps towards the destruction of all that is noble in it. Inevitably the condemnation of the Principe must insist on its pars destruens, on the potentially annihilating effect it may have, not on the very pragmatic advice offered on how to achieve power and thus contribute to the construction of a stable state. Pole shows considerable rhetorical skill in building suspense towards the revelation of the iniquity of the book: in spite of an early warning, which shall be discussed later, his meeting with the book appears quite fortuitous (‘cum in librum incidissem’, p. 136),34 but horrified recognition is immediate: ‘vix coepi legere, quin Satanae digito scriptum agnoscerem’ (p. 137).35 An explicit comparison is thus instituted with good books: ‘Dei digito scripti dicuntur, quales sunt, qui divinas leges continent’ (p. 137).36 Explicitly, the Principe shall contain nothing but diabolical laws. Analogous skill is shown in playing with the reader’s expectations and delaying the revelation of the writer’s name; when at last he is identified, the title of the book is also made explicit, and Pole is careful to point out that this is one of many   On the Principe in the context of the speculum principis tradition, see Allan H. Gilbert, Machiavelli’s Prince and Its Forerunners: The Prince as a Typical Book De Regimine Principum (Durham: Duke University Press, 1938). 33   ‘I found a book written by the enemy of mankind, giving all the advice of the enemy, and explaining the ways in which religion, pity, and all manners of virtues can be easily destroyed’. 34   ‘As I happened upon a book’. 35   ‘No sooner had I started reading, that I saw it was written by Satan’s finger’. 36   ‘We call those books written by the finger of God, which contain divine law’. 32

Reginald Pole and the Reception of the Principe in Henrician England

21

books Machiavelli has written. There seems to be little doubt that the Cardinal had actually read the Principe, though there has been some debate on the issue, and that he had the text fresh in his mind when writing his Apologia, since he mentions it in connection with a meeting with Thomas Cromwell that will be discussed below.37 The pages specifically dedicated to the Principe dwell in particular on Chapter 18:38 his attack highlights the centrality this chapter would assume in future readings of this work. Pole plays elegantly on some striking images in the chapter, applying amplificatio in the case of the metaphor of the lion and the fox, and choosing to focus on the people rather than the princes as his readers; led by these diabolical teachings, he writes, the Prince shall be moved by such malignant impetus that ‘in vos postea, qui subditi estis, tanquam lupi, vel tygrides in oves irruant, vel tanquam vulpes in pullos, ut vos lacerent, dissipent, & perdant’ (p. 138).39 The Apologia goes back to the metaphor of the lion and the fox more explicitly on the following pages, analysing and explaining it; in the passage just quoted the writer shows considerable ability in overturning the strength of Machiavelli’s image, since the other animals that are being evoked establish the biblical overtones of the passage (the wolves and sheep), while other, less awesome animals, chickens, with which the readers should identify, are made to appear. Any reader would appreciate the impact of the Ciceronian image of the lion and the fox; fewer readers would relish the implication that turning the Prince into a fox meant also turning themselves into chickens. Even when dealing with more general passages, such as the insistence on the necessity for the Prince to abstain from following the true precepts of religion when this may be detrimental to him, Pole prefers to insist on the obviously nefarious consequences for the people: in spite of his stressing the satanic origin of the book, he soon forgets to condemn its immorality or irreligiousness, and dwells on its practical consequences. His summary of Machiavelli’s principles (‘Tenenda via media, quam suadet prudentia’, p. 138)40 might at first strike the reader as a piece of very sound advice; the refutation that follows attacks the pernicious doctrine on political and practical terms, but it is unclear whether the audience Pole focuses on here is still the oppressed people, the aspiring prince or the dedicatee. The following section opens once again with ‘Caesar’, the vocative to which Pole often recurs to add persuasiveness to his writings; but in the first exposition of Machiavelli’s principles, he loses sight of his intended, primary reader in his attempt to reveal the danger inherent in the text, thus appealing to the stratum of society that would most obviously lose if the 37

  On this point see Mayer, pp. 80–1.   Early twentieth-century critics would use this as proof of Pole’s substantial misreading of the Principe, since he had not understood Machiavelli’s true purpose, and his patriotism; see for instance Antonio Panella, Gli antimachiavellici (Florence: Sansoni, 1943), pp. 23–4. 39   ‘Then they will attack you, who are subjects, like wolves, or tigers attacking sheep, or like foxes attacking chicken, destroying and tearing you’. 40   ‘A middle course should be kept, as prudence persuades us’. 38

22

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Prince decided to put the Machiavellian principles into practice. It is a revealing instance of ambiguity, suggesting alternative interpretations of Machiavelli in Pole’s mind. The conclusion of the passage dedicated to Machiavelli goes back once more to the lion and the fox: Et ideo arcanum illud imperii tuendi cum omne securitate, atque felicitate, ad leonis violentiam, & vulpis dolos tranfert, in quorum custodia, tanquam in arce munitissima, contra omnes fortunae casus illum suum Principem relinquit (p. 140).41

There is little doubt of Pole’s expertise in thus working around a single, memorable image, turning and overturning it until its various negative connotations are revealed. At the same time, however, the overall purpose of the invective is unclear. It is evident that one result of the passage is to single out, as noted by Robert Bireley, ‘Machiavelli’s reduction of religion to a means of control of a ruler’s subjects, his elevation of utility to the sole measure of political action, and his effective denial of the Christian vision of divine providence’;42 but such an assessment is limiting. Felix Raab highlights Pole’s profound understanding of the Principe, giving him full credit for sincere horror, but narrows his reading to Pole’s grasp of the religious implications of the text: ‘The Cardinal, after all, had a tremendous spiritual stake in an Augustinian universe; it was to this vision that he had sacrificed family and friends by breaking with Henry VIII’.43 The critic seems biased by an absolute outlook, romanticizing the issue at stake: as Pole was writing to Charles V, he was also implicitly proposing an equation that, while setting Henry VIII (and his evil counsellors) on the side of Machiavelli and thus of Satan, established Charles’s own place securely within the boundaries of religiously sanctioned truth. Such a reading might simply decode the Apologia as an early instance of the tendency to use Machiavelli as a spokesperson, or even a label, for politically rather than morally opposed factions; in the same way Huguenots, following the Massacre of St Bartholomew, would use the name of Machiavelli as a shortcut to indicate

41   ‘Therefore he entrusts this mystery of state with all security and confidence to the violence of the lion, and the cunning of the fox; in their custody, as if in a secure fort, his Prince is left to withstand all accidents of fortune’. 42   Robert Bireley, The Counter-Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1990), p. 15. 43   Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500– 1700 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), p. 31. Adriano Prosperi maintains Pole would see in Machiavelli’s works a radical anti-Christianism, even an atheistic stance; see his ‘Il Principe, il Cardinale, il Papa. Reginald Pole lettore di Machiavelli’, in Cultura e scrittura di Machiavelli. Atti del Convegno di Firenze-Pisa, 27–30 ottobre 1997 (Rome: Salerno, 1998), pp. 241–62.

Reginald Pole and the Reception of the Principe in Henrician England

23

religious intolerance, while Jesuits would equate machiavellian with the worst connotations of politique.44 Too many issues are at stake in Pole’s invective-cum-analysis: his preoccupation at the unforeseeable effects of the circulation of printed books, his religious beliefs, his political sagacity, his aesthetic appreciation of a flexible, multivalent, yet clear and enjoyable text, all play a role in his assessment, with often contradictory results. The slipperiness of Machiavelli’s text is enhanced by the simplicity of the style and the beauty of the language; Pole cannot help admiring these qualities, and evoking the text through imitation and rhetorical variation while condemning it. At the same time, though the idea of the dogma of Satan associated with a book did not originate with Pole, and certainly did not die with him, it is central to the early modern understanding of Machiavelli’s text, and in this sense the Apologia might be said not to have been part of an established approach, but rather to have opened the way for a reading that has become associated with the Tudor reception of Machiavellianism. The puzzle that is the Principe has led readers, more or less seriously, to think of this text as an apocryphon, a secret book to be understood only within a coterie. That this was also the reading suggested by Reginald Pole is the central thesis of Peter S. Donaldson’s analysis of the Apologia.45 Basing his intuition on rather weak premises, Donaldson sees the Apologia as prophetic typology, the fulfillment of one of the inevitabilities of history. If this interpretation sees Pole as the writer responsible for ‘fixing the image of the Henrician polity as Machiavellian in character’, Donaldson’s identification of Pole’s Machiavelli with a type of Antichrist is simplistic: the fact, cited by the critic, that Machiavelli’s works were on the Index librorum prohibitorum is hardly proof, as the Florentine writer shared this dubious privilege with hundreds of other authors. One answer to Donaldson’s hypothesis has already been proposed, since, as has been observed, ‘the demonic and apocalyptic fulminations of sixteenth-century controversialists’ are to be considered at least in part the exploiting of a rhetorical topos.46 On the other hand, Donaldson, though pointing out that ‘Machiavelli could be thought of as the purveyor of a secret doctrine partly because, at the time of his purported influence on Henry VIII, Il Principe existed only in manuscript’,47 does not appear to realize the giant leap the Principe made when it was actually printed. Pole’s hysterical tone at the idea of the spreading of Machiavelli’s words might remind us of the association between publication and contagion which we find in later detractors of the Principe, such as John Case or Simon Patericke.48   See Harro Höpfl, Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State, c.1540–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 99–106. 45   Peter S. Donaldson, Machiavelli and Mystery of State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 1–35. 46   See Anglo, p. 121. 47   Donaldson, p. 9. 48   See John Case, Sphaera Ciuitatis (Frankfurt: Wechelum, 1589), p. 2; and The Epistle Dedicatorie, in A Discourse Vpon the meanes of wel governing and maintaining 44

24

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Pole himself considers the hypothesis that Machiavelli was actually writing to reveal to the people the secrets of (evil) princes, only to reject it, scathingly commenting upon Machiavelli’s supposed love for the citizens (pp. 150–1). Yet his awareness of the alternative interpretation of the Principe highlights the paradox at the heart of the text already glimpsed at in the identification of interpretative ambiguities. Once more it is tempting to see Reginald Pole as the precursor of a dualistic reading that will dominate Elizabethan (and partly Jacobean) interpretations of Machiavelli’s notorious work: on the one hand the horrified reaction of the pious reader who discerns the finger of Satan; on the other the suspicion that Machiavelli might in fact be describing tyrants as they are (rather than as they should be)49 and thus disclosing their secret counsels to the people. Halfway through the Apologia, shortly before the section dedicated to Machiavelli, among the evil counsellors there emerges a veritable ‘legatus Satanae’, a messenger of the Devil (p. 123). He is very plainly named and described: Thomas Cromwell, on whose low origin and inferior status before his spectacular social climb Pole gloatingly dwells. Cromwell’s role in the late 1520s, when the divorce controversy was raging, was that of an intermediary between Cardinal Wolsey and the King, and even Wolsey’s fall did not damage his standing as a rising politician; in 1530 he became a member of the council and, while the King’s theologians were working towards a definition of royal supremacy, acquired increasing control on the relation between King and Parliament. He became the King’s principal secretary in 1534 and, possibly moved in equal measure by his ambition and by his evangelical convictions, was an undisputed proponent of the early years of the English Reformation.50 Pole’s resentment against Cromwell is easily explained, given the gulf that separated the two, and was exacerbated by what was probably Cromwell’s direct responsibility in the fate of the Cardinal’s brother and mother.51 Besides, concentrating on Cromwell as the arch-enemy, who bore the most serious responsibility for the disastrous change that had detached England from Rome, allowed Pole to shift, at least implicitly, part of the responsibility from the shoulders of the King.

in good peace, a kingdome, or other principalitie. Divided into three parts, namely, the Counsell, the Religion, and the Policie, which a Prince ought to hold and follow. Against Nicholas Machiavell the Florentine. Translated into English by Simon Patericke (London: Adam Islip, 1602). 49   This interpretation can be found in the most important sixteenth-century English translation of the text: see Machiavelli’s The Prince: An Elizabethan Translation. Edited with an Introduction and Notes from a Manuscript in the Collection of Mr Jules Furthman, ed. Hardin Craig (Chapel Hill: University of Carolina Press, 1944), p. 177. 50   Howard Leithead, ‘Cromwell, Thomas, earl of Essex (b. in or before 1485, d. 1540)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, online edn, May 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6769, accessed 24 April 2010]. 51   Van Dyke, p. 704.

Reginald Pole and the Reception of the Principe in Henrician England

25

It is in connection with Thomas Cromwell that Machiavelli makes his appearance in the book. The Apologia, as noted above, contains the narration of a meeting a few pages before the discussion of the Principe – a meeting during which Cromwell recommended a book to the politically naïve Pole. There has been some discussion on whether such a meeting actually took place, or whether it is an entirely fictional event.52 The link between Cromwell and the Florentine writer is historically rather tenuous: it is known, thanks to a letter dated 13 February 1537, that Cromwell had been given one or more of Machiavelli’s books by Henry Parker, Lord Morley. The accompanying letter refers initially to ‘the Cronykle of the Florantyns’ in the original Italian, and as such can be identified with the Historie Fiorentine.53 But, after discussing the appropriateness of some of Machiavelli’s arguments for Henry VIII’s own cause, especially as concerns the writer’s strictures against ‘the Bishop of Rome’, Parker then moves on to discuss the Principe: ‘this Boke off Machiavelle de principe ys surely a very speciall good thing for youre Lordschip’. But the recommendation, as has been noted, could also be motivated by the fact that both knew and liked Italy; Morley also notes Cromwell’s superior knowledge of Italian mores, and possibly of the language: ‘Youre lordschip I have oftentymes harde you say hath bene conversant among them. Sene theyere factyons and maners. And so was I never’. Such a compliment, coming from the translator of Petrarch’s Trionfi, is worth considering. It might have been inserted as a justification of the gift or as flattery, but it also connects Machiavelli’s books to that fascination for all things Italian. Surprisingly, the compliment would be echoed almost verbatim half a century later, this time in a Scottish context: in the Principe translation undertaken by William Fowler in the 1580s,54 dedicated to Walter Scott, Laird of Buccleuch, we read: Right hon.ll sir if to any for respect regard of wisdome bloode valor sight […] renone or worthines this worke might be dedicated we as obleshed in dewtye […] yow ar he to quhome the honour of the first and I he to quhome the obligation in

52

  See Mayer, pp. 99–100, and Anglo, pp. 123–6.   The letter written by Henry Parker is printed in Henry Ellis (ed.), Original Letters Illustrative of English History: Including Numerous Royal Letters: from Autographs in the British Museum, the State Paper Office, and one or two Other Collections, vol. 3 (London: Bentley, 1846), pp. 63–7. For a discussion of the letter and gift, see Kenneth R. Bartlett, ‘Morley, Machiavelli, and the Pilgrimage of Grace’, in ‘Triumphs of English’. Henry Parker, Lord Morley, Translator to the Tudor Court: New Essays in Interpretation, ed. Marie Axton and James P. Carley (London: The British Library, 2000), pp. 77–85 (Bartlett reads the gift as directly connected with the Pilgrimage of Grace): the letter, re-edited from the original in the Public Record Office, is also printed in ‘Triumphs of English’, pp. 230–1: my quotations come from this version. See also Anglo, pp. 97–8. 54   On the dating of Fowler’s translation of the Principe see Alessandra Petrina, Machiavelli in the British Isles: Two Early Modern Translations of The Prince (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 92–3. 53

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

26

the second suld […] respects and therfor sir it sal lat it stand with your […] and bontefull curtesie to receave these my travells translated and writtin at sondrye interupted houers, and at your leiseur censure and examine theme quha being mair perfyte and propter in the italien tonge then I be sal make my self graced by your correctioun.55

No connection can be proved between the two passages, but in both cases the linguistic interest, linked with italophilia, is put forward as if to justify the reference to Machiavelli’s Principe; the stylistic qualities of the text help its circulation, another point that shall be reiterated in the Elizabethan reception of the book.56 Aesthetic appreciation, as shared by readers since the early sixteenth century, appears to have accompanied the less licit pleasure of the ruler who sees his almost primeval instincts thus elegantly spelled out. In his Apologia, Pole makes it abundantly clear that it was not Cromwell who gave him the book, though he might have suggested reading it – the point has raised some debate, but critical consensus favours the hypothesis that, in his dialogue with Pole, Cromwell was referring to the Principe rather than to other books that have been suggested, such as Castiglione’s Cortegiano.57 The association, in Pole’s eyes, would have been almost inevitable: even setting apart personal animosities, Cromwell’s policy proceeded along lines which openly clashed with Pole’s beliefs and practices. The link between the dangerous doctrine of the Principe and Cromwell’s political principles is quickly established, even if there is little probability that Cromwell would actually mould his own, or the King’s policies along explicitly Machiavellian lines.58 In his already mentioned article on the early Italian readers of the Principe, Brian Richardson identifies the two opposed readings of Machiavelli’s Principe with the positions of Innocent Gentillet (‘the Florentine’s aim was to teach the prince to be a true tyrant’) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (‘the secret intention’ of a writer who wanted to reveal the mechanisms of tyranny): both, Richardson believes, are ‘deforming readings’.59 However, these readings, variously articulated, have dominated the interpretations of this book for centuries. Already explored by Pole in his Apologia, they turn the Principe into a pretext rather than a text. Henrician England saw also different approaches to Machiavelli’s works, from William Thomas’s ‘translations’, analysed elsewhere in this volume, to Richard Moryson, who made ample use of his knowledge of Machiavelli’s works in his pamphlets in defence of the Reformation.60 But the two reactions mentioned above, springing 55

  Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Hawthornden 2065, fol. 147v.   Petrina, 6–7, 17–18. 57   Suggested by van Dyke, pp. 712–14. 58   Van Dyke, p. 709. 59   Richardson, p. 18. 60   On Moryson see W. Gordon Zeeveld, ‘Richard Morison, Official Apologist for Henry VIII’, PMLA 66 (1940): pp. 406–25, and Anglo, pp. 98–102. 56

Reginald Pole and the Reception of the Principe in Henrician England

27

from an attentive and detailed knowledge of Machiavelli’s works, proved to be lasting and hugely influential in sixteenth-century England. Their opposite charges help us to gauge the extent to which Machiavelli’s works, and even the writer himself, could be used by their readers, variously interpreted to suit different ideological purposes or opposite political manoeuvres. Felix Raab concludes his analysis of pre-Elizabethan reactions to Machiavelli by stating that ‘in examining the reactions of Pole, Ascham, Morison and Thomas to Machiavelli, the common factor emerges that they come to him fresh, unhampered by the weight of secondary interpretation and standard attitudes which had not yet had time to form’.61 Some of these reactions did in fact contribute to the creation of standard attitudes. Henry VIII did not need Machiavelli; as in the case of Elizabeth, or of innumerable other monarchs in England and elsewhere, princes have always and almost instinctively used the ruses and stratagems described by the Florentine writer. However, Machiavelli’s description of the common ways of rulers, punctiliously based on carefully scrutinized examples from the present and the past, may have justified and given dignity to this behaviour. Only essentially conservative writers and ideologues, such as Reginald Pole, would show a real fear of Machiavelli’s writings, since these might offer a justification for the interruption of the status quo. But other readers, whether revolutionaries or reactionaries, could simply read, appreciate, analyse and translate them, turning the account of the early modern English response to Machiavelli into a complex and fascinating narrative.

61

  Raab, p. 48.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 2

Stolen Words to Train a Boy King: William Thomas Translates Machiavelli Maria Grazia Dongu

Looking back on Elizabethan writers and their works, Richard Helgerson had the impression of a ‘concerted generational project’, whose goal was to serve ‘the nation’, that is to say ‘a national community whose existence and eminence would then justify their desire to become its literary spokesmen’.1 A challenging period in which to live, Elizabeth’s reign marked the end of the turmoil arising from Edward VI’s death and his elder sister Mary’s reinstatement of the Catholic religion. Considering the life of Henry VIII’s only son, we can perceive how the untimely loss at such an early age of the young King called a halt to a process already in progress2 and left it to be continued later by Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare and many other distinguished writers. A nine-year-old orphan, Edward was supported, and his policy oriented, by his uncle the Duke of Somerset, and, when misfortune fell on the Lord Protector, by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, Duke of Northumberland. The latter was clever enough to flatter the boy King by admitting him to Council meetings from the age of 14.3 As Edward grew, Northumberland planned his political education. In childhood Edward had been trained by Richard Cox, John Cheke and Roger Ascham: his education had been based principally on the classics, the Scriptures and the study of Italian, French and Spanish.4 He therefore needed someone who could school him in the art of running a state. William Thomas, who was close to Dudley, enthusiastically undertook that task.5 A Welshman, Thomas was well educated but had been compelled to flee from England for Italy in 1544. He immersed himself in Italian, reading and translating Italian works, as well as writing his own, that is to say, consciously or otherwise,   Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 1–2. 2   Cathy Shrank, Writing the Nation in Reformation England, 1530–1580 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) devotes Chapters 3, 4 and 5 to the elitist circle attempting to forge an English national identity under Edward VI. 3   Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 53–6. 4   Jennifer Loach, Edward VI (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 11–13. 5   Loach, p. 97. 1

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

30

preparing himself for his future position at Edward’s court. He gained renown by dedicating his Historie of Italie to John Dudley, his Italian Grammer to John Tamworth, and his translation of Giosafat Barbaro’s Travels to Tana to Edward. Each of these works was part of a perspicacious reflection on Italian history, culture and affairs of state, which, as he pointed out, might be worth applying to England.6 Before becoming Edward’s secretary he had been a go-between, whose aim was to offer England a mirror as well as to warn his countrymen against repeating the errors of Italy. After an agreement to provide the King with discourses on selected topics of government each week, Thomas seized the opportunity to offer England and his King a model to imitate.7 The Italian influence was crucial, although not overtly so, to the moulding of the English nation in the times of Edward VI. As a proud nation with an established Reformed Church, Edwardian England was defensively impervious to ideas arriving from Catholic Italy, unless they included severe criticism of the papal court.8 A large section of Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine is embedded in Thomas’s Historie of Italie.9 The Welsh clerk translated it, almost verbatim, over 45 years before Thomas Bedingfield’s publication of his English version.10 Moreover, in Common Places of State11 he transformed most of the Prince’s headings into questions to be answered by his royal trainee. Thomas’s appreciation of Machiavelli as a historian is well known, as is his use of the Florentine author’s most celebrated and most criticized book as a model of conduct for his own King. This evaluation of this extraordinary go-between will analyse his use of rhetoric as he shaped himself as a tutor and the King as a disciple, who in turn should fashion himself as a ‘new prince’. Intellectuals had high hopes that a new era was starting, in which the King would seek their cooperation to give a firm leadership to England. Thomas worked to strengthen Edward’s independence of   William Thomas, Preface to The historie of Italie, a boke excedyng profitable to be redde (London: Berthelet, 1549). 7   On Thomas’s biography, see Dakota L. Hamilton, ‘Thomas, William (d. 1554)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, online edn, 2004 [http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27242, accessed 1 July 2011]; Edward Robert Adair, ‘William Thomas: a Forgotten Clerk of the Privy Council’, in Tudor Studies, Presented […] to Albert Frederick Pollard, ed. R.W. Seton-Watson (London: Longmans, 1924), pp. 133– 60; Sergio Rossi, ‘Un italianista nel Cinquecento Inglese’, Aevum 40 (1966): pp. 281–314. 8   Alistair Fox, The English Renaissance: Identity and Representation in Elizabethan England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p. 22. 9   Laura Sanna, ‘Historie of Italie’, in Lezioni ai Potenti, eds Angelo Deidda, Maria Grazia Dongu and Laura Sanna (Cagliari: CUEC, 2002), pp. 29–76, p. 41. 10   Niccolò Machiavelli, The Florentine Historie […] Translated into English by T[homas] B[edingfield], Esquire (London: Ponsonby, 1595). 11   Printed in John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials: Relating Chiefly to Religion, and the Reformation of It, and the Emergencies of the Church of England under King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, and Queen Mary, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1822), pp. 156–61. 6

Stolen Words to Train a Boy King

31

judgement, by teaching him to adopt a rational approach to political decisions.12 Numerous Renaissance books centred on the problem of good counsel: ‘These texts seem to acknowledge that conventional counsel has produced conventional, and therefore dysfunctional, moral-political behaviour; addressing a political elite as ideally rationalist produces an inadequate rational idealism’.13 Machiavelli’s Prince undoubtedly presents a new perspective, based on a traditional humanistic approach, but capable of reinventing the counsellor’s and the ruler’s roles as well as these characters’ rhetorical strategies. Both William Thomas, who translated and imitated Machiavelli’s style, and Edward VI, who had been exposed to Machiavelli’s works by his tutor, learned to reproduce the method their model followed in constructing the text, the authorial and the reader’s personae.14 Eugene Garver states that: ‘The Prince is a narrative imitation of Machiavelli’s own activity of inventing a solution to the problem of stable innovation; in a rhetorical sense, the prince’s recollection of Machiavelli’s lessons consist in imitating Machiavelli’s innovation and thereby becoming an innovator himself’.15 William Thomas tutored himself by analysing and reproducing Machiavelli’s style and urged Edward to do the same by giving him fragments from Machiavelli to expand into a text. Thomas’s writings, I suggest, were affected by the balanced structure of Machiavellian prose, which may be represented by the diagram of a tree, whose branches constitute the horns of a dilemma, always requiring contrasting solutions. These rhetorical strategies helped the shaping of a new ruler, who would not rely on tradition alone, but assert his own authority and interpretation of history. The special Machiavellian syntactic construction mirrors a rational process attempting to predict future events by analysing human reactions to particular political situations. The nervous reaction to The Prince might be explained by the impossibility of stopping this process once set in motion. In Garver’s words: ‘Both Socrates and Machiavelli look immoral not only because they show that existing values must sometimes be overridden, but because each […] invites questions 12   Edward profited from Thomas’s training, and became much more involved in affairs of State. Chris Skidmore, Edward VI: The Lost King of England (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007), pp. 194–96. 13   Nancy S. Struever, ‘Machiavelli, Montaigne, and the Problem of External Address in Renaissance Ethics’, in Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, eds Kevin Brownlee and Walter Stephens (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1989), pp. 236–53, p. 238. 14   The humanist teaching scheme was divided into reading aloud, analysing and reproducing texts, performed in front of the schoolmaster and classmates. Imitation meant applying the character’s concepts and method to a new situation. Nancy L. Christiansen, ‘Rhetoric as Character-Fashioning: The Implications of Delivery’s “Places” in the British Renaissance Paideia’, Rhetorica 15 (1997): pp. 297–334, pp. 313–16. 15   Eugene Garver, ‘Machiavelli and the Politics of Rhetorical Invention’, Clio 14 (1985): pp. 157–78, p. 174.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

32

about what would happen if everyone acted that way. Each challenges not only an existing community of values […] but may challenge any community of values’.16 Machiavelli’s rhetoric is to a certain extent an unresolved struggle, constantly challenging its readers to take sides, and eventually change them. Orderly lines of words arrange themselves into diagrams, order springing from them; for a while the reader feels he has solved the problem at hand. By teaching his pupil to weigh both sides of an argument, Thomas was teaching him to cope with a chaotic, changeable world. Imitating Machiavelli’s Posture: Prefatory Letters and the Art of Fashioning Personae Thomas’s life is evidence of the phenomenon of social mobility, achieved mainly through the power of words. When Castiglione’s Cortegiano (1528) envisaged ‘the possibility of base born men rising to comparable heights’, and imagined the ideal courtier ‘rising up to become his prince’s teacher’,17 it had recorded an observable fact in Renaissance society. Machiavelli’s biography follows nearly the same trajectory as Thomas’s life. He served as Second Chancellor and Secretary to the Foreign Policy Magistracy of the Ten, up to the victory of the pro-Medici party. Accused of being an accomplice in an anti-Medici plot, he was arrested and tortured.18 The anguish of being excluded from power and his loss of status troubled him in his last years, which he spent enacting rhetorical strategies that could have led to his rehabilitation. The dedicatory epistle of The Prince to Lorenzo de’ Medici has several purposes. It describes the book’s ideal reader and its narrator, as well as outlining the relationship between the speaking ‘I’ and his interlocutor.19 The opening lines are devoted to contrasting the authorial persona with other people, to emphasize his characteristics as a humanist, an experienced politician and chronicler.20 The 16

  Garver, p. 171.   Wayne Rebhorn, ‘Baldesar Castiglione, Thomas Wilson, and the Courtly Body of Renaissance Rhetoric’, Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 11 (1993): pp. 241–74, p. 254. 18   James B. Atkinson, ‘Niccolò Machiavelli: A Portrait’, in The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli, ed. John M. Najemy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 14–30. 19   Gerard Genette, Paratext: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 117–38, pp. 161–94, pp. 196–229. See also Jean-Jacques Marchand, ‘Machiavelli in limine: la figura dell’autore, dell’opera e del destinatario nei testi proemiali machiavelliani’, in Cultura e scrittura di Machiavelli (Rome: Salerno, 1998), pp. 311–25. 20   ‘Sogliono, el più delle volte, coloro che desiderano acquistare grazia appresso uno Principe, farseli incontro con […] cavalli, arme, drappi d’oro, pietre preziose e simili 17

Stolen Words to Train a Boy King

33

book stands symbolically for the authorial persona, whose desire is to unite himself with his interlocutor in a superior–subordinate relationship. The modesty topos is used to define both the speaking ‘I’ and its symbolic double. However, their insufficiency is always redefined as greatness: The Prince contains useful information for Lorenzo and the authorial persona has a more precise view of princes because it looks on them from a lower position. In so doing, the sender builds its own authority: he is to be trusted, as he is a middle-class man who has schooled himself and has a special perspective on powerful men and their political and social performances. Machiavelli overturned the traditional superior–subordinate relationship. The literate man belonging to the middle class is much more powerful than the Prince, since he can supply the ruler with the knowledge the latter lacks. It is no accident that Machiavelli dedicated his Discorsi to Zanobi Buondelmonte and Cosimo Rucellai, who were endowed with those qualities a ruler should have. It is a revolutionary act, recognizing the existence of an elitist group qualified to replace princes who had obtained power by inheritance or circumstances. The dedication of The Prince conveys a new image of Machiavelli, no longer a teacher of princes but of youth.21 Moreover, it identifies the changing relationship between nobles and their servants, also evident in The Prince, where the clear failure of the code of chivalry demands a new aristocracy, capable of interpreting reality and performing a role, without being entrapped in the performance. Whoever does not possess these abilities is qualified as volgo, those lacking meta-discursive abilities and thus bound to be deceived.22 In Thomas’s Preface to the Historie, dedicated to John Dudley, then Lord Great Chamberlain, fragments of the code of chivalry are to be found along with a reversal of the traditional superior–subordinate relationship. The addressee is described as a knight, known for ‘excellent feates of chiualrie, bothe by sea and ornamenti, degni della grandezza di quelli. Desiderando io, adunque, offerirmi alla vostra Magnificenzia con qualche testimone della servitù mia verso di quella, non ho trovato, intra la mia suppellettile, cosa quale io abbia più cara o tanto esìstimi, quanto la cognizione delle azioni delli uomini grandi imparata con una lunga esperienza delle cose moderne e una continua lezione delle antique’, Niccolò Machiavelli, De Principatibus, in Opere politiche, ed. Mario Puppo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1969), pp. 43–181, pp. 45–6. English translation: ‘It is customary most of the time for those who desire to acquire grace with a prince to come before him with […] horses, arms, cloth of gold, precious stones and similar adornments worthy of their greatness. Therefore, since I desire to offer myself to Your Magnificence with some evidence of my devotion to you, and since I have not found among my valuables anything that I hold more dear or estimate so highly as the understanding of the deeds of great men, which I have learned through long experience of modern things and constanct reading about ancient things’; The Prince, trans. and ed. William J. Connell (Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2005), pp. 39–40. 21   Atkinson, p. 24. 22   Mario Domenichelli, Cavaliere e gentiluomo: saggio sulla cultura aristocratica in Europa (1513–1915) (Rome: Bulzoni, 2002), pp. 78, 82.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

34

lande’, but also praised for his ‘wonderfull knowladge in ciuile orders’.23 In other words, he possesses qualities typical of Castiglione’s cortegiano, but he is also a member of the new bureaucracy serving the Tudor monarchy, to whom Thomas Elyot’s The Boke Named a Governour (1531) is directed. The boy King is never mentioned here, but the ideal prince is briefly outlined: All these thynges, with infinite moe, histories dooe so set foorth to the eies of princes (if thei reade theim well) that their hertes shalbe more enclined with peace and iustice to enriche their subiectes, and thereby procure theim selves glorie, than by murtheryng of innocentes, rauishyng of honest wiues and maidens, burnyng, spoilyng and destruction of countreis […] to make theim selfes conquerours of that thei can no longe enioie. For surely, more preise shall that prince deserue, that leaueth his realme quiete and welthie unto his successour.24

The ideal prince is not a warrior but rather a father figure, who rules his citizens wisely, ensures peace and justice and enriches his country. Here and elsewhere, Thomas resembles a merchant, who approves of a King who does not waste goods, but favours trade. In his dedicatory letter to Travels to Tana and Persia, he describes Edward in more precise words: ‘The subjects are the King’s children, and not sklaves, as they be otherwheare’.25 Rhetoric fashions a King, who embodies the best qualities of a magistrate: he is affectionate, kind, selfless, liberal and fair.26 On the other hand, the text claims that the King’s subjects are not his property. Thomas sought intimacy by giving the King a handwritten copy of his translation of Barbaro’s report ‘as a token of the faithfull love that I am bounde to bear unto you’.27 He is clearly engaging in self-promotion by showing how strong the bond between him and the King really is.28 The powerful addressee, John Dudley, is nothing more than a spectator at the performance staged by the bold ‘I’. Notwithstanding the opening modesty topos, ‘I’ presides over his text. His authority is stressed at mid-page by the verb ‘methought’ and by reference to his role as a go-between.29 As the polyptoton (my travaile; travailing) indicates, readers are invited to follow in the writer’s footsteps, that is to say, to share in his labour. Later, when the list of the contents is given, the ‘I’ qualifies himself as someone who has read Machiavelli’s works, but is imbued with the rhetoric of the specula principum. His vocabulary is Machiavellian: he is 23

  Thomas, Preface.   Thomas, Preface. 25   Giosafat Barbaro and Ambrogio Contarini, Travels to Tana and Persia, trans. William Thomas, ed. Henry E.J. Stanley (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1873), p. 1. 26   Domenichelli, p. 191. 27   Barbaro and Contarini, p. 2. 28   See Shrank, pp. 134–6. 29   Thomas, Preface. 24

Stolen Words to Train a Boy King

35

concerned with the rise and fall of states; he will unveil how a prince can use his own authority to administer his state or to oppress his subjects, and how Fortune can destroy his efforts. Like The Prince, The Historie attempts to tutor its ideal reader by presenting him with exempla, which are not models to imitate but rather to use for the purpose of judgement. It is no accident that the grammatical subject ‘I’ is here suddenly replaced by ‘It’, which refers to the book, the mirror through which the reader should look in order to learn not a political but a moral lesson. Although Edward is not mentioned throughout the letter, references are made to the princes, who can find the book helpful if they are able to decode it. The authorial persona makes the ruler share his ethical view of history and obliquely suggests that it should help him to interpret exempla correctly. Line by line, its authority has been constructed and its function introduced: a case and a historical drama will be presented, which the King should listen to in order to make his own decisions. Once again, the intellectual turns out to be extremely useful to the ruler. However, Thomas believed that Kings are divinely ordained to rule the country and did not ‘[replace] the concept of divine ordination with personal charisma, cunning and deception’30 as Machiavelli did. As stated in the introductory notes, Machiavelli’s dream did come true for Thomas. Not only did Thomas reproduce Machiavelli’s stance as an author and politician, along with his method, but he also tried to teach the boy King to ponder various problems which a ruler might face and urged him to find solutions to them.31 As a writer, he was besotted by the idea that Edward VI was the King who would promote political and religious reform and permit freedom of the press.32 His Vanitie of the World (1549) and Historie of Italie were published by Thomas Berthelet, printer to the King, and as such ‘invested […] with the political and ideological prestige’ of the monarchy.33 In striking contrast with this, ‘Thomas’s discourses for Edward VI are clothed in the language of secrecy’. This helps the construction of the persona of the King, who can play his role on the public stage without overtly relying on someone else, and ‘ensures free speech on the part of the counsellor’.34

30

  Joseph Khoury, ‘Writing and Lying: William Thomas and the Politics of Translation’, in Travel and Translation in the Early Modern Period, ed. Carmine Di Biase (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 91–102, p. 94. 31   ‘This Thomas drew up proper questions of state polity, devised for the exercise of the young King’s contemplations’; Strype, p. 156. 32   Andrew Hadfield, Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance, 1545–1625 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 25. 33   Laura Sanna, ‘A boke excedyng profitable to be redde: William Thomas’s Italy’, in Una civile conversazione: lo scambio letterario e culturale anglo-italiano. Anglo-Italian Literary and Cultural Exchange in the Renaissance, ed. Keir Elam and Fernando Cioni (Bologna: CLUEB, 2003), pp. 159–80, pp. 159–60. 34   Shrank, pp. 133–4.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

36

Thomas Translates Machiavelli Many scholars have pointed out how much Thomas owed to Italian historiography when writing his Historie: he drew extensively on famous Italian historians, summarizing, paraphrasing or translating most of his material. Laura Sanna suggests that sources have different functions in Thomas’s text, and proposes classifying them as organic, decorative and dialectic. In accordance with this labelling, Machiavelli’s Historie is an organic source, as Thomas’s writings are influenced by the Florentine text as far as its subject matter and dispositio are concerned.35 Anglo notes that William Thomas is ‘the first writer so far discovered, not merely in England but in Europe itself, to attempt topical political analysis on the basis of Machiavelli’s work’;36 Machiavelli is ‘the only literary source specifically acknowledged’ by Thomas, whose Historie of Italy was considered ‘a necessary Introduction to Machiavel, Guicciardin, Jovius’ by Gabriel Harvey.37 However, Anglo describes Thomas’s account of Florentine history as ‘an abridgment of Machiavelli’s book, so boiled down that it degenerates into a mere recital of names, dates and events – with nothing salvaged from the original’s historical reflections – though, from time to time, as in the summary of the lives of Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Thomas does reproduce his source in recognizable detail’.38 In contrast with Anglo’s view, Sanna’s detailed contrastive analysis demonstrates that Thomas manipulates excerpts from Historie Fiorentine in order to warn England and Edward of the danger of civil war, which sets poor people and aristocrats against each other, as had happened in Florence. Like Machiavelli, his aim is to detect general rules in the chaotic flow of history. He seems to be particularly responsive to the interplay of conflicting groups which resulted in the ruin of both Italy and Florence, and to the tyrannical interference of the Pope in Italian political affairs, responsible for a long, bloody fragmentation of the geographical unity of the peninsula into city-states, small republics and kingdoms.39 His translation stresses this main theme, transforming the orderly, balanced, well-articulated structure of the Machiavellian narrative on the conspiracy against Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici into a long, unbroken complex sentence, the focus of which is the Pope’s hatred of the two gifted brothers. Though Thomas appreciated Machiavelli’s work, he deleted any episode that could substantiate the claims of commoners against aristocrats. He supported a monarchical system, whose apex was the King, surrounded by his court: he did not want to encourage social turmoil, the dream of a world turned upside

35

  Sanna, ‘Historie of Italie’, pp. 40–8.   Sydney Anglo, Machiavelli – The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 102. 37   Anglo, p. 104. 38   Anglo, p. 104. 39   Laura Sanna, ‘William Thomas and Machiavelli’, Letterature Straniere & 6 (2004): pp. 150–1. 36

Stolen Words to Train a Boy King

37

down.40 He was adapting Machiavelli’s lessons to English culture and to Edward’s role.41 In one of the discourses he wrote for Edward’s education, Thomas was candid about the need to deny commoners the right to discuss public issues: ‘For if they have but so much liberty as to talk of the princes’ causes, and of the reason of the laws, at once they shew their desire not to be ruled: whereof growth contempt, and consequently disobedience, the mother of all errors’.42 To maintain his power, the King must be feared by his people, but should not forget that ‘it is the multitude […] that must be satisfied’.43 Addition, reduction and manipulation are the strategies of translation Thomas uses to make Machiavelli functional in the current English political situation. Sometimes cynical like Machiavelli in his perception of the English Renaissance, sometimes faithful to the philosophy of the specula principum, he seems to find the dilemmatic structure useful to express multifarious ideas in a transitional age.44 A Dilemmatic Work Jean-Jacques Marchand discusses the main features of Machiavelli’s style and connects them with a quasi-mathematical approach to politics. When commenting on the ‘Discorso sopra Pisa’ (1499), he outlines the repeated use of a dilemmatic structure marked by the double presence of disjunctive conjunctions, which can give rise to a diagrammatic structure, where each alternative can in turn be divided into two (or more) other sentences.45 Thanks to this stylistic device, we can perceive the logical development of Machiavelli’s thought and see it presented in an orderly manner on the page. The urge to clarify which policies might be successful and which might fail results in a schematic style, typified by the rhetorical figures of 40

  Sanna, ‘William Thomas’, p. 148.   Khoury, p. 96. 42   Strype, p. 377. 43   Khoury, p. 99. 44   The adjective ‘dilemmatic’ is here used to define a common strategy in Machiavelli’s prose. ‘A dilemma is a situation in which one has to make a choice between two or more conflicting but equally important alternatives’ or as a more specific term whose meaning is a dilemma is a ‘formal argument containing a premise in which two or more hypotheticals are conjunctly affirmed, and a second premise in which the antecedents of these hypotheticals are alternatively affirmed or their consequences alternatively denied’; Nicholas Bunnin and Jiyuan Yu, The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy (Malden: Blackwell, 2004), p. 182. Thomas Wilson’s definition is: ‘Dilemma otherwise complexio, vel cornutus, syllogismus, called a horned Argument, is when the reason consisteth of repugnant membres, so that whatsoever you graunt, you fall into the snare and take the foile. As if I should aske whether it were better to marie a faire woman, or a foul’; Rule of Reason Containing the Art of Logic (Whitefish: Kessinger, 2003), p. I.i. 45   Jean-Jacques Marchand, Niccolò Machiavelli. I primi scritti politici (1499–1512). Nascita di un pensiero e di uno stile (Padua: Antenore, 1975), pp. 19–23. 41

38

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

enumeration and distribution, and sometimes interrupted by feverish memories and vivid descriptions. Machiavelli’s interest in ‘the internal logic of political behaviour, or the study of conflicts and oppositions imminent in the way in which men act and speak’,46 affects his style. Whoever chooses to follow his lead and assume his posture is almost compelled to shape his own writing into similar structures. Indeed, this procedure is intrinsically characteristic of rhetoric, which Thomas Wilson defines as ‘an art to set furthe by utteraunce of wordes, matter at large, or (as Cicero doeth saie) it is a learned, or rather an artificiall declaracion of the mynde, in the handelying of any cause, called in contencion, that maie through reason largely be discussed’.47 Rhetoric was conceived of as a combative art48 and ‘dialectic […] gave the Tudor age its argumentative cast […] the epideictic or demonstrative orator, the speaker who merely displays his mastery of a subject […] does so in Tudor as in earlier theory and practice by judicious distribution of praise and blame’.49 Machiavelli, too, had been trained in ‘the humanistic technique of argument on both sides of a question’ and developed a ‘mode of dialectical thinking, in which positive terms are logically implicated in and give rise to their opposites’. In so doing, he ‘exposed the ideological nature of all such positive terms’,50 and indicated that ‘the whole notion of opposition must be redefined’.51 Not always in tune with Machiavelli’s radical ideas, William Thomas, however, in his dedicatory letter to the Earl of Warwick sums up Machiavelli’s thoughts and tries to shape them into a clear scheme. Though not explicitly cited here, the Florentine must be one of the writers who outlined the advantages deriving from scrutinizing past historical events: Though many wise and lerned men haue so substancially set foorth the infinite commodities that grow of the readyng of histories, that my wittes can not atteigne to a small part of the due commendacion therof: Yet seeyng my trauaile at this present hath been to publishe unto our owne nacion in our mother tounge the dooynges of straungers, and specially of the Italian nacion, whiche semeth to flourishe in ciuilitee moste of all other at this daie; me thought I coulde no lesse dooe for the incourageyng of theim that shall take this boke in hande, than partely reherse what profite thei maie gather by trauailyng therein. First thei shall see, upon what little beginnyng many great astates haue risen, and how thei that haue had the power to rule, by usyng their auctoritees well and prudently, haue merited immortall fame of honour and preise: and by usyng tyrannie and ill gouernaunce, 46   Ezio Raimondi, ‘Machiavelli and the Rhetoric of the Warrior’, MLN 92 (1977): pp. 1–16, p. 14. 47   Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique (London: Graftonus, 1553), sig. a1. 48   Shrank, p. 196. 49   Ong, p. 50. 50   Victoria Kahn, Machiavellian Rhetoric: From the Counter-Reformation to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 19. 51   Kahn, p. 30.

Stolen Words to Train a Boy King

39

haue contrariwise borne eternall sklaunder and shame. It encourageth the vertuouse men, by the exaumples that they reade, to encreace in vertue and nobilitee: and sheweth the viciouse, what the fruite of their abuses are.52

Thomas shapes his thoughts into a complex sentence starting with two subordinate clauses, the aim of which is to obtain his audience’s benevolence. He admits to being one among the many who praise history’s merits, and not even the most brilliant one. However, the contrastive connector ‘Yet’ and the following sentences are in clear contrast with the modesty topos. The author is well aware of the role he is playing as a go-between, thanks to his translations from Italian. This apparently tortuously structured sentence, where subordinates precede the main clause, is clearly constructed to express Thomas’s debt to Italian scholars and his delight in ‘translating’ ideas from hegemonic Italy into his own country. The contents, which Thomas lists here as if writing an index to his book, are set up in polar opposition, as Machiavelli did throughout The Prince, though the Florentine refused to limit his taxonomy to only two terms: the good ruler and the tyrant. Here Thomas keeps his distance from Machiavelli and is much closer to The Mirror for Magistrates (1559), as he tries to adapt the revolutionary subject matter to the courtly life he wants to share. The world is divided into good and evil, and not, as Machiavelli asserted, into successful and ineffective strategies. Yet he partially reproduces Machiavelli’s style: as noted above, his complex sentence might be rendered as the diagram of a tree, with subordinates as branches. In anticipating the contents of his book, Thomas goes so far as to echo some of Machiavelli’s headings, for example, ‘De principati nuovi che s’acquistano con l’armi proprie e virtuosamente’ and ‘Di quelli che per scelleratezze sono pervenuti al principato’.53 As shown by the passage from the Preface quoted above (‘First thei shall see, upon what little beginnyng’), his sentences are articulated into a polysyndetic structure. The main point in this sentence, appropriately broken into two parts by a semicolon, is the suitable use of power, bringing the Prince eternal fame. The main focus is on the way small states have increased their power. This précis may have thrilled a King and his court who were struggling to survive in Europe as an independent elite of a then small but ambitious kingdom. Later, the focus shifts to the action of the ruling class in governing the state, which can lead them either to fame or shame. The use of parallelisms is worth noting. Four coordinate sentences derive from the main clause. The last two deal with the art of politicians, rewarded or vituperated as a consequence of their good or bad behaviour. The parallel construction is reinforced by the repetition of some words (‘by usyng’), as well as by antonymous adverbs and nouns. The linear structure is stressed by the asyndetic and syndetic addition of sentences, while antonyms emphasize a moral, not syntactic, hierarchy. The features of two contrasting governments are conveyed 52

  Thomas, Preface.   Headings of Chapters 6 and 8 of The Prince.

53

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

40

by a somewhat vague lexical choice, which, however, echoes Machiavelli’s own. ‘Ill’ and ‘well’ maintain a moral connotation, while ‘prudently’ concords with Machiavelli’s warnings to his Prince. Parallelism is also almost obsessively reiterated in the last part of Thomas’s Preface, where he assumes the stance of a humanist historiographer whose task is to encourage virtuous men to perfect their political action and themselves, as well as to disclose the destiny of tyrants and permanently condemn them. As one might expect, parallelism is the most recurrent figure throughout the section of Historie of Italie deriving from Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine. Paired sentences are linked principally by adiectio. The use of the syndetic conjunction ‘and’ surprisingly lends an ironic touch to the report: ‘Notwithstandyng the Florentines in all those troubles kept them selfes vnited togethers, and obeied the strongeste’.54 Thomas translates his source almost literally: ‘i Fiorentini si mantennono infino al 1215 uniti, ubbidendo a’ vincitori né cercando altro imperio che salvarsi’.55 However, he eliminates the third negative syndetic coordinate, a deprecatory comment on the part of the Italian author, which is expanded upon in the following complex sentence in both versions. Moreover, he syndetically links the first and second sentences with the copulative conjunction, transforming the Italian gerund into a subject-verb-object structure. His derogatory judgement is expressed succinctly by the juxtaposition of grammatically similar sentences: the former reporting a fact, the latter suggesting a moral judgement. There are also many examples of accumulation of sentences joined by negative and adversative conjunctions: ‘And though he might haue taken on him selfe the absolute power without difficultee, beyng in suche auctoritee, yet ledde he still a priuate life: nor for all his great richesse, neuer soughte other mariage for his doughters, than amongest his owne citesins’.56 The structure of this complex sentence is divided into two parts by punctuation, to emphasize how humble and sober Cosimo de’ Medici was, both when ruling his own home and also when ruling his city. The first part of the sentence contrasts Cosimo’s authority with his refusal to be an absolute monarch in Florence. ‘And though’ and ‘yet’ stress the unusual behaviour of the politician and help the reader to consider the various opportunities given to men in office, that is to govern the state tyrannically or with justice. To reinforce this remarkable virtue, two successive negative sentences expand the previous concept: Cosimo was a private man involved in governing, but did not negotiate his power with foreign countries by pursuing political marriages between his daughters and their rulers. Thomas sums up a long passage which Machiavelli devoted to the portrait of such a remarkable man:

 Thomas, Historie, p. 140.   Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine e altre opere storiche e politiche, ed. Alessandro Montevecchi (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1986), p. 343. 56  Thomas, Historie, p. 152. 54 55

Stolen Words to Train a Boy King

41

benché […] solo, in Firenze, fusse principe, nondimeno tanto fu temperato dalla prudenza sua che mai la civile modestia non trapassò: perché nelle sue conversazioni, nel cavalcare, in tutto il modo del vivere, e ne’ parentadi, fu sempre simile a qualunque modesto cittadino; perché sapeva come le cose straordinarie che a ogni ora si veggono e appariscono, recono molta più invidia agli uomini che quelle che sono in fatto e con onestà si ricoprono.57

The Florentine author lingers on the way of life adopted by Cosimo, as he wants his ideal reader to grasp the general law this portrait illustrates. We would say that Cosimo chose a low profile, because he wanted to hide his power from the eyes of envious and inconstant citizens. Machiavelli says he was prudent and knew people’s moral weaknesses. Thomas abbreviates his source; in so doing, he applies the Machiavellian pattern to his topic in a hammering, effective way. Other excerpts from the Historie prove that Thomas was trying to reproduce the inner dialectic of Machiavelli’s prose by using the disjunctive conjuction ‘or’. We may take as an example: ‘The rule that he bare was not grounded on force or tirannie, but upon suche a loue to the people, that whan he died, the commons bewailed hym as a father of the countrey’.58 Machiavelli’s text is: ‘voleva che la legge si facesse ordinariamente e con volontà del popolo e non per forza’.59 The Italian links two completely different attitudes towards politics with the conjunction ‘and’, while the English version links two terms which are generally associated (force/tyrannie), the adversative connector pointing out their opposite (love for the people). A similar disjunctive construction is found in this brief passage: ‘The Turke had assaulted and taken Otronto in Puglia, and mynded to conquere Italie: whiche occasion caused all the princes of Italie to unite theim selfes together, more for feare than loue’.60 Once again, two different reactions to a historical event diagrammatically face each other, but without weighing their pros and cons: Italian states had already made their choice, representing the response people threatened by aggressive neighbours could plan and carry out. The use of the comparative more … than is a neutral statement, the sentence similar to a picture taken when everything had already happened. It is not a moral but a law which is implied here. In Chapter 17 of The Prince, Machiavelli presents his readers with a theme typical of a humanistic contest: ‘Nasce da questo una 57  Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine, p. 641. ‘Albeit […] in Florence he liued like a Prince, yet so gouerned by wisedome, as he neuer exceeded the bounds of ciuill modestie. For in his conuersation, in riding, in marrying his children and kinsfolks, he was like vnto all other discreet and modest Citizens; because he well knew, that extraordinarie things which are of all men with admiration beholded, do win more enuie, then those which without ostentation be honestlie couered’; The Florentine Historie, p. 173. 58  Thomas, Historie, p. 153. 59  Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine, p. 637. 60  Thomas, Historie, p. 154. Thomas’s passage abridges Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine, pp. 722–5.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

42

disputa: s’elli è meglio essere amato che temuto, o e converso’. His discussion is based on his knowledge of human volubility and is anticipated in the lucid statement: ‘Respondesi che si vorrebbe essere l’uno e l’altro; ma perché gli è difficile accozzarli insieme, è molto più sicuro essere temuto che amato, quando si abbi a mancare dell’uno de’ dua’.61 These words are an effective commentary of Thomas’s statements: Italian princes did what the large majority of people do, producing an unstable alliance. The speech delivered to his citizens by Farinata degli Uberti is clearly in the form of a dilemmatic oration, whose hammering rhythm is produced by the anaphoric repetition of ‘no lesse’: a counsaile of Ghibellines at Empoli […] concluded, that (to mainteine theyr parte in Tuscane) it was necessary to destroy Florence: but Maister Farinata Delli Vberti principall of the Ghibellines, onely amongest all the rest withstode this opinion, allegeying the perilles that he had suffered were in hope to enioy his countrey, and thinkyng hym selfe no lesse hable to defende it than to gette it, as he had dooen, he professed openly to become no lesse enemy to theim that shoulde take the contrary, than he was already to the Guelfes.62

Farinata must explain why a Ghibelline would refuse to destroy Florence, not respecting his party’s decision. The complex sentence, juxtaposing past events and the evaluation of future ones, breaks down the boundaries between opposites, making a Ghibelline an ally of Guelphs. The hypothesis of this confusion is quickly discarded, putting an end to the Ghibellines’s plan: ‘and so with his onely reason and auctoritee dissuaded the rest from theyr purpose’.63 Thomas is respectful of Machiavelli’s text here, but the latter makes greater use of repetitions and opposites: A questa sì crudele sentenzia data contra ad una sì nobile città, non fu cittadino né amico, eccetto che Messer Farinata degli Uberti, che si opponesse: il quale apertamente e sanza alcuno rispetto la difese, dicendo di non avere con tanta fatica corsi tanti pericoli, se non per potere nella sua patria abitare; e che non era allora per avere quello che già aveva cerco, né per rifiutare quello che dalla fortuna gli era stato dato; anzi per essere non minor nemico di coloro che disegnassero altrimenti, che si fusse stato ai guelfi, e se di loro alcuno temeva

61

  p. 132. ‘A debate arises whether it is better to be loved than feared or the contrary’; ‘The answer is that one would want to be both the one and the other, but because it is difficult to join them together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one has to do without one of the two’ (The Prince, ed. Connell, p. 91). 62  Thomas, Historie, p. 143. 63  Thomas, Historie, p. 143.

Stolen Words to Train a Boy King

43

della sua patria, la rovinasse, perché sperava con quella virtù che ne aveva cacciati i guelfi difenderla.64

Adjectives underline the unfair condemnation of Florence on the part of the Ghibellines, while the anaphoric recurrence of negative connectors highlights the gigantic figure of a partisan like Farinata, well-rooted in his values: among the confusion of labels, the certainty of moral conduct appears, making sense of such puzzling antonyms. Dismantling Machiavelli A counsellor and mentor to Edward VI, William Thomas seems to have devised a teaching plan whose fragments are the Common Places of State. In his prefatory letter, he states that the King, already trained in many tongues and the Holy Scriptures, has not yet become familiar with history, although it is essential for him. In order to help him develop the skills he requires as King, Thomas gives Edward ‘this little abstract only’, because ‘there is nothing better learned than that laboureth for himself’.65 In accordance with his aims as a teacher, he presents the King with ‘questions […] there is not so small an one among them, as will not administer matter of such discourse, worthy the argument and debating’. The pupil’s task will be to ask clever people for a valid answer to them, and whenever answers do not prove convincing, Thomas will collect quotations from the best books by his favourite authors and pass them on to the young boy.66 In doing so, the teacher reveals himself to be a man well rooted in his own times, as the sixteenth century was almost ‘obsessed with all artistic forms which seemed able to compress the most meaning within the smallest compass […] In literature the regard for aphoristic utterance was expressed through the study of classical inscriptions; the construction of epigrams; the constant quest for new aphorisms; and a mania for collecting, tabulating, and expounding the old’.67 However, he was not so inexperienced as to believe that the accumulation of pithy sayings was sufficient to govern a state, which is why he urged his pupil to expand on the questions he put to him. Thomas for the most part turns Machiavelli’s headings into questions.68 Anglo notes, ‘Even an admirer such as William Thomas has left clear evidence that it was the way in which the Discorsi reduced political activity to a number of concisely

 Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine, p. 349.   Strype, p. 156. 66   Strype, p. 157. 67   Anglo, p. 631. 68   Seventy-five questions adapt the headings of the Discorsi, while only ten those of the Principe. Sanna, ‘William Thomas’, p. 153. 64 65

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

44

expressed debating issues which especially appealed to him’.69 According to Sanna, a plan is revealed in the order given to the questions selected, which does not follow the sequence of the Discorsi, nor that of the Principe. The 85 questions stimulate discussion regarding the most frequently debated Renaissance issues: royal authority and its many duties, the art of war.70 Far from being ‘a specious substitute for [thought]’, as Anglo notes aphorisms are,71 and as they tended to become in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Thomas’s questions act as chapter headings whose discourses are to be written by both disciple and teacher. In Strype’s words: The King no doubt spent some thoughts upon: and soon wanted to see Thomas’s discourses upon the same. To him did the King now send certain notes by Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, […] to draw up some distinct discourses for his study and meditation […] Thus he compiled for the King’s use a general discourse, whether it were expedient to vary with time. Which he determined to be exceeding necessary for a prince to do; that is, that they should not always observe one direct and obstinate proceeding, if the time fell out that would require the contrary. For then it would follow inevitably, that their proceedings must perish. He meant not, as he wrote, that man should vary in amity, or turn from virtue to vice, or to alter in any such things as required constancy; but touching other private or public doings he judged it necessary to honour the time. For which he gave many apt examples out of ancient Greek and Roman history.72

This long quotation demonstrates how extensively Thomas used Machiavelli’s text and method in order to train the boy King. Dilemmatic writing is entailed by the questions, which encourage the development of polarities in the speech the young boy should produce. It is no accident that they, as was typical of humanistic rhetoric and legal procedure, imply a dilemmatic scheme to be completed: the most recurrent constructions start with whether … or and which. The King must be helped to construe alternative and even opposing actions when confronting political issues: rigidity in politics could result in painful ruin. He should be trained in dialectical thinking and instructed by exempla taken from ancient history. However, as he had been instructed in humanistic rhetoric, Thomas thinks that moral values should not be abused, nor virtue confused with vice. He was disinclined to accept the main tenets of Machiavelli’s works, that ‘virtù is not a general rule of behavior that could be applied to a specific situation, but rather, like prudence, a faculty of deliberation about particulars’73 – at least overtly. 69

    71   72   73   70

Anglo, p. 650. Sanna, ‘William Thomas’, p. 154. Anglo, p. 647. Strype, p. 161. Kahn, p. 31.

Chapter 3

Machiavelli in The Quintesence of Wit and his English Military Readers Valentina Lepri

The production of collections of political precepts at the end of the sixteenth century, given their popularity, represents a fascinating episode in the history of the circulation in print of the works of Italian Renaissance culture. Publishers and editors were frequently the genuine authors of these maxims, since they selected almost surgically from the works of one or more writers, transforming the latter into authors of precepts without their knowledge. This strategy made it possible to launch on the market new versions, not only fragmentary but also intensely reworked, of the theories of writers otherwise condemned to oblivion as a result of both religious and political censorship. Even the most famous names were not immune from this sort of counterfeiting. The works of several writers, such as the first editions of Francesco Guicciardini’s Ricordi, or selected passages taken from his Storia d’Italia, shared a similar treatment in the printing presses operating in the second half of the sixteenth century,1 to which we must add numerous collections of letters and anthologies of verses that met with the same editorial fate. In publishing these texts, the editors pondered the selection of the materials, censored and cut, manifesting a propensity for aphorisms on political and religious themes. The end result of their endeavours was consigned to volumes of reduced format, often in octavo or sedicesimo, which became vastly popular. This was what Jacopo Corbinelli, Francesco Sansovino and Pietro Perna did with the precepts, and the same treatment was applied to the letters of illustrious men in an enterprise fostered by Paolo Manuzio with Cosimo Ruscelli and Lodovico Dolce as editors.2 In the late sixteenth century, the abbreviated formula of thoughts and   See Giuliano Procacci, Machiavelli nella cultura europea dell’età moderna (Bari: Laterza, 1995); Vincent Luciani, Francesco Guicciardini e la fortuna dell’opera sua, ed. Paolo Guicciardini (Florence: Olschki, 1949). 2   See Amedeo Quondam (ed.), Le carte messaggiere: retorica e modelli di comunicazione epistolare: per un indice dei libri di lettere del Cinquecento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1981); Lodovica Braida, ‘L’antologia epistolare curata da Lodovico Dolce: plagio e sopravvivenze eterodosse’, in Libri, e altro: nel passato e nel presente, ed. Grado Giovanni Merlo (Milan: Fondazione Mondadori, 2006), pp. 135–50; Braida, ‘Modelli letterari, eterodossia e autocensura nelle antologie epistolari. Il primo libro delle Lettere volgari (Venezia, 1542)’, in Scripta volant, verba manent: Schriftkulturen in Europa zwischen 1

46

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

maxims, and their constant contamination in the publisher’s workshop, made it possible to circulate daring political reflections and heterodox religious views. In such books, it might be added, an author, like Guicciardini, appeared alongside a multitude of other voices.3 The continuous manipulations, the passage of texts from one printing enterprise to another and, finally, the interpretation or distortion wrought through translation progressively altered the original message of the writer. Since these collections were relevant to a specific editorial project, they did not describe so much the intellectual environment in which they were originally conceived as the various contexts in which they were divulged. In line with this working criterion, the works of Machiavelli too – which from the start had aroused curiosity and interest at various levels in Europe – circulated also through a clandestine manuscript production. His opinions crossed the Italian border and eluded the ecclesiastical ban concealed in heterogeneous miscellanies of aphorisms, to the extent that his particular case is better suited than others to illustrate the precise dynamic of the phenomenon. A characteristic example of the circulation of Machiavelli in accordance with this curious practice is The Quintesence of Wit, a book edited by Robert Hitchcock and printed in London at the end of the sixteenth century.4 This is the first English translation of a collection of maxims that includes a somewhat peculiar synthesis of the production of the Florentine secretary. Pondering on the genesis and the complex nature of this text also brings to light an aspect perhaps as yet insufficiently explored of the popularity of his thought in England. Hitchcock’s translation is based on Francesco Sansovino’s Concetti Politici.5 Published in Venice in the workshop of Giovanni Antonio Bertano in 1578, this 1500 und 1900, ed. Alfred Messerli and Roger Chartier (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2007), pp. 315–35; Braida, ‘La norma e la pratica della scrittura epistolare: del secretario di Francesco Sansovino (Venezia, 1564)’, Bibliologia. An International Journal of Bibliography 2 (2007): pp. 21–40 and Braida, Libri di lettere. Le raccolte epistolari del Cinquecento tra inquietudini religiose e buon volgare (Rome: Laterza, 2009). 3   See Paolo Trovato, Con ogni diligenza corretto: la stampa e le revisioni editoriali dei testi letterari italiani, 1470–1570 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991) and Claudia Di Filippo Bareggi, Il mestiere dello scrivere: lavoro intellettuale e mercato librario a Venezia nel Cinquecento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1988). 4   The Quintesence of Wit being a corrant comfort of conceites, maximies and poleticke deuises, selected and gathered together by Francisco Sansouino (London: Edward Allde, 1590). I have seen exemplar 232.1.35 in the British Library. Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from this book refer to the number of the maxim. 5   Concetti politici di M. Francesco Sansouino. Raccolti da gli scritti di diuersi auttori greci, latini, & volgari, à benefitio & commodo di coloro che attendono à gouerni delle republiche, & de principati, in ogni occasione cosi di guerra, come di pace (Venice: Giouani Antonio Bertano, 1578). Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from this book refer to the number of the maxim. On Sansovino see Delle inscrizioni veneziane raccolte ed illustrate da Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna, vol. 4 (Venice: Orlandelli, 1834), pp. 31–89; Emmanuele

Machiavelli in The Quintesence of Wit and his English Military Readers

47

is a quarto volume with 140 numbered pages, comprising 802 maxims. There are also eight unnumbered pages at the beginning containing a dedicatory letter from Sansovino to King Rudolf II, the notice to the readers, an index of subjects and, finally, a detailed list of the authors of the precepts. The list of writers is varied and interesting, comprising the Greek and Roman classical writers, such as Aristotle and Cicero and the historians Polybius, Sallust, Thucydides and Tacitus, the leading voices in the debate on language, Pietro Bembo and Giovanni della Casa and, to a more significant degree, some of the thinkers who in their various capacities fuelled the political debate of the time: Antonio Guevara, Remigio Nannini, Giambattista Pigna and, in particular, Francesco Guicciardini.6 The name of Machiavelli is the only one not specifically mentioned in the list, despite the fact that a very significant number of precepts were selected from his works. As usual in times of press censorship, Sansovino indicates Machiavelli’s presence by mentioning ‘Historie fiorentine’ in the list of writers. The English version features the same text and structure. The architecture conceived for the Venetian edition of 1578 has caused much uncertainty among scholars, who have striven to identify within it the maxims taken from the works of the writer: Vincent Luciani, in particular, has discussed Sansovino’s book, bringing to light the presence of Machiavelli’s and Guicciardini’s works in the collection.7 Beyond the question of the circumstances8 enabling the Venetian polymath to work on the collection and the intentions that drove him, what is certain is that, about ten years after its initial appearance, the book became the subject of interest in England and found its way to a London printing press. Antonio Cicogna, Memoria intorno la vita e gli scritti di Messer Lodovico Dolce (Venice: Segreteria dell’I.R. Istituto, 1863), pp. 359–429; Detlev von Hadeln, ‘Sansovinos Venetia als Quelle für die Geschichte der venezianischen Malerei’, Jahrbuch der Preußischen Kunstsammlungen 31 (1910): pp. 149–58; Guido Pusinich, ‘Un poligrafo veneziano del Cinquecento: Francesco Sansovino’, Pagine istriane 8 (1911): pp. 1–18, pp. 121–30, pp. 145–51; Elena Bonora, Ricerche su Francesco Sansovino imprenditore librario e letterato (Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 1994). 6   Aristotele, Appiano Alessandrino, Ammiano Marcellino, Antonio Guevara, Bernardo Iustiniano, Cesare imperadore, Cornelio Tacito, Cosimo Bartoli, Dione Casio, Francesco Guicciardini, Filippo Argentone, Galeazzo Cappella, Giovanni della Casa, Gabriello Fiamma, Gian Battista Pigna, Historie Fiorentine, Historie di Napoli, Ioseffo Hebreo, Iustino, Leonardo Aretino, Marc’Antonio Sabellico, Marco Tullio Cicerone, Niceta Aconiate, Polibio historico, Plutarco Cheroneo, Paolo Emilio, Pietro Bembo, Paolo Giovio, Platone, Procopio, Remigio fiorentino, Senofonte, Salustio, Svetonio, Tucidide, Tito Livio’. 7   See Vincent Luciani, ‘Sansovino’s Concetti Politici and Their Debt to Guicciardini’, Publications of the Modern Language Association 65 (1950): pp. 1181–95, and ‘Sansovino’s Concetti Politici and Their Debt to Machiavelli’, Publications of the Modern Language Association 67 (1952): pp. 823–44. 8   Sansovino, like Corbinelli, may have received the manuscripts of ‘ricordi’ from Fulvio Orsini. The Cardinal had links with Sansovino who wrote the Historia di casa Orsina. In 1566 Sansovino was also a guest in Orsini’s house in Florence. See Bonora, p. 69.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

48

The frontispiece of the English version diverges from the Italian title, the curator and translator having decided upon The quintesence of wit being a corrant comfort of conceites, maximies, and poleticke deuises. The book was printed in the press of Edward Allde in October 1590; like the Venetian edition it is a quarto volume; it opens with Hitchcock’s dedicatory epistle to Robert Cecil, which occupies the first four unnumbered pages; after this comes Sansovino’s dedication and the notice to readers between pages 7 and 9, the list of authors cited and, on the pages numbered 1 to 98, the translation of the 802 concetti; the volume ends with a seven-page index of subjects, which in the Italian edition is instead placed immediately after the notice to the reader. The book must have enjoyed considerable success, if we consider that in a few years the first print was followed by two further editions, in 1596 and 1599, and that even now various exemplars of the volume are to be found in European libraries and, above all, in England.9 The text includes 186 precepts that are taken directly from the corpus of the works of Machiavelli, corresponding to almost a quarter of the book: Discorsi Sopra la Prima Deca di Tito Livio, with 108 maxims, is the work most extensively drawn on, but there are numerous passages from Istorie Fiorentine, Il Principe and Dell’arte della Guerra. Of the 108 maxims composed using material from the Discorsi, almost half (53) come from the Preface.10 As for the Principe, which provides inspiration for 29 maxims, the sixth chapter is the most frequently drawn on, while in the Istorie and the Arte della Guerra, which give rise respectively to 25 and 24 maxims, no sections are particularly favoured over others. In the face of such a singular text, subtly yet extensively permeated by the presence of Machiavelli’s theories, the first question is: what type of influence did this version exert within its English context? At that time, England had already constructed a very clear image of Machiavelli, which originated in part from the anti-Italian Huguenot propaganda, amplified by the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and was then in part consolidated through Elizabethan theatre, especially in Christopher Marlowe’s plays.11 9

  Exemplars are not only in the British Library, but also in the library of University College, London; the Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library; Emmanuel College, Cambridge; the National Library of Scotland; in Birmingham; Brotherton Library Special, Leeds; Marsh’s Library, in Trinity College Library, Dublin; and in Peterborough Cathedral Library. 10   See Luciani, ‘Sansovino’s Concetti Politici and their Debt to Machiavelli’, pp. 824 ff. 11   See Edward Meyer, Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama (Weimar: Felber, 1897); Mario Praz, Machiavelli in Inghilterra ed altri saggi sui rapporti letterari angloitaliani (Florence: Sansoni 1962); Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500–1700 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965); Rosanna Camerlingo, Teatro e teologia: Marlowe, Bruno e i puritani (Naples: Liguori, 1999); Gilberto Sacerdoti, Sacrificio e sovranità:  teologia e politica nell’Europa di Shakespeare e Bruno (Turin: Einaudi, 2002); Sydney Anglo, Machiavelli – The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Alessandra Petrina,

Machiavelli in The Quintesence of Wit and his English Military Readers

49

There are three fundamental aspects, relating both to the history of the edition and to the context in which it was received, that we have to bear in mind before making any evaluation. The first is connected with the printing of Machiavelli’s works in England, which is one of the most useful tools for assessing the degree of knowledge of his thought in intellectual circles. The second aspect to consider is the marked manipulation of his texts: in effect, if we evaluate the sui generis nature of the collection Hitchcock translated, the extent of his intervention is striking, at times significantly altering the original. The last element to be born in mind is the intellectual milieu in which the edition began to circulate; this point is closely linked to the previous aspect, since it explains the reasons underlying the manipulations to which the work was subjected. In 1590, when The Quintesence of Wit was published, various manuscript versions of Machiavelli’s texts circulated,12 but only the Arte della Guerra existed in print in an English translation by Peter Whitehorne, published in 1560 and frequently reprinted. In addition to Whitehorne’s work there was the Italian production of John Wolfe who, with the assistance of erudite collaborators such as Petruccio Ubaldini and, very probably, Giacomo Castelvetro,13 made a significant contribution to the circulation of the writer’s thought in England. In Hitchcock’s collection we may identify two distinct types of intervention. On the one hand, we can note brief additions in the final sections of the maxims, glossing the actual content of the admonition on a more informal note and accentuating its aphoristic quality; in other cases we can observe changes in terminology, where expressions of a more general connotation are replaced with a more technical vocabulary that draws prevalently on the military sphere of warfare. Robert Hitchcock, or Captain Hitchcock as he was known in view of his military rank, was both a soldier and a writer, and he came into possession of a copy of the Concetti Politici14 through a companion in arms during a military expedition to the Netherlands in 1586. He informs the reader of these circumstances in a note added at the end of the volume, illustrating the channel of provenance of the text: ‘This saide Captaine Hichcock seruing in the Lowe Cuntries, Anno. 1586. with two hundreth Souldiours: brought from thence with this Booke, the second booke Machiavelli in the British Isles: Two Early Modern Translations of The Prince (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). See also the chapters by Petrina, Stanic and Loder in the present volume. 12   See Petrina, Machiavelli in the British Isles, pp. 47–67. 13   Eleanor Rosenberg, ‘Giacopo Castelvetro Italian Publisher in Elizabethan London and his Patrons’, Huntington Library Quarterly 6 (1943): pp. 119–48; Kathleen Teresa Butler, ‘Giacomo Castelvetro, 1546–1616’, Italian Studies 5 (1950): pp. 1–42; Paola Ottolenghi, Giacopo Castelvetro esule modenese nell’Inghilterra di Shakespeare: spiritualità riformata e orientamenti di cultura nella sua opera (Pisa: ETS, 1982); Chiara Franceschini, ‘Nostalgie di un esule. Note su Giacomo Castelvetro (1546–1616)’, Cromohs 8 (2003): online edition. 14   Napoleone Orsini, Studii sul Rinascimento italiano in Inghilterra con alcuni testi inglesi inediti (Florence: Sansoni, 1937), pp. 83–7, and Luciani, Francesco Guicciardini e la fortuna dell’opera sua, pp. 322–3.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

50

of Sansouinos politick Conceites, which shall be put to the Printing so soon as it is translated out of the Italian into English’. The editor may also have drawn upon the second Venetian edition of the text, published in 1588 by Altobello Salicato, who inherited the printing rights of the book on the death of Sansovino in 1583. It may be precisely to this circumstance that the editor is alluding when he mentions the ‘second booke of Sansouinos politick Conceites’, or declares that another anthology of precepts, which Sansovino published in 1583, entitled Propositioni overo Considerationi in Materia di Stato, is in preparation. The translation undertaken by ‘earnest Hitchcock’15 is fairly faithful to the original, even though at times he appears to have been prey to ingenuous misunderstandings. Moreover, it is not possible to evaluate in full, at least in this chapter, whether the decisions made in the course of his work were the result of genuine misunderstanding or were deliberate. Nonetheless, despite its importance, the linguistic operation performed by Hitchcock has to be left in the background for the moment, since what matters here is the image of Machiavelli that reached England through this work. In the selection of passages from Machiavelli’s works, almost all the references to episodes drawn from past and more recent history and used as exempla have been dropped; specific themes are given greater emphasis than in the original text. Maxim 413 focuses on a crucial motif in Machiavelli: ‘WE ought to reprehend him that is violent to spoyle, but not him that is violant and of a forward nature to adorne and polish: For that the violence to adorne be comes Single illegible letter vertue, and to destroye: a vise’.16 Attention revolves around the question of the discipline of violence within the management of power: violence, in this perspective, becomes virtue and represents a form of fertile energy for the growth of the state, but it is also necessary to comprise it within a programmatic plan, so as to avoid its energy being unleashed within the system, and thus enforcing men ‘that haue disseuered kingdoms, and are enemies to learning’.17 Violence is seen as a precious form of vitality, and as such demands order so that it can become useful in both military and political spheres: in this passage we can identify one of the distinctive traits characterizing Machiavelli’s political reflection, but in the collection this motif is defined in line with specific coordinates that are more clearly expounded in other examples. The discussion about the importance of using violence as an instrument to hold the state together is amplified by a number 15

  Orsini, p. 84.   Sansovino’s version: ‘Si dee riprender colui che è violento per guastare: et non colui ch’è violento per acconciare. perche la violenza nell’acconciar diventa virtù, et nel guastar vitio’; Machiavelli: ‘Perche colui che è violento per guastare, non quello che è per raconciare, si debbe riprendere’, Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi, I.9 (Rome: Antonio Blado, 1531), p. 64; (English version: ‘For it is the man who uses violence to spoil things, not the man who uses it to mend them, that is blameworthy’, The Discourses of Niccolò Machiavelli, trans. and ed. Leslie J. Walker (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950), vol. 1, p. 234). 17   Compare Machiavelli, Discorsi I.10, p. 32. 16

Machiavelli in The Quintesence of Wit and his English Military Readers

51

of precepts, which provide a solid corollary and which, in order to perform this task, have undergone a radical revision in terms of both language and meaning: ‘IT is a thing most certaine, that if where there be men there be no Souldiers: it dooth spring through ye fault of the Prince, and not through the defect or any want in nature, or of the scituation of the Countrie’, we read in maxim 440, ‘for that, a wise Prince doth vse in time of peace the orders of warfare and militarie discipline’. It is interesting to observe the use of the term militia, which Hitchcock takes literally from Sansovino’s version, shifting the reader’s attention from war, with its fortuitous nature, to the military world with its practices, thus also setting greater emphasis on the first part of the precept, in which the words ‘men’ and ‘soldiers’ are juxtaposed. In Machiavelli’s original text, antithetical expressions such as ‘war’ and ‘peace’ are used, while in the pages of The Quintesence of Wit the very term ‘militia’ generates new tensions, amplifying the term ‘soldiers’ and shifting the entire reasoning from war to military practice. In other places within the collection too, we can note addition, as in the case of maxim 569 which retrieves a passage from the Principe: ‘A Prince ought not to make estimation of conspiracies, when the people is beneuolent, but when they be his enemies and hate him, he ought to be afraide of euerye thing and of euerye one, how simple soeuer he be, for there is no man of such pouertie, that he wants a knife’.18 The English reader, even if he had identified the source of the precept, would have mistakenly attributed to Machiavelli a phrase that is not part of his work, and where once again recourse is made to the language of war: ‘there is no man of such pouertie, that he wants a knife’. The image of the weapon, the knife favoured by the infantry in the final hand-to-hand combat, perfectly represents the tangible threat inherent in the conspiracy, which is once again delineated as a form of violence devoid of control, which may appear even within the city walls. These concepts, thus manipulated, appear to focus with greater insistence on the military rather than the political sphere. This means that the maxims help the reader to acquire knowledge in the area of the techniques of war, and an awareness of the dynamics unleashing conflicts. The description of violence in both positive and negative terms, developing concepts derived from Machiavelli, confirms this general orientation. However, the practice is also perpetuated in points where the subject of analysis is the role of command, as in maxim 527: ‘WHosoeuer desires 18   Sansovino’s version: ‘Un Principe non dee stimar le congiure, quando il popolo gli è benevolo, ma quando gli sia nemico et lo habbia in odio, dee temer d’ogni cosa et d’ogniuno per picciolo ch’egli sia: perché uno huomo non è tanto povero, che gli manchi un coltello’; Machiavelli: ‘Concludo, per tanto, che uno principe debbe tenere delle congiure poco conto, quando el populo li sia benivolo; ma, quando li sia inimico et abbilo in odio, debbe temere d’ogni cosa e d’ognuno’ Il Principe, ed. Federico Chabod (Turin: Einaudi, 1961), p. 92; (English version: ‘I conclude therefore that a prince must hold conspirances of little account, if the people are benevolent to him. But if they are his enemy, and they have hatred for him, he must fear everything and everyone’; The Prince, trans. William J. Connell (Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2005), p. 98).

52

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

to be obeyed, it is necessarie he know how to commaund, and those know how to commaund, that make comparison of their own qualities, with that of those ouer whome they are to commaund: but when they perceiue they are out of proportion and frame they abtaine: and if they commaund ouer-hard and violent thinges, it is conuenient with violence and hardines to cause them to be obserued, otherwise he shall finde himselfe deceiued’.19 As with violence, command too is administered through the exercise of proportion, and among the skills of the commander, the capacity to assess, to weigh up the different forces at play and act upon the real situation with confidence, and above all with success, plays a decisive role. Command comes into play in the delicate operation through which violence is transmuted into a form of propulsive energy, representing the instrument through which it is possible to make a correct analysis of the circumstances and avoid mistakes. This is the situation reflected in maxim 703, drawn from the second volume of the Istorie Fiorentine: ‘AN Armie being vanquished, the warres are vanquished, but the townes being vanquished, and leauing the Armye entire: the warres begin to be more hotte, forsomuch as that Armie which is entire, maye recouer the Townes, the which when they holde in their handes, the warres is not ouercome’.20 19   Sansovino’s version: ‘A volere essere obedito, è necessario saper comandare. Et coloro sanno comandare, che fanno comparazione dalla qualità loro à quella di coloro a quali hanno da comandare. Et quando vi veggono proportione, allhora comandino: ma quando vi veggono sproportione se ne astenghino. Et se si comandano cose aspre, convien con asprezza farle osservare, altramente lo huomo se ne trova ingannato’. Machiavelli, Discorsi, III.22, pp. 675–6: ‘Et è una regola verissima, che quando si comanda cose aspre, conviene con asprezza farle osservare, altrimenti, te ne troveresti ingannato. Dove è da notare, che à voler esser ubbidito, è necessario saper comandare, et coloro sanno comandare, che fanno comparatione della qualità loro à quelle di chi ha à ubbidire, et quando vi vegghino proportione, all’hora comandino, quando sproportione, sene astenghino’; (English version: ‘It is indeed a very sound rule that, when harsh commands are given, one should be harsh in seeing them carried out; otherwise you will find yourself let down. It should also be noted that, if one wants to be obeyed, one should know how to command, and that one can know how to command only if one has compared one’s own character with the character of those who have to obey, and gives orders only when one sees that they harmonise and when they clash, abstains’. Discourses, I, p. 529). 20   Sansovino’s version: ‘Vinto uno essercito, è vinta la guerra: ma vinte le terre, et lasciando intero l’essercito, diventa la guerra molto più viva. Percioche quello esercito che è intero, può ricuperar le terre, le quali come si tengono in mano, non è perciò vinta la guerra’; Niccolò Machiavelli: ‘perché la guerra si aveva a fare dove era l’esercito e il capitano del nimico, non dove erano le terre e le guardie sue, perché, vinto l’esercito, è vinta la guerra, ma vinte le terre, e lasciando intero lo esercito, diventa molte volte la guerra più viva’ Istorie Fiorentine in Opere, ed. Corrado Vivanti (Turin: Einaudi, 2005) vol. 3, p. 560; (English version: ‘for the war ought to be carried on where the leader and forces of the enemy were, and not where his garrisons and towns were situated; for when the army is vanquished the war is finished; but to take towns and leave the armament entire, usually allowed the war to break out again with greater virulence’, History of Florence and of the

Machiavelli in The Quintesence of Wit and his English Military Readers

53

Even though the thematic framework and the vocabulary used refer to the military world and the activity of the army, the reasoning is in effect geared to a higher level, addressing concepts such as violence and command in more general terms, although without ever arriving at a strictly political terrain. Such an interpretation makes it possible to understand the emphasis placed on the positive value inherent in violence, on the need to keep the state in warlike trim so that it can maintain the balance of forces so arduously attained, and on extolling the capacity of appraisal that ought to govern the art of command. Within the treatise and, above all, the military framework in which it is placed, it is surprising to see how the precepts originating from the Arte della Guerra are presented in The Quintesence of Wit, since Machiavelli’s intention was to address the subject of war, the nature of armies and military logistics. In this case, the concepts appear to be distinguished from his other works present in the collection for two reasons. The first concerns their place in the text; the maxims are not strictly grouped as in the case of Machiavelli’s other works, where they are placed practically in sequence, but are scattered throughout the text almost as if to recall constantly to the reader the guiding thread running through the anthology, helping him to place the collection in the correct context. Moreover, the maxims do not set at their centre the reasons that guided the author in the composition of the work, namely the cogent criticism of the model of the mercenary army,21 counterbalanced by examples taken from Roman history. The criticism of the professional militia, although it does not entirely disappear, makes way for an examination of the different operations through which the commander disciplines the troops and leads them successfully in the various circumstances of war. The intense dialectic set up between the issue of violence and that of military command harks back to some extent to a broader argument hinging on the state as a product of force and not as a peaceful condition of man. This crucial theme in Machiavelli’s political theories gave rise to a vast and lengthy debate upon which, for example, Innocent Gentillet too reflected at length in Antimachiavel,22 which reached England through the anti-Catholic propaganda of the Huguenots. As we know, on precisely this point Gentillet brought together the views of the Florentine writer with those expressed by Jean Bodin in his Republique.23 These are the issues that must have struck Robert Hitchcock, a writer engaged with his own time, extremely attentive to the complex historic phase that his Affairs of Italy from the Earliest Times to the Death of Lorenzo the Magnificent (New York: Walter Dunne, 1901), no pagination). 21   In maxim 591, which takes its text from the first chapter, pp. 18–21. 22   Discours sur les moyens de bien gouverner (Anti-Machiavel) et maintenir en bonne paix un royaume ou autre principauté, divisé en trois parties, a savoir, du Conseil, de la Religion & de la Police que doit tenir un Prince. Contre Nicolas Machiavel (Geneva: François Estienne, 1576). 23   See Anna Maria Battista, Politica e morale nella Francia dell’età moderna (Genoa: Name, 1998), Chapter 3.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

54

country was going through, which coincided with the last, troubled period of Elizabeth’s reign. To date we have only scant and fragmentary information about Hitchcock (unlike what happens in the case of Sansovino), and above all it has not yet been possible to focus on the original contribution that he made as an author and editor. The collection of precepts constructed through the works of Machiavelli helps to clarify his activity, his speculative viewpoint and, not least important, the cultural context within which he operated. As with Sansovino in Venice, the close circle of his acquaintance featured some of the most illustrious figures of the English Renaissance, such as Roger Williams, George Gascoigne and Thomas Churchyard, as well as Barnaby Rich and Barnaby Googe. Engaged for many years in military campaigns, Hitchcock considers policy in its practical dimension and implementation, and writes above all about financial policy and military strategies. The first English disseminators of the collection of maxims – and probably also its first readers – originated from a clearly-defined cultural setting, which Hitchcock frequented, and it is within the diplomatic and military world that his edition of the Concetti Politici is also to be placed. Only part of his work was actually printed, and there exists a considerable collection of manuscripts, extant in the British Library, demonstrating his competence in the diplomatic sphere too.24 His name is known primarily among English economic historians, since his A Pollitique Platt for the Honour of the Prince, published by Kyngston in January 1580, offered a reference model for the development of projects of a political-financial nature. The author describes in detail the investment costs for the development of his plan to build a fleet to draw upon the fishing market and place England in direct competition with the Dutch Merchant Navy, prospecting an elaborate redistribution of profits which reveals a remarkable skill for social engineering.25 In 1590, while The Quintesence of Wit was in the printing press, Hitchcock was also working on a weighty tome entitled The Arte of Vvarre.26 This had been left unfinished by his friend and companion William Garrard with whom he had shared, shortly before, the experience of war in the Netherlands. The affinities between the two texts are not limited to chronology, since when they are compared we can find confirmation of the intellectual panorama in which the anthology of precepts originally circulated. Hitchcock’s contribution to the text is not limited 24

  See John Foxe’s opinion in London, British Library, Lansdowne MS 389, fols 339r–350v. 25   See John Cramsie, ‘Commercial Projects and the Fiscal Policy of James VI and I’, The Historical Journal 43 (2000): pp. 345–64, pp. 350–1. 26   The arte of vvarre Beeing the onely rare booke of myllitarie profession: drawne out of all our late and forraine seruices, by William Garrard Gentleman, who serued the King of Spayne in his warres fourteene yeeres, and died anno. Domini. 1587. Which may be called, the true steppes of warre, the perfect path of knowledge, and the playne plot of warlike exercised: as the reader heereof shall plainly see expressed. Corrected and finished by Captaine Hichcock (London: Warde, 1591).

Machiavelli in The Quintesence of Wit and his English Military Readers

55

to the editing, since he also wrote both introduction and appendices, and drafted the entire section on military logistics in the chapter headed ‘A generall proportion and order for provision’. The work deals with various military tactics and includes synoptic tables illustrating the correct arrangement of platoons. It is made up of six books: the first describes what a good soldier should be like, the second the tasks of the sergeants, and the third the duties of the superior ranks, while the last three books address problems of artillery, fortification and sundry army administration. The Spanish model is the constant benchmark, but reference is also made to classical culture and, at the same time, the text also addresses the new methods of warfare, including the importance of the use of firearms.27 Like The Quintesence of Wit, it represents a mode of book production that met with great appreciation in the literary milieu to which both Hitchcock and Garrard belonged. These were intellectuals with diplomatic and military backgrounds, who combined a solid humanist culture with a similarly vast experience in the army. In the second half of the sixteenth century there was a generalized and significant expansion of the military forces as the war of movement made way for static warfare; professionalism and specialization developed, and musketeers and harquebusiers appeared alongside the infantry.28 Within this shifting and above all expanding world we can discern the image of demanding new readers and writers. Several Italian Renaissance works had an impact in book production; Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra is undoubtedly the most famous, followed by other Italian and Spanish treatises, such as the works of Angelo Vizzani, Giovanni Matteo Cicogna, Bernardino Rocca and Francisco Di Valdes.29 English intellectuals also drew on such readings. Foremost among them are Barnaby Rich, whose writings have frequently been compared with Machiavelli’s

  The Arte of Vvarre, pp. 30 ff.   Piero Del Negro, Guerra ed eserciti da Machiavelli a Napoleone (Bari: Laterza, 2001), p. 13. 29   Angelo Vizzani, Lo Schermo. Nel qual per via di Dialogo si discorre intorno all’eccelenza dell’armi, & delle lettere (Venice: Giorgio Angelieri), 1575; Il primo libro del trattato militare di Giouan Mattheo Cigogna veronese; nel quale si contengono varie regole, & diuersi modi, per fare con l’ordinanza battaglie nuoue di fanteria. Con due tariffe, l’una delle ordinanze, & l’altra delle battaglie quadreperfette per ogni faccia: & molti altri ricordi utilissimi ad ogni buon soldato (Venice: Giouanni Bariletto, 1567); Imprese, stratagemi, et errori militari di m. Bernardin Rocca piacentino, detto il Gamberello, diuise in tre libri: ne’ quali discorrendosi con essempi, tratti dall’historie de’ Greci, & de’ Romani, s’ha piena cognition de’ termini, che si possono usar nelle guerre, cosi di terra, come di mare (Venice: Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1568); Specchio et disciplina militare di Francesco di Valdes maestro di campo, nel quale si tratta dell’officio del sargente maggiore. Nuouamente tradotto dalla lingua spagnuola nella italiana, da Gio. Paolo Gallucci salodiano, accademico veneto. Con vn dialogo dell’istesso intorno al formare vno squadrone di gente, et di terreno (Venice: Cornelio Arrivabene, 1598). 27

28

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

56

work on the art of war,30 and Roger Williams, a mercenary who wrote a number of military works, outstanding among which is the practical handbook A Briefe Discourse of Warre, published in 1590 and conceived with a new generation of soldiers in mind.31 Just a few years earlier, in 1586, George Whetstone had published The Honourable Reputation of a Soldier,32 while Barnaby Googe, who in 1561 had already translated the Zodiaco della Vita by Marcello Palingenio Stellato,33 in 1579 published The Proverbes of the Noble and Woorthly Souldier James Lopes de Mendoza. Googe’s extraordinary anthology of proverbs not only eloquently illustrates the interest these writers had in Spanish culture, but also describes the English tradition within which the collection of precepts prepared by Hitchcock too is to be placed. Several years later, military experience, combined with the production of maxims and a knowledge of the works of Machiavelli, was to reach more mature and explicit expressions in texts such as Gabriel Harvey’s Marginalia and The Cabinet-Council attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh, where there are numerous resonances with Hitchcock’s anthology.34 Many of the English readers of The Quintesence of Wit shared both the practice of writing and tragic military experiences, and approached the political issues raised by Machiavelli with an interest conditioned by the contingency of war, and in general by the requirements of the army. Their tastes were influenced and oriented by the lengthy resistance to the Farnese troops in the military campaigns in Flanders, and the new sensitivity that this engendered led them to approach the works of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, and military treatises. Vizzani in his text on fencing published in 1575 wrote that there are three things ‘without which no-one shall ever achieve military virtue. This is excellently taught by Plato in the second book of his Republic, where he says that the true soldier must be both bold and gentle and also have the qualities of the philosopher’. The man of arms must possess technical knowledge and a humanist culture, so ‘a valiant and wise   Henry J. Webb, Elizabethan Military Science: The Books and the Practice (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965); Bernard Capp, ‘The Marital Woes of Barnaby Rich’, Notes and Queries 245 (2000): pp. 469–70; Willy Maley, ‘Gender and Genre: Masculinity and Militarism in the Writings of Barnaby Rich’, Irish Studies Review 13 (1995–96): pp. 2–6. 31   See The Works of Sir Roger Williams, ed. John X. Evans (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972); Amos C. Miller, ‘Sir Roger Williams, a Welsh Professional Soldier’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion 1 (1972): pp. 86–118. 32   Mark Eccles, ‘George Whetstone in Star Chamber’, Review of English Studies 33 (1982): pp. 385–95; ‘Whetstone’s Death’, Times Literary Supplement (27 August 1931): p. 648; Thomas C. Izard, George Whetstone: Mid-Elizabethan Man of Letters (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942). 33   The firste syxe bokes of the mooste christian poet Marcellus Palingenius, called the zodiake of life. Newly translated out of Latin into English by Barnabe Googe (London: Ihon Tisdale, 1561). 34   Vincent Luciani, ‘Ralegh’s Cabinet-council and Guicciardini’s Aphorisms’, Studies in Philology 46 (1949): pp. 20–30. On the author’s identity, see Ioannis D. Evrigenis’s chapter in the present volume. 30

Machiavelli in The Quintesence of Wit and his English Military Readers

57

warrior, who is filled not only with courage and strength, but also with counsel and prudence, far surpasses the man of letters’.35 As reflected in the title of a work by George Gascoigne, also published in 1575, these were writers who felt they were Tam Marti, quam Mercurio36 since they combined the vocation for the art of war with the role of messengers of more lofty values, outstanding among which is the theme of political practice. This vision of politics is strongly rooted in action and enmeshed in the attitude of the military leader. The theme of politics is subjected to an attentive review and declined in an undoubtedly original manner by the erudite group of intellectuals and warriors of which Robert Hitchcock was an illustrious exponent: his works amply demonstrate this, addressing the topic from numerous angles, including the financial aspect in A Pollitique Platt, and then the military and diplomatic spheres, as we can deduce from his manuscript production. As for Hitchcock’s work, its very title confirms the desire to consider politics from a broader viewpoint and to offer the reader the quintesence of intelligence. Nevertheless, a reading of the text, and in particular of the Machiavelli corpus contained in it, leads to a result opposite to the general intention that would appear to have directed its English editor. In the anthology of maxims of the Florentine writer, with which the English were more or less consciously familiar, the conflict dominating man is not entirely resolved by imagining that individuals set at a higher level than others take responsibility for such a conflict to the point of managing it. The tradition of thought that was to bring together the most eminent figures in the political debate on this crucial aspect, such as Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Pufendorf and Christian Thomasius, was undoubtedly still far off, and here, in all the precepts, it appears instead to be the incessant evolution of history and the demands of the battlefield that maintain the upper hand. The authority called upon to operate in this shifting reality is not yet the political but the military authority, and its constant perimeter of action continues to be the army.

35

  Vizzani, pp. 15v–16r.   See Felix E. Schelling, The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne (Philadelphia: Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, 1894). 36

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 4

Sir Walter Raleigh’s Machiavelli Ioannis D. Evrigenis

Introduction Among biographers as well as students of his writings, one finds nearly universal consensus that Sir Walter Raleigh was a Machiavellian.1 This characterization is not entirely surprising in either case, yet the ease with which it is offered belies the literary evidence on which it is based. Until 1953, when the attribution of The Cabinet-Council to Raleigh was challenged, commentators pointed mainly to that work and to Maxims of State to support the view that Raleigh was a Machiavellian. Figuring out how to fit Raleigh’s History of the World – a work both much larger and original – into this story posed a serious challenge, since therein Machiavelli’s name appears only rarely, and Raleigh’s assessment of the Florentine’s views is of a very different kind. As a result, commentators often found themselves at a loss, and a different, unsatisfactory, consensus emerged: that Raleigh was not a systematic thinker.2   See, for example, Irvin W. Anthony, Ralegh and His World (New York: Scribner, 1934), pp. 32–3; Muriel C. Bradbrook, The School of Night: A Study in the Literary Relationships of Sir Walter Ralegh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), pp. 72–3; Nadja Kempner, Raleghs Staatstheoretische Schriften. Die Einführung des Machiavellismus in England (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1928), especially pp. 25–7; John L. Lievsay, The Elizabethan Image of Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), p. 21; Vincent Luciani, ‘Ralegh’s “Discourses on the Savoyan Matches” and Machiavelli’s “Istorie Fiorentine”’, Italica 29 (1952): pp. 103–7; Mario Praz, ‘The Politic Brain: Machiavelli and the Elizabethans’, in The Flaming Heart: Essays on Crashaw, Machiavelli, and Other Studies in the Relations between Italian and English Literature from Chaucer to T.S. Eliot (Garden City: Doubleday, 1958), pp. 90–145, p. 108, p. 123; Mario Praz, ‘Un machiavellico inglese: Sir Walter Raleigh’, Cultura 8 (1929): pp. 16–27; Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation, 1500–1700 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), pp. 70–1; Ernest Albert Strathmann, Sir Walter Ralegh: A Study in Elizabethan Skepticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), p. 168. According to the account of Raleigh’s trial published in the Oxford edition of his works, the attorney who questioned Raleigh referred to his ‘Machiavellian and devilish policy’; see The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, Kt., 8 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1829), vol. 1, p. 659. 2   See, for example, John W. Allen, English Political Thought, 1603–1660 (London: Methuen, 1938), p. 63; Émile Gasquet, Le Courant Machiavélien dans la Pensée et la Littérature Anglaises du XVIe Siècle (Paris: Didier, 1974), pp. 389–90; Newman Thomas 1

60

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Attempting to come to terms with Machiavelli’s influence on Raleigh is not an easy matter, since most of the works attributed to him were published posthumously. Archival research and stylistic comparisons have led to certain revisions to the Raleigh canon, but the majority of the works that were included in it continue to be, and the overall picture has not changed, despite the fact that we now know that he had nothing to do with some of the works that were attributed to him. What I propose to do here is to examine briefly the reasons for disqualifying the most Machiavellian of the works traditionally attributed to Raleigh, and then consider Raleigh’s view of Machiavelli in the History of the World, a work whose authenticity is not in doubt, and one in which he names Machiavelli and comments on his teachings. The relationship between Raleigh and Machiavelli that emerges is one that complicates an already muddled picture, by revealing a Machiavellianism unlike the one that Raleigh is commonly known for. The Raleigh ‘Canon’ In 1658, John Milton published a treatise entitled The Cabinet-Council, which he attributed to Raleigh. In the epistle to the readers, he explained: Having had the Manuscript of this Treatise, Written by Sir Walter Raleigh, many years in my hands, and finding it lately by chance among other Books and Papers, upon reading thereof, I thought it a kinde of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an Author from the Publick.3

For the better part of 300 years, Milton’s story was taken at face value, and The Cabinet-Council was attributed to Raleigh and considered a window into his Machiavellianism. Birch included it in his edition of Raleigh’s works,4 as did Oxford University Press, in its edition of 1829,5 which has not been replaced by an updated one, and hence remains the one used by most scholars. In 1953, Ernest Strathmann argued that The Cabinet-Council was but a slightly revised version of a work entitled ‘Observations Political and Civil’, of which he Reed, ‘The Philosophical Background of Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World’ (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1934); Laurence Stapleton, ‘Halifax and Raleigh’, Journal of the History of Ideas 2 (1941): pp. 211–24, p. 211; Strathmann, Sir Walter Raleigh, p. 170. 3   John Milton, ed., The Cabinet-Council: Containing the cheif Arts of Empire, and Mysteries of State: discabineted in political and polemical aphorisms, grounded on authority and experience: and illustrated with the choicest examples and historical observations (London: Johnson, 1658), sig. A2r. 4   The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, Kt., Political, Commercial and Philosophical, Together with his Letters and Poems, ed. Thomas Birch, 2 vols (London: Dodsley, 1751), vol. 1, pp. 39–170. 5   The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, Kt., 8 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1829).

Sir Walter Raleigh’s Machiavelli

61

had located nine manuscript copies.6 The earliest of these dated from the very end of the sixteenth century, and was signed by ‘T.B.’; Strathmann concluded that T.B.’s ‘dedication […] contains references to himself which preclude the possibility of Ralegh’s authorship of the Observations’.7 Strathmann’s argument has been singlehandedly responsible for a nearly unanimous reversal in Raleigh scholarship, which now considers The Cabinet-Council a fake, perhaps even a ruse on Milton’s part.8 Determining the identity of ‘T.B.’ has proven a difficult task, but it is clear that whoever he was, the author of the earliest of the surviving manuscript copies of ‘Observations Political and Civil’ was not Raleigh. On its own, however, this conclusion does not rule out the possibility that Raleigh may have had something to do with what eventually became The Cabinet-Council, a possibility that Strathmann himself recognizes, but many of those who follow him do not. One can think of at least three scenarios in this regard. First, Raleigh could have been the original author of ‘Observations’. While the surviving manuscripts of this work tell us that ‘T.B.’ claims authorship of the earliest known version, they also tell us that several different individuals produced copies of roughly the same work over an extended period of time. Given that the work is a compilation of maxims taken mainly from Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Bodin and Lipsius,9 rather than an 6   Ernest A. Strathmann, ‘A Note on the Ralegh Canon’, Times Literary Supplement, 13 April 1956, p. 228. After classifying the manuscripts into two groups, Strathmann concluded, ‘Although it is not a complete printing of any copy of the Observations which I have seen, CC generally follows the readings of Group I MSS. Milton’s text, which apparently stems from a Group I MS., stands apart from all the manuscripts in the number and variety of its changes. CC omits approximately 10 per cent of the text, chiefly toward the end of the Observations’ (p. 228). I have consulted two versions of Strathmann’s Group I, Huntington MS EL 1174 and British Library, Additional MS 27320. Though indeed similar, these manuscripts have certain interesting differences. Both appear to have been written by more than one hand, with some evidence of overlap between them. The former is simply entitled ‘Obseruations’ at the head (iir), with the traditional full title given here only as the title of Chapter 1. In the latter, the title to that chapter is spelled differently (‘Obseruations Politicall and Ciuile’, rather than ‘Civill’), and in the Table of Contents, differently still (‘ciuill’, 126r). The Huntington copy bears the sign ‘M:3/4’, as well as the crossed-out initials ‘GC’ on the inside flyleaf. Both contain signatures, the former that of Bridgewater (John Egerton, First Earl of Bridgewater), and the latter bears the name ‘Christopher’ (126v, upside down). Finally, both copies contain the dedicatory letter to Lord North, which means that the original was copied at least once in its entirety. 7   Strathmann, ‘A Note on the Ralegh Canon’. Despite this conclusion, Strathmann offers reasonable hypotheses regarding the possible connection of the ‘Observations’ to Raleigh. 8   See, for example, Martin Dzelzainis, ‘Milton and the Protectorate in 1658’, in Milton and Republicanism, ed. David Armitage, Armand Himy and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 181–205. 9   Kempner, especially section B, II. Before Kempner, Adolf Buff, who accepted the attribution, nevertheless noted that the work was not original (‘Über drei Ralegh’sche

62

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

original composition, it is not clear that it even makes sense to seek an original author. But could Raleigh have been the original compiler? Based on ‘T.B.’’s selfreferences, Strathmann dated the earliest of the surviving manuscripts to between 1596 and 1600. At the earliest of those dates, Raleigh would have been around 42 years old, and thus could have easily produced a compilation of this kind before ‘T.B.’. Second, ‘T.B.’ or someone else before him could have compiled the original ‘Observations’, and Raleigh could have merely been one of those who copied the work down the line.10 Third, and likeliest, Raleigh could have owned a copy of ‘Observations’, which could have been mistaken for a work of his by the person who allegedly gave it to Milton, or by someone in between. Whether a ruse or not, and regardless of which of these possibilities is closest to events as they actually transpired, Milton would have had to give readers a reason for attributing The Cabinet-Council to Raleigh. In fact, he gave two. He told them that he considered the work Raleigh’s, because it was ‘both answerable in Stile to other Works of his already Extant, as far as the subject would permit, and given me for a true Copy by a Learned Man at his Death, who had Collected several such peices’.11 As the manuscript on which The Cabinet-Council was based is unaccounted for, the latter must remain a mystery for now. What could Milton have had in mind regarding the former? Raleigh was executed in 1618. More than 20 years later, a short book under the title The Prince, or Maxims of State was published in London. Its title page announced that it was ‘Written By Sir Walter Ravvley, and presented to Prince HENRY’.12 This work, whose authenticity is also now contested, was nevertheless considered genuine in the period preceding the publication of The Cabinet-Council. With slight variations in its title, Maxims of State appeared at least six times before 1658, often as part of Raleigh’s collected works.13 Also a collection of maxims, this time taken from Aristotle and Machiavelli,14 the Maxims made no secret of its connection to The Prince, and was in fact published occasionally as The Prince, or Maxims of State.

Schriften’, Englische Studien 2 (1879): pp. 392–416, p. 399), and offered a side-by-side comparison with Machiavelli’s works, as well as Bodin’s Six livres, to prove his claim (pp. 398–414). 10   See Kevin Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 101. 11   Milton, ed., The Cabinet-Council, sig. A2r–v. 12   The Prince, or Maxims of State (London: n.p., 1642). In the Preface to the History of the World, Raleigh claims that he undertook that work ‘for the service of that inestimable Prince Henry’ (1829, vol. 2, p. lxiv). 13   See, for example, items 131–6 in Christopher M. Armitage, Sir Walter Ralegh, an Annotated Bibliography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987). It, too, figures in both Birch’s 1751 edition of Raleigh’s works, and in the Oxford University Press edition of 1829. 14   See Kempner, pp. 45–61.

Sir Walter Raleigh’s Machiavelli

63

Given Raleigh’s reputation as a man of action and considerable experience in both court and empire,15 the association of such a work with his name would have surprised few readers, and this appears to have been what Milton had in mind when he announced, on the title page of The Cabinet-Council, that the work’s aphorisms were ‘grounded on Authority, and Experience; And illustrated with the choicest Examples and Historical Observations’.16 This reputation was already well established in the immediate aftermath of Raleigh’s death, and has persisted through the centuries. In this context, Raleigh the courtier, statesman and adventurer is someone who would naturally be interested in maxim books, in particular ones heavily indebted to Machiavelli. As the reader of Maxims of State and The Cabinet-Council realized quickly, however, these works are vaguely Machiavellian, but their authors’ dispositions towards Machiavelli were far from unambiguously positive.17 To this observation, one might counter that this presentation is precisely what one ought to expect of a Machiavellian,18 but Raleigh’s Machiavellianism does not quite fit this mould either. A Machiavellianism, of Sorts If the detective work regarding Raleigh’s possible connection to the Maxims of State and The Cabinet-Council is inconclusive, there is another, better, way to 15

  See, for example, Gasquet, pp. 372–3.   In the epistle dedicatory to The Prince, Machiavelli writes that the book contains ‘knowledge of the actions of great men, learned by me from long experience with modern things and a continuous reading of ancient ones’; The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield, second edition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 3. 17   For example, Machiavelli is mentioned rarely in Maxims of State, and when that happens, his view of the matter at hand is rejected (see, for example, The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, Kt., vol. 8, p. 15, p. 16, p. 18.) With regard to these, Lefranc points out that, ‘l’auteur des Maxims nomme Machiavel quatre fois, toujours pour l’attaquer’, and argues that ‘[...] l’auteur des Maxims cite et utilise Machiavel de façon curieuse’. Lefranc finds that Raleigh’s attitude towards Machiavelli is the opposite of the one conveyed by Maxims of State, and concludes, ‘Les Maxims ne sont pas son œuvre’; Pierre Lefranc, Sir Walter Ralegh, Écrivain, l’œuvre et les Idées (Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1968), p. 70, p. 68, p. 70. See Vincent Luciani, ‘Ralegh’s “Discourse of War” and Machiavelli’s “Discorsi”’, Modern Philology 46 (1948): pp. 122–31, pp. 130–1. 18   Machiavelli’s emphasis on appearances, especially as laid out in Chapters 18 and 19 of The Prince, was singled out by admirers and opponents alike as one of his most important teachings, and the authors of Maxims and The Cabinet-Council were no exception. Hence, the expectation that a Machiavellian would say something other than what he meant was widespread. Prior to the period in question, Gentillet, Bodin and Botero had all produced works, well known to English readers, containing more or less intentional examples of this practice. See Ioannis D. Evrigenis, Fear of Enemies and Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 72–93. 16

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

64

assess his Machiavellianism. Of the many works variously attributed to him, there are three that were published during his lifetime, and whose authenticity is not disputed:19 two works related to his travels20 and his History of the World,21 which he composed whilst imprisoned in the Tower.22 The latter is not a political work, at least not in the sense that some of the tracts attributed to Raleigh were, but it is nevertheless a far more promising starting point for an assessment of Raleigh’s attitude towards Machiavelli, for several reasons. First, there is no reason to doubt that Raleigh was its author.23 This otherwise unimpressive fact acquires special significance when one considers that most of the works that have been attributed to Raleigh are now seen as more or less suspicious. Second, though billed as a work of history, the History of the World makes ample room for politics. I am not referring here to a strict separation between politics and history, which is tenuous wherever it is invoked, but rather to the fact that commentators on Raleigh’s political thought have tended almost without exception either to shy away from treating this work as a work on politics, or to feel the need to explain themselves in the few instances in which they did so.24 Their main reason for doing so was the apparent availability of tracts on explicitly political topics, whether general, as in the cases of Maxims of State or The CabinetCouncil, or specific, as in the cases of Raleigh’s discourses on war,25 alliances26

  See, for example, Armitage, Sir Walter Ralegh, vol. 2, p. 186, p. 88.   Walter Raleigh, The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empyre of Guiana, with a Relation of the Great and Golden Citie of Manoa (which the Spanyards Call El Dorado) And of the Prouinces of Emeria, Arromaia, Amapaia, and Other Countries, with their Riuers, Adjoyning (London: Robinson, 1596); Walter Raleigh, A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Iles of Açores, this Last Sommer (London: Ponsonbie, 1591). 21   Walter Raleigh, The History of the World (London: Walter Burre, 1614), hereafter cited as HW, followed by the section numbers and page numbers to the 1614 and 1829 editions. 22   On the composition and reception of this work, see Charles H. Firth, ‘Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World’, Proceedings of the British Academy 8 (1918): pp. 427–46. 23   Strathmann calls the History ‘the greatest authority as a guide to Ralegh’s thought’, and adds, ‘admittedly, the History too has its problems of originality, even of authorship; but it has the hallmark of its compiler’s approval. Passages were take verbatim from other works; assistants gathered some of the material, helped with translation, gave advice, and quite possibly wrote portions of the work. Nonetheless, we have in the History, however disordered and unwieldy, some kind of design with Ralegh as overseer’ (Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 12–13). 24   One exception is Reed, who argues, ‘Raleigh’s remarks on government are not a digression, but a necessary chapter in his History of the World’ (p. 264). 25   A Discourse of [...] Warre, etc. (London: Moseley, 1650). 26   The Interest of England with Regard to Foreign Alliances, Explained in Two Discourses. I. Concerning a Match Propounded by the Savoyan between the Lady Elizabeth and the Prince of Piemont. Ii. Touching a Marriage between Prince Henry of England and 19 20

Sir Walter Raleigh’s Machiavelli

65

and parliaments,27 to name but a few obvious examples. This course of action, however, ignores Raleigh’s own view of the History, which he saw as a highly political work. In his Preface, he explains why he focuses on the beginning of the world, and argues that through history: we live in the very time when [the world] was created; we behold how it was governed; how it was covered with waters, and again repeopled; how kings and kingdoms have flourished and fallen; and for what virtue and piety God made prosperous, and for what vice and deformity he made wretched, both the one and the other. And it is not the least debt which we owe unto history, that it hath made us acquainted with our dead ancestors; and, out of the depth and darkness of the earth, delivered us their memory and fame. In a word, we may gather out of history a policy no less wise than eternal; by the comparison and application of other men’s fore-passed miseries with our own like errors and ill deservings.28

Raleigh’s description of his work is striking not because it puts politics at the centre of the History, but because it does so in unmistakably Machiavellian terms. Readers familiar with Machiavelli’s Discourses should recognize this view of history as heavily indebted to the one developed in the Prefaces to Books I and II of that work. Indeed, one might say that Raleigh’s undertaking itself was but a more ambitious examination of a beginning of vaster proportions than Rome’s. In short, the History of the World was a work that would present its author with plenty of opportunities to discuss Machiavellian themes, and consider, cite or comment on Machiavelli’s views. I will return to the overall Machiavellian character of the work below, but let me first ground this brief inquiry into the relationship of the History to Machiavelli’s thought in a much less ambitious and somewhat more secure footing. In History of the World, Raleigh mentions Machiavelli by name eight times, in six separate sections of the book.29 These references might appear to amount to little in a work whose first edition was a folio numbering some 1,400 pages,30 and yet they tell an interesting story regarding Raleigh’s Machiavellianism. These references, all centred on The Prince and Discourses, reveal Raleigh’s considerable familiarity with Machiavelli’s thought, and show that he had access to more than one edition of his works. In terms of content, too, the references in a Daughter of Savoy. By Sir Walter Raleigh, Knt. Now First Published from His Original Manuscript (London: Newbery, 1750). 27   Walter Raleigh, The Prerogative of Parliaments in England: Proved in a Dialogue (pro & contra) betweene a Councellour of State and a Iustice of Peace (Midelburg: n.p., 1628). 28   HW, Pref. (1614: A2r; 1829: II, v–[vi]). 29   Once in I.i.xv, once in III.vi.ii, once in IV.ii.iii, twice in IV.v.viii, twice in V.ii.iii, and once in V.vi.i. 30   In the Oxford University Press edition of Raleigh’s works (1829), the History occupies six volumes (ii–vii) of an eight-volume set.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

66

question are interesting, because they address a mix of popular and rather obscure themes in Machiavelli’s thought. One could divide them into two groups. The first consists of six references pertaining to four subjects (the supply of advancing armies, the defence of passages, the use of mercenaries and a conqueror’s ability to hold those whom he has conquered) in which Raleigh cites Machiavelli with reference to relatively minor issues. The second includes two references, dealing with two major Machiavellian themes, fortune and dissimulation. Group I The first passing reference to Machiavelli occurs in a section in which Raleigh recounts Xerxes’s march into Greece. There, Raleigh argues that the land itself becomes an enemy to the invader, ‘for were there no man found to giue resistance, yet the want of meanes to feede such an Army, and the Famine, which cannot be preuented, will without any other violence offered dis-inable and consume it’.31 On the march in Greece with an army which Raleigh puts at no fewer than ‘two millions of Soules; besides his beasts for Seruice and Carriage’, Xerxes was therefore likely to ‘suffer famine, and vsing Machiavels words, Mourire sans cousteo; die without a knife’.32 A little further, deep in the midst of a discussion of Alexander the Great’s march across Asia, in a section whose title announces it as a ‘A digression concerning the defence of hard passages’,33 Raleigh considers the significance of the Macedonian victory in the Battle of Granicus, and argues that battles on terrains such as rivers, straits and mountains are crucial because when it loses, the defending army gives up not only the passage but also its reputation, since if it is unable to defend with an advantage, it has no reason to hope for success ‘vpon equall tearmes and euen ground’.34 Raleigh continues, ‘It was therfore Machiavels counsell, That he which resolueth to defend a passage should with his ablest force oppose the Assailant’.35   HW, III.vi.2 (1614: 51; 1829: V, 110).   HW, III.vi.2 (1614: 51; 1829: V, 110). The reference is to The Art of War, wherein Fabrizio lists a series of general rules of war taken from Vegetius. Among them, he cautions, ‘Quello che non prepara le vettovaglie necessarie al vivere è vinto senza ferro’; Niccolò Machiavelli, Opere, ed. Corrado Vivanti, 3 vols (Turin: Einaudi-Gallimard, 1997–2005), henceforth ‘Opere’, vol. 1, p. 683. As Lefranc notes, Raleigh’s formulation probably comes from Charrier’s translation, in which the passage is rendered: ‘Celluy qui ne donne point d’ordre a la munition des vivres veult estre vaincu sans couteau’ (quoted in Lefranc, p. 614). 33   The title continues, ‘Of things following the battaile of Granicke’ (HW, IV.ii.3 [1614: 143; 1829: V, 307]). 34   HW, IV.ii.iii (1614: 143; 1829: V, 307). 35   HW, IV.ii.iii (1614: 143; 1829: V, 307). In the Discourses, I.23, Machiavelli writes, ‘Thus when you lose the pass that you had presupposed you would hold, and in which your people and your army trusted, most often such terror enters into the people and the remainder of your troops that you are left a loser without being able to try out their virtue. So you have 31 32

Sir Walter Raleigh’s Machiavelli

67

This simple and otherwise unremarkable comment is in fact quite extraordinary: it would be as easy for the reader of Raleigh’s History to pass over this reference as it would be for a reader of Machiavelli’s Discourses to miss what that author has to say about the defence of difficult passes. Although in Discourses I.23 Machiavelli discusses an especially popular topic – whether one should endanger all of one’s fortune, by putting all of one’s eggs in one basket, so to speak – he devotes about half of the chapter to a subset of cases, those having to do with the defence of hard passages. Where the consequences for successful invaders are concerned, Machiavelli and Raleigh are in agreement, and this agreement is in keeping with the spirit of Raleigh’s chapter on the significance of the Macedonian victory at Granicus. It should also be noted, however, that Machiavelli does not advise, in Discourses I.23 or elsewhere, that one should put one’s ablest forces in such a position, but rather cites with approval those who retreat to more favourable sites.36 If anything, he generally considers reliance on a few good men an imprudent policy.37 The importance of Raleigh’s citation, however, lies not so much in its rendition of Machiavelli’s view, but rather in the fact that it tells us that Raleigh had read the Discourses and read them closely. That aspect of I.23 is not one that has caught the attention or imagination of many commentators on Machiavelli. Perhaps more significantly, the issue of the defence of difficult passes is not one that Machiavelli discusses elsewhere, not even in The Art of War, a likelier locus for such a subject.38 Raleigh’s choice in the next reference is less surprising. A bit further in Book IV, in his treatment of ‘the great ciuill warre between Alexanders Captaines’, Raleigh turns to ‘What the causes were of the quiet obedience performed unto the Macedonians, by those that had been subject unto the Persian empire’.39 Machiavelli come to lose all of your fortune with part of your forces’; Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 57–8. 36   For example, the Romans’ reception of Hannibal (Discourses, I.23 § 3). In fact, Vivanti points to a letter to Vettori, in which Machiavelli claims, ‘I have never, among ancient things, found anyone succeed in holding passes, but I have seen many having left the passes and awaiting their enemies in open places, judging that they would be better able to defend themselves, and test the fortune of war with less disorder’ (10 December 1514 in Opere, vol. 2, p. 334, my translation). Vivanti cites Inglese, who points out that a marginal note to the manuscript of the letter uses the language found in the title of Discourses I.23 (Opere, vol. 2, note 18, p. 1593). 37   See, for example, Discourses I.22: ‘one should never risk all one’s fortune with part of one’s forces’ (p. 56); Discourses I.23 § 1, where Machiavelli’s pronouncement regarding the respective choices of Tullus and Mettius to do so, is, ‘This affair could not have been worse considered by those kings’ (p. 57). 38   Walker claims that the arguments in I.23 ‘are peculiar to the Discourses’ and notes, ‘[i]n the Art of War, Bk. IV, Machiavelli mentions that the Romans preferred to pitch their camp in the open, rather than in confined and rough places, but says nothing about the folly of defending passes’ (Opere, vol. 1, p. 269, note 2); see also Opere vol. 1, p. 254, note 3. 39   HW, IV.v, and IV.v.8 (1614: 221; 1829: V, 473).

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

68

had considered this subject in Chapter 4 of The Prince, where he too had used Alexander’s empire as his example.40 Machiavelli’s influence here extends beyond the subject matter and example, and is apparent even in the presentation, where Machiavelli expects that ‘anyone might marvel at how it happened’,41 and Raleigh that ‘We may justly wonder’42 how Alexander and his successors encountered no resistance from their Asian subjects. Raleigh finds that the main reason: is well set down by Machiauell; and concernes all other Kingdomes that are subject vnto the like forme of Gouernment: the summe whereof is this, Wheresoeuer the Prince doth hold all his Subjects vnder the condition of slaues, there is the conquest easie, and soone assured: Where ancient Nobility is had in due regard, there is it hard to winne all, and harder to keepe that which is won.43

Raleigh’s other examples, the Turks and the French, are also taken from Machiavelli. Nevertheless, Raleigh finds Machiavelli’s explanation insufficient, and adds, ‘To this want of Nobility in Persia, may be added the generall want of liberty conuenient among the people: a matter no lesse auaileable, in making easie and sure the conquest of a Nation, than is the cause assigned by Machiavel’.44 In Book V, devoted to Rome, Raleigh returns to Machiavelli’s pastures, and invokes his authority in a discussion of mercenaries. If encountering Machiavelli’s name in this context is unsurprising, Raleigh’s timing was nevertheless somewhat unexpected. Though presented with several better opportunities to consider mercenaries earlier, Raleigh did not choose to take up the issue until he came to the Carthaginians, a choice which he admits is rather controversial.45 At the closing of the previous chapter, Raleigh admits that his classification is problematic, since, even though they were paid, the troops in question were also subjects of Carthage, but decided to ‘hold them, as Polybius also doth, no better than Mercenaries’.46 Raleigh fails to mention that Machiavelli did as well, and on more than one occasion.47 40

  The title of that chapter is ‘Why Darius’ kingdom, which Alexander had occupied, did not rebel from Alexander’s successors after his death’ (p. 51). 41   The Prince, p. 51. 42   HW, IV.v.8 (1614: 222; 1829: V, 475). 43   HW, IV.v.8 (1614: 222; 1829: V, 476–7). 44   HW, IV.v.8 (1614: 223; 1829: V, 479). 45   HW, V.ii.3, entitled ‘The dangers growing from the vse of Mercenarie Souldiers, and forraine Auxiliaries’. Raleigh devotes no fewer than three sections (one of them split into two parts) to the discussion of the Carthaginian mercenaries. 46   HW, V.ii.2 [1614: 322; 1829: VI, 136). 47   See, for example, The Art of War I.55; Niccolò Machiavelli, The Art of War, ed. and trans. Christopher Lynch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 14; Opere, vol. 1, pp. 537–8; The Prince, XII, p. 77; Discourses III.32. Establishing the extent of Machiavelli’s indebtedness to Polybius is no easy matter. For instance, Machiavelli cited Polybius often, but sometimes refrained from doing so, as in the case of the cycle of political revolutions

Sir Walter Raleigh’s Machiavelli

69

Thus, Raleigh’s verdict is that the ‘extreame danger’ of using mercenaries ‘is well obserued by Machiavel’.48 On this occasion, Raleigh does not retract his modest praise, but rather reinforces it by citing Machiavelli’s example of Charles’s conquest of Italy with a piece of chalk.49 Unfortunately, whilst Raleigh’s rendition retains the spirit of that example, in his uninspired version, ‘the French King won the Realme of Naples; with his Buckler without a sword’.50 As in the discussion of passes, here too, Raleigh’s references and examples make for a distinctly Machiavellian treatment of a thoroughly Machiavellian topic. In this case, when Raleigh diverges from Machiavelli, it is to paraphrase, rather than to take issue with his source. In many ways, then, this last case is the most straightforward, involving a subject matter that had been associated with Machiavelli, not only – or even principally – the author of The Prince and the Discourses, but also the author of The Art of War and the Florentine Histories.51 There is no doubt that Machiavelli considers the subject of mercenaries important, but beyond attesting to this, its presence in all his major works also underscores the fact that it was one which did not raise the serious ethical issues that some of his other subjects did. Thus, even though one might disagree with Machiavelli’s views regarding the usefulness of mercenaries or auxiliaries, those views did not require treating Machiavelli as anything more than a historian or strategist, however bad. Group II Things are quite different in the remaining two references to Machiavelli. The first of these occurs near the very beginning of the work (I.i.15), and concerns fortune. Raleigh devotes Chapter 1 to ‘the Creation, and Preseruation of the World’, and the opening sections therein to an analysis not just of the events related in the first chapters of Genesis, but also of the broader theological issues surrounding the origin of the world, such as nature (x), fate (xi), foreknowledge (xii), providence (xiii) and predestination (xiv). Raleigh’s examination of these questions lives up to (Polyb. VI.9.10; Discourses, I.2); see Harvey C. Mansfield, ‘Machiavelli’s Political Science’, American Political Science Review 75 (1981): pp. 293–305, p. 301. Given the fact that Raleigh had read and cited both authors, this difficulty in turn complicates Raleigh’s indebtedness to Machiavelli. 48   HW, V.ii.3 (1614: 322; 1829: VI, 136). 49   The Prince, XII, p. 77. 50   HW, V.ii.3 (1614: 322; 1829: VI, 136). Lefranc points out that this rendition follows Gaspard d’Auvergne’s translation, and is hence suggestive of Raleigh’s source (p. 229). 51   Fabrizio’s presence and role in the discussion place the subject of mercenaries firmly in the background of The Art of War. See Marcia L. Colish, ‘Machiavelli’s Art of War: A Reconsideration’, Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998): pp. 1151–68; Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 203–5. The various Machiavellian examples that appear in Raleigh’s section can be found in Florentine Histories I.38; The Prince, XII, XIII; Discourses II.19, II.20, III.32, among others.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

70

the expectations he had raised in the Preface. In the opening sections of the book, Raleigh paints a picture of God as a clockmaker, the first cause and power behind every movement of nature.52 Hence, when he arrives at his discussion of fortune, Raleigh finds that he might ‘then with better reason reject that kind of idolatry, or god of fools, called fortune or chance; a goddess, the most reverenced, and the most reviled of all other’.53 This goddess, doubly false for not having even belonged to Hesiod’s original ‘counterfeit’ gods, ‘grew so great and omnipotent, as, from kings and kingdoms, to beggars and cottages, she ordered all things, resisting the wisdom of the wisest, by making the possessor thereof miserable; valuing the folly of the most foolish, by making their success prosperous’, leading many to equate fortune with wisdom.54 To Raleigh, this paradoxical view suggests a lack of understanding which, when faced with seemingly inexplicable phenomena, attributes them to fortune. Raleigh finds this view ‘common’ not just in the sense that it was base, but also in that it was widely held. Poets and philosophers occasionally refer to ‘necessity’, ‘fate’ or ‘fortune’, yet the phenomena they described by these terms were always the workings of the anima mundi, of which we have only a very limited view. Nevertheless, Raleigh finds abundant evidence, in Scripture and in the works of philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, and theologians, such as Augustine and Aquinas, to conclude with Melanchthon, ‘Quod Poetæ fortunam, nos Deum appellamus’.55 Raleigh’s mention of necessity and his portrayal of fortune as a woman might raise expectations of Machiavellianism here, but even though he mentions Machiavelli, the conclusion he draws is very different from the Florentine’s. If one were to wonder, ‘how comes it then, that so many worthie and wise men depend vpon so many vnworthy and emptie–headed fooles; that riches and honor are giuen to externall men, and without kernell: and so many learned, vertuous, and valiant men weare out their liues in poore and deiected estates’, Raleigh would respond that the cause is the very adaptability that Machiavelli advocates as essential to faring well in politics.56 One who is courageous and virtuous – not in the sense favoured by Machiavelli – will refuse to flatter the powers that be, and hence ‘shall evermore hang vnder the wheele’.57 Herein, rather than in fortune, lies the answer to the riddle of base men who set before them ‘MACHIAVELS two markes to shoote at (to wit) riches, and glorie’, and end up with riches and

52

  Raleigh begins section X as follows: ‘AND for this working power, which we call nature, the beginning of motion and rest, according to Aristotle; the same is nothing else but the strength and faculty which God hath infused into every creature, having no other self-ability than a clock, after it is wound up by a man’s hand, hath’ (1829: II, 24; 1624: 11). 53   HW, I.i.15 (1614: 17; 1829: II, 38). 54   HW, I.i.15 (1614: 17; 1829: II, 38). 55   HW, I.i.15 (1614: 17; 1829: II, 39). 56   HW, I.i.15 (1614: 17–18; 1829: II, 40). 57   HW, I.i.15 (1614: 18; 1829: II, 40).

Sir Walter Raleigh’s Machiavelli

71

honours, and constant men who end up with nothing.58 Clearly reclaiming virtue from Machiavelli, Raleigh sees the latter type as prizing it ‘for it selfe’.59 If an attempt to reclaim virtue during a discussion of fortune constitutes a challenge to Machiavelli, Raleigh’s final reference to the Florentine may well amount to a declaration of war. The context is a discussion of the Second Macedonian War, near the end of the History, and the specific locus is Antiochus’s use and subsequent betrayal of Cassander. After relating the events, Raleigh concludes: By this wee see, that the doctrine, which Machiavel taught vnto Cæsar Borgia, to employ men in mischieuous actions, and afterwards to destroy them when they haue performed the mischiefe; was not of his owne inuention. All ages haue giuen vs examples of this goodly policie, the later hauing beene apt schoolers in this lesson to the more ancient: as the reigne of Henry the eighth here in England, can beare good witnesse; and therein especially the Lord Cromwell, who perished by the same vniust Law that himselfe had deuised, for the taking away of another mans life.60

A charitable reader might conclude that this is an attempt to rehabilitate Machiavelli by pointing out the Machiavellianism of everyone else. Whether well intentioned or not, however, this rather simple observation also robs Machiavelli of his novelty and his teachings of their value, and perhaps explains in a nutshell why his name appears so rarely in this gigantic work of an alleged Machiavellian. What Would a Machiavellian Do? To these explicit references, the scholar wishing to ascertain Raleigh’s view of Machiavelli might add others, in which Raleigh discusses Machiavellian subjects in a Machiavellian manner, or instances in which Raleigh’s descriptions and views are reminiscent of Machiavelli’s. On the basis of such an extensive analysis, Lefranc concludes, ‘il est manifeste que Ralegh éprouva une très grande admiration pour Machiavel’,61 but there are several problems with this conclusion. First, the corpus providing the basis for Lefranc’s assessment includes several   HW, I.i.15 (1614: 18; 1829: II, 42).   HW, I.i.15 (1614: 18; 1829: II, 42). Greenblatt argues that Raleigh’s conduct towards the end of his life constituted an expression of his agreement with Machiavelli regarding virtue as flexibility, but one could see Raleigh’s conduct as consistent with the view of virtue developed in the History, one that in the end is different from Machiavelli’s. See Stephen J. Greenblatt, Sir Walter Raleigh: The Renaissance Man and his Roles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), p. 44; see also pp. 145–6. 60   HW, I.i.15 (1614: 613; 1829: VII, 777). 61   Lefranc, p. 232. 58 59

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

72

works whose status is as questionable as that of the Maxims and The CabinetCouncil, two works which Lefranc rightly excludes as spurious.62 Second, not everything that appears Machiavellian is evidence of Machiavelli’s influence. Meinecke, Praz, Gilbert and many others have noted that Machiavellianism existed long before Machiavelli, but Raleigh’s very own warning that ‘All ages haue giuen vs examples’ of Machiavelli’s ‘goodly’ policies suffices to make the point.63 The reader who heeds Machiavelli’s advice regarding appearances will be careful not to attribute to his influence views that merely appear Machiavellian. Third, there are many prominent sections of the History, in which the reader would expect to see Machiavelli or at least some evidence of his influence, but where neither is found.64 These absences are especially striking when one compares the History to the Discourse of […] Warre, a work whose authorship is open to the same doubts that surround the works published posthumously, but whose authenticity has not been challenged. In addition to several references to Machiavelli by name,

  It should be emphasized that Lefranc’s decision to reject The Cabinet-Council rests more or less on Strathmann’s case, and that his reasons for rejecting the Maxims could be applied to several of the other works he accepts as genuine (p. 64, pp. 67–70). 63   Felix Gilbert, ‘Machiavellism’, in Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Scribner, 1973), pp. 116–26, p. 116; Friedrich Meinecke, Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’État and its Place in Modern History (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1997, first edn 1924); Praz, ‘The Politic Brain’, p. 96. HW, I.i.15 (1614: 613; 1829: VII, 777). For example, in I.vi.7, entitled ‘That the wiser of the ancient Heathen had farre better opinions of God’, Raleigh argues, ‘And this is certaine, that if we looke into the wisedome of all Ages, we shale finde that there neuer was man of solid vnderstanding or excellent iudgement: neuer any man whose minde the Arte of education hath not bended; whose eyes a foolish superstition hath not afterward blinded; whose apprehensions are sober, and by a pensiue inspection aduised; but that he hath found by an vnresistable necessitie, one true God, and euerlasting being, all for euer causing, and all for euer sustayning; which no man among the Heathen hath with more reuerence acknowledged, or more learnedly exprest, than that Egyptian Hermes, howsoeuer it fayled afterward in his posteritie: all being at length by deuillish policie of the Egyptian Priests purposely obscured; who inuented new gods, and those innumerable, best sorting (as the Deuill perswaded them) with vulgar capacities, and fittest to keepe in awe and order their common people’ (1614: 81; 1829: II, 184). This passage contains several ideas that are similar to ones that can be found in Machiavelli’s works, but this vague resemblance is not sufficient for labelling them as ‘Machiavellian’. Other examples can be found in Raleigh’s views of lies (III.x.7) and of duplicity (V.III.1). 64   For example, Raleigh’s section ‘Of the beginning of Rome, and of Romulus birth and death’ (II.xxiv.5) reads as though it had been written by someone who had never read Machiavelli’s Discourses. Machiavelli’s absence from this section, as well as from Raleigh’s general section on beginnings and the establishment of government (I.ix.1) is striking, given his emphasis on beginnings more generally, and that of Rome in particular. This absence becomes all the more striking when one recalls that Raleigh described the History as a work on the beginnings of the world. 62

Sir Walter Raleigh’s Machiavelli

73

that short work contains unambiguous evidence of a Machiavellian influence.65 Fourth, as the explicit references in the History illustrate, even in cases in which we know that we have Raleigh commenting on Machiavelli, it is far from clear what to make of his views. Lefranc sees Machiavelli in the passages in question as either ‘nettement approuvé’, or ‘nommé d’une façon apparemment impartiale mais discrètement favorable toutes les autres, son autorité étant alors invoquée à l’appui des idées ou des faits exposés’.66 As we have seen, however, Raleigh’s comments on Machiavelli’s views were largely critical, if measured. Prior to Strathmann’s challenge to the authenticity of The Cabinet-Council, there was widespread agreement that Raleigh was a Machiavellian. Though commentators pointed to other writings, the bulk of the evidence for this judgement came from The Cabinet-Council and the Maxims. One might have expected, therefore, that the equally widespread acceptance of Strathmann’s challenge to the former and Lefranc’s dismissal of the latter would have led to a re-evaluation of that judgement, since on the basis of the unquestionably genuine writings one may say that Raleigh was a rather sophisticated reader of Machiavelli’s writings, but not that he was simply a Machiavellian first and foremost. There is an obvious difficulty with this reassessment, of course: once Machiavelli had made the case for adjusting to the demands of the times and for simply appearing to be pious and moral, one who agreed with him need do nothing more than denounce this view and proceed to embrace it. This practice would have been well known to Raleigh, whose quotations from Machiavelli’s works indicate that he had read at least two French editions of his works, and had possibly become acquainted with the Florentine’s thought during his campaigns in France, at a time when this type of anti-Machiavellian Machiavellianism was not uncommon.67 Explaining how Raleigh could have acquired the title of Machiavellian is therefore not difficult. Between his lifestyle and reputation, and the maxim books attributed to him, one can find more than enough evidence to do so. What is interesting is that this reputation did not disappear, nor subside even after the elimination of The CabinetCouncil and Maxims of State, the two works that were most responsible for it in the first place. Those who, on the one hand, reject these works as spurious and, on the other hand, continue to see Raleigh as a Machiavellian, appear to be accepting, if only tacitly, a view of Raleigh as one of the many writers of his period who saw value in Machiavelli’s teachings, but chose to distance themselves from their source. A ‘Machiavellian’ possibility suggests itself in this regard. Raleigh composed the History during a time of trial and disfavour similar to those that Machiavelli had experienced during the composition of The Prince. In the Epistle Dedicatory to that 65

  See, for example, Luciani, ‘Ralegh’s “Discourse of War” and Machiavelli’s “Discorsi”’. 66   Lefranc, p. 226. Lefranc is referring here to the broader set of Machiavellian passages, which includes the ones examined above. Of the latter, however, he considers IV.v.8 among those in which Machiavelli is ‘nettement approuvé’. 67   Lefranc, pp. 229–30.

74

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

work, Machiavelli is explicit about his attempt to use the book in order to escape that condition, and some have suggested that Raleigh’s motives in composing the History might not have been all that different. At the very least, Raleigh could have been attempting to restore his reputation. This is not a reading that one can rule out, but Raleigh’s idiosyncratic invocations of Machiavelli in the History and his measured disagreement with the Florentine make for a tone very different from the one emerging from the writings misattributed to him.68 The rarity of Raleigh’s references to Machiavelli and the equanimity with which the author presents them make it hard to conclude that his is the same kind of anti-Machiavellian Machiavellianism that one encounters in the works of Gentillet and Botero, for instance.69 Instead, the passages examined above suggest that Raleigh may not only be presenting a series of views that are more or less Machiavellian, but also that he does this in a way that emulates Machiavelli’s, for example, by amending slightly the views that he attributes to his sources, and making contradictory statements.70 Whatever else it may be, the cautious Machiavellianism of the History also makes it necessary to revisit with a considerable amount of scepticism the various accounts that credit Raleigh with a principal role in the dissemination of Machiavellianism in England.71 It is possible – indeed likely – that some such influence resulted from writings which were more or less persuasively attributed to him by others, after his death, but which were not his own. Aubrey recalled his grandmother saying, ‘The enemie to the stomack [raw], and the word of disgrace [lie], / Is the name of a gentleman with a bold face’.72 It appears that we may need, then, to distinguish between Raleigh and Rawlye, just as it is often necessary to distinguish between Machiavelli and Machiavel.

68   This list would include The Cabinet-Council and Maxims first and foremost, but extends to a host of other writings. See, for example, Thomas N. Brushfield, The Bibliography of Sir Walter Ralegh (Exeter: Commin, 1908, second edn) items 237–49, 258–79; Armitage, Sir Walter Raleigh, items 62–72, 76–81, and especially 149–66. 69   See Ioannis D. Evrigenis and Mark Somos, ‘Wrestling with Machiavelli’, History of European Ideas 37 (2011): pp. 85–93. 70   Zera S. Fink, for instance, seeks Raleigh’s views ‘beneath what appear to be intentional contradictions’, in The Classical Republicans. An Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in Seventeenth Century England (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1945), p. 23. 71   See, for example, Kempner; R.J. MacEwan, ‘The Influence of Machiavelli on Marlowe through Raleigh’ (MA diss., Catholic University of America, 1934). 72   John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Andrew Clark, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898, vol. 2, p. 182. Clark notes that ‘lie’ was ordinarily spelled ‘lye’, and ‘Rawlye’ was a common spelling of his name.

Chapter 5

Machiavellianism in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta Enrico Stanic

Marlowe and Machiavelli Machiavellianism in The Jew of Malta is both an oversimplified and an exceedingly convoluted critical issue. Notwithstanding minor differences in various critical viewpoints, a sense of unnecessary complication seems to be the common denominator together with the fact that The Prince seems to be the only text associated with Machiavellianism in critical discourse. The differences between critical views are often too slight to be the mark of a new interpretation: one critic’s position seems to be more linked to those of his/her predecessors than to the text. The idea that the Machiavellianism in the play was not inspired by a direct knowledge of The Prince but by Gentillet’s Anti-Machiavel is, as some scholars argue, equally plausible. This chapter is based on the assumption that Marlowe did read Machiavelli (without excluding the possibility of his knowing Gentillet), and offers a further contribution of the relevance of The Prince to The Jew of Malta.1 1   Instances of the critical discussion on the relation between Machiavelli and Marlowe are: Sydney Anglo, Machiavelli – The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 363–4; Howard Babb, ‘Policy in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’, English Literary History 24 (1957): pp. 85–94; Nigel W. Bawcutt, ‘Some Elizabethan Allusions to Machiavelli’, English Miscellany 20 (1969): pp. 53–74; Nigel W. Bawcutt, ‘Machiavelli and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’, Renaissance Drama 3 (1970): pp. 3–49: Nigel W. Bawcutt, ‘“Policy”, Machiavellianism, and the Earlier Tudor Drama’, English Literary Renaissance 1 (1971): pp. 195–209; Nigel W. Bawcutt, ‘Machiavelli and the Elizabethans: A New Examination’, Études Anglaises 30 (1977): pp. 455–62; Nigel W. Bawcutt, ‘The “Myth of Gentillet” Reconsidered: An Aspect of Elizabethan Machiavellianism’, Modern Language Review 99 (2004): pp. 863–74; Luc Borot, ‘Machiavellian Diplomacy and Dramatic Developments in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’, Cahiers Elisabéthains 33 (1988): pp. 1–11; Catherine Minshull, ‘Marlowe’s “Sound Machevil”’, Renaissance Drama 13 (1982): pp. 35–53; Mario Praz, ‘Machiavelli and the Elizabethans’, Proceedings of the British Academy 13 (1928): pp. 3–51; Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500–1700 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965); Irving Ribner, ‘Marlowe and Machiavelli’, Comparative Literature 4 (1954): pp. 348–56; Margaret Scott, ‘Machiavelli and the Machiavel’, Renaissance Drama 15 (1984): pp. 147–74.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

76

A focused analysis of the Prologue of the latter and of Machiavelli’s The Prince makes the idea that Marlowe did read The Prince and did make some references – though none too direct – to Machiavelli’s doctrine rather plausible. In the first four lines of the Prologue Machevil/Machiavelli implies that he not only survived his death but also that, before appearing on the stage, his spirit has lived on through a recently murdered politician, the Duke of Guise: Albeit the world think Machevil is dead, Yet was his soul but flown beyond the Alps, And now the Guise is dead is come from France To view this land and frolic with his friends.2

The fact that Marlowe suggests Guise as an embodiment of Machiavelli should be carefully analysed in order not to cause misinterpretations. Pointing to Guise – an ambitious and determined politician – as a model of Machiavellianism, Marlowe is only indicating him as wicked and power-thirsty. The fact that he was a bitter enemy of the Huguenots – who clearly hated him and regarded him as evil – and that he was eventually murdered for political reasons by order of the French King Henry III takes a very different meaning when confronted with Machiavelli’s considerations in Chapter 17 of The Prince. In a crucial passage Machiavelli writes: Debbe nondimanco el principe farsi temere in modo che, se non acquista lo amore, che fugga l’odio: perché può molto bene stare insieme essere temuto e non odiato. […] Debbe dunque un principe savio […] solamente ingegnarsi di fuggire l’odio, come è detto.3

To consider the Duke of Guise an ambitious and scheming Machevil may have been interesting enough for most of the audience, but it would hold little relevance to those who knew Machiavelli’s books, because the most important trait about Guise is the fact that he overlooked the core principle of Machiavelli’s doctrine: the Prince must never act so that he is openly hated by his enemies, and those readers of Machiavelli who saw the play must surely have noticed this subtle

  Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, ed. Nigel W. Bawcutt (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979). All quotations from the play are from this edition. 3   Niccolò Machiavelli, De Principatibus, ed. Giorgio Inglese (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1994), pp. 261–3. English version: ‘Nonetheless, the prince must make himself feared in such a way that, although he does not acquire love, he avoids hatred. For being feared and being not hated may exist together very well. I conclude, therefore, [...] that [...] a wise prince [...] must only contrive to avoid hatred, as was said’; Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. William J. Connell (Boston: Bedford, 2005), pp. 92–3. All quotations from the original version and English translation of The Prince come from these editions. 2

Machiavellianism in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta

77

allusion. This is but the first example of how Marlowe’s Prologue works on two levels as regards the use of Machiavellian issues. Lines 6 and 9 – ‘Such as love me guard me from their tongues’ and ‘Admired I am of those who hate me most’ – also work on two levels. The audience can recognize the treacherous and untrustworthy nature of the Machiavellian disciple in these lines, because the followers of Machiavelli are depicted as avoiding the mention of the person by whom their actions are inspired, while those who openly despise Machiavelli do so only to hide the fact that their schemes are in fact Machiavellian. This display of duplicity certainly satisfies the audience who asks from Machevil nothing more than being as odious as possible so that they can point their finger at him, but there is some deeper meaning here. The reader of Machiavelli also understands how subtly Marlowe refers to another characteristic of the Prince, that is, a peculiar form of ‘moral fluidity’. In Chapter 15 of The Prince Machiavelli suggests that morality should not be held as a limit to the actions of the wise leader, who should consider himself above ethical judgement while pursuing the goal of consolidating the power of the state: Et etiam non si curi di incorrere nella infamia di quelli vizii, sanza e quali possa difficilmente salvare lo stato; perché, se si considera bene tutto, si troverrà qualche cosa che parrà virtù, e seguendola sare’ ruina sua: e qualcuna altra che parrà vizio, e seguendola ne nasce la sicurtà et il bene essere suo.4

What appears mere deceitfulness can also be seen as an allusion to a sense of political pragmatism which is again indicated by Machiavelli as necessary in the exercise of power in a passage from Chapter 18: E però bisogna che egli abbia un animo disposto a volgersi secondo che e venti della fortuna e la variazione delle cose gli comandano; e, come di sopra dixi, non partirsi dal bene, potendo, ma sapere entrare nel male, necessitato.5

These passages help the reader to recognize how Machiavelli’s stinging lucidity may be found beneath the lines of Marlowe’s Prologue, lines which at a superficial level merely speak of the callous treacherousness of a Machevil.

  De Principatibus, p. 255 (‘Indeed, let him not worry about incurring the infamy of those vices without which it is difficult for him to save the state. For, if everything be well considered, something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in his security and well-being’, p. 88). 5   De Principatibus, p. 266 (‘And for this reason he needs to have a spirit disposed to change as the winds of fortune and the variation of things command him, and, as I said above, not to depart from the good if he is able, but to know how to enter into evil when he needs to’, p. 95). 4

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

78

Another reference to Machiavelli’s Il Principe is contained in lines 10–13 of the Prologue, when Machevil points at the Pope himself as a Machiavellian schemer: Though some speak openly against my books, Yet will they read me, and thereby attain To Peter’s chair; and when they cast me off Are poisoned by my climbing followers.

This image of the Vatican as a den of murderous political climbers could not but appeal to an anti-Catholic audience, who had no difficulty in picturing the Pope as a devilishly shrewd politician; but on a different, more educated level these allusions to the Papacy refer to specific parts of The Prince. Machiavelli does indeed write about various popes, and he does so in consideration of the fact that they are the head of the Holy See – one of the various states battling for predominance in Renaissance Italy – and therefore military and political leaders. The entirety of Chapter 11 is dedicated to the lucid analysis of how an Ecclesiastic Principality is to be ruled. Besides exercising their spiritual power, all popes also have to rule their state as any other prince does, and, as the examples Machiavelli lists clearly illustrate, they do so with a certain amount of success: Surse dipoi Alexandro VI, il quale, di tutti i pontefici che sono mai stati, mostrò quanto uno papa col danaio e con le forze si poteva prevalere […] Venne dipoi papa Iulio e trovò la Chiesa grande, avendo tutta la Romagna et essendo spenti e baroni di Roma e, per le battiture di Alexandro, annullate quelle fazioni; e trovò ancora la via aperta al modo dello accumular denari, non mai più usitato da Alexandro indrieto […] Ha trovato dunque la Sanctità di papa Leone questo pontificato potentissimo: il quale si spera, se quegli lo feciono grande con le arme, questo con la bontà et infinite altre sua virtù lo farà grandissimo e venerando.6

This passage is important to understand that the allusion in lines 12–13 to one Machiavellian pope literally climbing over the poisoned body of his predecessor is merely the superficial side of the more serious issue of the growing influence of the Church as a temporal power due to the effective work of a series of politically and militarily brilliant popes, an issue that Machiavelli illustrates and that Marlowe seems to refer to.   De Principatibus, p. 235 (‘Then there arose Alexander VI, who, of all those who have ever been pontiff, showed how far a pope with money and armies could prevail [...] Then came Pope Julius. He found the church great, since it possessed all of the Romagna; and the barons of Rome were eliminated, since Alexander’s blows had annihilated those factions. He also found the road clear for accumulating money in ways that had never been practised before Alexander [...] Thus His Holiness Pope Leo has found his pontificate most powerful. One hopes, if the former popes made it great with their arms, this one will make it very great and venerable through his goodness and his other infinite virtues’, p. 75). 6

Machiavellianism in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta

79

Another important point in the Prologue is constituted by lines 14–15, which read ‘I count religion but a childish toy, / And hold there is no sin but ignorance’. The popular myth of the Machiavellian atheist is clearly exploited here for the happiness of the audience, but once again these lines can be read as the sarcastic parody of some passages of The Prince. In Chapter 18 Machiavelli in fact points out that the wise leader must know how to fake a deeply religious attitude for the good of his state, his personal feelings towards religion notwithstanding, while at the same time he must always be ready to act against any religious principle for the good of his state: Et hassi ad intendere questo, che uno principe e maxime uno principe nuovo non può observare tutte quelle cose per le quali gli uomini sono chiamati buoni, sendo spesso necessario, per mantenere lo stato, operare contro alla fede, contro alla carità, contro alla umanità, contro alla religione […] Debba dunque uno principe aver gran cura che non gli esca mai di bocca cosa che non sia piena delle soprascripte cinque qualità; e paia, ad udirlo e vederlo, tutto pietà, tutto fede, tutto integrità, tutto umanità, tutto religione: e non è cosa più necessaria, a parere si avere, che questa ultima qualità.7

As this passage illustrates, Machiavelli did not believe religion to be a ‘toy’. Far from being irrelevant or marginal, religion is viewed in The Prince as something serious, as the most important quality a leader should appear to possess in order to win the hearts and minds of his subjects, for whom it is certainly relevant. Obviously the Prince must not himself become bound by religion in any way, because his actions must be always and solely aimed or designed to strengthen the power of the state, and no religious code should get in the way. In this sense it would be more correct to talk about religion as a tool, but it is only natural that Marlowe should decide for his Machevil to be verbally effective, even if incorrect, rather than truthful to Machiavelli’s words. It is in fact an interesting parallel that for Marlowe the theatrical impact of a speech comes before its respect for the source material, as for the Prince the good of his state always comes first. Another interesting point in the Prologue are lines 20–1, dealing with the issue – central in Machiavelli’s doctrine – of the true nature of power: ‘Might first made kings, and laws were most sure / When like the Draco’s they were writ in blood’. The reference to the proverbially severe Athenian legislator is entirely Marlovian – Machiavelli never mentions Draco in The Prince – and bears little 7   De Principatibus, p. 266 (‘And one must understand the following: that a prince, and especially a new prince cannot observe all of those things for which men are believed good, since to maintain his state he is often required to act against faith, against charity, against humaneness, and against religion [...] Thus a prince must take great care that nothing ever leaves his mouth that is not full of the five qualities stated above, and that he appear, to hear and to look at him, all compassion, all faith, all integrity, all humaneness, all religion – and there is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality’, p. 95).

80

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

general relevance because, apart from reiterating the stereotype of the bloodthirsty Machiavellian ruler, these lines in fact point to the problematic issue of how far a leader should go while pursuing the goal of gaining and keeping power. Machiavelli deals with this matter in Chapter 18: Dovete adunque sapere come e’ sono dua generazioni di combattere: l’uno, con le legge; l’altro con la forza. Quel primo è proprio dello uomo; quel secondo, delle bestie. Ma perché el primo molte volte non basta, conviene ricorrere al secondo: pertanto ad uno principe è necessario sapere bene usare la bestia e lo uomo […] Bisogna ad uno principe sapere usare l’una e l’altra natura e l’una sanza l’altra non è durabile.8

The doctrine of necessary cruelty in the exercise of power as related by Machiavelli is certainly different from the brief and sensationalistic summary Machevil makes of it, yet an underlying similarity is undeniable. This passage – like the ones cited above – highlights how a close comparative reading of the Prologue and The Prince reveals a more complex attitude on Marlowe’s part while writing Machevil’s speech than a mere capitalization on anti-Machiavellian feelings. The presence of two levels throughout the Prologue suggests that Marlowe was conscious that his knowledge of Machiavelli might be put to better use if veiled under the appearance of a stereotyped character. Primarily, but not necessarily superficially, Marlowe fulfils the expectations of the audience by consciously and effectively perpetrating distortions and misunderstandings personified by the stereotypical figure of Machevil. This is certainly the most evident form of Machiavellianism in the play, and quite probably the only one capable of being understood by the majority of Elizabethan theatre-goers. Secondarily (but, to the focused spectator, with sarcastic clarity), Marlowe inserts allusions that point to a deeper knowledge of Machiavelli. It is difficult to say if he had any seriously political intention in doing so, but still he proves that he is aware that other people would understand his allusions. And to these few he indirectly sends a subtle message, pointing at the ironic truth that many people with a better reputation than his own are using Machiavellian strategies in their self-righteous lives exactly in the same way as a caricatural villain may do on stage.

8   De Principatibus, pp. 263–4 (‘You should know, therefore, that there are two kinds of combat: one with laws, the other with force. The first one is proper to man, the second is proper to beasts. But because many times the first is not enough, one must have recourse to the second. For a prince, therefore, it is necessary to know well how to use both the beast and the man [...] It is necessary for a prince to know how to use the one and the other nature; and the one without the other does not endure’, p. 94).

Machiavellianism in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta

81

Ferneze’s Machiavellianism One curious fact about the critical discussion of Machiavelli’s influence in The Jew of Malta, as seen in the works listed above, is the assumption that, if Machiavellianism is present in the play, it must be looked for mainly in Barabas’s villainous actions and, to some extent, in the Prologue. It is no surprise that Barabas’s overreaching character should draw the attention of scholars, since he is constantly scheming, plotting, killing young Maltese noblemen, poisoning nuns and getting Friars hanged for his own crimes. But to assume that Barabas’s villainy is Machiavellian just because he is the designated villain in the play is superficial and inaccurate. Most critics in fact dismiss the hypothesis that Machiavellianism is a relevant aspect of the play at all, but they do so by focusing on Machiavellianism in Barabas: what is sometimes not realized is that this does not imply that any other character may be truly Machiavellian. Marlowe’s text does indeed suggest that a Machiavellian villain is present among the characters: in truly Machiavellian fashion, he has managed to pass unobserved under the scrutiny of most critics. This crucial yet somehow uncredited character is Ferneze, the Christian governor of Malta and leader of the Knights of St John.9 The text, when read without bias, infallibly points to Ferneze as the real Machiavellian hero in The Jew of Malta. Barabas is wicked and shrewd, undoubtedly resourceful and disturbingly enterprising, but there is a flaw in his temperament which no Machiavellian character would allow himself: he is passionate to the point that his violent emotions dominate him completely and eventually cloud his judgement. In the first scenes he is a powerful and egocentric Jew, apparently very lucid and focused, but then lust for revenge sets in and triggers a criminal chain reaction. Blood-lust possesses him to the extent that he does not appear to be in control any more: solely driven by vengeance, Barabas obliterates reality and single-mindedly pursues his goal with a certain success at first, but eventually is the cause of his own demise. Ferneze, on the other hand, is very different and truly Machiavellian, a sharp and prudent leader as The Prince ideally depicts him. He is powerful not because he is rich, like Barabas, but because he is the undisputed ruler of Malta and 9   Ferneze is indeed sometimes mentioned in more general terms, frequently in relation to economic or political issues present in the play. See Anglo, pp. 363–4; Babb, pp. 85–94; Coburn Freer, ‘Lies and Lying in The Jew of Malta’, in A Poet and a Filthy Play-maker: New Essays on Christopher Marlowe, ed. Kenneth Friedenreich (New York: AMS Press, 1988), pp. 143–65; David Thurn, ‘Economic and Ideological Exchange in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’, Theatre Journal 46 (1994): pp. 157–70. The only critical study which approaches the question of Machiavellianism in a sense broad enough to allow a reference to Ferneze’s Machiavellian nature to emerge is Luc Borot, quoted above (note  1). Nevertheless, even Borot’s study eventually focuses on the possible parallels between the many turns of events in the play and their relation to a general influence of Machiavelli on Elizabethan political theory.

82

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

commands the military forces of the Knights. He is feared and even though he may not be loved, he is not hated either – at least not by anybody except Barabas. This makes him the perfect image of the political leader as described in Chapter 17 of The Prince: a strong ruler who is able to inspire admiration in his subjects, but who does not rely completely on love to keep his place, preferring to cause fear and yet careful not to be hated. The fact that for most of the play he is perceived only as Barabas’s enemy should not lead us to rash conclusions, for during the play Ferneze is constantly at work – not under the spotlight, of course. His undeniable political ability seems to be based on a key maxim from Chapter 18 of The Prince, when Machiavelli – bluntly perhaps, yet effectively – states that to a prince the obligation to keep faith to his words is always subordinated to the well-being of his state and to the necessity to maintain a firm hold over his power. Machiavelli writes: Quanto sia laudabile in uno principe il mantere la fede e vivere con integrità e non con astuzia, ciascuno lo intende; nondimanco si vede per experienza nelli nostri tempi quelli principi avere fatto gran cose, che della fede hanno tenuto poco conto e che hanno saputo con l’astuzia aggirare e cervelli delli uomini: et alla fine hanno superato quelli che si sono fondati in sulla realtà […] Non può pertanto un signore prudente, né debbe, observare la fede quando tale observanzia gli torni contro e che sono spente le cagioni che la feciono promettere.10

Indeed Ferneze, while rearranging the diplomatic relationship of Malta every time a new possible ally or a potential threat appears, proves his uncanny ability to get the best outcome for himself in any situation while never having to suffer the consequences deriving from his changing loyalty. Specific events from the play may help us understand the extent of Ferneze’s truly Machiavellian attitude. In I.ii he is faced with the problem of paying Calymath the substantial sum owed by Malta as a tribute to the Turks. In this situation his course of action is simple but effective: the tribute, he decides, will be paid by the Jews, a minority the Christian population hates while, at the same time, it retains an economic power which may in the long run weaken the leadership of the Christian Knights. Therefore his solution has many advantages: he will solve the main problem of having to pay the Turks a sum of money which he hardly could manage to collect anyway; he will certainly gain the favour of his Christian subjects by sparing them taxation; he will gratify them by striking the hated and rich Jews; finally, he will 10   De Principatibus, pp. 263–4 (‘How laudable it is in a prince to maintain faith and to live with integrity and not with cleverness, everyone understands. Nonetheless, one sees from experience in our own times that those princes have done great things who have held faith of small account, and who have known how, with their cleverness, to trick men’s brains, and at the end they have surpassed those who founded themselves on sincerity [...] Therefore a prudent lord cannot, nor should he, observe faith when such observance turns against himself, and when the reasons that made him promise it are eliminated’, pp. 93–4).

Machiavellianism in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta

83

exercise his power on the Jewish community, scaring them and robbing them of their profits. Lines 59–67 perfectly exemplify the spirit of this scene: Barabas: Are strangers with your tribute to be taxed? Second Knight: Have strangers leave with us to get their wealth? Then let them with us contribute. Barabas: How, equally? Ferneze: No, Jew, like infidels. For through our sufferance of your hateful lives, Who stand accursed in the sight of heaven, These taxes and afflictions are befallen, And therefore thus we are determined: Read there the articles of our decree.

Here Ferneze employs at least two central concepts of The Prince: the use of religion, and, more in general, of anything good and noble, as a tool to give an additional moral quality to the Prince’s decisions while maintaining a clear focus on the political necessity of the state, and the application of a wise balance between sheer display of power and formal respect for the law while ruling over his subjects. Machiavelli writes in Chapter 18: Dovete adunque sapere come e’ sono dua generazioni di combattere: l’uno, con le legge; l’altro con la forza. Quel primo è proprio dello uomo; quel secondo, delle bestie […] Bisogna ad uno principe sapere usare l’una e l’altra natura e l’una sanza l’altra non è durabile […] Ma è necessario questa natura saperla ben colorire et essere gran simulatore e dissimulatore: e sono tanto semplici gli uomini, e tanto ubbidiscono alle necessità presenti, che colui che inganna troverà sempre chi si lascerà ingannare […] A uno principe adunque non è necessario avere in fatto tutte le soprascritte qualità ma è ben necessario parere di averle; anzi ardirò di dire questo: che, avendole et observandole sempre, sono dannose, e, parendo di averle, sono utili; come parere pietoso, fedele, umano, intero, religioso, et essere: ma stare in modo edificato con lo animo che, bisognando non essere, tu possa e sappia diventare il contrario.11 11   De Principatibus, pp. 263–6 (‘You should know, therefore, that there are two kinds of combat: one with laws, the other with force. The first one is proper to man, the second is proper to beasts [...] It is necessary for a prince to know how to use the one and the other nature; and the one without the other does not endure [...] But it is necessary to know how to color this nature well, and to be a great pretender and dissembler, and men are so very simple, and they so well obey present necessities, that he who deceives will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived [...] Thus it is not necessary for a prince actually to have all the above written qualities, but it is very necessary to seem to have them. Indeed, I shall dare to say the following: that when these qualities are possessed and always observed they are harmful. And when they seem to be possessed, they are useful. So

84

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

The ideas expressed in the passages above not only bear a striking resemblance to Ferneze’s general attitude, but also show how the governor’s first move is, when analysed from an objective, truly Machiavellian perspective, totally successful. His understanding of Machiavelli’s suggestions is outstanding and his application of these teachings to the circumstances of Maltese life is perfect. In the general context, the fact that one fanatic Jew starts hating him should not be considered a major drawback. From Ferneze’s point of view, Barabas does not amount to anything more than a calculated collateral damage. Of course, things turn out differently during the play and he will lose much more than he expects to when his own son is killed, but (the events of the play being centred on Barabas’s bloodlust) this probably would not have happened in the non-fictional world, where lunatic mass-murderers were certainly less frequent than in theatrical Malta. In II.ii the political situation suddenly changes but Ferneze easily adapts to it. At first he is prudent, and when Del Bosco asks for his permission to sell some captured Turks as slaves in Malta, Ferneze denies it (lines 19–23) because the isle of Malta owes the Turkish general a tribute. The Spanish captain quickly reacts, showing surprise at the idea that the Christian Knights are bound to the Turks, but his indignation allows Ferneze to allude to the fact that the problem is merely one of quantity, that is, the lack of troops on his part. The role of the fellow Christian beset by infidels is well played by Ferneze and gains him unexpected sympathy from Del Bosco who immediately offers his help (lines 28–42): Del Bosco: Will Knights of Malta be in league with Turks, And buy it basely, too, for sums of gold? […] Ferneze: Captain, we know it, but our force is too small. Del Bosco: What is the sum that Calymath requires? Ferneze: A hundred thousand crowns. Del Bosco: My lord and king hath title to this isle, And he means quickly to expel them hence; Therefore be ruled by me, and keep the gold. I’ll write unto his Majesty for aid, And not depart until I see you free. Ferneze: On this condition shall thy Turks be sold.

The irony of Ferneze’s final line is quite interesting, because it allows us to infer that his initial refusal and all the following discussion with Del Bosco are indeed part of a subtle plot according to which Ferneze means to lead Del Bosco exactly where he wants him to go, that is, to an offer of alliance. Once again, the use of religion as a tool to enforce the position of power of a leader is perfectly mastered by the governor of Malta, but his behaviour throughout the entire scene is genuinely that it is useful to seem compassionate, faithful, humane, honest, religious and to be so, but to stay so constructed in your spirit that if it is necessary not to be these things, you are able and know how to become the contrary’, pp. 93–5).

Machiavellianism in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta

85

Machiavellian when viewed from another perspective. Thanks to Ferneze’s political intuition and quick mental adaptability, the arrival of Martin Del Bosco and his Spanish fleet provides Malta with an unexpected ally and with new tactical solutions. The addition of Del Bosco’s troops and the possibility of further help from the King of Spain allow Ferneze to defy the Turks openly and to avoid the embarrassing situation of having to pay tribute to the infidel. What is more, he is freed of all obligations towards Calymath and thus can keep for himself the money he has already extorted from the Jews. Ferneze here acts in the best possible way, gaining profit from his alliances while significantly strengthening the position of his country against its enemies. Ferneze’s brilliant solution is the result of an attitude which Machiavelli encourages the Prince to maintain constantly, as a key quality for the wise leader: Non può pertanto un signore prudente, né debbe, observare la fede quando tale observanzia gli torni contro e che sono spente le cagioni che la feciono promettere […] E però bisogna che egli abbia uno animo disposto a volgersi secondo che e venti della fortuna e la variazione delle cose gli comandano.12

Machiavelli himself could not have found anything to criticize in Ferneze’s conduct. The Maltese governor seems to follow the guidelines of Chapter 18 of The Prince almost verbatim, for he quickly adapts to the new situation and does not hesitate to break a promise when a better deal presents itself to him – the end of consolidating his political power being always primary to him. A final proof of Ferneze’s deeply Machiavellian nature is given in V.ii, and – not coincidentally, one may infer – it is closely related to Barabas’s ultimate mistake. When Barabas gains control of Malta as a reward from Calymath, he reacts unpredictably by refusing to be governor. This is not a real mistake in itself; it is the demonstration that he too possesses a certain Machiavellian intuition as regards the necessity for a leader not to be hated by his subjects, as the The Prince clearly reads: Debbe nondimanco el principe farsi temere in modo che, se non acquista lo amore, che fugga l’odio: perché può molto bene stare insieme essere temuto e non odiato.13

Unluckily for Barabas, this is the only hint of Machiavellianism he possesses, and, far from proving helpful, it will doom him. Instead of thinking over a possible   De Principatibus, pp. 264–6 (‘Therefore a prudent lord cannot, nor should he, observe faith when such observance turns against himself, and when the reasons that made him promise it are eliminated [...] And for this reason he needs to have a spirit disposed to change as the winds of fortune and the variation of things command him’, pp. 93–4). 13   De Principatibus, p. 261 (‘Nonetheless, the prince must make himself feared in such a way that, although he does not acquire love, he avoids hatred’, p. 92). 12

86

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

solution – finding a conniving Christian to use as a puppet ruler in his stead, for instance – Barabas lets himself be driven by mindless passion, which in turn leads him to rely on his nemesis, Ferneze, whose Machiavellian skills are far from limited. Why Barabas should choose to do so is, to some extent, beyond the necessity of a rational explanation – we are dealing, after all, with a play and an Elizabethan one at that, where dramatic action does not need to be always rationally motivated. But one may suppose that, at the climax of his delusive grandeur, Barabas must have believed that his victory is already complete and that the Christian governor can be easily manipulated: after all Barabas has outwitted him once, why should he not be able to do it again, if necessary? But Ferneze is far from defeated. Barabas’s final plan may be somehow helpful to Ferneze, for it grants victory against the Turks and the regaining of his former position as governor of Malta. But the knowledge of the Jew’s scheme may be exploited differently, because both Barabas and Calymath ignore Ferneze’s alliance with Del Bosco. In this sense, to reveal the machination to the Turks may only give him further advantage, leading to the death of the untrustworthy Jew while buying Del Bosco more time to capture the Turkish ships. The quick rearrangement of alliances and the subtle power games eventually – and predictably – turn in favour of Ferneze: he is in power again, in a far stronger position than before, as Calymath is his prisoner and the Turkish soldiers have all been treacherously killed, and – a secondary matter under many respects – the hateful Jew finally dies, allowing the governor to draw some moralistic conclusions for the sake of Christian righteousness (lines 117–23): Ferneze: Content thee, Calymath, here thou must stay, And live in Malta prisoner; for come all the world To rescue thee, so will we guard us now, As sooner shall they drink the ocean dry, Than conquer Malta, or endanger us. So, march away, and let due praise be given Neither to fate nor fortune, but to heaven.

The self-righteous tone of the couplet which concludes the play is once again proof of how fully Ferneze applies Machiavelli’s suggestions about religion being a useful cloak for policy, and, more in general, the final turn of events – while certainly serving the purposes of Marlowe’s main revenge-centred plot – reveals how perfectly Ferneze embodies some of Machiavelli’s most politically lucid intuitions, that is, those contained in Chapter 15 of The Prince about the attitude a leader should have towards ethics and their application in the exercise of political power: E molti si sono immaginati repubbliche e principati che non si sono mai visti né conosciuti in vero essere. Perché egli è tanto discosto da come si vive a come si dovrebbe vivere, che colui che lascia quello che si fa, per quello che si dovrebbe fare, impara più presto la ruina che la preservazione sua: perché uno uomo che

Machiavellianism in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta

87

voglia fare in tutte le parte professione di buono, conviene che ruini infra tanti che non sono buoni. Onde è necessario, volendosi uno principe mantenere, imparare a potere essere non buono et usarlo e non usarlo secondo la necessità.14

The realistic approach that Machiavelli encourages the Prince to maintain is certainly a recognizable trait in Ferneze. The flexibility of any moral code in the face of political necessity is a guideline Ferneze applies throughout the play, and in the last act it culminates in a double treason which gains him the last words; hypocritical though they may be, they are definitely the words of a winner. In another passage in Chapter 15 of The Prince, Machiavelli suggests that a leader should not judge an action as good or bad merely in itself, but only and always in relation to the consequences it will bring and to the effects of these consequences on his political power – a suggestion whose importance Ferneze seems to understand completely. In this sense, Machiavelli writes, what may appear to be ‘good’ in general moral terms could turn out to be bad for the Prince, who should therefore choose a different course of action. In particular, the fear of moral condemnation must not ever hinder the path of the Prince as, in the play, it does not hinder Ferneze’s: Et etiam non si curi di incorrere nella infamia di quelli vizii, sanza e quali possa difficilmente salvare lo stato; perché, se si considera bene tutto, si troverrà qualche cosa che parrà virtù, e seguendola sare’ ruina sua: e qualcuna altra che parrà vizio, e seguendola ne nasce la sicurtà et il bene essere suo.15

A true disciple of Machiavelli’s doctrine – which at times seems to be applied almost to the letter – Ferneze exemplifies the ability to evaluate and then pursue a course of action not for his immediate consequences but strictly in relation to the ultimate political effect such actions will eventually produce. More in general, Ferneze seems to incarnate the true spirit of Machiavelli’s political thought, that is, adaptability. A prince who realistically wishes to gain, and, above all, keep power, should not have any fixed preconceptions and should not limit himself to following 14   De Principatibus, pp. 253–4 (‘And many have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in truth. For there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not to use it according to necessity’, p. 87). 15   De Principatibus, p. 255 (‘Indeed, let him not worry about incurring the infamy of those vices without which it is difficult for him to save the state. For, if everything be well considered, something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in his security and well-being’, p. 88).

88

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

an unquestionable set of rules. Guidelines do exist, and Machiavelli is very precise in instructing his readers about them, but the one and only end is power and to gain it a leader must adapt to the different and unpredictable situations of political life by bending his own code to immediate necessity. Ferneze is indeed such a leader; he has learned this simple lesson and pragmatically applies it, with rather satisfying results. The relatively secondary role played on stage well becomes the image of the political intriguer – not exposing himself to too much attention while actually deciding the fate of an entire country – and may to some extent account for a certain lack of critical attention on Ferneze, but it does not make him any less important as the true disciple of Machiavelli in the play.

Chapter 6

When Pretence Rules over Essence: Shakespeare’s Bastard in King John Conny Loder

When critics discuss Shakespeare’s play King John, they do so usually in connection to the anonymous Troublesome Reign of King John. In this connection the predominant and so far unsolved question is, which of the two plays came first? This chapter does not intend to solve this dilemma, although I agree that The Troublesome Reign predates Shakespeare’s King John.1 Its focus lies elsewhere: how much of Shakespeare’s Philip of Faulconbridge, the Bastard, is a reflection of Machiavellian thought as it can be found in Machiavelli’s The Prince? Reading Machiavellian politics as a theatrical act, an act of manipulation and control of the members of the Commonwealth, allows us to view the Bastard as a Machiavellian performer whose skill will develop over the course of the play.2 This chapter discusses how the Bastard uses the theatrical means of an actor to manipulate the members of the English Commonwealth into fulfilling their duties and thus maintains the stability of the Commonwealth. The history plays, more than other Shakespearean plays, have been read against Machiavelli’s doctrine. E.M.W. Tillyard argued in Shakespeare’s History Plays that Elizabethans did not consider Machiavelli an alternative to the Aristotelian world order;3 today critics agree that Elizabethans actually did. Hugh Grady points out that one does not ‘know precisely how Machiavellian ideas were transmitted to the dramatists’, but that it is ‘reasonable to assume that discursive dynamics [were] at work’.4 Today, criticism is split over a different question: whether Elizabethan   For example, see A.J. Piesse, ‘King John: Changing Perspectives’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays, ed. Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 126–40, p. 126. 2   See James P. Saeger, ‘Illegitimate Subjects: Performing Bastardy in King John’, JEGP 100 (2001): pp. 1–21, or Vickie Sullivan, ‘Princes to Act: Henry V as the Machiavellian Prince of Appearance’, in Shakespeare’s Political Pageant: Essays in Literature and Politics, ed. Joseph Alulis and Vickie Sullivan (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. 125–52. 3   See E.M.W. Tillyard, Shakespeare’s History Plays, 2nd ed. (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948). 4   Hugh Grady, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Montaigne: Power and Subjectivity from Richard II to Hamlet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 29. 1

90

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

dramatists favoured or rejected Machiavelli’s doctrine. Recent discussions concentrate on Machiavelli’s original doctrine and how it is incorporated into Shakespeare’s political plays, particularly the history plays. Although critics admit that interpretations of a pro-Machiavellian stance can be found in these plays, the majority of these critics claim that this stance is usually suppressed and withdrawn at the end of the play. Among these is Stephen Greenblatt who argues that Elizabethan dramatists acknowledged Machiavelli’s subversive thought. He suggests that Elizabethans did not reject it, but rather used Machiavelli’s philosophy to bring about subversion, only to contain it and restore political stability by the same means that threatened to undermine that stability. For Greenblatt, this ‘involves as its positive condition the constant production of its own radical subversion’.5 Conversely, Tim Spiekerman argues in his book Shakespeare’s Political Realism that one can read Shakespeare as completely rejecting Machiavelli’s philosophy.6 Hugh Grady’s recent work on the adaptation of Machiavelli’s philosophy into Shakespeare’s plays reads Shakespeare not only against Machiavelli, but also against Montaigne, concluding that Montaigne’s subjectivity complements Machiavelli’s view on ambition and power in the history plays.7 Shakespeare, Grady argues, ‘depicts subjectivity as something of a dialectical negation of power, not a mere effect of its operations; as an orientation to multiple potential selves or identities, not merely the production of a unitary one; as a mental space critically distanced from, and not entirely defined by, the circulating ideologies and discourses of institutions of power’.8 In the history plays too, Shakespeare connects statecraft with (distorted) Machiavellian politics and Machiavellian theatricality, as can be seen for instance in 3 Henry VI, when Richard claims to outdo Machiavelli in immorality (III.ii.182–95) and in Richard III, when Richard’s confidant, Buckingham, identifies himself with a ‘tragedian’ (III.v.5).9 5   Stephen Greenblatt, ‘Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and its Subversion, Henry IV and Henry V’, in Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, 1945– 2000, ed. Russ McDonald (Malden: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 435–57, p. 444. 6   See Tim Spiekerman, Shakespeare’s Political Realism: The English History Plays (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), p. 154. 7   See Hugh Grady, ‘Shakespeare’s Links to Machiavelli and Montaigne: Constructing Intellectual Modernity in Early Modern Europe’, Comparative Literature 52 (2000): pp. 119–42. 8   Hugh Grady, Shakespeare, Machiavelli and Montaigne, p. 6. 9   William Shakespeare, The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York and the Good King Henry the Sixth; The Tragedy of King Richard the Third in The Riverside Shakespeare, eds G. Blakemore Evans and J.J.M. Tobin, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). This is the edition of Shakespeare’s play used throughout. For a detailed discussion of these passages and their connection with Machiavellian theatricality see Conny Loder, ‘Tyranny, Theatricality and Machiavelli’, in Queen and Country, ed. Alessandra Petrina (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 191–211; Conny Loder, ‘Shakespeare’s King Richard III: The Perverted Machiavel’, in Divining Thoughts: Future Directions in Shakespeare Studies, eds Peter Orford et al. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), pp. 69–76.

When Pretence Rules over Essence: Shakespeare’s Bastard in King John

91

Although both plays place the political conflict into a religious context, King John highlights the religious implications far less than the Troublesome Reign does. For Tillyard, the Troublesome Reign serves English propaganda, presenting John on the one hand as a failed politician, on the other as ‘the righteous champion of Protestantism’.10 Today’s criticism looks at King John more critically. One of these critics, Virginia Mason Vaughan, believes that in ‘deconstructing The Troublesome Reign and reconstructing the events of John’s reign into a new drama, Shakespeare subverted much of the Tudor ideology embedded in the original’.11 Besides their different religious implications, the two plays give the Bastard different levels of significance in the plot, which conveys ‘different understandings of service to the crown’.12 King John is unique in that ambition is personified by an outsider, Philip Faulconbridge, rather than by a contender to the throne. Edward Gieskes sees Philip in The Troublesome Reign as a nobleman who behaves according to the code of chivalry, unlike the Bastard in King John the latter is: treated by the play as a vocation in our modern sense of employment. By the end of the play he administers the royal succession to the throne without any real opposition from the hereditary nobles around him. Shakespeare’s Bastard actively chooses a career as a royal servant in choosing to acknowledge his bastardy while the Bastard of the Troublesome Raigne is forced to avow his ancestry, against his better judgment, and in this involuntary manner enters the aristocracy, and from thence comes to royal service. The plays exhibit alternative conceptions of identity – one chosen, the other essential – which are linked to the ability of each character to serve the King.13

This shaping of identity is not just a pragmatic enterprise; Shakespeare’s Bastard undertakes a process of adapting and, more importantly, of rejecting roles, which climaxes in his becoming – on the dramatic level – the protagonist of the play and – on the political level – the essence of Machiavelli’s manipulative and rhetorically skilled politician. King John starts with subversion of power on two scales: within the macrocosm, the French King threatens to invade England, while within the microcosm, Faulconbridge’s younger son questions primogeniture. The Faulconbridge conflict is contained twofold by royal decree, affirming first primogeniture and then royal genealogy. It is also contained in both cases in and through the character of the 10

  Tillyard, p. 215.   Virginia Mason Vaughan, ‘King John: A Study in Subversion and Containment’, in King John: New Perspectives, ed. Deborah T. Curren-Aquino (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), pp. 62–75, p. 65. 12   Edward Gieskes, ‘“He is but a Bastard of the Time”: Status and Service in The Troublesome Raigne of John and Shakespeare’s King John’, ELH 65 (1998): pp. 779–98, p. 779. 13   Gieskes, p. 780. 11

92

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Bastard. Eventually the macrocosmic conflict will be contained by the Bastard as well. Significantly, he lays no claim to royal genealogy, but instead uses his language, attitude and body shape as a vehicle to disconnect from one family and connect with another. Serving as both narrator and chorus, the Bastard is the play’s fulcrum and jocularly pries his way into the royal household. When Robert, his younger brother, openly claims that he is Sir Faulconbridge’s true heir since Sir Faulconbridge ‘by will bequeathed / His lands’ to him (I.i.109–10), he challenges the Bastard’s inheritance. The latter’s flippant attitude, however, signals that he does not care if his brother’s challenge is successful, thus suggesting that he has ulterior motives. The Bastard knows that, by challenging his father’s bequest of the family lands to his younger brother before the King, he will either inherit the family lands or be accepted as the former King Richard’s illegitimate son. Playing the role of the deprived son, he gulls his brother into corroborating their mother’s adultery with Richard. His ulterior motives are revealed when he comments on how his brother initiates his suit to King John: ‘Well, sir, by this you cannot get my land; / Your tale must be how he employ’d my mother’ (I.i.97–8).14 A few lines earlier, the Bastard had invited Elinor and John to ‘[c]ompare [their] faces, and be judge[s themselves]’ (I.i.79), which prompts Elinor to liken the Bastard to her son Richard: ‘He hath a trick of Cordelion’s face, / The accent of his tongue affecteth him. / Do you not read some tokens of my son / In the large composition of this man’ (I.i.85–8). John also recognizes in the Bastard the mirror of Richard (l. 90). The Bastard’s physical tie to the royal family is confirmed by his looks, language and conduct – all important traits for an actor. Putting on a theatrical act, he becomes the protagonist of a show. He rejects the role of a noble courtier when he ridicules court etiquette. With his flippant humour, he stages himself as the outsider at court and thus undermines court society when he becomes a member of this society. His theatrical skill becomes more sophisticated over the course of the play in which he starts with staging himself as a member of the royal family and proceeds to become a statesman. Although the Bastard appears passive and allows the others to discover and announce his true identity, in reality he pulls the strings, just like a theatre director. Once his identity has been publicly announced, he shapes his own destiny. When Elinor asks him, ‘Whether hadst thou rather be a Faulconbridge, / And like thy brother, to enjoy thy land; / Or the reputed son of Cordelion, / Lord of thy presence and no land beside’ (I.i.134–7), she tests him on his priorities – reputation or wealth. Elinor approves of his waggish answer that he ‘would give it every foot to have this face’ (I.i.146). His identity is thus established via genealogy and appearance – ‘this face’ – not property – ‘every foot’. Elinor’s offer to the Bastard to be ‘Lord of [his] presence’ implies not only independence from the feudal system, but a clear

14   William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King John, in The Riverside Shakespeare.

When Pretence Rules over Essence: Shakespeare’s Bastard in King John

93

departure from his old life and a new identity, which is bestowed onto him, not by his father, but by the Queen mother. Shakespeare created a character who proves the Machiavellian premise that pretence rules over essence when staged effectively. In The Prince, Machiavelli claims that ‘[e]veryone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are […] because the masses are always impressed by the superficial appearance of things, and by the outcome of an enterprise. And the world consists of nothing but the masses’.15 A romantic reading shows a Bastard who holds status and identity over wealth, but a political reading shows the Machiavellian in the Bastard. After all, the Bastard’s radical and deliberate manipulation is effective because he is successful in being what he is not – he practices what Francis Bacon in his Essays calls dissimulation.16 When Elinor offers the Bastard her patronage, Elinor moves from spectator to advocator and initiator of the Bastard’s career. The Bastard’s manipulation of Elinor is proven successful when she asks: ‘Wilt thou forsake thy fortune, / Bequeath thy land to him, and follow me? / I am a soldier, and now bound to France’ (I.i.149–51). Accepting the offer (‘Madam, I follow you unto the death’, I.i.154), the Bastard accepts his new identity. In the eyes of the spectators on and off stage, he appears to rise by the means Machiavelli describes in Chapter 7 of The Prince, by ‘simple good luck’ like those leaders ‘who get control of a state […] as a gift from someone’ (p. 18). It is, I suggest, not just luck that raises Shakespeare’s protagonist into the new position. The Bastard’s rise to power stems from his own prowess. His swift and disciple-like acceptance of Elinor’s Christlike challenge to follow her suggests that the Bastard had set out to join the royal family. It is evident from the Bastard’s hints at court that he may be Cordelion’s son and from his later ruminating about his newly gained prestige that he sought to join the royal family from the beginning. Although his body is inscribed with royal identity, his language and his antics are not. By using humour, however, he appears spontaneous and so conceals his well laid out plans to join the royal family, disarming Elinor and John and letting them think that it is their idea to invite him into the family. A direct application for acceptance as Cordelion’s son would have put them on the defensive. While on the surface he therefore appears spontaneous in accepting his fate because he acts light-heartedly, his later meditation about his true identity is evidence that he has been contemplating his ascent before. Although he does not disseminate false information by referring to his mother’s infidelity, one could argue that by concealing his motivation for doing it, his ambition, he is still dissimulating. He acts as if he had no ambitions for a royal career, but he immediately seizes the opportunity to rise when this career is offered to him. Although he does not fully meet Machiavelli’s requirements for virtù – 15   Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. and trans. Robert M. Adams, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1992), p. 49. All quotations from the text are taken from this edition. 16   Francis Bacon, The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall, ed. Michael Kiernan (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), pp. 76–9.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

94

there is no merit or glory displayed in his conduct – he does meet Machiavelli’s requirements for seeming, that is, for staging himself as something that he is not. One therefore can argue that in this early scene, he already uses a Machiavellian ploy to initiate his career. In the rest of the play, Shakespeare will test his Machiavellian character against several situations which will prove that the Bastard is able to maintain his position and thereby support the good of the Commonwealth. How deeply Shakespeare probes Machiavelli’s theory becomes clear in the Bastard’s speeches which reflect on the consequences of theatricality and Machiavelli’s theory of pretence. In the first of these speeches, a soliloquy, the Bastard reflects on his new identity. In a mock conversation, he sneers at his new status, as he is now part of what he calls the ‘worshipful society’ (I.i.205). Being a ‘foot of honour better’ (I.i.182), and now able to ‘make any Joan a lady’ (I.i.184), he ponders on the consequences of his own theatricality. Aware of how easily a community can be deceived, he rehearses new roles which his position offers and by which he can deceive this community even more.17 Further, he admits to his ambition by which he will climb the career ladder and rise to an even higher position: But this is worshipful society, And fits the mounting spirit like myself; For he is but a bastard to the time That doth not [smack] of observation – And so am I, whether I smack or no; And not alone in habit and device, Exterior form, outward accoutrement, But from the inward motion to deliver Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age’s tooth, Which though I will not practice to deceive, Yet to avoid deceit, I mean to learn; For it shall strew the footsteps of my rising (I.i.205–16).

This passage reveals that the outcome of the Bastard’s suit before the King was the one he had sought, and that  his actions were premeditated.  This unmasks his apparent carelessness as a theatrical act, a charade. As soon as he can rid himself of his Faulconbridge identity, he embraces his new identity. That his true identity, his essence, is not that of a careless spirit, but rather that of an ambitious politician becomes clear in this soliloquy and the ensuing confrontation with Lady Faulconbridge. The Bastard’s rejection of his role as a subservient nobleman takes shape when he ridicules his own status as a bastard. In this ‘theatricalized form of individuality’18 the Bastard proves his astuteness: he is determined to observe others, who have already completed the assimilation into ‘worshipful society’. Yet 17

  See Saeger, p. 13.   Saeger, p. 2.

18

When Pretence Rules over Essence: Shakespeare’s Bastard in King John

95

Shakespeare uses the character of the Bastard to discuss the principles of observing and imitating as two sides of the same coin. Observation is necessary so that the Bastard can pretend to be part of this society and hence he plans to adapt and put on the society’s ‘habit and device’. Imitation, however, contradicts his earlier dissimulation. Now he will simulate the behaviour pattern of worshipful society, although he does not really believe in it. As he used his  likeness to Cordelion in the earlier part of this scene, he will use his physical appearance again, this time to adapt to the inner circle of power. Putting on not only ‘habit’ but also ‘device’, which connotes cunning or scheming, shows that this adaptation is meant to deceive others, although the Bastard claims that he ‘mean[s] to learn’ how deception works, but not ‘practice to deceive’ (see quotation above). He assumes the role not of a member of worshipful society, but rather that of an observer who appears to be a member. His conviction to trust his own skills more than society suggests that he is suspicious of man’s integrity. This scepticism towards man mirrors Machiavelli’s.19 At the same time it shows a heightened awareness that only an outsider of this worshipful society can have. So, how does the Bastard use theatricality in politics? He starts evolving into a political Machiavellian when he follows Elinor to France. There, his otherness is even more obvious than it was at the English court. In the presence of highranking nobility he shows that he has not adapted to his new status but rather continues his role of a jovial player. His impertinent behaviour is consistent with the subversion that he planned for the worshipful society, as he indicated in his first soliloquy. Consequently, he maintains his position as an outsider. Yet on King Philip’s order, ‘To arms’ (II.i.287), it is the Bastard who echoes the cry of war, not John. This not only deprives John of his status as man in command but it also casts the Bastard into his new role as a soldier; it is the step integrating him into society. He even turns into a self-appointed counsellor, advising both John and Philip on how they could defeat Angiers together: ‘Your royal presences be rul’d by me: / Do like the mutines of Jerusalem, / Be friends a while, and both conjointly bend / Your sharpest deeds of malice on this town’ (II.i.377–80). A hint at pragmatic, if not evil, Machiavellianism comes when the Bastard concludes his counsel, asking both French and English kings: ‘How like you this wild counsel, mighty states? / Smacks it not something of the policy’ (II.i.395–6). The term policy underscores Machiavellianism, since policy is an Elizabethan signifier for Machiavellianism, and as such connotes ‘statecraft’ and ‘shiftiness or cunning’.20 Three important studies on the semantics of Machiavelli within the English language were written by Mario Praz, Napoleone Orsini and Nigel Bawcutt. Praz discusses how the word politic became synonymous with Machiavelli, although it had nothing in common 19

  See, for example, Machiavelli, p. 10, p. 18, describing people as unfaithful, ungrateful and untrustworthy. 20   John Roe, Shakespeare and Machiavelli (Cambridge: Brewer, 2002), p. 103; for a deeper analysis see Napoleone Orsini, ‘“Policy” or The Language of Elizabethan Machiavellianism’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 9 (1946): pp. 122–34.

96

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

with Machiavelli’s own politico.21 Orsini observes that allusions to Machiavelli in Renaissance England consisted of words with no obvious connection to Machiavelli and his doctrine, such as policy, practice, maxim and aphorism, which all ‘denote a political craft’.22 Bawcutt discusses the use of the term policy in English drama before 1570, particularly in connection with Machiavelli.23 I showed in my own study, which covers English plays from 1532 to 1625, that there is a significant correlation between the occurrence of the terms policy, practice and Machiavelli (and their derivatives). If the term Machiavelli appeared in a play, the term policy occurred significantly more often than if the play did not contain the name Machiavelli.24 Even joining forces is a strategy that Machiavelli advocates, should it bring an immediate advantage (p. 62). True to Machiavelli, the Bastard suggests that the Anglo-French union should be only temporary and with the clear intent to ‘dissever your united strengths, / And part your mingled colors once again’ (II.i.388–9). In order to convince the kings of his plan, the Bastard chooses Machiavellian decorum that promises glory: ‘Fortune shall call forth / To whom in favour she shall give the day, / And kiss him with a glorious victory’ (II.i.391–4). Leaving the festive clown-character behind, he now represents the military side of the government, seeking victory and offering a strategy for that pursuit. Aiming at glory, for himself as much as for the King, the Bastard’s heroic drive recalls Machiavelli’s assertion that the greatest glory can be gained in ‘undertaking great enterprises’ which leads to supremacy – a supremacy that can be seen and acknowledged by the whole Commonwealth (p. 60). Yet, immediately after this heroic pathos, the Bastard falls back on his usual language, presenting his true self to the audience in an aside and thereby turning the audience into his accomplice. Devilishly at ease, he comments that Limoges’s and King Philip’s troops will be eliminating each other rather than attacking the city of Angiers: ‘O prudent discipline! From north to south – / Austria and France shoot in each other’s mouth. / I’ll stir them to it’ (II.i.413–15). This new role exposes his theatrical act even further. When he adorns his battle plan with heroic pathos, he simulates court etiquette. Yet when he reflects in his aside on this battle plan, he dismisses pathos and returns to his own language, rejecting court etiquette. At the same time his vicious plan exposes his own heroic pathos as shallow since his ultimate aim, the annihilation of the Austrian and French 21   See Mario Praz, ‘Machiavelli and the Elizabethans’, Proceedings of the British Academy 13 (1928): pp. 12–16; see also J.H. Whitfield, ‘The Politics of Machiavelli’, Modern Language Review 50 (1955): pp. 433–43. He claims that The Prince does not contain any words derived from the root polit- (p. 437). 22   Orsini, p. 122. 23   See Nigel Bawcutt, ‘“Policy”, Machiavellianism and Earlier Tudor Drama’, English Literary Renaissance 1 (1971): pp. 195–209. 24   Conny Loder, Machiavelli’s Influence on Elizabethan History Plays (MLitt dissertation, unpublished, 2008), pp. 51–91.

When Pretence Rules over Essence: Shakespeare’s Bastard in King John

97

armies, lacks ethics. What it certainly does not lack is Machiavellian cunning. Two aspects in the Bastard’s behaviour here can be read as Machiavellian. On the one hand, the destruction of the enemy alliance of France and Austria depicts Shakespeare’s protagonist as a skilled soldier who takes advantage of the battle and manoeuvres the enemy into defeat. The Bastard quickly understands how to turn the situation to his own advantage because, as Machiavelli suggested, he is able to ‘read terrain’ as well as to ‘organize sieges for his own advantage’ (p. 41). On the other hand, this moment of self-exposure recalls the witty and cynical asides of other Shakespearean schemers, Richard III and Iago. It therefore exposes the Bastard’s charade only further. If one compares this aside with his first soliloquy, his intention not to deceive has been proven false, since in II.i he does exactly what he claimed to reject in I.i. His plan is, however, defeated and instead a peace treaty is drawn. He is appalled, because this bars him from action and therefore glory. Being ‘bethump’d with words’ (II.i.466), he is silent, with his function as counsellor now obsolete, turned once more into an outsider. On the surface his scheming has been replaced by ethical conduct on the part of his superiors. The treaty between England and France overwrites it. Silenced in front of others, the Bastard, in a soliloquy, voices his anger and disgust about this society and, in particular, their use of commodity: it is ‘this same bias, this commodity, / This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word’ (II.i.581–2) which has crushed his hopes for a glorious victory. For the first time, society has failed him in his manipulative ploy. Instead it ‘hath drawn him from his own determin’d aid, / From a resolv’d and honourable war / To a most base and vile-concluded peace’ (II.i.584–6). Since commodity has not ‘woo’d’ (II.i.588) him yet, he decides to quit dissimulation and instead starts imitating worshipful society: ‘Since kings break faith upon commodity, / Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee’ (II.i.597/8). Since he cannot succeed in this society if he follows his own thinking, he must follow its morals. The concept he rejected in his first soliloquy has now become his way of life. Disillusioned about nobility’s morals, he now not only seems like them, he is one of them. Not being part of a society in order to understand it is a prerequisite in The Prince. Machiavelli claims in his dedication to Lorenzo de’ Medici that in order ‘to know the people well one must be a prince, and to know princes well one must be, oneself, of the people’ (p. 3). He likens this to an artist who, to sketch mountains, must take his perspective from the valley and to sketch the valley must take his perspective from the mountain (p. 3). Seen through this template, the Bastard observes worshipful society from the perspective of an outsider. In this respect he plays not the role of the Prince but rather of Machiavelli, one of the people and a close advisor to the Prince. As an outsider to courtly society, Shakespeare’s protagonist has a similar objective view of this society. The overlapping perspectives will be put into practice as soon as the betrothal between Blanche and the Dauphin proves inadequate to avoid the war. As the battle rages, the Bastard’s true essence resurfaces and he embraces his duty as a soldier, spurring his King to high deeds as well: ‘But on, my liege, for very little

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

98

pains / Will bring this labor to an happy end’ (III.ii.9–10). Continuing his quest for action, the Bastard makes it his mission to save England. When he takes the lead in the battle and predicts an easy victory, he shows his self-confidence. This scene is free from his usual sarcasm; instead it shows a conscientious Bastard. It also shows that he is indifferent to John’s private feelings, concentrating on his task as a soldier. This indifference is a result of the Bastard’s disappointment with John’s lack of resolve. The latter has been unable to convince Angiers that he is their de facto and de jure King. John’s plea to Angiers – ‘And let us in – your King, whose labor’d spirits, / Forewearied this action of swift speed, / Craves harborage within your city walls’ (II.i.232–4) hardly compares to the grandeur of Shakespeare’s real Machiavellian, Henry V, in his ultimatum to Harfleur: ‘If I being the batt’ry once again, / I will not leave the half-achieved Harflew / Till in her ashes she lie buried’ (III.iii.7–9).25 John’s weak performance signals the end of the Bastard’s loyalty towards John’s body private, as the man who has guaranteed the Bastard’s progress into the royal family. Instead his loyalty shifts to the institution of the Crown and the English Commonwealth. While the war against France continues, England’s attempt to invade Angiers has already created one winner: the Bastard. Constantly in the foreground, he has upstaged his own King and staged himself as the one in charge. Once the scene changes and the story continues in England, Shakespeare’s play draws another image of an alarmingly weak King John. John is now reduced to self-pity and delirium, unable to make any pretence about his condition. Only the Bastard can maintain a pretence that John is still in control and that the realm is stable. Yet the nobles have heard that John ordered Arthur’s murder and are set to defect to the French side. As John’s inability becomes more obvious and he is even less willing to take the necessary action, the Bastard maintains his frank attitude towards the King. He coldly concludes that if John intends to ignore reality, all evil will ‘unheard fall on [his] head’ (IV.ii.136). The hierarchy between the Bastard and John has turned upside-down: when the former openly criticizes his King for his inability, rather than being indifferent towards him, he turns into his superior. His sincerity forces John to follow his advice, even apologizing: ‘Bear with me, cousin, for I was amaz’d / Under the tide’ (IV.ii.137–8). John’s incapacity requires the Bastard to metamorphose into a role model. Although John is unable to match his spirit, he admires his energy and determination and acknowledges his transformation into a ‘sprightful noble gentleman’ (IV.ii.177). While John is a shadow of his own self, the Bastard shows him no pretence, but rather his essence as a true patriot. Nevertheless, he is forced to pretend towards other characters in order to sustain John’s leading position. He reminds the nobles of their loyalties: their duty is to the King (IV.iii.22) – the institution of the Crown, not the body private of John. Playing the patriot, he tries to force the rebellious nobles into fulfilling their duty. While the nobles exhibit high emotions in IV.iii, he controls his, reminds them of their ‘manners’ and addresses their ‘reason’ (IV.   William Shakespeare, The Life of Henry the Fifth, in The Riverside Shakespeare.

25

When Pretence Rules over Essence: Shakespeare’s Bastard in King John

99

iii.31). He tries to hush them into obedience, not by heroic pathos but by speaking bluntly to them, addressing not their conscience but their function within the Commonwealth. Like him, they serve a higher aim, the Commonwealth, and since their service is now overridden by emotion, he directs their thoughts back to their service to the Commonwealth and thus focuses on their rational thinking. At the same time, he exposes the nobles’ personal ethics as selfish conduct and as such, irrelevant in political matters. Even after he and the nobles discover Arthur’s lifeless body, he keeps a pretence of level-headedness towards the nobles: ‘It is a damned and a bloody work, / That graceless action of a heavy hand – / If that it be the work of any hand’ (IV.iii.57–9). His words indicate that he is undecided as to whether the King is responsible for Arthur’s death, yet he ‘puts his duty to England first’.26 Despite this uncertainty, he does not criticize John’s conduct in front of the nobles: he enacts loyalty, maintaining the image of John as the potent monarch. It is only after the nobles have left that the Bastard reveals his true emotions in a tirade to Hubert, suspecting he had something to do with Arthur’s death, ‘I do suspect thee very grievously’ (IV.iv.134), and cursing him if he did, ‘[t]here is not so ugly a fiend of hell / As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child’ (124–5). This shows he shares the rebels’ scruples about John; so his emphasis of reason over ethics proves theatrical. Back at the court, the Bastard is confronted with John’s growing inability to dominate the political game, and so he urges his King to ‘glister like the God of war’ and ‘show boldness and aspiring confidence’ (V.i.54, 56) – in short, John should, like some of the princes Machiavelli describes (p. 49, p. 60), use superficial appearance and spectacular undertakings to delude bystanders. The visual impact in this spectacular undertaking is of high importance. The Bastard’s suggestion to ‘glister’ and ‘show’ echoes this need for visual impact. Disillusioned that John is caught paralyzed in a static moment, he gives orders rather than receiving them. While critic William Matchett argues that in this moment the Bastard ‘demonstrates […] maturity’,27 one can go one step further, as Michael Manheim does. He argues that the Bastard ‘has transformed his earlier verbal versatility into an art requisite for the new Machiavellian state, where brutalities and deceptions must take place beneath an attractive veneer’.28 The Bastard’s pep talk paints a verbal image of a champion, who awes his spectators into obedience; he steps into Machiavelli’s place as a political advisor to his Prince. Now John must show qualities of grandeur. His vision of royalty is of a spectacle controlling subjects and enemies. It is also a means Machiavelli discusses with the example of Ferdinand of Aragon who ‘kept all the barons of Castille preoccupied’, ‘enthralled and preoccupied the   William H. Matchett, ‘Richard’s Divided Heritage in King John’, in Shakespeare’s Histories: An Anthology of Modern Criticism, ed. William A. Armstrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), pp. 145–69, p. 160. 27   Matchett, p. 163. 28   Michael Manheim, ‘The Four Voices of the Bastard’, King John: New Perspectives, in Curren-Aquino, pp. 126–35, p. 132. 26

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

100

minds of his subjects, and kept them fascinated with the outcome of his schemes’ and so never ‘allowed men leisure to take concerted action against him’ (p. 61). The Bastard’s suggestion that John can control the masses by being omnipresent in his people’s minds can be reached only if he enacts majesty. Dirk Hoeges suggests that The Prince does not present any of the discussed princes and leaders as the ideal, but by depicting their strengths, puts together an artificial being that can serve as a model for an ideal prince.29 Much like Machiavelli’s artificial being, the Bastard paints an image of John far removed from reality. Both Machiavelli’s artificial being and the Bastard’s invented alter ego of John aim at an ideal leader who is in many ways larger than life. The skill in establishing oneself as this potent leader, which Machiavelli links to the skills summarized as virtù, is also linked to the skills of an architect. In The Prince, Machiavelli explains that ‘the man who does not lay his foundations in advance may with great effort build them later – but he will always do so with inconvenience to the architect and danger to the structure’ (p. 19). The stability, onto which the Prince’s foundation, his body of politics, rests, is established by the personal stamina of the Prince. The Bastard’s creation of John as someone shining like the god of war (V.i.54, 56) intends to set up John as this potent architect. John should at least pretend to be this god. Yet no ploy can prevent John’s death. Although the Bastard declares that he will ‘do the office for thee of revenge’ (V.vii.7), the play ends before his promise can be fulfilled since France still poses a predominant threat. As with Angiers, the Bastard is denied action and the war ends without the Bastard’s intervention. With a swift oath of allegiance to Prince Henry, ‘I do bequeath my faithful services / And true subjection everlastingly’ (V.vii.104–5), he lays claim to his continuing grip on power. This enactment of public submission initiates the Bastard’s final theatrical act. There is no doubt that the Bastard is still in charge. Nigel Bawcutt warns us that today’s criticism only too willingly detects Machiavellianism in Shakespeare’s plays: cunning, grandeur or patriotism nearly always find their roots in Machiavelli.30 Although a number of recent studies appear to prove Bawcutt’s point, I suggest that in Shakespeare’s King John there are significant moments echoing a Machiavellian sentiment. Nicolas Stockhammer suggests in his study on power that if one reads Machiavelli’s works in the context of an Italy, oppressed by foreign intruders, The Prince becomes a guide on how an uomo valente can bring peace and stability to the country.31 Machiavelli’s mantenere lo stato implies continuity, not only for a state, but also   Dirk Hoeges, Niccolò Machiavelli. Die Macht und der Schein (München: Beck, 2000), p. 186. 30   Nigel Bawcutt, ‘Shakespeare and Machiavelli: A Caveat’, Shakespeare Survey 63 (2010): pp. 237–48. 31   Nicolas Stockhammer, Das Prinzip Macht. Die Rationalität politischer Macht bei Thukydides, Machiavelli und Michel Foucault (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009), p. 17, pp. 125–7. 29

When Pretence Rules over Essence: Shakespeare’s Bastard in King John

101

for a specific community that shares the same culture and traditions.32 Power becomes a tool to achieve a specific goal, and in Machiavelli’s case, this goal includes the well-being of a community. Shakespeare’s protagonist finds himself in a similar context. England is threatened by internal and external subversion that must be contained by the figure of the sovereign. A weak sovereign, as King John is, increases the risk of the community disintegrating further, simply because the antagonistic forces within this community are allowed to fester. The Bastard’s plea for England ‘to itself do rest but true’ (V.vii.118) therefore can be read as an echo of Machiavelli’s words in the last chapter of The Prince, calling for the ousting of foreign oppressors: liberating the country from these foreigners will make the people show ‘deep devotion’ to the liberator (p. 72). Shakespeare’s phrase to ‘rest but true’ to itself includes two requests: it is first directed towards inner self-constraint which calls on the subjects’ duties towards their sovereign and their willing submission to him. Second, it requires England to remain English and not allow foreign customs to override Englishness. Shakespeare’s protagonist therefore delivers his final monologue as the climax of his patriotism. He enacts this patriotism publicly amongst the nobility and by enacting it forces the nobility to follow his example. When Roland Berman argues that the Bastard’s development ends in ‘devout submission’ to state and order,33 it is not necessarily true loyalty but enacted loyalty to manipulate the spectators, the other characters on stage, into obedience as well. Throughout the play the Bastard’s Machiavellian theatricality  had deprived John of his role as active leader of the country, so it was in some way subversive. But the Bastard’s intent to stabilize the Commonwealth rather than lead it into further chaos can be read positively. In King John, Shakespeare thus uses Machiavellian theatricality in the character of the Bastard and manipulation of others to a positive end. Clearly, the Bastard’s enacted submission to the new monarch at the end of the play is a theatrical act which includes the message that deviation will not be tolerated; this message is directed not only to the spectators on stage but also to the sixteenth-century audience. In this closing monologue and the final words of the play, the Bastard stages heroic pathos, not only to manipulate others into fulfilling their duties, but also to create a community that can guarantee continuity – for everyone, including himself.

32

  Stockhammer, p. 127, p. 195.   Ronald Berman, ‘Anarchy and Order in Richard III and King John’, Shakespeare Survey 20 (1967): pp. 51–9, p. 59. 33

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 7

Henry V and the Just War: Shakespeare, Gentili and Machiavelli Rosanna Camerlingo

At the beginning of Henry V the young King inherits a divided nation: Scotland’s threats to invade England, an extremely factious and dangerous court, and, as will be made clear in the course of the play, lack of ethnic identity haunt the reign. The country is not yet a country. Understandably, Henry’s first political action in the play is to divert the attention of his fragmentary body politic on a foreign country. As lords and prelates will repeat in their official speeches to the King, the diverse forces of the country must be gathered around ‘one purpose’, led to ‘one consent’, ‘as many arrowes, loosed several way, / Come to one mark’, to ‘the dial’s centre’.1 The ‘purpose’, the ‘mark’, the ‘centre’ is war on France, which was exactly Henry’s father advice on his death-bed: ‘Be it thy course to busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels, that action hence borne out / May waste the memory of the former days’.2 Cancelling the memory of Henry IV’s usurpation of the throne and founding the nation afresh is the political will the dying King leaves to his son. The war on France is the object of the secret conversation between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely opening the play. The problem is how to provide a legitimate reason for Henry’s determination to wage war on a legitimate country. The astute, learned prelates easily fabricate an argument for the young King: the Salic law, according to which women are excluded from succession, cannot be applied in France, because, they contend, the Salic land, from which the Salic law takes its name, is not in France, as the French believe, but in Germany, where Charles the Great had established this law ‘holding in disdain the German women’ (I.v.48). Therefore, the prelates conclude after re-constructing the long and tortuous hereditary line including females even on the French side and leading to Henry, the King of England has all rights to claim the kingdom of France.3 To strengthen the legal cause, the two prelates remind him of the glorious lineage of   I.ii.212, 181, 210. All citations from the text refer to King Henry V, ed. John H. Walter (London: Methuen, 1965). 2   William Shakespeare, The Second Part of King Henry IV, ed. Arthur R. Humphreys (London: Methuen, 1966), V.iii.213–15. 3   On the revival of the Salic law and legal dynastic questions in the early 1580s see Andrew Gurr’s Introduction to King Henry V (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 1–63, especially p. 21. 1

104

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

his powerful ancestors (from which the name of Henry’s father and the sacrilegious usurpation that stains that lineage are significantly omitted) appealing to his pride: ‘Awake remembrance of these valiant dead’ says the Bishop Ely, evoking Edward the Black Prince’s victories over France, ‘And with your puissant arm renew their feats: /You are their heir, you sit upon their throne […] Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprise’ (I.ii.115–21). Henry, instead, counts less on blood and ‘fate’ than on the legitimacy of the Salic law. On the basis of a dynastic right and not in the name of his ancestors’ conquests, he formally requires an answer about the justness of his war on France: ‘May I with right and conscience make this claim?’ (I.ii.96). However, this new interpretation of the Salic law, accompanied by a conspicuous sum of money to finance the war, is what the prelates offer in order to shift Henry’s attention from a Bill that would transfer their properties to the king. What may appear a convenient and not at all surprising agreement between monarchy and Church opens a whole world of issues concerning the relationship among nations. For, despite all high speeches about concentrating the centrifugal forces of the body politic around one point, the justification provided by the spiritual power is neither holy nor patriotic, as one would expect in a work devoted to the celebration of a most charismatic king raised to the rank of a myth, but specifically legal. Although historically true, the self-serving advice of the two prelates is emphatically shown as a poor justification, if not hardly honourable, in a play one of the most memorable of Shakespeare’s Choruses explicitly presents as heroic, with the hero as a hearty Christian soldier endowed with all the virtues of a national leader – oratory, energy, courage, patriotism and, above all, piety. The legal device and the patriotic propaganda displayed in the Chorus seem not to harmonize.4 Only about 20 years earlier, in 1581, Torquato Tasso had gathered the scattered European Christian army in La Gerusalemme Liberata around one goal, the conquest of Jerusalem, in the name of a Christian counter-reformistic God. That war was a holy war. The major difference between the mandates of the two Christian ‘soldiers’, Tasso’s Goffredo di Buglione and Shakespeare’s Henry V, is worth noting. In Gerusalemme, the Pope, the Vicar of a European Christian God, is the ultimate spiritual authority of the war on Islam. One religion is in arms against another, one continent against another. On the other hand, Henry formally requires the advice of two local prelates on the exclusive basis of their legal knowledge and experience in order to wage war on another European country. The first obvious difference is that the war on Islam is not a war among Christian nations. Yet, was 4   The schizophrenic relationship between the glamorous portrait of the young King and his pragmatic, even ruthless, political acts has led to a division between critics who take the idealization literally, and those who, while noting Henry’s ambiguities, express a wide variety of severe judgements, from ‘cynical’, to ‘hypocritical’, ‘ambiguous’ and, in a derogatory way, ‘Machiavellian’. On Henry’s Machiavellian politics see Stephen J. Greenblatt, ‘Invisible Bullets’, in Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), pp. 21–65.

Henry V and the Just War: Shakespeare, Gentili and Machiavelli

105

it so obvious that wars among Christian nations could not be holy in the sixteenth century? It took a long time and many discussions for a non-religious, secular, in other words modern international law to be born and put into practice. Henry V seems part of this discussion, starting from that legal advice replacing religious authorization. What were the historical circumstances that made Shakespeare call attention to such a replacement at the very beginning of his heroic play? The break of Christian unity and the European discovery of the New World were the two major events leading the great Salamanca theologian Francisco de Vitoria to question for the first time the authority of the Pope. In his highly influential Relectio De Indiis (1539), Vitoria denied both the Pope’s plenitudo potestatis in temporal matters and the Emperor’s title as dominus totius orbis that had authorized the Spanish conquest of the Americas.5 He denied, in other words, any universal moral authority that might empower the claim of the Castilian monarchy over the possession of lands overseas. In rejecting all universal moral authority, Vitoria opened the way to a free competition among European nations for the conquest of the New World, and consequently to the necessity of reconsidering the ethical and juridical norms regulating their relationships. It is a transition already marked at the beginning of Vitoria’s De Iure Belli, also delivered in Salamanca in 1539 immediately after the De Indiis: Since it emerges finally, after the lengthy discussion in my first relection on the just and unjust titles of the Spanish claim to the barbarian lands of the socalled Indians, that possession and occupation of these lands is most defensible in terms of the laws of war, I have decided to round off the previous reflection with a brief discussion of these laws.6

Vitoria was aware that war had become the issue around which European geopolitical transformations had begun to turn ever since the discovery of the New World. In the context of European religious wars, a new international law could be borne only by establishing new rules and new justifications for the war. However, ‘although it is clearly false to speak of Vitoria as the father of anything so generalized and modern as “International Law”, it is the case that his writings became an integral part of later attempts to introduce some regulative principle into international relations’.7 Fifty years after Vitoria’s De Iure Belli a decisive turn towards secular international law took place. The first move is due to the Italian refugee Alberico Gentili, appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford in 1587. Following   Francisco de Vitoria, On the American Indians, in Political Writings, ed. Anthony R. Pagden and Jeremy Lawrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 258–64. 6   Francisco de Vitoria, On the Law of War, in Political Writings, p. 295. For a detailed account of Vitoria’s political theory see Padgen, Introduction, pp. xiii–xxvii. 7   Padgen, Introduction, p. xxviii. 5

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

106

the path opened by the Spanish theologian, the Italian jurist was convinced that religion could not be considered a cause of war. His reflection on war and its causes, however, developed in different historical and biographical circumstances. Forced to flee from Italy with his family in 1579, because of his Protestant faith, Gentili experienced the bitter condition of exile when the religious conflict that divided the European continent had reached a critical moment. This experience gave his work an unusual mixture of intellectual lucidity and emotional intensity, and influenced Gentili’s thought on the relationship among different faiths inside and among European nations. One principle recurs constantly in De Iure: the use of violence to impose one’s faith is not only morally condemnable, but impossible. In De Iure the most urgent problem was no longer how to deal with nonChristian peoples, or with extra-European nations (although Turkey’s threat to Europe was a major issue of his works, and one of the reasons for appealing to European unity),8 but how to regulate war among emerging European Christian powers. Gentili’s first step was to raise the status of civil law and affirm its supremacy over theology: ‘silete theologi in munere alieno’ (‘Let the theologians keep silence about a matter which is outside of their province’) he thundered in De Iure, pointing his finger at the Oxford Puritan theologians, with whom he engaged in never-ending controversy.9 The insistence on the necessity of replacing theology with jurisprudence was the reason why, according to Carl Schmitt, Gentili, and not the theologian Vitoria, is to be considered the first theorist of a modern international law.10 Religion continued to be invoked as the justification of war by radical Protestants and Catholics. In England, the war with Spain was often represented as a holy crusade against the great conspiracy of the Antichrist.11 Among the 8

  On the relationship between the emergence of new nations, the necessity of new juridical norms, civil wars and the New World, see Benedict Kingsbury, ‘Alberico Gentili e il Mondo Extraeuropeo: gli Infedeli, Gli Indiani d’America e la sfida della differenza’, in Alberico Gentili e il mondo extraeuropeo (Milan: Giuffré, 2001), pp. 13–47. 9   Alberico Gentili, De Iure Belli Libri Tres, trans. John C. Rolfe (Oxford: Clarendon, 1933), I.XII, p. 57. Gentili’s intention, expressed in the opening chapter, was to emancipate jurisprudence from its technical status and make it part of moral philosophy and political theory. He thus could oppose what he called scientia civilis to theology. 10   Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (New York: Telos Press, 2003), p. 150. Schmitt contrasts the widespread opinion attributing the primacy of international law to Hugo Grotius. For Peter Haggenmacher, instead, both Gentili and Grotius bring to complete maturity the medieval theory on war; see ‘Il diritto della guerra e della pace di Gentili. Considerazioni sparse di un “Groziano”’, in Il diritto della guerra e della pace di Alberico Gentili (Milan: Giuffré, 1995), pp. 9–54. See also Gezina H.J. van der Molen, Alberico Gentili and the Development of International Law: His Life, Work, and Times (Amsterdam: Paris, 1937). 11   On the many sermons evoking a holy war against Spain see Paola Baseotto, ‘Fighting the “warres of the Lord”: Incitement to War in Elizabethan Devotional Writing, in Religious Writing & War’, in Les Discours Religieux et la Guerre, ed. Gilles Teulié (Montpellier:

Henry V and the Just War: Shakespeare, Gentili and Machiavelli

107

numerous sermons encouraging the nation to attack Spain in the name of the true Church, the puritan George Gifford’s Sermons upon the Whole Booke of the Reuelation, published in London in 1596 and dedicated to the Earl of Essex (the representative figure of anti-Spanish policy), supported war in order for the Protestant religion to triumph over the forces of an evil and false religion. In the dedicatory Epistle to his 50 sermons, representing England as the elect nation waiting for the Second Coming, Gifford writes about the necessity of getting ready to reject the powerful armies of the Catholic League still threatening the island after Spain’s failed attempt to invade England in 1588: The King of Spaine, who hath giuen his power to the beast, sent his forces anno 88. for to inuade her land, & to throw down her excellent Highnes, from that sacred authority & power in which almighty God hath placed her, & miraculously protected her, fighting from heauen against her enemies, euen to the wonderment of the whole world […] Nay, looke how long that great fierie dragon, Sathan, that prince of darknes doth burne in hatred against God & his truth, so long Antichrist and his adherents moued by his instigation, wil be restles in seeking the subuersion of our religion, Queen, and countrie.

Having thus described the nervous state of the English nation caused by the ‘menacing mighty forces’ of the beast, Gifford turns to his dedicatee, the Earl of Essex: ‘Then doe we especially and aboue many others, stand in neede of noble warriors & mighty men, who in so great & waighty causes are to be guided by the most high God, euen by the light of his most sacred worde, that through his blessing they may prosper and haue good successe’.12 Thus Gifford hopes that the just people of England be saved by the just warrior Essex, who, inspired by God’s grace, like the irate Christ of the Revelation, might destroy the forces of evil, and bring justice to the world. Gifford’s cultural outlook is entirely within the limits of the Scriptures. Gentili, too, approved of the anti-Spanish policy of the Earl of Essex. Dedicated to the Earl, his De Iure devotes a long chapter to the war against Spain. To be sure, Spain is one of England’s major enemies, Gentili maintained, but not because of religion. In the chapter ‘Of Defence on Grounds of Expediency’ Gentili associates the Spanish and Turkish Empires as dangerous powers: ‘Do not all men with complete justice oppose on one side the Turks and on the other the Spaniards, who are planning and plotting universal dominion? […] Shall we wait until they actually take up arms?’ To strike an enemy who is ready to strike is perfectly licit:

Université Paul Valéry, 2006), pp. 37–53: ‘Protestant historiography interpreted St John’s Revelation as a profecy of the establishment of Protestantism and the final victory of the true Church’ (p. 40). 12   George Gifford, Sermons upon the Whole Booke of the Reuelation (London: Man, 1596), sig. A3.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

108

‘being in danger of receiving an injury is a very serious thing, even if the injury has not been received’. As for the Spanish threat: If any one does not know about the Spaniards, let them learn from Paolo Giovio that their disposition is also lawless and greedy for power; and when they have once crept in, they always secure the supreme control by every kind of artifice. We must therefore oppose them; and it is better to provide that men should not acquire too great power, than to be obliged to seek a remedy later, when they have already become too powerful.

The greedy temperament of the Spanish people is the cause of war, not religion. For Gentili, the universalistic ambition of the Spanish Empire had to be halted in order to obtain a just balance of powers among the European nations. At stake was the safety of the English nation, even the future of Europe: ‘Unless there is something which can resist Spain, Europe will surely fall’.13 It is a clear warning. Since Spain was a constant threat to the safety of the English nation, a preventive war against the Spanish empire had to be considered a legitimate political action, not a religious crusade: religion was not the issue. Religions, the Italian jurist maintains, hardly cover the sovereigns’ ambition and will to power. It is a velamentum falsum.14 Gentili’s treatise, whose first version was published in 1588–89, inspired a large number of English works on war in the 1590s, all centred on the necessity of rejecting Spain’s attempts to invade England. The Anglican Matthew Sutcliffe, for example, one of the royal chaplains, also dedicated his fervently patriotic The Practice, Proceedings, and Lawes of Armes (1593) to the Earl of Essex. Sutcliffe’s auctoritates are not the Scriptures but Tacitus, Cicero, Livy: the same political and moral thinkers of ancient Rome summoned up by Gentili. The Italian jurist’s words resound in Sutcliffe’s treatise. Like Gentili, Sutcliffe easily detects the velamentum falsum beyond Spain’s constant threat to invade neighbouring nations. In the chapter devoted to the just war Sutcliffe comments on the relationship between Spain and the other European nations: Many wise princes haue an eye to their neighbours greatnesse, and perceiuing how prejudiciall their encrochments may proue unto them, haue iust cause to withstand them […] time it is therefore for Christian Princes to awake, and iust cause they haue to withstand the encrochments of the king of Spaine, that under pretence of the Romish religion eniambeth [i.e., invades] al his neighbours, unlesse they will bee swallowed up in the unsatiable gulfe of the ambitious tyrannie of the Spanish nation.15  Gentili, De Iure, I.XIV, pp. 64–5.  Gentili, De Iure, I.X, p. 47. 15   Matthew Sutcliffe, The Practice, Proceedings, and Lawes of Armes (London: Barker, 1593), pp. 7–8. 13 14

Henry V and the Just War: Shakespeare, Gentili and Machiavelli

109

It was clear to Sutcliffe as well as Gentili that the ‘Romish’ religion was only an excuse covering Spain’s expansionistic aims, and that neighbouring nations had every right to stop it: not in the name of the Protestant faith, but in order not to be swallowed by Spain’s lust for power. For both Gentili and Sutcliffe, Spain was a rival nation, not a force of the Antichrist. Because of its desire for power, Spain had to be attacked preventively before it could attack England. Whether it was Protestant or Catholic, for Gentili, religion concerned exclusively the relationship between God and the individual, not the relationship among men. So he writes in De Iure: Since the laws of religion do not properly exist between man and man, therefore no man’s rights are violated by a difference in religion, nor is it lawful to make war because of religion. Religion is a relationship with God. Its laws are divine, that is between God and man; they are not human, namely, between man and man. Therefore a man cannot complain of being wronged because others differ from him in religion.16

Because religion does not rule the relationships among men, and because it originates from the soul and the will, and is, therefore, always free (‘Religion is a matter of the mind and of the will, which is always accompanied by freedom’),17 the diversity of religion cannot be claimed as a cause of injury, and therefore of war. Since it inhabits a private region of the individual, it cannot be subjected to social or political judgement. Gentili’s aim, however, was not only to exclude religion from the causes of war, but also to replace its institutional duty of separating good from evil with jurisprudence. In an attempt to raise the science of civil law to the rank of philosophy and theology, Gentili raises the rank of civil jurists: they, not the theologians, are the new ‘priests of justice, who separate the just from the unjust, discern the licit from the illicit’.18 But what exactly is the task of the new jurists-priests? Gentili takes on Vitoria’s notion of ius gentium, but rather than emphasizing the natural law that should establish it, he thinks of nations as juridically founded entities. Because the right of the citizens is intrinsically linked to the nations’ political and juridical autonomy, a war can be called for when the ius gentium in a nation is violated. The real novelty of De Iure, however, is Gentili’s insistence that war could not be claimed as just by either contestant. Because war concerns only the relationship among sovereigns, ‘who have no judge or superiors’, and because no supranational  Gentili, De Iure, I.IX, pp. 40–1.  Gentili, De Iure, I.IX, p. 39. 18  Gentili, De Iure, I.XI, p. 51. ‘Right is not defined as a merely technical norm, but as an encompassing science whose supreme function is to legitimize the whole institutional apparatus’; Diego Pirillo, ‘Magia e machiavellismo: Giordano Bruno tra “praxis” magica e vita civile’, in La magia nell’Europa moderna. Tra antica sapienza e filosofia naturale, ed. Fabrizio Meroi (Florence: Olschki, 2007), pp. 513–42, p. 523 (translation mine). 16 17

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

110

or absolute justice could be claimed, inevitably ‘War may be waged justly by both sides’.19 The exclusion of religion as a cause of war, together with the acquisition of ius gentium, led inevitably to the concept of equality of the two contestants’ rights. This is a novelty Shakespeare must have known. The war in the Greek field of Troilus and Cressida is thus defined by Troilus: ‘O virtuous fight, When right with right wars who shall be most right’.20 Gentili’s commitment to replace theology with jurisprudence could not occur without the aid of robust political thought, and the idea of preventive war leads inevitably to Machiavelli. In De Iure, however, Gentili never mentions him, and pour cause. In De Legationibus (1585), dedicated to Philip Sidney, Gentili had passionately praised Machiavelli’s Discourses as a work promoting republican liberty and democracy, and had interpreted The Prince as revealing the tyrant’s arcana imperii to the people. Gentili’s defence of Machiavelli as ‘eulogist of democracy’ (‘Democratiae laudator’) and ‘foe of tyranny’ (‘tyrannidis summe inimicus’) was explicitly directed against Innocent Gentillet’s popular interpretation of Machiavelli as impious and atheist in his Discours contre Machiavel published in 1576.21 This ‘heterodox’ reading of Machiavelli stirred up the immediate reaction of those who agreed with the French pamphlet. The Puritan theologians at Oxford accused the Italian jurist of being Machiavellicus. Gentili rejected the accusation as unjust, even an insult, but the volume of ideological conflict with the Oxford theologians, rather than decreasing, became louder. In the early 1590s Gentili became involved in a harsh dispute in Oxford on the lawfulness of the theatre. The subject of the debate was a college drama named Hippolytus by one William Gager, member and playwright of Christ Church College. John Rainolds, Doctor of Theology at Cambridge, an expert on biblical texts and future representative of the Puritan party at the Hampton Court Conference, had violently attacked the play, appealing to the laws established in Deuteronomy, and to the ethics of the New Testament. Following the Scriptures, Rainolds condemned the actors’ disguise as unlawful and a source of sexual and social confusion. Rainolds’s accusations and Gager’s defence appeared in 1599 in Th’Overthrowe of Stage-Playes. In the appendix are four letters in Latin where the controversy continues between Rainolds and Gentili. Gentili had already defended the theatre in Commentatio ad Legem Codicis de Professoribus et Medicis (1593). Here he argues that devices and disguises are necessary for the theatre to reach its pedagogical goal, and draws an analogy with the mendacium  Gentili, De Iure, I.III, p. 15, I.VI, p. 31.   William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, ed. David Bevington (Walton-onThames: Nelson, 1998), III.ii.167–8. 21   Alberico Gentili, De Legationibus Libri Tres, trans. Gordon J. Laing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1924), III.IX, p. 156. On Gentili’s interpretation of Machiavelli in De Legationibus, see Diego Panizza ‘Il pensiero politico di Alberico Gentili. Religione, virtù e ragion di stato’, in Alberico Gentili. Politica e religione nell’età delle guerre di religione (Milan: Giuffré, 2002), pp. 59–213, pp. 119–29. 19

20

Henry V and the Just War: Shakespeare, Gentili and Machiavelli

111

officiosum, the lie doctors find useful to cure the diseases of their patients.22 The biblical condemnation of the promiscuous use of clothing could not be applied to actors: to wear clothing that might conceal the actors’ sexual or social identity was a minor inconvenience needed for the moral function of fiction to work. Rainolds promptly detected the Machiavellian principle beyond the mendacium officiosum, that is the necessity of doing evil in order to reach good. His letters to Gentili beat on this point like a continuous bass, as in this letter of 10 July 1593: ‘So, since melancholics are cured by falsehood, as you add in the same place, just as here you note that diseases are cured by shows, you declare that this abuse of which you speak is good and not evil and that with your statement the word of God is not contradicted […] I urgently beg you to throw at us no longer principles of this kind of impiety and evil’. Rainolds understands perfectly that Gentili’s interpretation of Machiavelli’s famous principle could lead to the moralization of Machiavelli’s ‘impious’ political science: ‘As you teach, the abuse of evil is not evil, but good’.23 Raising ‘evil doing’ (in this case fiction) to virtuous action, Gentili was inevitably raising the status of Machiavelli to the rank of a moral political thinker. This interpretation was far more dangerous than Gentillet’s caricature of Machiavelli as devilish advisor of tyrants. Gentili’s Machiavelli attacked the Puritans on the same ground: political morals. At this point, drama and actors become a pretext for a highly emotional political confrontation between the divine Rainolds and the jurist Gentili about the moral principles that should rule society. The animosity (and prolixity) of Rainolds’s letters betray his anxiety: ‘Indeed you ought to value the theologians, one of whose authority in the question of divine law you must consider greater than a hundred of those skilled in human law’.24 This was the answer to Gentili’s challenge to Rainolds’s interpretation of the Scriptures: ‘But what is a matter of religion? Not every, or everyone’s, interpretation of scripture is a matter of religion. Theology is the teacher of faith and life, but not of all life. Nor is every part of the word of God completely yours’.25 Gentili objected to Rainolds’s argument in favour of the primacy of theology in all fields of life, and to his interpretation of the Scriptures. At stake was the political authority of the theologians, and of Rainolds himself. Rainolds may have seen the presence at Oxford of an Italian jurist, protected by the most eminent exponents of the ruling class – from the Earl of Leicester to the Queen herself – as a threatening intrusion of the Roman law which the 22   Alberico Gentili, Commentary on the Third Law of the Title of the Code ‘On Teachers and Doctors’, in Latin Treatises on Poetry from Renaissance England, trans. J.W. Binns (Signal Mountain: Library of Renaissance Humanism, 1999), pp. 73–119. In his defence of acting he writes: ‘It serves the purpose of curing vices of a depraved nature, and of mankind. Just as doctors, and some others, do to shun a serviceable lie’ (p. 113). 23   Latin Correspondence by Alberico Gentili and John Rainolds on Academic Drama, trans. Leon Markowicz (Salzburg: Universität Salzburg, 1977), p. 29. 24   Latin Correspondence, p. 77. 25   Latin Correspondence, p. 39.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

112

Reformation had thrown away along with the popish rule with which it was associated. Rainolds’s exceptional anger may be explained as a response to the royal favour granted to someone he acknowledged a dangerous political enemy.26 After all, the assimilation of Italy, Popish rule and Machiavelli was widespread among Puritan detractors of the theatre. Gentili’s appeal to mendacium officiosum, however, was not meant to defend exclusively the legitimacy of dramatic art. He was a jurist, not a dramatist. In defending it he was obliquely affirming a political principle limiting the authority of theologians in his field. He was, in other words, applying to the theatre the same rule that vigorously supported his treatise on war: theologians must be silent on matters that concern them not. On the other hand, he tries to divert Rainolds’s attention from matters of minor importance such as theatre to the book on war he had sent him. Rainolds perceived the overlapping of Gentili’s defence of theatre and of his new ‘book on war’: ‘I now understand and perceive all the more that this was necessary for me to do because that which seemed to me the most crucial opinion of all, namely, that the abuse of evil is not evil but good, you indicate you will defend again in your books on war’.27 Rainolds was right. Although Gentili remains justifiably silent on Machiavelli, the Machiavellian principle of the preventive war as efficacious political action aimed to obtain the safety, glory and power of the respublica permeates the whole structure of De Iure. ‘A just and unavoidable necessity makes anything lawful’, he writes on the necessity of sacrificing justice to honour and safety.28 Gentili, Panizza notes, was moving Machiavelli’s political science into the ius gentium. In Chapters 14 and 15 of Book I, devoted to the cause of the just war, utilitas and honestas converge, raising utilitas, as Rainolds well perceived, to honestas.29 Shakespeare may have known Gentili’s ideas on a subject much nearer to his interests than war and its rights. If he agreed with Gentili’s reasoning on the emancipation of the laws of fiction from the divine laws established in the Bible, he could as well have agreed with Gentili’s reasoning on the emancipation of the laws of war from divine laws. As Rainolds had detected, the principle ruling Gentili’s thought was the same for both subjects. It is what emerges in Henry V: here theatre and war come together. In 1599 it seemed impossible to write about war without mentioning the Earl of Essex. So Shakespeare entrusts the Chorus 26

  In proudly replying to Rainolds’s accusation of occupying the chair of civil law at Oxford, and defending himself from the accusation of popery, Gentili writes: ‘I do not “occupy” that chair. I “hold” it with the favor of good people out of the highest and most humane generosity of my ruler, and in it I teach in such a way that the queen does not regret her kindness and the rest of the court does not regret its judgement’ (Latin Correspondence, p. 45). On the inflamed controversy between Gentili and the Puritans at Oxford, see Diego Panizza, Alberico Gentili, giurista ideologo nell’Inghilterra elisabettiana (Padua: Panizza, 1981), pp. 55–87. 27   Latin Correspondence, p. 85. 28  Gentili, De Iure, III.XII, p. 351. 29   Panizza, ‘Il pensiero politico di Alberico Gentili’, pp. 164–6.

Henry V and the Just War: Shakespeare, Gentili and Machiavelli

113

preceding Act V with the task of comparing Essex’s hopefully triumphant return from his expedition to Ireland with Henry’s return to London after his triumphant victory over the French (V.i.29–35). What may appear a negligible allusion to a local, albeit significant, event of English history, or a homage paid to the hero of the day, becomes a cameo revealing Shakespeare’s participation in the debate on contemporary English foreign policy at whose centre was the figure of Essex as leader of an aggressive anti-Spanish action. The association of Essex with Henry suggests that it was contemporary war with Spain that Shakespeare was thinking of when he was writing in 1599, rather than a fifteenth-century war with France. In 1598 the final version of Gentili’s De Iure Belli was published, and in 1599 Henry V was represented in the wooden O of the newly built Globe.30 What is emphasized at the beginning of the play is not the conquest of another European nation, but the political unity of the English nation. But is the means licit? To answer Henry does not appeal to divine justice, but to human law. The long and tortuous juridical justification that the Archbishop of Canterbury eloquently enunciates on the insistent and formal request of the King in front of the whole court shows that Henry looks for a legal, that is, political justification. Henry’s war is just not because God so commands, but because so the law says. The Archbishop of Canterbury advises but does not authorize war. The authority and responsibility of the war fall entirely upon the King. And since the King cannot appeal to any authority, whether spiritual or supranational, other than himself, formal procedure and his own conscience become crucial elements in deciding the war’s justness. ‘May I with right and conscience make this claim?’ (I.ii.96). Because it is a public action, just war must be formally and legally unimpeachable. These were the first requisites for a war to be just: war is not a brawl or a private enmity. Because it is a public and political event, it must be formally announced ‘War is a just and public contest of arms’.31 It is not only a legal question, but also a question of honour. In the following scene the Dauphin of France publicly offends King Henry, and consequently the nation he incarnates. As a challenge to the young English King’s claim to the throne of France, the French Dauphin sends Henry five tennis balls alluding to a popular game at the French court. Among the just causes of war, Gentili names honour. The nation whose honour is offended must strike back. The injury, of course, must not be private, but public, and must be directed from one king to another. The offended king must defend the honour of the nation because his passivity would provoke further offences and harmful political consequences. The principle on which the Italian exile builds his reasoning rules Chapter 9 of Book II of Machiavelli’s Discourses: the state that – like the Roman empire – values   On Gentili’s De Iure and Henry V see Paola Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010); Theodor Meron, Henry’s Wars and Shakespeare’s Laws: Perspectives on the Law of War in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993). Both studies survey theories of wars from the Middle Ages to Shakespeare. 31  Gentili, De Iure, I.II, p. 12. 30

114

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

empire and glory over tranquillity must safeguard its honour and reputation.32 Taking on Machiavelli’s principle that power is the first objective for a state to survive, Gentili argues that aspiring to glory and honour is not only legitimate but inevitable for a nation that wants to last in the competitive and aggressive world of sixteenth-century Europe. If honour is injured, therefore, war may legitimately be waged not only to re-establish justice and peace, and to satisfy the sovereign’s honour, but to guarantee the political safety of nation and people. ‘But if it be a sin to covet honour, / I am the most offending soul alive’ (IV. iii.28–9) cries Henry in his most memorable patriotic speech. It is then to the honour of the nation, not to God, that Henry appeals to inflame his soldiers on the eve of the battle. Henry’s honour is the honour of the whole nation: ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers’ (IV.iii.60). Brotherhood and nobility are the values around which Henry energizes his exhausted army. And yet neither honour nor the legal justification provided by the Archbishop had been the object of the previous crucial first scene of Act IV, when Shakespeare looks into the concealed consciences of the main actors of the war: king and subjects. Henry leaves the glow of the public scene, enters the shadow of the soldier’s camp, and explores the unseen world of the single subject in the face of the most predictable and feared of war’s risks: death. The scruples that had moved Henry to obtain a legally unimpeachable justification that might free his conscience from the responsibility of his subjects’ lives re-emerge on the eve of the battle of Agincourt: ‘And God forbid’ he had warned the two prelates when requesting a convincing justification for the war: For God doth know how many now in health Shall drop their blood in approbation In what your reverence shall incite us to […] We charge you, in the name of God, take heed; For never two such kingdoms did contend Without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops Are every one a woe, a sore complaint ’Gainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords That makes such waste in brief mortality. (I.ii.18–20, 23–8)

Such threats, such good intentions and such responsibility do not last long. Poetry becomes prose; intentions are belied in the face of the real soldiers. Hiding his royal identity, Henry plays the part of a soldier among soldiers: ‘his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man’ (IV.i.102–3). Fear is the main subject of the conversation between the soldiers Williams, Bates and the masked soldier-King. Fear, says the disguised Henry, is the feeling that all men share the day before the battle. Even the King, Henry continues: ‘when he sees reasons of fears, as we 32   Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 176.

Henry V and the Just War: Shakespeare, Gentili and Machiavelli

115

do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are’ (IV.i.105–7). Yet, if the King is afraid of losing his honour and his war, the soldiers are simply afraid of losing their lives. Henry insists, looking for the soldiers’ readiness to die for the nation: ‘I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable’ (IV.i.121–3). This is not Williams’s feeling: ‘That’s more than we know’ (IV.i.124). Only the King knows whether the cause is just or not. When the discussion shifts inevitably to the predicament of the soldier’s soul that may not be ready to pass to the other world, Williams faces the problem concerning the relationship between the day of Judgement and the justness of the war. Ultimately, the final judgement on the soul of the soldier depends on the King’s knowledge of the justness of the war: ‘But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at that latter day’ (IV.i.129–32). Henry has no doubts: the responsibility of his subjects’ souls must not and cannot fall on the King. In front of the final judgement, each soul is alone and responsible for its own private sins: ‘Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own’ (IV.i.182–3). Here, Henry seems to sum up Gentili’s ideas about the separation of religion from civil law as far as the justification of the war is concerned, and the Anglican views about sins, illustrated in Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Both relentless enemies of the Puritans, Gentili and Hooker vigorously affirm that people’s inward lives could not be brought to public trial.33 In the long and controversial Book VI, devoted to the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, Hooker draws a neat line between outward and inward sins. While outward sins committed against other men must be publicly submitted to the judgement of the ecclesiastical courts, private sins, sins committed against God, must be confessed to God, who can be appeased only by a sincere contrition. The Church cannot do anything for the salvation of his subjects’ souls. This, as we have seen, is also Henry’s reply to his soldiers. Sin, for Hooker, is a disease of the soul that can be cured and disciplined by the Church only if it becomes an action that offends other men. The subjects’ secret and private lives are out of Hooker’s juridical programme.34 Because sin is hidden, and therefore cannot be legally verified, ‘every soul which is wounded with sin, may learn the way how to cure itself’.35 Political obedience to the sovereign is the exclusive objective of Hooker, Elizabeth and Henry. Yet may obedience, as Bates affirms, ‘wipe[s] the crime of it out of us’ (IV.i.131–32) even if the cause is wrong? In other words, if the cause is not legitimate, may the obedience due to the King absolve the soldier from the sin of taking part in it? 33   See Giovanni Aquilecchia, ‘Alberico Gentili e Richard Hooker’, Giornale critico della filosofia italiana 72 (1993): pp. 376–93. 34   Richard Hooker, ‘Repentance and Spiritual Power’, in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, ed. Paul G. Stanwood (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1981), pp. 3–103. 35   Hooker, p. 70. See also p. 92 and p. 94.

116

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

This is the doubt that seems to lead Henry to the following scene where, in one moment, Shakespeare gives us the opportunity to know what lies in the King’s conscience. It is a crucial insight, for, as both King and soldiers indicate, the responsibility of the war’s justness depends on the conscience of the sovereign. Thus, when, moved by Williams’s and Bates’s fears and scepticism, Henry prays the ‘God of battles’ to instil courage into his soldier’s hearts, he also begs to ‘think not upon the fault / My father made in compassing the crown’ (IV.i.284–5). The King’s conscience then is not innocent. Hidden, or willingly forgotten, within the King’s conscience, the awareness of the usurpation and murder of Richard II inherited from his father Henry IV is now revived. Not a private sin – not his reckless life with Falstaff – but a political crime threatens the juridical legitimacy of the war. Nevertheless, despite the inherited guilt of regicide, the unexpected victory at Agincourt will undoubtedly prove that God has no jurisdiction over political relations among men. The brief incursion into the conscience of the sovereign seems intended to show that princes’ arcana do not determine the justness of the war; neither can they influence the outcome of the battle. If the sins of the subjects concern their individual relationship with God, the just war has nothing to do with the inward life of the sovereign. This is very similar to what Gentili affirms when opposing the Protestant idea of the godly monarch. For Gentili, the just war is a public event and cannot depend on the sovereign’s conscience: investigating the right or just intention of one of the contestants would belie the principle of the bilateral symmetry of the just war. If the just cause is to be found in the conscience of only one of the contestants then the other would be inevitably wrong. In this case, instead of a war, the conflict becomes a private brawl, a punitive expedition of good against evil. Gentili excludes souls, consciences, private lives, intentions – whether they belong to the subjects or to the King, whether they are right or wrong – from the public event that is a war among nations. And yet, the problem of how to link the subjects’ consciences to a legally founded nation remains unanswered. Civil law is not enough. Obedience is not enough. Henry must recur to religion. We do not know whether a very pagan God of battles infuses courage into the soldiers’ hearts, or whether a Christian God, for that day (‘not today’, Henry implores), forgives the King’s fault. We know that from his investigation into the soldiers’ consciences, Henry has learnt that fear of dying is the disease that threatens the soldiers’ trust in the sovereign, and that the natural linkage he invokes on behalf of the King (‘I think the King is but a man’, IV.i.99) breaks in the face of Williams’s sceptical reflection upon the social difference between a soldier’s life and that of the King: ‘when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed, and we ne’er the wiser’ (IV.i.186–7). That fear must be kept hidden: ‘no man’, he tells the soldiers, ‘should possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he [the king], by showing it, should dishearten his army’ (IV.i.107–9). Henry’s appeal to courage, brotherhood and nobility on the public field of the battle sounds like a mendacium officiosum intended to cure the exhausted English army in the face of the bold, fresh, imposing French army. Henry’s replies to William’s and Bates’s preoccupation for their individual predicament resemble

Henry V and the Just War: Shakespeare, Gentili and Machiavelli

117

Gentili’s development of the Machiavellian idea of religion as ‘something absolutely necessary for maintaining a civilized society’:36 What if they are of the same religion? Nations are more closely united by a common religion than by the tie of any other law or by the terms of a treaty. Therefore, when we unite with one another in such fellowship, we invoke nature; when we form a treaty, the law of nations; when we are joined together by common laws, the state; when we have a common religion (the strongest tie of all), we appeal to the hearts of men and the saint who is the fountain head of that union.37

Here Gentili abandons the idea of religious tolerance, or religious freedom. At stake is no longer the inward freedom of the individual conscience, but a potent element of social cohesion: a more powerful social linkage than nature or law. Above law, nature or any treatise, religion appeals to people’s emotions (viscerum): it makes them invincible. All soldiers, all nobles in the name of a new ‘mind’: ‘all things are ready, if our minds be so’ (IV.iii.71). Henry’s moving speech annihilates individual and social differences, but not in the name of a common natural link. It is no longer the King who is ‘only a man’ among his soldiers, but all soldiers who are raised to the rank of the King. The transcendental principle around which the sanctum of the English communion inflames his subjects’ viscera is honour. Henry’s patriotic speech seems to resume and overturn Falstaff’s famous speech on immaterial honour in 1 Henry IV: ‘What is honour? A word. What is in that word “honour”? What is that honour? Air’.38 On the battlefield of Agincourt Henry replies: And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered – We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition. (IV.iii.57–63)

Like the poet mentioned by Theseus in Midsummer’s Night Dream, Henry gives Falstaff’s airy nothing a local habitation and a name. No longer individual chivalric value, now honour is for the first time the honour of the whole nation: Welsh, Scottish, English and Irish are united in one single collective linguistic illusion that has appealed to the viscera of the audience of all times.  Machiavelli, Discourses, p. 50.  Gentili, De Iure, I.XV, p. 72. 38   William Shakespeare, King Henry IV part 1, ed. David Scott Kastan (London: Arden, 2002), V.i.134–5. 36 37

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

118

Appeals to honour, promises of an enduring memory for those who will valorously fight at Agincourt, however, are still not enough. Henry knows well that the unity of the body politic must come to terms with the religion of the people. At the beginning of the play the two prelates subtly associate Henry’s acquired knowledge of theology with his political ability: hear him but reason in divinity, And, all admiring, with an inward wish You will desire the King were made a prelate: Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs You would say it hath been all in his study. (I.i.38–42).

‘You would say’; Henry ‘seems’ to be acquainted with divinity; ‘You will desire the King were made a prelate’: Henry is what a crafty prince should be: ‘A prince, therefore’, The Prince’s famous words read, ‘need not necessarily have all the good qualities I mentioned above, but he should certainly appear to have them […] He should appear to be compassionate, faithful to his word, kind, guileless, and devout. And indeed he should be so. But his disposition should be such that, if he needs to be the opposite, he knows how’.39 The good prince must ‘appear to be’ virtuous in order to win the love of the people, yet must be able to turn to evil in case circumstances require it. Above all, he must know how to use religion. In the chapter of the Discourses devoted to the religion of the Romans, Machiavelli praises Numa Pompilius for pretending to receive political advice from a Nymph: ‘Having found a very fierce people and wishing to bring them to civil with the art of peace, he turned to religion as something absolutely necessary for maintaining a civilized society’. For people ‘respected the power of God more than that of men’. Because human authority was not sufficient to rule the Romans, Numa recurs to divine authority, which men trust and fear. His deception is a ‘peaceful’ stratagem whose end is ‘the happiness of that city, because it [religion] produced good institutions, the good institutions created good fortune, and from good fortune arose the happy successes of their undertakings’. It was extremely useful for ‘controlling the armies, in giving courage to the plebeians, in keeping men good, and in shaming the wicked’.40 Henry’s army is not as ‘fierce’ as the unruly people of the newly founded Rome, but smart and sceptical enough to be perfectly aware, as Williams and Bates make clear, that the war on France is the King’s war, not theirs, that they cannot trust the King’s conscience. They know, in short, that the war in which they are going to risk their lives has a human, not a divine legitimacy. The surprising victory of Agincourt however is attributed to God only after victory has been achieved. It is not in the name of God, but in the name of a hereditary right that Henry declares his war. But it is in the name of God that he declares it won. Shakespeare uses here, as Gentili   Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Bull (London: Penguin, 1961), p. 57.  Machiavelli, Discourses, p. 50, p. 51, p. 52.

39

40

Henry V and the Just War: Shakespeare, Gentili and Machiavelli

119

did, the medieval metaphor of war as a legal trial where the two contestants are equal until the final sentence. Victory thus becomes the sign, not the intention of God’s final judgement: ‘The arms on both sides should be public, for bellum, “war”, derives its name from the fact that there is a contest for victory between two equal parties, and for that reason it was first called duellum, “a contest of two”’.41 The fight between the two mighty monarchies of England and France is like a duel, embodied by Henry and the Dauphin. Victory is not predictable. When announced, it appears like a miracle: ‘It is wonderful’ (IV.viii.110). It is only now that Henry credits the unexpected triumph not to human strength but to the will of God: ‘Praised be God, and not our strength’ (IV.vii.84). But it is when the number of English casualties is proclaimed as astonishingly small compared to the French – 29 compared to 1,000 – that Henry praises God with strengthened emphasis: ‘And be it death proclaimed through our host / To boast of this or take that praise from God / Which is His only’ (IV.vii.112–14). Here, Henry takes the opportunity to confirm his reply to Williams’s doubts about the justness of the war: ‘war is His beadle, war is His vengeance’ (IV.i.163). War, the disguised King continues, is God’s chance to punish the evil ones. War, however, now looks like God’s vengeance against the French. And it is only now that Henry can declare that the nation is elect. Henry knows well that God has not taken side for England. And yet he also knows that he must reply to his soldiers’ doubts about the predicament of their souls in the other world. He knows, in other words, that he must adopt the religion of his soldiers for the nation to be born. Gentili’s interpretation of Machiavelli gave Shakespeare the opportunity to forge the English version of the portrait of the Italian Prince. In it, some of Elizabeth’s most famous portraits overlap. In the Peace Portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts a sword appears in the forefront of the picture as symbol of the nation’s strength. Peace and devotion seem to be founded upon a sword that has just been, or may, again, be used by the sovereign. This RomanMachiavellian image evokes another equally political icon: at the beginning of the Puritan John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, Elizabeth’s image is framed by a C, the initial of Constantin, the Roman emperor who converted to and adopted the religion of the people.

 Gentili, De Iure, I.II, p. 12.

41

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 8

Republicanism and Religious Dissent: Machiavelli and the Italian Protestant Reformers Diego Pirillo

Machiavelli, John Wolfe and the Italian Protestant Reformers During the sixteenth century, long before the first English translations, Machiavelli was well known in the British Isles thanks to Latin and French versions and a significant manuscript circulation.1 Il Principe was not his only work familiar to Tudor readers: several passages of Storie Fiorentine – widely read in Protestant Europe because of Machiavelli’s attack on the temporal power of the Roman Church – were translated and incorporated in William Thomas’s History of Italy, published in London in 1549, a work that Gabriel Harvey considered a ‘necessarie introduction to Machiavel, Guicciardin, Jovius’.2 Elizabethans often read Il Principe along with Storie Fiorentine, as did the annotator of an anonymous English manuscript translation of Il Principe – datable to the late sixteenth century – who in the last folio referred to the fifth book of Storie Fiorentine, arguing that Machiavelli ‘teacheth what men doe and not what they ought to doe’.3 1   Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the conference Britain, Ireland and the Italian Renaissance: Reception and Influence, Gregynog Hall, University of Swansea (October 2009), organized by John Law and Helen Fulton, and at the Colloquium of the Department of Italian Studies at Brown University (November 2009), for which I thank Ronald Martinez and Massimo Riva. I also benefited from discussions with Mark Molesky, Kenneth Gouwens and David Harris Sacks. Special thanks to Alessandra Petrina for her suggestions and comments. Translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated. 2   William Thomas, The History of Italy, 1549, ed. George B. Parks (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963), p. 98, for an explicit reference to the Storie Fiorentine. For Harvey’s note, written on his 1561 edition of The Historie of Italie, see Virginia F. Stern, Gabriel Harvey: His Life, Marginalia, and Library (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 237; on Harvey’s interest in artes historicae see Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, ‘“Studied for Action”: How Gabriel Harvey Read his Livy’, Past & Present 129 (1990): pp. 30–78. 3   Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Eng 1014, f. 50v. On the manuscript circulation of Machiavelli in England and Scotland see Alessandra Petrina, Machiavelli in the British Isles: Two Early Modern Translations of The Prince (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009).

122

Figure 8.1

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (English translation, c.1588, Houghton Library, Harvard, MS Eng 1014), first two chapters. © Houghton Library, Harvard

Republicanism and Religious Dissent

Figure 8.2

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (English translation, c.1588, Houghton Library, Harvard, MS Eng 1014), endpage with marginalia. © Houghton Library, Harvard

123

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

124

Until 1584, however, the only work by Machiavelli that had actually been published in England was the Arte of Warre. This translation by Peter Whitehorne, printed in London in 1560 and reissued in 1573 and 1588, was carefully read and quoted by Harvey and Thomas Digges, among others.4 The situation changed radically when the English printer John Wolfe succeeded in reprinting almost all of Machiavelli’s works in London between 1584 and 1588.5 In 1584 Wolfe published I Discorsi followed by another volume with Il Principe, the Vita di Castruccio Castracani, and some early political works including the Ritratto di cose di Francia e della Magna and Il modo che tenne il duca Valentino per ammazzar Vitellozzo. In the preface to I Discorsi Wolfe gave notice of other works, which would appear in the following years.6 In 1587 he published Arte della Guerra and Storie Fiorentine, and in 1588, L’Asino d’Oro with La Mandragola and Clizia, Belfagor, I Capitoli and I Decennali. All these reprints were falsely presented as the work of Italian presses in Palermo, Roma and Piacenza. In this way Wolfe was attempting to increase the value of his editions, hoping to sell them not only in England but also in the rest of Europe, and especially in Italy, where Machiavelli had been placed on the Index of prohibited books in 1557.7 Indeed, through the Frankfurt fair Wolfe’s reprints were smuggled into Venice. In April 1584 the Inquisition confiscated 18 copies of the Dialogi del Machiavelli in ottavo from

  On the early modern reception of Arte della Guerra see Sydney Anglo, Machiavelli – The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 476–572. 5  See Clifford C. Huffman, Elizabethan Impressions: John Wolfe and his Press (New York: AMS Press, 1988); Jason Lawrence, ‘Who the Devil Taught Thee so Much Italian?’ Italian Language Learning and Literary Imitation in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 187–201; Michael Wyatt, The Italian Encounter with Tudor England: A Cultural Politics of Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 185–98. On Wolfe’s reprints of Machiavelli see especially Adolph Gerber, ‘All of the Five Fictitious Editions of Writings of Machiavelli and Three of those of Pietro Aretino Printed by John Wolfe of London (1584–1588)’, Modern Language Notes 22 (1907): pp. 2–6, pp. 129–35, pp. 201–6, and Peter S. Donaldson, Machiavelli and Mystery of State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 86–110. 6   ‘Lo stampatore al benigno lettore’, in I discorsi di Nicolo Machiavelli, Sopra la Prima Deca di Tito Livio (Palermo: Appresso gli Heredi d’Antoniello degli Antonielli [London: John Wolfe], 1584), p. 4r. 7   Denis B. Woodfield, Surreptitious Printing in England 1550–1640 (New York: Bibliographical Society of America, 1973), pp. 10–12. On Machiavelli in the Index see Giuliano Procacci, Machiavelli nella cultura europea dell’età moderna (Bari: Laterza, 1995), pp. 83–121; Peter Godman, From Poliziano to Machiavelli: Florentine Humanism in the High Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 303–33; Anglo, pp. 164–82. See also Artemio E. Baldini, ‘Jean Bodin e l’Indice dei libri proibiti’, in Censura ecclesiastica e cultura politica in italia tra Cinquecento e Seicento (Florence: Olschki, 2001), pp. 79–100. 4

Republicanism and Religious Dissent

Figure 8.3

125

Niccolò Machiavelli, Il prencipe (London: John Wolfe, 1584), title page. © Houghton Library, Harvard

126

Figure 8.4

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Niccolò Machiavelli, I Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (London: John Wolfe, 1584), title page. © Houghton Library, Harvard.

Republicanism and Religious Dissent

127

the Venetian bookseller Angelo Bonfadini, copies printed very likely by Wolfe in January of the same year.8 Wolfe’s Italian publications and especially his reprints of Machiavelli have already received considerable attention. What still remains to be thoroughly studied, however, is the role the Italian Protestant community in London played in this ambitious editorial project. Working as editors and translators the Italian reformers strongly influenced early modern English readers of Machiavelli, from Walter Raleigh to Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare.9 As recent scholarship has pointed out, they had a decisive role in the cultural and religious history of early modern England.10 Under the reign of Edward VI, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, encouraged the arrival of several Italian religious exiles, such as Peter Martyr Vermigli, Bernardino Ochino and Emanuele Tremelli, who participated directly in the English theological debates. In the second half of the sixteenth century the English Reformation looked with great interest at the theology of the Italian reformers. It is telling that a work like the Beneficio di Cristo, the key text of the ‘Italian Reformation’, was immediately translated into English by Edward Courtenay and later again by Arthur Golding.11 While taking part in the theological debates of the English Reformation, the Italian reformers also contributed to the diffusion of the secular learning and literature of their homeland, publishing authors and texts prohibited or censored in Italy at the time, such as Boccaccio, Aretino and Machiavelli.12 Wolfe’s reprints of Machiavelli were therefore not only part of a marketing strategy, but were crucial in the ideological battle of Italian religious exiles against the Roman Church and the Index. Machiavelli exerted a decisive influence on the Italian Reformation, no less considerable than that of Erasmus or Luther. The close association between political radicalism and religious dissent, between aspirations for Church reform and republicanism, drew the Italian religious dissidents towards the writings of the Florentine thinker, who had denounced the responsibility of the Papacy in the sixteenth-century Italian religious crisis. According to a famous chapter of Machiavelli’s Discorsi, while in France and   Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 199; Sergio Bertelli and Piero Innocenti, Bibliografia machiavelliana (Verona: Edizioni Valdonega, 1979), pp. lxi–lxii. 9   See Victoria Kahn, Machiavellian Rhetoric: From the Counter-Reformation to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 124–31. 10   See especially Wyatt, The Italian Encounter with Tudor England, and M. Anne Overell, Italian Reform and English Reformations, c.1535–c.1585 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). 11   Overell, pp. 61–80. 12   John Tedeschi, The Italian Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture: A Bibliography of the Secondary Literature, ca.1750–1997 (Modena: Panini, 2000). 8

128

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

in Germany there were still the ancient ‘goodness’ and ‘religion’, which make ‘many republics there live free’,13 in Italy the Roman Church had dissolved any religious sentiments: ‘for as where there is no religion one presupposes every good, so where it is missing one presupposes the contrary. Thus we Italians have this first obligation to the church and to the priests that we have become without religion and wicked’.14 Religion was therefore something different and distinct from the Church and from ecclesiastical institutions. The Roman court in particular was responsible for the extinction in Italy of all devotion and religion.15 Machiavelli’s accusation against the Roman Church, combining the strong anticlerical Italian tradition and the growing wave of religious dissent, had a significant impact on the Italian heretical movement, from Lucio Paolo Rosello to Antonio Brucioli.16 Even among the clergy linked to Italian ‘evangelism’, the ideas formulated in the Discorsi on the civic value of ancient Roman religion had a wide circulation.17 At the time of his Machiavelli editions, Wolfe’s connections with the Italian reformers were particularly strong. The first Italian work he had printed was Essortatione al Timor di Dio by the Italian heretic Giacomo Aconcio, published posthumously in 1579. Aconcio’s Essortatione was edited by Giovanbattista Castiglione, Queen Elizabeth’s Italian tutor, who in the preface remembers Wolfe’s Italian apprenticeship in Florence, referring to him as a young man recently come back from Italy, where he had diligently learned the art of printing.18 Thanks to this collaboration with Italian exiles, Wolfe became the most prolific printer of Italian texts in Elizabethan England. Between 1584 and 1591, he also published several other works in Italian, including Pietro Aretino’s Ragionamenti, Torquato Tasso’s Aminta, Giovanbattista Guarini’s Il pastor fido and even Baldassarre Castiglione’s Courtier in Thomas Hoby’s translation.19 It is important to remember that Machiavelli and Italian texts circulated in the British Isles not only through vernacular but also through Latin translations,

13   ‘Discorsi Sopra la Prima deca di Tito Livio’, I.55, in Niccolò Machiavelli, Opere, I, ed. Corrado Vivanti (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), p. 310; Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 110. 14  Machiavelli, Discourses, I.12, p. 38. 15  Machiavelli, Discorsi, I.12, p. 233. 16   Leandro Perini, ‘Gli eretici italiani del “500 e Machiavelli”’, Studi storici 10 (1969): pp. 877–918. 17   Carlo Ginzburg and Adriano Prosperi, Giochi di pazienza. Un seminario sul ‘Beneficio di Cristo’ (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), p. 16, p. 142. 18   Giacomo Aconcio, Una essortatione al timor di Dio (London: John Wolfe, 1579?), p. 4. 19   For a complete list see Wyatt, The Italian Encounter with Tudor England, pp. 262–4.

Republicanism and Religious Dissent

129

which have not yet been thoroughly studied.20 Torquato Tasso’s Liberata, for example, translated into English only in 1594, in Richard Carew’s version of the first five cantos, and again in 1600, in Edward Fairfax’s first complete translation, was nonetheless already available in Latin in 1584, in Scipione Gentili’s version, though limited to the first two cantos and part of the fourth.21 Similarly, Castiglione’s Courtier was read in England not only in Hoby’s version but also in Bartholomew Clerke’s Latin translation, published in 1571 and frequently reprinted well into the eighteenth century.22 This was also the case of Machiavelli’s Principe, translated into Latin in 1560 by Silvestro Tegli and well received by English academics, such as John Case, author of Sphaera civitatis, a major work in the history of English anti-Machiavellianism.23 This same version circulated widely in early modern Europe: Baruch Spinoza, among others, had Tegli’s translation in his library.24 The ‘Republican Face’ of Machiavelli: Alberico Gentili’s De Legationibus Tegli’s translation is also important in the history of the republican interpretation of Machiavelli. In the 1580 Basel reprint of Tegli’s version, the printer Pietro Perna added a preface stating that Machiavelli supported not tyranny but rather the true prince.25 Like the Italian Protestant community in Basel, the Italian reformers 20   On Latin culture in early modern England see James W. Binns, Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Latin Writings of the Age (Leeds: Cairns, 1990). On the persistence of Latin in early modern scholarly culture see also Ann Blair, ‘La persistance du latin comme langue de science à la fin de la Renaissance’, in Sciences et Langues en Europe, ed. Roger Chartier and Pietro Corsi (Paris: Centre Alexandre Koyré, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1996), pp. 21–42, and Peter Burke, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 43–60. 21   Torquato Tasso, Solymeidos (London: John Wolfe, 1584). Two years later Gentili published a commentary on Tasso’s poem: Annotationi sopra la Gierusalemme Liberata (London: John Wolfe, 1586). 22   Baldassarre Castiglione, De Curiali sive Aulico Libri Quatuor (London: John Day, 1571). 23   Niccolò Machiavelli, De Principe Libellus (Basel: Pietro Perna, 1560). On Tegli’s translation of Il Principe see Werner Kaegi, ‘Machiavelli a Basilea’, in Meditazioni Storiche, ed. Delio Cantimori (Bari: Laterza, 1960), pp. 155–215; Perini, ‘Gli eretici italiani del ‘500 e Machiavelli’, pp. 902–18, and La vita e i tempi di Pietro Perna (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2002), pp. 175–92. 24   Adolfo Ravà, ‘Un contributo agli studi spinoziani: Spinoza e Machiavelli’, in Studi filosofico-giuridici dedicati a Giorgio del Vecchio (Modena: Società Tipografica Modenese, 1930), II, p. 301. 25   Perna’s epistle, inserted in the 1580 reprint of Tegli’s translation of Il Principe, has been transcribed by Perini, ‘Gli eretici italiani del ‘500 e Machiavelli’, pp. 916–18.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

130

in England were also profoundly influenced by Machiavelli’s republicanism. In 1611, Giacomo Castelvetro did not hide his republican sympathies, and while reproaching Tommaso Campanella for his anti-Machiavellianism, praised the ‘excellent and holy mind’ of the Florentine thinker, for his fight against the Medici tyranny in Florence: ‘to inspire hate against any tyrant, he chose Borgia as the example of the most impious and cruel that was ever born […] in order that the blind Florentines would open their eyes and hate even more anyone who might attempt to usurp their precious freedom’.26 A similar view of Machiavelli’s republicanism was already held by Alberico Gentili, who became Regius Professor of civil law at Oxford in 1587. In De legationibus, published in London in 1585 and dedicated to Philip Sidney, Gentili argued that Machiavelli’s real aim was not to serve the princes but to unmask the arcana imperii and to reveal the very logic of politics. Gentili invites his reader to unearth the republican message hidden in Machiavelli’s pages, arguing that the Florentine thinker was not the counsellor of tyrants but rather ‘a eulogist of democracy, and its most spirited champion […] And so, naturally, he did not favour the tyrant. It was not his purpose to instruct the tyrant, but by revealing his secrets counsels to strip him bare, and expose him to the suffering nations […] The purpose of this shrewdest of men was to instruct the nations under the pretext of instructing the prince’.27 De legationibus seems to echo Paolo Giovio’s Elogia here, a work Gentili quotes frequently, where Machiavelli’s admiration for Brutus and Cassius is emphasized along with his involvement in the conspiracy against Giulio de’ Medici in 1522.28 Gentili had a decisive role in Wolfe’s project to reprint Machiavelli’s works in London. In the late sixteenth century the Italian lawyer had a very close relationship with the English printer. Wolfe not only published Gentili’s first work printed in England, De iuris interpretibus, which appeared in 1582 and was dedicated to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, but also the first edition of his major work, De iure belli, published in three volumes between 1588 and 1589 and dedicated to Leicester’s successor Robert Devereux. In the same years Wolfe also printed Tasso’s Solymeidos, as well as Scipione Gentili’s Annotationi, the first

  Translated from Castelvetro’s marginalia to Tommaso Campanella, Discorsi della Monarchia di Spagna (Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS R.4.5, f. 9r). See Chiara Franceschini, ‘Nostalgie di un esule. Note su Giacomo Castelvetro (1546–1616)’, Cromohs 8 (2003), online edition. 27   Albericus Gentilis, De legationibus libri tres (London: Thomas Vautrollerius, 1585), III.9, p. 109; English trans. Gordon J. Laing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1924), p. 156. 28   Paolo Giovio, Opera (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1972), VIII, pp. 111–72. On Giovio and Machiavelli see Carlo Dionisotti, ‘Machiavelli e il Giovio’, in Machiavellerie. Storia e fortuna di Machiavelli (Turin: Einaudi, 1980), pp. 411–44. 26

Republicanism and Religious Dissent

131

critical study on the classical and modern sources of the Gerusalemme Liberata.29 The close relationship between Gentili and Wolfe has often led to the suggestion that the Italian lawyer was in fact the author of the anonymous preface to Wolfe’s edition of Discorsi. In this preface, rather than fall victim to the widespread anti-Machiavellianism of the time, the reader was instead invited to consult Machiavelli’s works with a more discerning eye, as in this way the author himself had discovered ‘how great a difference there was between a just Prince and a Tyrant, between the government of many good men and a few wicked, between a well regulated republic and a confused licentious multitude’. At the same time I Discorsi was presented as an authoritative work on ars historica, a guide to read ancient history, in order to find useful political counsel for the present in the past. In Machiavelli it was possible to identify ‘new doctrine, new acuteness of intellect, and new ways to learn how to draw useful lessons from the pleasant reading of history. And in short I found that I learned more about the governments of the world in one day than I had so far through the reading of history’.30 This reading was indeed very close to Gentili’s De legationibus. Privileging I Discorsi over Il Principe, the Italian lawyer praised the ‘aureas in Livium observationes’ believing them indispensable for a fruitful interpretation of history. Following Cicero, Gentili conceives of history as a branch of rhetoric, a source of exempla, meant to offer moral and political education. At the same time, however, he is aware of the contemporary debates on ars historica and of the need to read history critically and systematically.31 Indeed, for a profitable reading of classical and modern historians Gentili proposes a close reading of Machiavelli’s Discorsi, a work achieving a perfect synthesis of history and philosophy, providing a critical method to interpret the past: ‘in reading history he does not play the grammarian, but assumes the role of philosopher. And undoubtedly history and philosophy are mutually dependent’.32 According to Gentili, Machiavelli interpreted Roman history as a true philosopher because he   Wolfe published also Gentili’s Legalium comitiorum Oxoniensium (London: John Wolfe, 1585) and Condicionum Liber (London: John Wolfe, 1587). On the relationship between Gentili and Wolfe see Ian Maclean, ‘Alberico Gentili, his Publishers, and the Vagaries of the Book Trade between England and Germany, 1580–1614’, in Learning and the Market Place: Essays in the History of the Early Modern Book (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 291–337. 30   Translated from ‘Lo stampatore al benigno lettore’, sig. 2v. 31   On the relationship between exemplarity and historiography, and on early modern debates on ars historica, see D.R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Scholarship: Language, Law and History in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); Timothy Hampton, Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); Anthony Grafton, What was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 32  Gentili, De legationibus, III.9, p. 110 (English translation p. 157). 29

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

132

succeeded in extracting from the study of classical historians an understanding of the universal laws common to every historical event. Historical ages, argues the Italian jurist quoting a famous passage from I Discorsi (III.43), are always uniform because the passions of men and the habits of the people are themselves always identical: ‘Through all mortal affairs, through the infinity of the ages runs a certain similarity, for those who participate therein are always men of the same type, retaining the same nature and the same emotions forever […] To what extent do we find change of customs in individual nations? Either not at all, or in a very small degree’.33 The practice of reading ancient historical works through Machiavelli in order to interpret contemporary political issues was common in England at the time. Certainly it was a method employed by Gabriel Harvey, who read Livy together with Philip Sidney and Thomas Preston with the help of I Discorsi, a work they read ‘in Italian’, ‘with much delight, and more profit’.34 Gentili used the same reading technique in his work on embassies, where he constantly read ancient history with a precise political end, to make it directly applicable to contemporary affairs of state. ‘No history is without utility’, observes Gentili, if the historical knowledge is not founded on ‘speculations based on the past, but by studying the present’.35 Therefore, to understand the rights and duties of ambassadors it was necessary to take into account ancient history comparing it constantly with contemporary practice, as Machiavelli does in his Discorsi.36 Reading ancient history and looking carefully at contemporary European politics, Gentili defines the principle of diplomatic immunity. The inviolability of the ambassador was very clear to the ancients, who had developed complex ceremonials reserving the greatest honours for diplomats, giving them the privilege of immunity not only in allied territory but also in enemy country.37 To the Elizabethan audience this was a clear reference to the 1584 controversy around the Spanish ambassador Bernardino de Mendoza, deeply involved in the Throckmorton conspiracy and forced to leave England for Paris. Gentili’s opinion on the matter was crucial: the Italian jurist was a strong supporter of the immunity guaranteed to diplomats by the law of nations.38 At the same time, however, he underlined the ambassador’s firm duty to disobey the Prince if his  Gentili, De legationibus, III.8, p. 107 (English translation p. 153).   Jardine and Grafton, p. 43. 35  Gentili, De legationibus, II.1, p. 39 (English translation p. 135); III.8, p. 108 (English translation p. 154). 36  Gentili, De legationibus, II.1, p. 40 (English translation p. 58). 37  Gentili, De legationibus, II.1, p. 40 (English translation p. 58). 38  Gentili, De legationibus, II.4, p. 45 (English translation p. 65). On early modern literature on the perfect ambassador see Timothy Hampton, Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); still useful are also Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (New York: Dover, 1955); Paolo Prodi, Diplomazia del Cinquecento. Istituzioni e prassi (Bologna: Patron, 1963); Maurizio Bazzoli, 33 34

Republicanism and Religious Dissent

133

orders are unjust. Passive obedience to a superior is never a virtue, especially for the perfect ambassador: ‘not even a resident ambassador should obey if his sovereign should want him to do something which detracts even in the smallest degree from his obligations to God […] The ambassador, therefore, should write to his sovereign that for religious reasons he cannot obey him’.39 De legationibus, republished in 1594 and 1607, circulated widely in early modern Europe, especially in the intellectual milieu of the libertinisme érudit. In Bibliographia politica, a work rife with references to Machiavelli, Gabriel Naudé quotes Gentili, arguing that the Florentine thinker ‘as Alberico Gentili acutely observes, in reading history […] does not act as a grammarian but rather as a philosopher’.40 In Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique the entry ‘Machiavelli’ refers to De legationibus discussing the opinion of those who consider the Florentine thinker ‘a writer zealous for the common good, who describes the mechanisms of politics, only to inspire horror against tyrants, and to excite all peoples to defend their freedom’.41 In Elizabethan England Gentili was soon recognized as indispensable reading for those interested in the relationship between diplomacy and politics. This emerges clearly in John Case’s Sphaera civitatis, published in Oxford in 1588 and frequently reprinted in England and Germany.42 In contrast with Gentili, Case, a prominent figure within English Aristotelianism, had no sympathy for Machiavelli, whom he considered a serious threat to the predominant scholasticism. Following Innocent Gentillet’s Discourse contre Machiavel, Case’s work opened with an attack against ‘that Florentine monster’ and his ‘blasphemous and dangerous doctrine’. At the same time, however, putting aside the violent polemic tone of anti-Machiavellianism, Case praised ‘Alberico Gentili, doctor of civil law’, agreeing with him that ‘without embassy […] no state, no republic, no dominion can exist’, and advising his readers to consult De legationibus, ‘to which I refer the curious reader who wishes to know more on embassies’.43 ‘Ragion di stato e interessi degli stati. La trattatistica sull’Ambasciatore dal XV al XVIII Secolo’, in Stagioni e teorie della società internazionale (Milan: LED, 2005), pp. 267–311. 39  Gentili, De legationibus, III.15, p. 173. 40   Translated from Gabriel Naudé, Bibliografia politica, ed. Domenico Bosco (Rome: Bulzoni, 1997), p. 186. 41   Translated from Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique (Amsterdam: Brunel, 1740), III, 248. On pre-Enlightenment debates on Machiavelli’s republicanism see Procacci, pp. 266–88, and Mario Rosa, Dispotismo e libertà nel settecento: interpretazioni repubblicane di Machiavelli (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2005). 42   John Case, Sphaera Civitatis (Oxford: Iosephus Barnesius, 1588). On Case see Charles B. Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983) and Jonathan Woolfson, ‘Between Bruni and Hobbes: Aristotle’s Politics in Tudor Intellectual Culture’, in Reassessing Tudor Humanism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 197–222. 43   Translated from Case, p. 621.

134

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

The Virgin Queen as a Principe Nuovo: Machiavellianism, Petrarchism and the Cult of Astraea Along with Castelvetro and Gentili, further confirmation of Machiavelli’s influence on the Italian community in late sixteenth-century London is provided by Giordano Bruno’s vernacular dialogues, published by John Charlewood between 1584 and 1585. In Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante (1584) Bruno refers several times to I Discorsi, drawing on the chapters on the superiority of Roman civic religion to Christianity.44 Moreover, in several passages of Spaccio Bruno clearly expresses his republicanism, admitting the right to resist the tyrant when the power of the sovereign is not limited by law and subordinated to the common good. Further references to Machiavelli, overlooked by scholars, can be found in Bruno’s Cena de le ceneri, the first dialogue published in London in 1584, where Elizabeth is portrayed as a principe nuovo. Bruno’s words on the English Queen have been studied in the attempt to shed light on the relationship between the philosopher of the infinite universe and the Virgin monarch. Bruno never hid his familiarity with the English court, which he accessed through the French ambassador Michel de Castelnau.45 Indeed, in the eighteenth century Thomas Bearne, assistant librarian at the Bodleian Library, observed that ‘Jordanus Brunus presented his Books to Queen Elizabeth’.46 There is, however, no direct evidence to prove this statement. Certainly Bruno paid close attention to Elizabeth and to English politics. In his vernacular dialogues he makes several assertions in favour of the Anglican settlement, arguing for the necessity of one power in religious and civil matters. In the sonnet opening Eroici furori, he appears well informed on Elizabethan imperial ideology, describing the English Queen as the only Diana.47 His sympathy for heretic princes, such as Elizabeth or Henri de Navarre, constituted a serious charge during his trial.48 In Cena the Italian philosopher had further argued that Elizabeth ‘by title and royal dignity is not inferior 44   Giordano Bruno, Dialoghi filosofici italiani, ed. Michele Ciliberto (Milan: Mondadori, 2000), p. 541. On Bruno’s interest in Machiavelli see Michele Ciliberto, La ruota del tempo. Interpretazione di Giordano Bruno (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1988), pp. 176–82; Saverio Ricci, ‘Bruno e Machiavelli nelle crisi delle guerre di religione’, in Machiavelli e la cultura politica del meridione d’Italia, ed. Gianfranco Borrelli (Naples: Guida, 2001), pp. 23–35; Miguel A. Granada, ‘Maquiavelo y Bruno: religión civil y crítica del Cristianismo’, in Giordano Bruno: Universo infinito, unión con Dios, perfección del ombre (Barcelona: Herder, 2002), pp. 169–96. 45   Luigi Firpo, Il processo di Giordano Bruno (Rome: Salerno, 1993), p. 189. 46   See Saverio Ricci, La fortuna del pensiero di Giordano Bruno, 1600–1750 (Florence: Le Lettere, 1990), p. 256. 47  Bruno, Dialoghi filosofici italiani, p. 777. In De la Causa Principio et Uno he considered Elizabeth the highest model of female virtue, superior to any queen of antiquity: see Dialoghi filosofici italiani, pp. 203–4. 48  Firpo, pp. 188–9.

Republicanism and Religious Dissent

135

to any king anywhere on earth’.49 He went so far as to state that if only ‘the empire of fortune would correspond to and would match the empire of the most generous spirit and mind’, the English Queen ‘would be the sole empress of this terrestrial sphere: and with fuller significance that divine hand of hers would sustain the globe of this universal monarchy’.50 In the same pages he invites Elizabeth to strengthen her power favouring the ascension of ‘humble things’, because it ‘is licit, and is in power of princes’, and to oppose the privileges of aristocrats, who believe they deserve everything only because of their ‘greatness’, ‘for they will say that this befits them not because of the favor, courtesy, and magnanimity of the prince, but because of justice and reason’.51 In fact, Bruno is referring to the ninth chapter of The Prince, which Wolfe published in the same year in London. Following Machiavelli, Cena reminded Elizabeth that a reign founded on the favour of the ‘people’ is necessarily more stable than one depending on the favour of the ‘nobility’. The Prince reigning only with the support of the aristocracy would be ‘surrounded by men who consider themselves his equals’, while ‘a prince who acquires a principality through the favor of the people is unhampered: only a few in his circle are unready to obey him’.52 Bruno’s image of Elizabeth as principe nuovo and ‘universal monarch’ was not an isolated view in the Italian Protestant community in London. Similar words were used by John Florio, Bruno’s closest friend in England. In First Fruites, published in London in 1578, the Italian lexicographer had argued that only one prince should be ‘Monarch and lord of al the world’: Not without great mysterie did God ordeine, that in a family there should be onely one father of family, in a common people, he wyl that one onely citizen commaund: in a Province, one onely governour: and that one Realme be governed by one only king, & a campe by one only captaine: & that an Emperour be Monarch & lord of al the world. His meaning is, wee muste woorshyppe but one onely God, and serve one onely prince.53

49  Bruno, Dialoghi filosofici italiani, p. 51. For the English translation see The Ash Wednesday Supper, trans. Stanley L. Jaki (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), p. 83. 50   The Ash Wednesday Supper, p. 83. 51   The Ash Wednesday Supper, p. 82. 52   Il Principe, IX, in Niccolò Machiavelli, Opere, ed. Corrado Vivanti (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), p. 143; for the English version see The Prince, trans. Peter Constantine (New York: The Modern Library, 2008), p. 45. 53   John Florio, His Firste Fruites: Which Yeelde Familiar Speech, Merie Proverbes, Wittie Sentences, and Golden Sayings (London: Thomas Dawson, 1578), p. 81. On Florio see Frances A. Yates, John Florio: The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), and Wyatt, The Italian Encounter with Tudor England. On early modern imperial ideologies see Franz Bosbach, Monarchia Universalis: Ein Politischer Leitbegriff der frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988); Anthony R. Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and

136

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

In this passage, however, Florio was not referring to Machiavelli but to the popular Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius, the ‘crude forgery’ by Antonio de Guevara, the Spanish bishop, preacher and historiographer at the court of Charles V.54 Firste Fruites often refers to Guevara’s political theology, justifying the notion of monarchia universalis on biblical monotheism.55 Though Florio was not a political writer, he knew Renaissance literature on specula principum and reason of state very well. In his Anglo-Italian dictionary, New World of Words, published in London in 1611, he cited among his sources works such as Thesoro politico, a widely circulating collection of sixteenth-century political texts, as well as Giovanni Botero’s Relationi universali, Paolo Paruta’s Discorsi politici and Machiavelli’s opera omnia.56 In depicting the ideal prince in Firste Fruites, however, Florio distanced himself from what The Prince states as concerns the relationship between morality and politics. Unlike Machiavelli, the Italian lexicographer argued that the Prince should be loved rather than feared, inspiring his conduct to ‘humanitie et clemencie’.57 These were indispensable virtues for the good prince, necessary if he intended to found the state on solid ground, creating consensus among the subjects and preventing rebellions.58 Firste Fruites was therefore reformulating the traditional themes of specula principum, in which mercy and forgiveness often figured as the fundamental prerogatives of the clemens princeps. By cancelling blame and pardoning punishment, the sovereign imitated the priest’s act of remission from sins and thus legitimized his authority.59 In late sixteenth-century England, this political

France c.1500–c.1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); David Armitage (ed.), Theories of Empire 1450–1800 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998). 54   Antonio de Guevara, Aureo libro di Marco Aurelio con l’horologio de prencipi (Venice: Francesco Portonari, 1556). On Guevara and neo-Stoicism see Jill Kraye ‘“Ethnicorum omnium sanctissimus”. Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations from Xylander to Diderot’, in Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Jill Kraye and Martin W.F. Stone (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 107–34. See also Augustin Redondo, Antonio de Guevara (1480?– 1545) et l’Espagne de son temps. De la carrière officielle aux oeuvres politico-morales (Geneva: Droz, 1976), and Davide Bigalli, Immagini del principe. Ricerche su politica e umanesimo nel Portogallo e nella Spagna del Cinquecento (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1985), pp. 223–80. An insightful reading of Guevara’s Aureo libro can be found in Carlo Ginzburg, Occhiacci di legno. Nove riflessioni sulla distanza (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1998), pp. 18–27. 55  Florio, Firste Fruites, pp. 78–9. Compare with Guevara, Aureo libro, p. 12r. 56   John Florio, Queen Anna’s New World of Words; or Dictionarie of the Italian and the English Tongue (London: Bradwood, 1611). 57  Florio, Firste Fruites, p. 65. 58  Florio, Firste Fruites, p. 65. 59   See Adriano Prosperi, Giustizia bendata. Percorsi storici di un’immagine (Turin: Einaudi, 2008), pp. 81–131, and Michael Hohlstein, ‘Clemens Princeps: Clementia as a Princely Virtue in Michael of Prague’s De Regimine Principum’, in Princely Virtues in the Middle Ages, 1200–1500, ed. István P. Bejczy and Cary J. Nederman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 201–17.

Republicanism and Religious Dissent

137

theology was frequently employed by those who saw in Elizabeth the new virgin Astraea, uniting ‘Justitia’ and ‘Clementia’.60 Theatrical performances also gave voice to this conception of sovereignty and of the good prince as clement judge. The earthly court was meant to imitate God’s merciful justice, as even judges would in the end be subject to divine justice, as shown in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. In this way the sovereign reaffirmed his divine investment, underlining the absolute power of one who, by conceding pardon, was conditioned by nothing, not even the severity of a crime. Forgiveness and punishment were the prerogatives of the good Prince, as James I emphasized in Basilikon Doron – a work Florio soon translated into Italian – insisting that the Prince should ‘mixe justice with mercie, punishing or sparing’.61 Firste Fruites highlighted this image of the sovereign as clemens princeps. Mercy was what distinguished the legitimate king from the tyrant: ‘For what more noble vertue can be in a Prince, then to be clement, ready to forgeve, and slowe to punishe? […] Contrarywise, if a man be proude, hauty, and a tyrant, he purchaseth infamy, getteth hate of many, love of none, and many tymes he looseth his estate’.62 This passage was clearly meant for Elizabeth, subsequently named.63 In order to be a just and impartial governor, Florio continued, addressing the English Queen, the ideal prince must be an example of chastity, refusing earthly pleasures as Roman emperors had done: O golden worlde, when neyther Wyne, nor banquettes were knowen, then was chastity knowen in the Temple of Vesta. Then the Emperours dyd frequent the Chappel of Iupiter, then Lust durst not come to the court of Cesar, then abstinence walked through the markette in everye Cittye, then the worlde was chaste, then the world dyd triumph, but nowe every thyng goeth contrary.64

These words, an obvious reference to Petrarch’s Triumph of Chastity, were not a simple tribute to the myth of Astraea.65 To understand the meaning of Florio’s 60   See for instance John Davies, Complete Poems, ed. A.B. Grosart (London: Chatto & Windus, 1876), I, p. 151. 61   James I, Basilikon Doron, or His Maiesties Instructions to His Dearest Sonne, Henry the Prince (London: John Norton, 1603), p. 30. Florio’s translation has been published in Giuliano Pellegrini, John Florio e il Basilikon Doron di James VI: un esempio inedito di versione elisabettiana (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1961). See Michael Wyatt, ‘An Italian Baptism for the Basilikon Doron of James VI/I’, in Exiles, Emigrés and Intermediaries: Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions, ed. B. Schaff (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010), pp. 71–84. 62  Florio, Firste Fruites, p. 65. 63  Florio, Firste Fruites, p. 65. 64  Florio, Firste Fruites, pp. 66–7. 65   ‘Triumphus Pudicitie’, in Francesco Petrarca, Triumphi, ed. Marco Ariani (Milan: Mursia, 1988), p. 219. On the English reception of Petrarch’s Trionfi see Robert Coogan, ‘Petrarch’s “Trionfi” and the English Renaissance’, Studies in Philology 67 (1970): pp. 306–27, and Michael Wyatt, ‘Other Petrarchs in Early Modern England’, in Petrarch in

138

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

words it is necessary to recall the political context in which his work was composed. Published in 1578, Firste Fruites was dedicated to Robert Dudley, the strongest opponent in the English court of the marriage between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou.66 Seeing the marriage as the means for a possible Catholic restoration in England, the Puritans also protested, and in 1579 John Stubbs violently attacked the marriage negotiations. Following Machiavelli, he argued that ‘any alteration in religion or expectation to have religion altered is a politic bile inflaming the peace of a settled and even state’.67 Instigated by Dudley, Sidney also entered the debate, reminding Elizabeth of the responsibility of the Valois in the Saint Bartholomew massacre and asking her not to marry the Duke of Anjou, ‘a Frenchman and a papist’. Virginity was a privilege given by God to the protector of his Church: ‘for your standing alone you must take it as a singular honour God hath done you, to be indeed the onely protectour of his Church’.68 Aware of these controversies, Florio indicated to Elizabeth the value of chastity with Petrarch’s verses. By recalling the example of the virgin Tuccia, Firste Fruites thus gave voice to the position of Dudley, Sidney and the Puritan party, resolved to oppose the marriage. In this same context the Trionfi became part of contemporary Elizabethan iconography.69 In the Sieve Portraits, painted by George Gower and Quentin Massys between 1579 and 1583, Elizabeth was represented as the virgin Tuccia, holding in her hand the sieve used to bring water from the Tiber to the temple of Vesta. In addition, in both cases, the connection between the image of Elizabeth and Petrarch’s text was further reinforced by verses from the Trionfo d’amore, ‘stancho riposo e riposato affanno’ (‘laboured Britain: Interpreters, Imitators and Translators Over 700 Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 203–16. 66   Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtship of Elizabeth I (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 154–94; Blair Worden, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 89–114. 67   John Stubbs, The Discouerie of a Gaping Gulf Whereinto England is Like to be Swallovved by Another French Mariage (London: Page, 1579), sig. C3r. On Stubbs see Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, pp. 164–6, and Cyndia S. Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 123–37. 68   Philip Sidney, ‘A Discourse of Syr Ph. S. To the Queenes Majesty Touching hir Mariage with Monsieur’, in The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Albert Feuillerat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), III, pp. 51–60, p. 60. 69   On the influence of Petrarch’s Trionfi on Elizabethan iconography see Heather Campbell, ‘“And in their midst a sun”: Petrarch’s Triumphs and the Elizabethan Icon’, in Goddesses and Queens: The Iconography of Elizabeth I, ed. Annaliese F. Connolly and Lisa Hopkins (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 83–100. On the Sieve Portraits see also Stephen Orgel, ‘Shakespeare and the Cannibals’, in Cannibals, Witches, and Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance, ed. Marjorie Garber (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp. 40–66, and Susan Doran ‘Virginity, Divinity and Power: The Portraits of Elizabeth I’, in The Myth of Elizabeth, ed. Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 171–99.

Republicanism and Religious Dissent

139

rest, and restful labour’), appearing in the lower left-hand corner. This recalls the conflict between beauty and chastity, and the final victory over love by the Virgin Queen, constructed on the model of Petrarch’s Laura.70 Massys’s Sieve Portrait was probably commissioned by Christopher Hatton, a firm opponent of the marriage, alongside Dudley.71 Thus, through the allusions to Petrarch and Guevara, the Firste Fruites took sides with Dudley in the delicate English political situation. Florio advised Elizabeth to refuse the Duke of Anjou and to contract a mystical marriage with her reign, emulating in the civil sphere the indissoluble union between Christ and his Church. He concluded repeating, through Guevara, the words Plutarch had directed to Trajan regarding the notion of corpus mysticum: ‘thou and thyne Empire are one mystical body in manner of a true and living body: for these two things ought to be so conformable, that the Emperour maye reioyce to have such subiectes, and the people maye account themselves fortunate, to have such a lord’.72 Conclusion: Reading Politics between Machiavelli and Tacitus As the examination of the writings by Florio, Bruno, Castelvetro and Gentili demonstrates, the interest in Machiavelli was widespread within the Italian Protestant community in London, precisely at the time Wolfe was publishing Il Principe and I Discorsi. This intellectual context must be taken into account in the reconstruction of the early English reception of Machiavelli, in which the Italian reformers played an important role. Machiavelli’s republicanism had already fuelled the Italian Reformation’s opposition to the Catholic Church; in Elizabethan England the Florentine thinker provided the Italian exiles with a language and a method to address contemporary political issues, raised by the development of European diplomacy and by the elaboration of the English imperial ideology. In the complex political situation of the late sixteenth century, when Elizabeth had to face both Puritan and Catholic opposition within her reign, the Italian reformers turned to Machiavelli and Renaissance political literature to take part in the English political debates. They were not only editors and translators but also active readers and interpreters of Machiavelli, reshaping and engaging with his works against the cliché that saw the Florentine thinker as an adviser of tyrants. Along with Machiavelli, the Italian reformers were decisive also in the dissemination of a wide range of political texts relating to reason of state and Tacitism. In Traiano Boccalini’s New-found Politicke, a loose English version of Ragguagli di Parnaso by Florio and others, Machiavelli’s position was supported by references to Tacitus, ‘the father of humane wisdome, and true inventor of 70

  ‘Triumphus Pudicitie’, pp. 90, 212.   Doran, ‘Virginity, Divinity and Power’, p. 187. 72  Florio, Firste Fruites, p. 83. On Guevara’s conception of corpus mysticum see Redondo, pp. 595–8, and Bigalli, pp. 264–80. 71

140

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

modern Policie’.73 The Roman historian had provided his readers with ‘spectacles’ to understand the logic of politics, showing them that ‘Princes are often compelled to commit actions not greatly to be commended’ and for this reason they ‘shadow and blanch over with the specious and precious pretexts of an holy and undefiled intention, of an honest, hearty, and affectionate zeale towards the common good’.74 Like Florio, Gentili concluded his Regales disputationes not with Machiavelli but quoting Scipione Ammirato’s Discorsi sopra Cornelio Tacito.75 In Catholic and Protestant Europe Machiavelli now had to be mentioned in disguise. Yet he was quoted under the name of Tacitus or, as in Gentili’s De iure belli, under the names of sixteenth-century Italian historians such as Francesco Guicciardini and Paolo Giovio. Referring to Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia and Giovio’s Historiae sui temporis, Gentili was actually alluding to the famous passage of Il Principe on Ferdinand the Catholic’s ‘pietosa crudeltà’ (‘pitiful cruelty’), arguing that Charles V too exploited Christian religion in order to justify his aggressive foreign policy. As in De legationibus, in De iure belli Machiavelli provided Gentili with the words to unmask the secrets of arcana imperii, showing that the risks of tyranny lay not only on internal but also on global politics. To preserve religious freedom in Protestant Europe it was necessary to prevent the establishment of a universal monarchy, founded, like the Spanish empire, on the political use of religion and other practices described by Machiavelli: ‘there is no religion so wicked as to order an attack upon men of a different belief. In this way King Ferdinand, who was called the Catholic, covered almost all his excesses with a respectable mantle of religion […] And it was under a similar pretext that the Emperor Charles, the grandson of Ferdinand, veiled his desire for dominion’.76

73   Traiano Boccalini, The New-found Politicke. Disclosing the Secret Natures and Dispositions as well of Private Persons as of Statesmen and Courtiers (London: Williams, 1626), p. 26. 74   Boccalini, p. 30. 75   Alberico Gentili, Regales disputationes (London: Thomas Vautrollerius, 1605), p. 132. 76   Translated from Alberico Gentili, De iure belli (Hanau: Guilielmus Antonius, 1598) I.9, p. 63 (English translation by J.C. Rolfe, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933, p. 40). On Gentili’s reference to Machiavelli see Adriano Prosperi, America e apocalisse e altri saggi (Pisa-Rome: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 1999), pp. 265–6. For further allusions to Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra see Alberico Gentili, De armis romanis (Hanau: Guilielmus Antonius, 1599), now available in the critical edition by B. Kingsbury and B. Straumann, trans. D. Lupher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

Chapter 9

From Machiavellian Policy to Parliamentary Reason of State: Sketches in Early Stuart Political Culture Alessandro Arienzo

Machiavellianism and Machiavelli’s influences in Tudor and Stuart cultures have been studied widely. Early Stuart Machiavellianism is commonly interpreted as the prosecution of the Elizabethan canon, this having a two-fold expression: on the one hand, it gave voice to the dark side of politics, as it was cynical, tyrannical, even devilish; this was Machiavelli as described by the anti-Machiavellists. Seen from this angle, Machiavelli’s works played a disruptive role in the traditional balance between religion and policy, and his figure was used on both sides of the struggle between Catholicism and the Reformation.1 On the other, he offered a crude analysis of statecraft, policy and princely rule, clearly assessing what politics was really about. Machiavelli’s discussion of religion and politics made him fascinating but unpalatable to zealous politicians, yet in the long run he would be acknowledged as being among the founders of modern politics and credited as the philosopher who, by separating politics from religious concerns, recognized the proper aims of political action. Later reason of state theories were considered, therefore, a by-product of his new sensibility towards politics. Friedrich Meinecke interpreted Machiavelli as the agent of a historical necessity leading towards the full recognizance of the state, of its nature, its aims and interests.2 By following his lesson, later historians have often equated Machiavellianism with reason of state, studying it as a discretionary, unbound and often amoral princely rule, made palatable through the justification based on reason and necessities of state.3 More recent studies on English early modern history have paid great attention to 1   John H.M. Salmon, The French Religious Wars in English Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959); Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500–1700 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965). 2   Friedrich Meinecke, Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’État and its Place in Modern History (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1997, first edition 1924). 3   George L. Mosse, The Struggle for Sovereignty in England, from the Reign of Queen Elizabeth to the Petition of Right (East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1950); Margaret A. Judson, The Crisis of the Constitution: An Essay in Constitutional and Political Thought in England, 1603–1645 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1949); Francis

142

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

the humanist influences on political theory of that age. Thus, the images of the clear conflict between absolutism and constitutionalism and the sharp contrast between secular politics and Christian religion were questioned.4 Moreover, the series of studies that began with Pocock’s works showed the important role of Machiavelli’s republicanism as well as crypto-republican instances before and after the Revolution of 1642.5 Machiavellianism, therefore, was neither a barely relevant intellectual fashion for courtiers nor a voguish catchword for ‘would-be politicians’,6 but a crucial feature of seventeenth-century political culture. On the contrary, a narrower attention has been given to reason of state and to its relation to Machiavelli and Machiavellianism. The expression ‘reason of state’, in fact, appeared during the socalled constitutional conflicts that spread through the first decades of the seventeenth century as part of a wider debate on the notion of royal prerogative.7 Indeed, both Machiavellianism and reason of state were expressions of the same need for a secular approach to politics, to statesmanship and statecraft. In early Stuart culture the presence of anti-Machiavellian themes is strongly intertwined with the rejection of royal prerogative, the attack on the cunning policies of James’s and Charles’s courts, and with the languages of reason of state and political necessity. But while Machiavellianism never acquired a fully positive meaning, reason of state could take the shape of good political reason distinguished from a false Machiavellian practice. Certainly the two traditions D. Wormuth, The Royal Prerogative, 1603–1649. A Study in English Political Ideas (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1939). 4   Glenn Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: An Introduction to English Political Thought, 1600–1642 (London: Macmillan, 1992), and Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). For a different approach see Johann P. Sommerville, ‘The Ancient Constitution Reassessed: The Common Law, the Court and the Languages of Politics in Early Modern England’ in The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays in Politics and Political Culture, ed. R. Malcolm Smuts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 39–64, and Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640 (London: Longman, 1986). 5   Zera S. Fink, The Classical Republicans: An Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in Seventeenth-Century England (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1945); John G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Markku Peltonen, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought, 1570– 1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 6   Sir Politick Would-be is a character in Ben Jonson’s Volpone; or, The Fox (London: Thomas Thorpe, 1607). 7   The classic account on constitutional conflicts in the seventeenth century is Joseph R. Tanner, English Constitutional Conflicts of the Seventeenth Century. 1603–1689 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928). On royal prerogative, see Wormuth; Margaret McGlynn, The Royal Prerogative and the Learning of the Inns of Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

From Machiavellian Policy to Parliamentary Reason of State

143

should not be confused with each other as they expressed different views and approaches towards the state and the government. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to highlight some developments in Machiavellianism and reason of state in order to clarify where they converge and diverge by using the issue of policy as a guideline. I will thus distinguish a ‘Machiavellian’ approach to policy from those prerogative powers, extra legem, at the disposal of a legitimate sovereign, whether monarchical or parliamentary. I will argue that while Machiavelli’s influence was crucial in the definition of policy as prudence, his role was only secondary in English debates on reason of state. Outlining Machiavelli’s influence in early Stuart culture and distinguishing it from the influence of Machiavellianism and reason of state is not a simple task. Indeed, the process that goes from the rejection of the Florentine’s works to the acceptance of his figure as a political analyst is not straight.8 It is known that Felix Raab identified Machiavellianism with prudential and secular politics and placed at its core a permanent conflict between religion and policy. This was so evident that in the first decades of the seventeenth century, according to Raab, Machiavelli’s influence may be best considered in the light of the conflict between policy and religion. He therefore argued that the main development between 1603 and 1640 was ‘the intensification of the religion/policy dichotomy’ as this theme became a sort of touchstone ‘by which Englishmen tested their political opinions on Machiavelli, and Machiavelli on their political opinions’.9 In England, the attempt to fit Machiavelli’s proposals into an Augustinian universe was the reason behind the establishment of a doves-and-serpents dichotomy that took the place of the continental good versus false reason of state divide. A different view is that of George Mosse, who held that the conflict between Machiavellianism and religion was not characterized by the complete detachment of the former from religious morality.10 Machiavellianism was not outside a Christian ethical framework as it was a part of a new approach to policy expressing ‘a general tension between religious presupposition and political realities’.11 Within a wider process of centralization of political powers, morality and policy followed conflicting values, but they were not mutually exclusive. In Mosse’s The Struggle for Sovereignty, the Florentine is also deemed the first upholder of reason of state, a theme that, in England, ‘aided the assimilation of the concept of sovereignty’ and played ‘an important part in royalist as well as parliamentary thought’.12 8

  For an outline of Machiavelli’s influence on European political culture see Giuliano Procacci, Machiavelli nella cultura europea dell’età moderna (Bari: Laterza, 1995). 9   Raab, p. 100. 10   George L. Mosse, The Holy Pretence: A Study in Christianity and Reason of State from William Perkins to John Winthrop (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957). In the Preface to the American edition of the Holy Pretence re-edited in 1968, Mosse observed how challenging to his own thesis was Felix Raab’s account. 11  Mosse, The Holy Pretence, p. 5. 12  Mosse, The Struggle for Sovereignty, p. 50.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

144

Both Mosse and Raab accepted Meinecke’s view of Machiavelli’s political theory as the ground of reason of state.13 Scholarly literature has thus described a long-lasting effort of adaptation of moral Christianity to the new dictates of modern state-centric politics, a process in which the conflict between good Christian policies and political prudence was not only a matter of ethical concerns, but also a concrete policy issue. In his Apologia, Reginald Pole reported a conversation between himself and Cromwell that took place at Cardinal Wolsey’s residence regarding a shift in court politics from a moral and conventional tradition to a new, covetously practised, prudential ethics allegedly supported by Machiavelli. Indeed, the advice given by Thomas Cromwell to adapt ‘to the place, the time, and the person’ offered Pole a political principle to worry about.14 Describing this dubious meeting in Wolsey’s house gave Pole the occasion to clarify the moral and political implications of this new ethics. It is not surprising that an intellectual like him could be horrified by an art of politics in which religion was the instrument of the desires and lusts of the sovereign. Notwithstanding his fears, Reginald Pole clearly understood the growing importance of this new way of relating the principles of politics to religious and moral concerns. In the first decades of the seventeenth century the rupture of the traditional balance between honestus and utile was assimilated into political theory, as testified by the writings dedicated to the new Stuart King, describing the manners of a perfect politician and establishing a new balance between contrasting values. Among them, The Court of the Most Illustrious and Most Magnificent James, the First, signed B.A.D. and published in 1619,15 is a text where advice for courtiers and observations concerning both ordinary and extraordinary state preservation are jointly presented. The linking theme is a new vision of wisdom, described as the capacity of a subject to adapt to the will of the king and to adjust to situations and occurrences. As a political virtue, wisdom expresses how everyday self-government is the true ground of government and policy. This theme of self-government is crucial, as it shows the relevance of stoicism in the literary genre of advice for princes’ literature, as well as for those figures supporting the prince in his government, such as the

13

  For a different view, placing reason of state in the context of late medieval political thought, see Gaines Post, ‘Ratio Publicae Utilitatis, Ratio Status and “Reason of State” 1100– 1300’, in Studies in Mediaeval Thought: Public Law and the State, 1100–1322 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 241–309. On Machiavellianism and religion see also Victoria Kahn, ‘Revising the History of Machiavellism: English Machiavellism and the Doctrine of Things Indifferent’, Renaissance Quarterly 46 (1993): pp. 526–61. 14   Quoted in Sydney Anglo’s Machiavelli – The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 124. 15  B.A.D., The Court of the most magnificent James, the first. With divers rules [...] precepts and selected definitions lively delineated [for an ideal courtier] (London: Griffin, 1619).

From Machiavellian Policy to Parliamentary Reason of State

145

courtier or the secretary.16 In early Stuart political culture, concerning the conceptual couple of wisdom/prudence and its new relationship with policy and statecraft, two relevant works are Llodowick Lloyd’s The Practise of Policy (1604) and John Melton’s A Six-folde Politician (1609).17 In his volume, in fact, John Melton distinguishes between two sorts of politician: ‘Politicians in Shew: and substantiall complete experienced politicians’. Among the first sort ‘there are such as by wicked & indirect meanes, compasse many times great matters, whereunto is required small store of learning and arte: for it is an easy matter, for him to burne and make levell to the ground, a famous city’.18 Sometimes they are only ‘vain Politicians’, ‘men voide of all understanding’,19 credulous, or those who ‘through the priviledge of their learning and schollership, attribute unto them-selves the title of Politicians’.20 ‘Substantiall politicians’, instead, are men truly capable of joining divine and human motivations according to wisdom and prudence and experience. They ‘are such […] as are Divinely indued with a singuler gift and blessing of wisedome & iudgment, in all occurrences that may advaunce the glory of God & common safetie of that State’.21 According to Melton, political reasons should be guided by a full comprehension of human motivations and only within the principles of Christian politics may prudence and experience drive politicians’ choices effectively: in many matters a wise Statesmen hath liberty to change his opinion, as reason & the discretion of present occasions, shall guide him, yet in such actions and accidents as shall touch the trial of a good conscience, in relinquishing the same, for any present advantage, is not onely very dangerous, and sildome admitted, but it returnes in the issue much inconvenience, & irrecoverable losse of honor and reputation.22

Melton’s main concern is to offer advice on good policy for the ‘ordinary conservation’23 of the state; in other words, to achieve stability through wise and prudent policies based on everyday politics and self-government. Indeed, ‘Princes affaires must not be ordered by a free discourse of reason, but the government of their estates must bee tyed, either to the customes, lawes, & municipall statutes of their countries already established & ratified; or to the profound and discerning iudgment 16

  On prudence and wisdom in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European culture see Vittorio Dini and Giampiero Stabile, Saggezza e prudenza. Studi per la ricostruzione di un’antropologia in prima età moderna (Naples: Liguori, 1983). 17   Llodowick Lloyd, The Practice of Policy (London: Stafford, 1604); John Melton, A Six-folde Politician: Together with a Six-folde Precept of Policy (London: Busby, 1609). 18   Melton, pp. 10–11. 19   Melton, p. 3. 20   Melton, p. 23. 21   Melton, pp. 10–11. 22   Melton, pp. 157–8. 23   Melton, p. 124.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

146

of discreete, wise, and experienced rulers’.24 Discretion and law, therefore, are the two faces of a wise and stable rule based on the continuity of ordinary conservation rather than on extraordinary government. Likewise, Llodwick Lloyd, in his The Practice of Policy, dedicated to James I, affirms that a wise counsel is both ‘godly’ and ‘good’, embracing Christian virtues and exact prudence. A wise prince should be ‘like Ianus, looking backward as well as forward’,25 handling past experiences and future events as well as able to keep fully informed. Conspirators and seditious subjects, in fact, always recur to ‘policy’ and a king should use wisely the ‘lawful stratagems’ used by Antiochus and Prusias against their enemies, the Romans,26 and as ‘the sword is put into the hands of princes, to punish offendors, and to cut off disobedient and seditious subiects’27 so ‘is dissimulation lawfull in such and like actions’.28 Dissimulation, therefore, may be used ‘yea even in Courts, as Plato sayd, that Princes may dissemble, to prevent greater sufferings to their subiects, and may use such policies as the phisician doeth to his patients, to put poyson in his douggers, to heale his patients’.29 Thus, ‘Princes must be of the nature of the Lyon, and yet be as wise and as wary as the fox’.30 And as ‘wise men in Court with Princes, are as preservatives kept for a sick body’,31 so ‘great wisdome is to looke in time to such, and to cut off the heads of that would willingly have many heads like hydra’.32 Thus, in these texts, the theme of political prudence is generally based on an idea of wisdom intended as an individual ability to adapt to a changing world of secular politics based on self-discipline. This capacity is the prerequisite of any political prudence aiming to mediate between moral and civil laws and concrete political situations. Indeed, any form of political prudence presupposes some kind of wisdom, of adaptive morality. But while the former concerned the rules for action oriented towards specific political aims, the latter posed the problem of the subject, its ethics, values, priorities and self-preservation in a changing and hostile world. In all these works the term policy, while keeping the pejorative meaning acquired in Tudor culture, also defined a set of techniques and political tools to be applied in every field of foreign and home politics,33 which testified to the ongoing process of 24

  Melton, p. 113.   Lloyd, p. 9. 26   Lloyd, p. 15. 27   Lloyd, p. 37. 28   Lloyd, p. 69. 29   Lloyd, p. 69. 30   Lloyd, p. 70. 31   Lloyd, p. 6. 32   Lloyd, p. 7. 33   On the use of policy see Napoleone Orsini, ‘“Policy”: Or the Language of Elizabethan Machiavellianism’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 9 (1946): pp. 122–34; Nigel W. Bawcutt, ‘“Policy”, Machiavellianism and the Earlier Tudor Drama’, English Literary Renaissance 1 (1971): pp. 195–209; Mario Praz, ‘Machiavelli e gl’inglesi dell’epoca Elisabettiana’, in Machiavelli in Inghilterra e altri saggi (Florence: Sansoni, 25

From Machiavellian Policy to Parliamentary Reason of State

147

transition towards a neutral use of the term and the full establishment of politics as a science. Certainly, they share the idea that the well-being of a state could no longer be guaranteed only by rule of law, ancient customs and Christian politics, but it also required individual wisdom, political prudence, discretion and a detailed knowledge of history. Scholars have thus highlighted the importance of Machiavelli’s influence on authors such William Thomas or Walter Raleigh, whose Machiavellianism is rooted in the idea that the Florentine was a careful historian. To a certain extent, if the importance of texts such as The Cabinet-Council or The Maxims of States, for a time long credited to Walter Raleigh, lie in the full acceptance of Machiavellian policy, the relevance of books such as Raleigh’s The History of the World or William Thomas’s The Hystorye of Italy is in their detached and critical evaluation of Machiavelli’s contribution to politics. The Florentine, focusing on history and experience more than moral principles, had the merit of shedding light on the true grounds of politics. Edward Dacres, while rejecting Machiavelli’s anti-Catholicism and his alleged support of cunning politics, probably best expressed this sort of acceptance of Machiavelli as a political historian when he wrote: Mine Authour was a Florentine, whose nationall attribute among the Italians is subtilty, and whose particular eminence in cunning hath styled the most cunning, as his Sectaries, Machiavillians. Not hath this workman taken in hand a worke unproper for his skill, being the discovery of the first foundations, and analyzing of the very grounds, upon which the Romane Commonwealth was built, and afterwards rose to such glory and power, that neither before nor after all the ages of the world ever afforded the like example.34

But it was Francis Bacon who probably best expressed the autonomous and cautious use of Machiavelli’s theory in the early Stuart decades. According to Lord Verulam, prudence and wisdom should not rest on authority or mere observation but, rather, they should consist of the application of reason and learning to historical facts and actions. On the other hand, ‘wisdom touching negotiation or business hath not been hitherto collected into writing, to the great derogation of learning […] It is by learned men for the most part despised, as inferior to virtue, and an enemy to meditation’.35 In his Essays, Bacon expresses a humanistic approach to politics, ‘negotiation or business’, in which Machiavelli, together with Tacitus, 1962), pp. 97–152; Nicolai Rubinstein, ‘The History of the Word “Politicus” in EarlyModern Europe’, in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 41–56; Arnold J. Heidenheimer, ‘Politics, Policy and Policey as Concepts in English and Continental Languages: An Attempt to Explain Divergences’, The Review of Politics 48 (1986): pp. 3–30. 34   Edward Dacres, ‘The Epistle Dedicatory’, in Machiavel’s Discourses upon the First Decade of T. Livius, 1636, sig. A4–A4v as quoted in Raab, p. 97. 35   Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (London: Everyman’s Library, 1986), p. 181.

148

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Lipsius, Montaigne and other classical sources, played a significant role. In this sense, Makku Peltonen observes that Bacon’s Essays should not be interpreted as the product of his experimental method, but rather that he largely borrows from classical republican and humanistic sources, among which are Machiavelli and Tacitus.36 The influence of the Florentine can quite clearly be seen in a number of Bacon’s essays and among them is his much studied discussion of ‘reform’, that is, of changes or ‘innovation’. According to Lord Verulam, innovation in state business and politics is sometimes necessary, and thus indispensable to: reform […] without bravery or scandal of former times and persons; but yet set it down to thyself as well as to create good precedents as to follow them. Reduce things to the first institution, and observe wherein and how they have degenerated; but yet ask counsels of both times; of the ancient time, what is best; and of the latter time, what is fittest.37

Bacon is citing Machiavelli’s idea of reverting back to the first principles of a commonwealth as a remedy against corruption: innovation intended as a good policy of reforming an institution should be the process of rediscovering its primi principi. This theme was to have a great impact on English Stuart political culture and it was certainly crucial for later English republicans, particularly James Harrington and his followers. A different but equally relevant Machiavellian theme that was to exercise a significant influence in later decades was the idea of two classes naturally struggling against each other: the great and the people. Chapter 15 ‘Of Seditions and Troubles’, with its association between rebellion and discontentment, is also one of Bacon’s essays in which he is evidently inspired by the Florentine. According to Bacon, the materials of seditions are of two kinds: ‘much poverty and much discontentment’. He continues, ‘As for discontentments, they are in the politic body like to humours in the natural, which are apt to gather a preternatural heat and to inflame. And let no prince measure the danger of them by this, whether they be just or unjust’.38 Discontentment is certainly a natural phenomenon associated with the existence of two classes, the nobles and the peoples, facing each other in a continuous struggle for domination and freedom: ‘There is in every state (as we know) two portion of subjects, the nobles and the commonalty. When one if these is discontent, the danger is not great; for common people are of slow motion, if they be not excited by the greater sort; and the greater sort are of small strength, except the multitude be apt and ready to move of themselves’.39 36   Markku Peltonen, ‘Politics and Science: Francis Bacon and the True Greatness of States’, The Historical Journal 35 (1992): pp. 279–305; see also Peltonen, Classical Humanism. 37   Francis Bacon, Essays (London: Everyman’s Library, 1995), p. 28. 38  Bacon, Essays, p. 37. 39  Bacon, Essays, p. 39.

From Machiavellian Policy to Parliamentary Reason of State

149

Bacon is here referring to themes that Machiavelli placed at the centre of his analysis of popular republics and republican institutions, but giving them a dispassionate and rather conservative overtone. Indeed, the conflict between the great and the people is one of the pillars of knowledge necessary to prevent the political body from decaying; but unlike the Florentine, Bacon did not place the defence of liberty in the people but in a more traditional balance between the noblesse, the commonalty and the prince, to whom belonged a proper balancing role. As we can see from this scattered evidence, the Machiavellian shift in the balance between policy and religion in early Stuart political culture was substantially accepted both in practice and in theory among a wide number of authors. But in those decades Machiavelli and Machiavellianism played a far more complex role other than separating politics from moral and religious concerns, as they both posed the problem of interpreting political events and the principles for political action by recurring to reason, history and experience. In this sense, the policy/religion divide was a pressing theme among many others, such as institutional reform, a better balance between the court and local or representative institutions, the financial and military crises. Besides Machiavellianism, the themes of reason of state, state necessity and the idea of absolute prerogative also acquired a greater presence in political debate. Reason of state intended as the absolute prerogative of the King, in fact, addressed with greater clarity the necessity of a derogatory and extraordinary government within a constitutional and juridical frame into which Machiavellian policy could possibly fit. Reason of state and Machiavellianism, in fact, followed two different but very close paths, expressing different instances and trying to answer different problems. In the early 1990s a series of studies on the history of reason of state challenged Fredrick Meinecke’s thesis of a Machiavellian reason of state, expressing itself essentially as Machtpolitik.40 But already in 1975 David S. Berkowitz noted how the idea of reason of state in England emerged through different terms such as laws of state, arcana imperii, state necessity, mystery of state and described how the English debate followed a very peculiar trajectory compared with those in continental Europe.41 The English ratio status played a crucial role in the early decades of the seventeenth century and reached its zenith in 1628 when the judges in the Five Knights’ Case ‘upheld “reason of state” as an amalgam of judicial discretion and the royal prerogative justifiably exercised in exceptional cases for the salus populi’.42 A number of studies have now clarified the role of reason of state in English political culture and have stressed its importance for royalist as   For a discussion on this new season of studies, see Artemio E. Baldini (ed.), La ragion di stato dopo Meinecke e Croce. Dibattito su recenti pubblicazioni (Genova: Name, 1999). 41   Daniel S. Berkowitz, ‘Reason of State in England and the Petition of Right, 1603– 1629’, in Staatsräson: Studien zur Geschichte eines politisches Begriff, ed. Roman Schnur (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1975): pp. 165–212. 42   Berkowitz, p. 208. 40

150

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

well as parliamentary and republican thought.43 Nonetheless, reason of state and Machiavellianism are thus associated within the broader neo-humanistic culture that characterized the early seventeenth century.44 These two traditions, while sharing a common, secular vision of politics, focused differently on the issues of State and statecraft and relied differently on history and law. Both theories derived political action from wisdom and experience and based the art of politics on a rational and cumulative knowledge, and both relied on a ruler’s political prudence and discretion. However, ratio status tried to identify the inner motions of the state starting from political and/or juridical principles, such as prerogative, salus populi, necessitas, thus placing less relevance on history and focusing more on the rational evaluation of the means by which the state could guarantee its preservation and stability both in foreign and internal politics.45 While in continental Europe, by following Botero’s example, reason of state was not only the mere recourse to extraordinary means or to discretionary and prerogative powers, as it expressed a wider political reason aiming at the effective governance of a state, in England it would only be in the late seventeenth century that reason of state assumed such a wider governmental feature. In the early decades of the century, the debate on ratio status was mainly concerned with the extraordinary means necessary to guarantee the safety of the state and, within the limits and extent of the King’s powers, to maintain salus populi. In this sense, it is to some extent true that ‘if Bodin never used the term “reason of state”, he succinctly identified the essentials which gave meaning to the concept as it was employed in England: a monarch unbound by law; acting, when necessity required, without the consent of the subjects; and responsible for the security and survival of the State’.46 In this scenario Machiavelli and Machiavellianism played only a minor role in the opposition between ancient constitution and absolute sovereignty. And indeed it was Bodin, more than the Florentine, who was the true opponent of English rights and Parliament. Certainly, dynastic change in 1603 brought a new attempt by the Crown to strengthen its authority and reinforce its institutions and administration. So-called 43   Geoff Baldwin, ‘Reason of State and English Parliaments, 1610–1642’, History of Political Thought 25 (2004): pp. 620–41; Alan C. Houston, ‘Republicanism, the Politics of Necessity and the Rule of Law’, in A Nation Transformed: England After the Restoration, ed. Alan C. Houston and Steve Pincus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): pp. 241–70. 44   Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 45   In his Della Ragion di Stato Giovanni Botero wrote that ‘State is a stable rule over a people and Reason of State is a perfect knowledge of the means by which such a dominion may be founded, preserved and extended. Yet, although in the widest sense the term includes all these, it is concerned most nearly with preservation’. Giovanni Botero, The Reason of State, trans. P.J. and D.P. Waley (London: Routledge, 1956), p. 3. On Botero, see Artemio E. Baldini (ed.), Botero e la ‘Ragion di Stato’ (Florence: Olschki, 1992). 46   Berkowitz, p. 167.

From Machiavellian Policy to Parliamentary Reason of State

151

constitutional debates that took place in the first decades of Stuart rule – both in James’s and Charles’s government – posed central issues in political philosophy and constitutional doctrine as well as government and statecraft. James’s attempt to unify the crowns of England and Scotland, and the ensuing debate on PostNati, or the judgement in the Bates Case of his divine right of kingship, and then, under Charles’s rule, the institutional and constitutional conflicts on the Crown’s alleged right of impositions or imprisonment without cause shown as well as shipmoney taxation: all these events had deep repercussions on state government and governance. Throughout all these moments of English politics, reason of state was discussed via the concept of royal prerogative; a concept that could be used both as an expression of unlawful politics inspired by Machiavellian advisers or as the just and lawful policies of a sovereign bound to guarantee the safety of the realm. At the end of the sixteenth century prerogative was, in fact, intended as a series of property rights and kingly privileges, vaguely exercised according to the common law and attested by the Statute De Prerogativa Regis. The growing contrast among the judges, and between the court and the parliaments, concerning the extraordinary powers of the King and the rights of the subjects determined a series of attempts to offer a convincing definition of the characteristics of political prerogative, quite often resembling the characters of a sovereign power. It is also relevant that Francis Bacon, in his View of the Differences in Question Betwixt the King’s Bench and the Council in the Marches of 1606, also tried to disentangle the concept of absolute prerogative by distinguishing disputable prerogatives – those ordinary powers belonging to the sovereign that may be discussed in courts of justice – from indisputable prerogatives, and separable prerogatives – private rights of the King that may be alienated or ceded – from inseparable prerogatives – the expression of sovereign or public powers that could not be severed by his person.47 Thus, while disputable and separable prerogatives expressed ordinary rights exercised by the King in accordance with law and private justice, indisputable and inseparables prerogatives were no less than a full sovereignty intended as an unbound public power to be used for the good of the Commonwealth. Political prudence and Machiavellian politics could therefore be exercised within the broader frame designed by these kingly prerogatives. In this way, the juridical and political space drawn by the principle of prerogative could be shaped by policy and prudence. This tight relationship is clearly expressed by Chief Baron Fleming in the Bates Case of 1606 when he affirmed that: The king’s power is double, ordinary and absolute, and they have several laws and ends. That ordinary […] is exercised by equity and justice in ordinary courts, and by the civilians is nominated jus privatum, and with us Common Law; […] the absolute power of the king […] is only that which is applied to the 47   Francis Bacon, View of the Differences in Question, in Bacon’s Letters and Life, ed. James Spedding (London: Longman, 1859), vol. 3, p. 371.

152

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England general benefit, and is salus populi; […] and this power […] is most properly named policy and government; and as the constitution of this body varieth with time, so varieth this absolute law, according to the wisedom of the king, for the common good.48

The King has a twofold power: the first aims at ordinary government and is exercised according to the common law and equity; the second, the extraordinary power of the King, is the true government and is exercised by wisdom and discretion, according to salus populi. Only the latter is properly government and policy, being bound by the principles Necessitas non habet legem and Princeps legibus solutus est. Fleming referred to the typical arcana imperii argument, writing that in all matters of state ‘the wisdom and providence of the King is not to be disputed by the subject’.49 Already in 1602, as Johann P. Sommerville reminds us, Baron Fleming argued in favour of monopolies affirming that the English monarchy had a ‘plenaire fullness of power’ by which the King could do whatever ‘their own princely prudence and wisedome’ deemed suitable ‘according to the occurents and necessarie affairs of state’.50 Wisdom and prudence, therefore, were the true rationale of prerogative and reason of state and, according to Fleming, it was always to the people’s benefit that the absolute power of the King should rule. This broadened the concept of prerogative beyond a purely juridical meaning and translated it as policy and government. This ambiguous connection between the spheres of Machiavellian policy and prudence and reason of state, with the swinging of the latter between mere kingly statecraft and a juridical notion of prerogative, would continue throughout the first half of the seventeenth century. Moreover, with the beginning of the civil war and the proclamation of Parliament as the legitimate holder of sovereignty, the complex relationship between Machiavellian policy and reason of state would be linked to that representative institution, giving ratio status and salus populi a radical turn and affirming Machiavelli as a republican theorist more than a cynical and atheist advisor of politicians. We can see this transformation in an interesting volume published in 1649 and titled Vox Coeli. Containing Maxims of Pious Policy, in which the author addresses Parliament with a series of reflections on religion, policy, prudence and reason of state. In the midst of the struggle between King Charles and his Parliament, Enoch Grey confirmed that the supreme power of the ‘English Nation’ resides in the People. Religion, law and equity were the pillars of a well-governed state, and in this sense ‘Religion is the best reason of state’.51 Thus:

48   A Complete Collection of State Trials, ed. Thomas B. Howell (London: Howard, 1816), II, p. 389. 49   Quoted in Berkowitz, p. 176. 50   Sommerville, pp. 61–2. 51   Enoch Grey, Vox Coeli: Containing Maxims of Pious Policy, London: n.p., 1649, p. 1.

From Machiavellian Policy to Parliamentary Reason of State

153

it is an everlasting rule in politicks, that no State can admit any law or priviledge whatsoever, but the same at some times, and in cases of necessitie and urgency, must be violated. Wise men in consideration of the Acts of States – men should respect the reasons, and the ends of their acts, more than the acts themselves; the reason of State lies in the publick safety, the Jus Reipublicae is the bond of Parliament, and viva ratio & manifesta aequitas, is the very anima legis and the fundamentall of all imperiall lawes in all Kingdoms and Common-wealth.52

Again, reason of state is equated with prudence and policy and is based on necessity and public safety as: the affairs of state should not bee managed by custome, by the opinion or affection of men, by the private ends, or interest of any, but by Religion, by Reason, by Conscience, the rules of all acts being divine, and all humane motions must be sutable to the degrees of God, of natures law, to the rules of equity, and for the welfare of the Republicke: and the necessity of law, is to be weigthed in the scale of preservation of publick peace, of liberty, of profit, and of safety of the whole, before respect of any private person, honour, or advantage.53

Indeed, reason of state is not so much reason of interest as: we may read that the Acts of State do alter according to the urgencies of the people, or present exigencies of time, wherein it is more honourable to yeeld to the just demand of friends, as the means, the only means to prevent the imperious commands of rebells. An equall satisfaction of every interest without wrong to Christ and his truth, is the best policy under heaven [and] Whereby the highest & most honourable undertakings of the wisest and most prudent States-men, have frequently been subjected to the world success: to that end, it is the best reason of state, for person publick to remove every ground of private Jealousie in what concerns their own particular interest or benefit.54

The circularity of prudence, reason of state, state necessity and parliamentary government is the core of this text: ‘Prudence is requisite to determine the time and season of judgement’55 and it must be tied to reason of state intended as the preservation of public safety and preservation. Prudence is therefore discretion and wisdom essentially is equity: ‘wisedome is requisite to distinguish causes and persons, wisedome to inflict censures in proportion to demerit’.56 52

    54   55   56   53

Grey, p. 40. Grey, p. 40. Grey, pp. 30–1. Grey, p. 17. Grey, p. 16.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

154

Thus, in the years immediately before the Revolution, political prudence and policy took the shape of salus populi, and reason of state as the outcome of a wider debate on the King’s prerogatives and the subject’s liberties. When Parliament assumed the leadership of the country, it also took a full legislative and executive sovereignty. This parliamentary reason of state is clearly expressed in Henry Parker’s pamphlets57 in which he equated sovereignty with the exercise of an unbound and unrestrained power of self-preservation; and Parliament, as the representative expression of the English nation, has the full right to exercise this arbitrary power: ‘That there is an arbitrary power in every state somewhere tis true, tis necessary […] If the state intrust this to one man, or few, there may be danger in it, but the parliament is neither one nor few; it is indeed the State it selfe’.58 Parker’s reason of state is an extraordinary power in extraordinary cases that is grounded on necessity: ‘That iron law which we call necessity, is but subservent to this law: for rather than a nation shall perish, anything shall be held necessary, and legal by necessity’.59 Therefore ‘We must insist upon Necessitie therefore, as the main ground and end of policie’.60 In the growing contrast between royal prerogative and parliamentary politics, salus populi became a higher principle than that of royal prerogative: ‘This directs us to the trascendent ακμή of all Politiques, to the Paramaunt Law that shall give Law to all humane Lawes whatsoever, and that is Salus Populi: the Law of Prerogative it selfe, it is subservient to this law’.61 Salus populi is thus expressed by the representatives of the English nation assembled in Parliament. Reason of state is policy, and policy aims at safety: ‘Lawes ayme at Iustice, Reason of State aimes at safety: Law secures one subject from another, Law protects subjects from insolence of Princes, and Princes from sedition of Subjects’.62 Reason of state aims at the well-being of a state and operates: by emergent Counsels, and unwritten resolutions [..] it may be rightly said, that the Statesman begins where the lawyer ceaseth: for when warre has silenced lawe, as it often does; Policy is to bee observed as the onely true Law [..] Many men, 57

  On Henry Parker see Margaret A. Judson, ‘Henry Parker and the Theory of Parliamentary Sovereignty’, in Essays in History and Political Theory in Honour of C.H. McIlwain, ed. Carl Wittke (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), pp. 138–67 and Michael Mendle, Henry Parker and the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 58   Henry Parker, Some Observations upon his Majestie Late Answer and Expresses (London: n.p., 1642), p. 34. 59   Henry Parker, The Case of Shipmony Briefly Discussed, According to the Grounds of Laz, Policy, and Conscience. And Most Humbly Presented to the Censure and Correction of the High Court of Parliament (London: n.p., 1640), p. 7. 60   Henry Parker, Jus Populi: or, a Discourse wherein Clear Satisfaction is Given as Well Concerning the Right of Subjects, as the Right of Princes (London: n.p., 1644), p. 43. 61  Parker, The Case of Shipmony, p. 3. 62  Parker, The Case of Shipmony, pp. 18–19.

From Machiavellian Policy to Parliamentary Reason of State

155

especially lawyers, would have Law alone take place in all times, but for my part I think it equally destructive to renounce reason of state, and adhere to Law in times of great extremity, as to renounce Law, & adhere to Policy in times of tranquillity.63

Thus, towards the end of the first half of the century, policy is not only mere statecraft or Machiavellian policy, as described by anti-Machiavellian polemists, but it also meant a dictatorial power above the law, grounded on salus populi and exercised according to reason of state. First as the absolute prerogative of the King, then expressing the common interest of a nation assembled in a representative institution, reason of state would offer a different view on policy. This shift in policy and statecraft paralleled the new influence exercised by Machiavelli after the victory of Parliament when the Florentine assumed a greater influence as a republican and political historian. Indeed, the anti-Machiavellian image of a perfidious Machiavelli kept playing a significant role in the pamphlets against the King and the Parliaments, and later on against the Machiavellian Cromwell. Nonetheless, in policy and statecraft, the Prince had to give way to the new reason of the sovereign state, be it monarchical or parliamentary.

 Parker, The Case of Shipmony, p. 19.

63

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 10

Order, Conflict and Liberty: Machiavellianism in English Political Thought, 1649–1660 Marco Barducci

In his study The English Face of Machiavelli (1964), Felix Raab considered how Machiavelli’s writings had been used ‘both in attack and defence of monarchical rule’ during the 20-year period of the English Revolution. The scholar argued that following Charles I’s decapitation, Machiavelli’s works, in particular the Discourses, contributed to the Commonwealth ideology of liberty, virtue, war and love of one’s country.1 Machiavelli’s influence on seventeenth-century English republicanism has subsequently been examined in numerous studies. Following Pocock’s seminal work, The Machiavellian Moment,2 Paul Rahe and Jonathan Scott analysed the relation between the Florentine Secretary and the classical Greek and Roman inheritance, highlighting the elements of discontinuity (Machiavelli’s attention to the institutional aspects of Modes and Orders)3 and continuity (his attempt to rearrange classical experience to fit modern politics). After 1649, the English Commonwealthsmen were inspired by Machiavelli’s theory of government mutability to justify the fall of the monarchy and the creation of the republic ‘without King or House of Lords’.4 On the other hand, in his study on The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, Jeffrey R. Collins emphasized the influence that the Machiavellian conception of religion as an instrumentum regni had on the Erastian debate in England during the 1650s. Collins maintains that authors like Hobbes and Harrington drew principally from Machiavelli the

  Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500– 1700 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), p. 119, p. 157, pp. 161–8, p. 188. 2   John G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). 3   Paul Anthony Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). 4   Jonathan Scott, Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writing of the English Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 39, p. 81, p. 203. 1

158

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

conviction that ‘Pagan and Jewish polities had successfully controlled religion with ancient prudence’.5 As one can gather from this brief overview, the theme of English Machiavellianism in the last 40 years has engendered differing assessments. Even so, recent studies of the writer’s influence on English political thought from the fall (1649) to the restoration of the monarchy (1660) underline the elements of ideological continuity between the English Revolution and the classical Renaissance and Protestant traditions. In the words of Jonathan Scott: at its ideological core [of the English Revolution] we discover a humanist preoccupation with history in general and antiquity in particular; a protestant commitment to restoration of the purity of the primitive Christian religion; and a vigorous defence of classical and medieval Commonwealth values against the ravages of contemporary economic, social and political change.6

Alongside this prevalent conception of the English Machiavelli as a vehicle of the classical republican tradition, however innovative and original, it is necessary to take into account the elements of novelty, both from a historical and an ideological point of view, that characterized England in the ten years following 1649. This chapter will consider the different uses made of Machiavelli’s works in England between 1649 and 1660 in the light of Hobbes’s and Grotius’s teachings. My purpose is to demonstrate that the notion of a single Machiavellian influence needs to be replaced by a multifaceted one which recognizes that he was read and used alongside other authors (in this case Hobbes and Grotius), whose conceptions of state and society were also the product of, and partly contributed to, the transformation of the political and scientific culture of the seventeenth century. The context here is one in which the problems of authority and obligation, liberty and stability were heightened by the process of military-fiscal statebuilding in an age characterized (at least from the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648) by the struggle to establish a system of international relations between sovereign and independent states. Following the example of the major European monarchs, Charles I had begun a process of state-building in England between 1625 and 1640, aiming at the construction of a military-fiscal state and at tighter control over Church and religion.7 The English Revolution was originally a reaction against the political and religious centralization pursued by Charles I and his ministers; but from 1642 and during the years of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, the necessity to guarantee the survival and governability of the state underlay a process of modernization which triggered the renovation and expansion of England’s 5   Jeffrey R. Collins, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 186. 6   Scott, Commonwealth Principles, p. 85. 7   Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 567–83.

Order, Conflict and Liberty

159

military apparatus, the consequent reform of direct and indirect taxation and the gradual development of a public credit system.8 This led to an expansionist policy with strong Protestant overtones, and the beginning of a campaign of censorship and control over the periodic press which aimed at obtaining the consensus of the nation for the government following the revolution.9 Such dynamics of transformation were also reflected in the use of language, which broke from the tradition of ancient constitutionalism and common law, or, generally speaking, from classical Renaissance languages and themes. For example, the works of Grotius from the 1630s brought a Dutch-derived language of natural rights and of political-religious order to the English debate;10 Hobbes’s doctrine offered English political thought a political science based on Cartesian natural philosophy. Sydney Anglo notes that it is necessary not to reduce the study of Machiavelli to a mere collection of ‘the scattered passages with a Machiavellian resonance, cementing them together, and then presenting the result as a proof of “influence”’.11 Therefore, I will examine the works of Anthony Ascham, Marchamont Nedham and James Harrington, three renowned authors whose ideas were deeply, although differently, inspired by Machiavelli’s political theories, in order to demonstrate how these authors’ synthesis of the works of Machiavelli and of his contemporaries, Grotius and Hobbes, responded to the problems of state order, conflict and freedom. The choice of these three authors also depends on the fact that they illustrate the variety of uses to which the Florentine’s work could be put. Through the readings of Grotius and Hobbes, Ascham, Nedham and Harrington attempted to re-read and modify the meanings and purposes behind the references to the Florentine thinker. Anthony Ascham Between 1648 and 1650, Anthony Ascham was one of the principal non-republican supporters of the Commonwealth.12 His publishing activity runs from July 1648, when the Discourse Wherein is Examined What is Particularly Lawfull during the Confusions and Revolutions of Government was published, until January 1650, when Reply to a Paper of Dr. Sanderson was printed. Since the leaders of the 8   Michael J. Braddick, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558–1714 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 91–103. 9   See Jason Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda During the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). 10   See Marco Barducci, Grozio ed il pensiero politico e religioso inglese, 1632–1678 (Florence: CET, 2010). 11   Sydney Anglo, Machiavelli – The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 8. 12   Marco Barducci, Anthony Ascham ed il pensiero politico inglese, 1648–1650 (Florence: CET, 2008).

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

160

Rump Parliament and of the Council of State shared a political line that aimed at freeing the regime from its revolutionary origins, as well as gaining the acceptance of its Presbyterian and royalist subjects, Ascham was commissioned to support this programme through pamphlets and newspapers. In exchange for this service, on 31 January 1650, the Council of State ‘appointed Mr. Anthony Ascham to go Agent into Spaine’.13 Once he joined his colleagues in Madrid in the summer of 1650, the young ambassador of the Republic of England, waiting to meet Philip IV, was killed by assassins hired by Lord Clarendon. In his works Ascham did not demonstrate any enthusiasm for republican government, declaring, in Discourse and in Confusions and Revolutions of Governments (a reprint of Discourse, published in July 1649 with the addition of nine chapters), that he preferred monarchy. After reading Grotius’s De Imperio Summarum Potestatum Circa Sacra (circulating in manuscript and then translated and published in England in 1651 and 1655 by the Anglican theologian Clement Barksdale),14 Ascham developed his concept of the relationship between obedience and protection and between state and Church. In the light of an analysis of sovereign power, of its functions and aims, Ascham read the other celebrated work of the Dutch jurist, De iure belli ac pacis (also translated by Barksdale for the first time in English in 1654), to elaborate his de facto thesis that linked the concept of sovereignty derived from Bodin, the ius conquestus, with the defence of peace and natural rights. Ascham assigned absolute authority over subjects and the Church to the magistracy which held the summa potestas, and he legitimized such power by virtue of the magistrate’s capacity to guarantee the citizens’ right to live. This idea of a power whose principal aim was to guarantee the peace and safety of individuals was further described by Ascham in Confusions and Revolutions, falling back on the works of ‘Mr. Hobbes’ (particularly the Elements), which circulated illegally between 1649 and 1650.15 The objective of Ascham and the group for which he wrote was not to begin a discussion on the best form of government for England but rather to convince its subjects to obey, giving up any resistance in the name of peace and the safety of ‘life and limbs’. It was with this intention that Ascham, on various occasions, turned to Machiavelli’s writings. In his Discourse of 1648 Ascham wrote in defence of the right of Parliament to impose a new constitutional framework on the King along the lines proposed in the Heads of Proposals. In dealing with the true meaning of the concepts of ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ government, he opened his argument with the Machiavellian statement that changes in government historically occurred in coincidence with war, and that any regime, once established by force, demanded   Journal of the House of Commons 6 (1802), p. 353.   Marco Barducci, ‘Clement Barksdale, Translator of Grotius: Erastianism and Episcopacy in the English Church, 1651–1658’, The Seventeenth Century 25 (2010): pp. 265–80; Barducci, Grozio, ch. 2. 15   See Mark M. Goldsmith, ‘Hobbes’s Ambiguous Politics’, History of Political Thought 11 (1990), pp. 639–74. 13 14

Order, Conflict and Liberty

161

equal obedience from its subjects.16 In the mid-1640s, in the midst of civil war, Presbyterians and Independents found themselves sharing the idea that obedience towards an authority governing with a rational criterion, identifiable with the principle of equity, was legitimate. Rational government meant morally correct government, because God could not act but according to reason.17 In his Discourse Ascham adhered to this vision, superimposing the Machiavellian concept of the inevitability of the ‘confusions and revolutions’ of government and the language of reason of state, with which he defended the Parliament’s right to modify the laws and institutions of the country in case of ‘extreme necessity’. Ascham refers to the Machiavelli of The Prince. From this work he drew parallels between the claims of the Rump Parliament to power following a victorious struggle, the Machiavellian consideration of the ‘new prince’ and the justification of the absolute obedience of subjects in the name of the stability and survival of the state. The theme of the conservation of the state was also central to the Discourses, where Machiavelli (Book I) strongly highlighted the roles of law, order, education, distribution of wealth and the idea of the mixed constitution as a safeguard to the decadence of the republic. In Ascham’s A Discourse, the reference to the Grotian concept of ius belli not only offered a rational and legal foundation for a Machiavellian conquest theory but formed the basis of the peace of the Commonwealth. Moreover, the doctrine of natural rights expounded by Grotius and Hobbes founded the order of the state and the safety and freedom of the individual no longer solely on the virtù of the magistrate or on Aristotle’s moral responsibility of active citizens, but rather on a pact dictated by reason. The new English republican government, therefore, had to act according to equity and meanwhile demand obedience in the interest of the citizens. The conservative purpose of Ascham’s argument seems apparent in Chapter 13 of A Discourse, where he stated that the greatest risk for a society was its reduction to a simple ‘multitude’ following a war. The internal confusions of a state often gave rise to claims in defence of individual and ‘particular rights and liberties’, that may conceal the threat of ruin for the entire community.18 On the basis of such statements scholars have associated Ascham’s name with Hobbes’s. Given the importance of Grotius’s thought in the entire structure of Discourse, it would seem more appropriate to link such views to a reading of De Iure via De Imperio. In these works Grotius underlines the risk of ‘confusion’, arising from the disobedience to sovereign authority, while discussing the multitude and the break-up of the state in relation to the right of resistance and the conflicts deriving

16   Anthony Ascham, A Discourse: Wherein is Examined, What is Particularly Lawfull during the Confusions and Revolutions of Government (London: n.p., 1648), p. 6. 17   Richard Tuck, ‘Power and Authority in Seventeenth-Century England’, The Historical Journal 17 (1974), pp. 43–61, p. 55. 18   Ascham, A Discourse, p. 70.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

162

from different religions.19 In a similar manner, responding to the claims of the Levellers, Ascham asserted the priority of the stability of the state over political and religious freedom. For this reason and implicitly drawing upon De Imperio, he entrusted the civil magistrate with control over the Church and the imposition of rules of worship. Thus Ascham used the ideas of Machiavelli, Grotius and Hobbes to secure the stability and safety of the republic and the freedom of the individual necessary to put an end to the ‘confusions and revolutions of governments’. The references to Machiavelli’s Prince and Discourses touch upon the themes of both conquest and the conservation of the state, whether principality or republic. Nevertheless, Ascham found Grotius and Hobbes’s doctrines more effective than Machiavellian scepticism and ‘reason of state’ in persuading the opponents of the regime to obedience because of their ability to place the good order of the state and the defence of individual rights within a framework of reason, offering legitimacy to society and sovereignty. Marchamont Nedham In 1649, having served on both parliamentary and royalist sides, Nedham was recruited by the Council of State as the editor of the regime’s official periodical, the weekly Mercurius Politicus. From 1650, he was commissioned to address the English people on the virtues of a republican form of government and to defend its legitimacy. To this end, he borrowed examples of classical republics filtered through Machiavelli’s writings, upholding ‘the equation of political liberty with military strength’ and considering England a popular and democratic republic, like Rome, aimed at expansion.20 Each citizen learned republican virtue by serving in the popular army, or New Model Army, ‘the militia lodged only on the people’s hands’.21 Nevertheless, the risk for a republic was that an excessive duration of government office, in this case of Parliament, would bring ‘titular tyrants’ to the constitution, that is, a permanent aristocracy driven by the same interests as the monarchy.22 The circulation of office (in the army as in Parliament) and the limitation of citizens’ wealth so that ‘none of them grow over rich’23 were essential requirements of a free and democratic state.

  Hugo Grotius, De Imperio Summarum Potestatum Circa Sacra: Critical edition with Introduction, English Translation and Commentary, ed. Harm-Jan Van Dam (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p. 180. 20   Blair Worden, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), ch. 1, 2, 9. 21   Mercurius Politicus, 2–7 May 1652. 22   Mercurius Politicus, 2–9, 16–23 October and 8–15, 12–19 February 1652. 23   Mercurius Politicus, 6–13, 13–20, 20–27 May 1652. 19

Order, Conflict and Liberty

163

Nedham’s objective consisted of re-educating to freedom a people who for too long had been reduced to slavery by the monarchy. The error of a free state was to keep ‘the people ignorant of those wayes and meanes that are essentially necessary for the preservation of their liberty’,24 when instead ‘children must be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom’.25 The editorials appearing in Mercurius Politicus between September 1650 and October 1651 reintroduced the ideas previously collected by Nedham in a pamphlet entitled The Case of the Commonwealth of England, published in May 1650 with the approval of the Council of State. The aim was to present the superiority of the republican government over monarchy, demonstrating its advantages and virtues. Once again, the starting point was the analysis of the Roman republic made by Livy and Machiavelli. Nedham borrowed Machiavelli’s equation between republic and defence of freedom, interpreted as individual and collective interests, and in doing so distinguished himself both from Milton, who was more inclined to consider the moral and religious consequences of freedom, and from Harrington, who was instead mainly interested in the conservation of the state.26 The assumption was that the defence of liberty, whose preconditions were internal and external conflict and the alternation of government, was also the main aim of the republican Machiavelli. In fact, as mentioned above, not only in The Prince but also in the Discourses, the theme of freedom was closely linked to the durability of the state. The relationship between freedom and state preservation was a strong theme in Nedham’s writings, which explains why the republican editorialist re-read Machiavelli’s doctrine in the light of Grotius and, to a lesser extent, Hobbes. The first chapters of the 1650 pamphlet cite Machiavelli and Polybius to support the ideas That Government Have their Revolutions and Fatal Periods and That the Power of the Sword is, and ever hath been, the Foundation of all Titles. But it was equally important for the new regime to demonstrate The Equity, Utility, and Necessity of Submission to the Present Government,27 which is why Nedham turns to the natural right theory of Grotius to justify a government following a victorious war against the armed royalists. Nedham cites De Iure to reaffirm the concept that those who had obtained command by force had to be obeyed, since it was established by the ius gentium that the victors of a war had the right ‘to use all meanes for securing what they have gotten, and to exercise a right of dominion over the Conquer’d party’.28 Nedham came back to this   Mercurius Politicus, 6–13 May 1652.   Mercurius Politicus, 27 May–3 June 1652. 26   Scott, Commonwealth Principles, pp. 156–62, pp. 177–8. 27   Marchamont Nedham, The Case of the Commonwealth of England Stated, or the Equity, Utility, and Necessity of a Submission to the Present Government (London: n.p., 1650), titles of Chapters 1 and 2. 28   Nedham, The Case of the Commonwealth, p. 24. 24 25

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

164

in Chapter 3, in which he cited ‘the most excellent Grotius’ to maintain that obedience to the new government was dictated by the principle of ‘necessity’, that the right of resistance had to be alienated to guarantee ‘Publique safety’ and ‘Publique Equity’.29 Again, citing Grotius, more specifically the principle by which ‘In Regno diviso, gens una, pro tempore, quasi due gentes habentur’ (‘In a divided state one nation during the time of its national divisions is esteemed as two nations’),30 Nedham could justify Parliament’s resistance to the King by making it seem like a normal conflict between two enemies of equal authority and therefore bypassing the subversive implications of Protestant resistance theory. As concerns Machiavelli, De Iure not only provided Nedham with a justification for the conquest as a legitimate way of accessing government, but also with a precise idea of the existing relationship between the authority of sovereign power and individual freedom, on the basis of which ‘civil liberty cannot be conceived without sovereignty’, since the former is the ‘source and guardian’ of the latter.31 Nedham used both Machiavelli’s works and Grotius’s De Iure in an attempt to reconcile liberty and the interests of the citizens with the durability of a state legitimately founded on the defence of individual rights. In October 1650, a second edition of The Case appeared with the addition of an appendix containing passages from Hobbes’s De Corpore Politico and Saumaise’s Defensio Regia. The addition of Hobbes’s argument concerning the sovereign right to use the sword as the true guarantee ‘for life, limbs, and property’,32 rather than contradicting republican values, shows Nedham’s attempt to join Machiavellian liberty with a strong sovereign authority in order to avoid the risk of social disintegration deriving from internal conflict. Nedham also turned to Machiavelli in order to criticize Cromwell’s monarchical ambitions. In The Excellencie of a Free State (1656), Nedham’s call ‘for an armed popular republic, with frequent parliaments and rotation of offices’ had the characteristics of an act of opposition against Cromwell’s attempt to clothe himself ‘with the more plausible title of emperor’,33 following the dissolution of the second Parliament of the Protectorate. However, between March and May 1657, during the negotiations culminating in the drafting of Humble Petition and Advice, and in a style which echoed Harrington’s masterpiece Oceana, Nedham wrote a series of editorials ‘from Utopia’, in which he once again discussed the themes of conflict, freedom and state order. Nedham reported that the citizen of ‘this renowned City and Commonwealth of Utopia’ realized that ‘there is a   Quoted in Scott, Commonwealth Principles, p. 18.   Nedham, The Case of the Commonwealth, p. 27. 31   Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres, Prolegomena (Amsterdam: n.p., 1650), §§ 8, 12°; Book I, Chapter 3, esp. §§ 6–24. 32   Quoted in Joseph Frank, Cromwell’s Press Agent: A Critical Biography of Marchamont Nedham, 1620–1678 (Lanham: University Press of America, 1980), p. 85. 33   Marchamont Nedham, The Excellencie of a Free State (London: n.p., 1656), p. xxi. 29

30

Order, Conflict and Liberty

165

necessity of a settlement, and that it matters not what the form be’.34 To this end, the Senate of Utopia gathered to decide ‘the waies and means of reducing this Commonwealth to a happy establishment’.35 The senators had understood the error made by ‘the High Shoon, the Levellers, and the Enthousiasts’ in invoking liberty in the political and religious sphere. Such freedom had not created a ‘free state’ but had destroyed the government ‘of our predecessors’ and led the country to the brink of anarchy.36 The Senate therefore reached a dual conclusion. First of all, the inhabitants of Utopia were wrong to consider that every government derives ‘from principles of natural right and freedom’. The truth was that ‘government is an Art or Artifice […] found out by man’s wisdom […] he being necessitated, in order to the more serene enjoying of his freedom, to resign up his natural right for the publick convenience of himself and the community where he lives’. Secondly, ‘there is no everlasting principle in government, as to any one particular form […] For the rules and reasons of government cannot be always the same, it depending upon future contingents; and therefore must be alterable according to the variety of emerging circumstances and accidents’. A government was therefore better if able to guarantee ‘a free enjoyment and security of their rights and properties’.37 Thus, Nedham supported the Humble Petition and Advice, writing, after the failure of the republican government, that the senate of Utopia re-established ‘the form of the three Estates’, according to the principle that ‘when the ends of governments cannot otherwise be conserved, [it is necessary] to revert upon the old bottom and foundation’.38 The editorials from Utopia therefore present a synthesis of the topics discussed by Machiavelli and Hobbes. Nedham took from The Prince and Discourses the idea that every new government, in order to last, had to adapt to the institutional tradition of the country and, if corrupt, to return to first principles. But then, as in the appendix to The Case, he overlapped this Machiavellian principle with the Hobbesian dichotomy between a naturally anarchical state and a calm and safe society. Nedham also used Machiavelli and Hobbes to criticize the search for models of political and religious reform in England. This theme characterized one of Nedham’s last republican works before the restoration of Charles II. In March 1660, by which time General Monck had arrived in London to prepare for the return of the monarchy, Newes from Brussels appeared; pretending to be a knight from the court of Charles II about to return to London from exile in Brussels, Nedham made a last desperate effort in defence of the Commonwealth. He returned to Machiavellian rhetoric, 34

    36   37   38   35

Mercurius Politicus, from Utopia, 19–26 March 1657. Mercurius Politicus, from Utopia, 12–19 March 1657. Mercurius Politicus, from Utopia, 19–26 March 1657. Mercurius Politicus, from Utopia, 19–26 March 1657. Mercurius Politicus, from Utopia, 26 March–2 April 1657.

166

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

comparing Charles II to Cesare Borgia and supporting the free government of the republic against the ‘tyrannical’ one of the monarchy. Nedham’s Machiavellianism defended the political and religious freedom of English classical republicanism. Nevertheless, the combined use he made of the doctrines of Machiavelli, Grotius and Hobbes in relation to the themes of conservation, freedom and conflict, also demonstrates the existence of a discourse on the Commonwealth that, after 1649, was not strictly republican. James Harrington The work of James Harrington has been represented in different ways. He has been considered an example of Hobbesian moral philosophy,39 or of a political philosophy with utopian tendencies;40 he has also been associated with the tradition of classical English republicanism, influenced by Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, Livy, Sallust, Cicero and, above all, Machiavelli.41 Harrington’s works appeared between 1656 and 1659. All those traditions of thought contributed, in different ways, to the extraordinary complexity of themes characterizing his work. There is little doubt, however, that Machiavelli’s influence is substantial. In the First Part of the Preliminaries of Oceana, Harrington described Machiavelli as a master of ancient prudence. Machiavelli had, in fact, not only begun the analysis of feudal dependence and its incompatibility with republican government, but had also perceived that the only way of countermanding the terrible Polybian law of anacyclosis was to balance the virtue of the many with that of the few, following which Harrington would define the principle of ‘dividing and choosing’. Furthermore, Harrington articulated the rudimentary Machiavellian doctrine of the relationship between ownership and freedom and placed it at the foundation of a political theory that sets the republic’s duration against the vicissitudes of fortuna. Harrington’s republican doctrine took up the republicanism of the Discourses and the union between active citizenship and the 39   Glenn Burgess, ‘Repacifying the Polity: The Responses of Hobbes and Harrington to the “Crisis of Common Law”’, in Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution, ed. Ian Gentles, John Morrill and Blair Worden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1998), pp. 202–28; Jonathan Scott, ‘The Peace of Silence: Thucydides and the English Civil War’, in The Certainty of Doubt: Tributes to Peter Munz, ed. Miles Fairburn and William H. Oliver (Wellington: Victoria University Press: 1996), pp. 90–116. 40   James Colin Davis, Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 41   John G.A. Pocock, ‘Introduction’, in The Political Works of James Harrington, ed. John G.A. Pocock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Pocock, Machiavellian Moment; Blair Worden, ‘James Harrington and “The Commonwealth of Oceana”, 1656’, in Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society 1649–1776, ed. David Wootton (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 83–110.

Order, Conflict and Liberty

167

exercise of arms, and sought to combine the expansionism of the Roman republic with the stability of Venice and Sparta. At the centre of Harrington’s republican design are the agrarian law, linking the interests of the many with those of the few, and the rotation of offices. Harrington also took from Machiavelli the image of the legislator, ‘Lord Archon’, who, in a moment of imbalance between the distribution of land and the political superstructure of Oceana, aimed to re-establish the ‘return to principles’ through an agrarian law.42 Finally, from Machiavelli, Harrington drew his own view of the political implications of faith, proposing the establishment of a civil religion free from the ambitions of the clergy.43 It has been said that Harrington was a disciple of Hobbes, and consequently not a representative of the classical republican tradition, since both Oceana and Leviathan share the aim of state peace and stability.44 Such a conclusion, however, is based on a type of syllogism suggesting that insofar as the republican Machiavelli was a defender of a neo-Roman conception of freedom, which put the glory of the state before its stability, then Harrington could not be completely inspired by him in his search for the stability of an immortal model of the republic. In Oceana Harrington elaborated a doctrine of the preservation of the republic that he thought could unify Machiavelli’s republicanism as expressed in the Discourses and the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes – an attempt also seen in Marchamont Nedham. Nonetheless, in his later works he referred more insistently to the orders of the republic of Israel, thus recalling Machiavelli and Grotius. In Oceana the search for the republic’s stability takes on utopian tendencies, by means of which Harrington ‘sought a perfect government and a perfect society through institutional, rather than personal means’.45 In the same way Machiavelli, in Book I of the Discourses, links the analysis of law, customs and institutions to the republic’s survival, adding that in ancient Rome social conflict had contributed to the improvement of institutions and the safeguarding of liberty. According to Harrington, however, Machiavelli ‘hath missed […] very narrowly and dangerously’ the point that the foundations resided in the ‘balance of dominion’46 (property, especially landed property). Secondly, Machiavelli had linked the rise of the republic to the moral quality of the citizens.47 The principles of nature, inferred from Cartesian philosophy and applied by Hobbes to the study of politics, offered Harrington a different rational foundation for the creation of an immortal republic, one capable of overcoming the limits   James Harrington, Oceana, in Political Works, ed. John G.A. Pocock, pp. 207–10, pp. 233–45, pp. 267–81, pp. 320–33. 43   Harrington, Oceana, pp. 185–7. 44   See Jonathan Scott, ‘The Rapture of Motion: James Harrington’s Republicanism’, in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, ed. Nicholas Phillipson, Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 139–63. 45   Davis, Utopia, p. 214. 46   Harrington, Oceana, pp. 166–7. 47   Harrington, Oceana, pp. 321–2. 42

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

168

of Machiavellian republicanism and inspired by the historical analysis of the greatness and decadence of Rome. In fact, since the cause of the republic’s corruption was found in the unequal distribution of land and the gradual autonomy of religious from civil power, Harrington opposed Machiavellian relativism with Hobbes’s statement that nature’s function should also be imitated in politics, ‘for in the art of a man, being the imitation of nature which is the art of God. There is nothing so like the first call of beautiful order out of chaos and confusion as the architecture of a well ordered commonwealth’.48 Rather than supporting Hobbes, however, Harrington considered ancient teachings useful to understand the laws of nature; since ‘the matter and forme’ of Oceana were matter and movement, the agrarian law and the rotation of government offices could correct the defects of antiquity’s most perfect republics, including Israel. Harrington proposed ‘to show Hobbes what he taught me’, affirming that ‘in the institution or building of a commonwealth, the first work is no other than fitting and distributing the materials. The materials of a commonwealth are the people’.49 Considering the population as material in movement meant reducing the moral responsibility of political participation to the observance of elective rituals,50 inspired by a Hobbesian ‘civic “motion”’51 and the Venetian republic’s ‘mechanization of virtue’.52 In Oceana Hobbes’s doctrine forms the metaphysical foundation (matter and movement) of an eternal republic governed by God’s laws and inspired, through Machiavelli, by the orders of the ancient (Israel, Rome, Sparta) and modern (Venice) republics. Harrington’s writings after 1656 discuss the search for a model republic able to guarantee stability and religious peace: Machiavelli’s contribution remains almost unchanged, Hobbes loses importance and Grotius assumes an even greater influence. Harrington had already accused Hobbes in Oceana of having failed, by founding his ‘natural philosophy’ on the sword rather than on the ‘balance of property’.53 Therefore, the lessons that Hobbes had drawn from Greek and Roman history, ignoring the link between the functioning of the republic and the distribution of wealth,54 were mistaken. The republic that best incorporated the laws of God and nature into its own orders was neither Rome nor Sparta but Israel. ‘Now whether I have rightly transcribed these principles of a commonwealth out of nature’, Harrington writes in the Preliminaries to Oceana, ‘I shall appeal unto God and to   Harrington, Oceana, p. 341.   Harrington, Oceana, p. 212. 50   Davis, Utopia, p. 209. 51   Scott, ‘Rapture of Motion’, p. 151. 52   Vittorio Conti, ‘The Mechanization of Virtue: Republican Rituals in Italian Political Thought in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, vol. 2, ed. Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 73–84. 53   Harrington, Oceana, p. 62. 54   Harrington, ‘The Prerogative of Popular Government’, in Political Works, p. 412. 48 49

Order, Conflict and Liberty

169

the world. Unto God in the fabric of the commonwealth of Israel, and unto the world in the universal series of ancient prudence’.55 In examining the ‘model republic’ of Israel, that best historical example of the Commonwealth Harrington hoped could be superseded in England, the principal source was Grotius.56 The two books of The Prerogative of Popular Government (1658) refuted the theses of three critics: Matthew Wren, author of Considerations upon Mr. Harrington’s Commonwealth of Oceana (1657) and, in the second book, the Presbyterian Lazarus Seaman and the Anglican Henry Hammond. In Considerations, in opposition to Oceana, Wren cited Hobbes to maintain that neither the constitution nor the laws could guarantee the duration of the state and reconcile the interests of the many and the few. Harrington replied with a demonstration that the theme of authority is connected with the ownership of land. To support his point he quoted Grotius’s De Iure to maintain that every ‘pater familias est rex’ by virtue of the authority he exercises through his property. Such a relationship between landed property and authority, Harrington continued (citing Grotius’s De Imperio, II, §IV), brought about three types of ‘fathers or families’. When there is one ‘land-lord’, as in the case of Adam, the government is a monarchy; when there are few owners, as in the case of Lot, Abraham and the other patriarchs (‘many princes’), they unite and give life to a mixed monarchy, or ‘as Grotius believes, a kind of Commonwealth administered in the land of Canaan by Melchizedeck, unto whom as king and priest Abraham paid tithes of all that he had’. Third and final was the case when ‘the multitude are landlords (which happened in the division of the land of Canaan) make a commonwealth’.57 Therefore, Harrington cites De Imperio to demonstrate the patriarchal origin of authority, including republican authority, and its link with land ownership. In making this case he refers to the Grotian example of Melchizedeck’s authority over Canaan’s land, and then to Moses before the advent of Aaron, defining the magistrate ‘king and priest’. ‘The consent of the nations evinceth’, Harrington continues, following in the steps of De Imperio, ‘that the function of the clergy or priests, except where otherwise determined of by law, appartaineth to the magistrate’.58 Monarchy and iure divino clericalism were successive corruptions of the Commonwealth of Israel and the reason why the reform of the English republic had to be founded upon a democratic election of civil magistrates and the clergy. Harrington mainly relied on Grotius when re-reading, in an Erastian light, the relationship between civil and religious authority among the ancient populations of Israel. The exception was his disagreement with Grotius’s conclusions on the   Harrington, ‘The Preliminaries to Oceana’, in Political Works, p. 172.   On Harrington’s use of Grotius as a source on the Hebrew republic, see Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 117–22; Barducci, Grozio, pp. 108–14. 57   Harrington, The Prerogative, p. 411. 58   Harrington, The Prerogative, p. 412. 55 56

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

170

ordination of the clergy. For Harrington, to re-establish the primal and virtuous interrelationship between civil and ecclesiastical authority that had characterized the respublica Hebræorum, it was necessary that ‘a free people had thus far power of electing their priests’ through chirotonia (by the show of hands of the faithful),59 while in De Imperio Grotius supported the ordination of bishops by the laying on of hands (chirotesia) by a civil magistrate. Harrington’s use of Grotius as a guide to Hebrew politics becomes particularly relevant in Book I, Chapter 11 of Prerogative on Agrarian Law and Public Interest. The issue here is the ‘popular balance of land’ following the distribution of land to the Israelites by God.60 Harrington contradicted Wren, who maintained that there were no traces of the agrarian law founded by Moses in the sacred scriptures. In particular he cited Grotius’s Annotationes ad Vetus Testamentum, noting that ‘God, by the ballot of Israel […] divided the land (some respect had unto the Princes and patriarchs for the rest) to every one his inheritance, according unto the number of names’.61 Again the authority of Grotius’s Annotationes was called upon by Harrington to demonstrate how the rotation of official posts guaranteed that, before the advent of Saul’s monarchy, the Commonwealth of Israel worked well.62 In Pian Piano (1658) Harrington draws from Annotationes ad Vetus Testamentum a comment from Deuteronomy distinguishing, within the Hebrew republic, between a ‘senate’ with the function of debating and the ‘people’ with the function of deciding.63 In The Stumblingblock of Disobedience (1658), Harrington turned to the authority of De Iure to support the popular derivation of the Sanhendrin’s authority, whose power to control the monarchy did not decline until Herod’s reign. Once more explicitly citing Grotius, Harrington compared the mixed government of Israel to the ‘three estates in a Gothic model’.64 Again, in The Art of Lawgiving (1659), Harrington referred to Elohim (as an example of a sacred republic) whose orders were founded by God through the legislator Moses. After 1656, the idea of a return to the principles of the Hebrew republic and the attention to the laws of the republic of Israel shape Harrington’s response (in method and partly in content) to the teaching of the master of ancient prudence, Machiavelli. Unlike the Florentine, however, religion in Harrington does not have an exclusively political significance, but plays a central role in the creation of a

  Harrington, Oceana, p. 384.   See Lea Campos Boralevi, ‘Il Problema del potere nel XVII secolo. Giubileo, proprietà, libertà’, in Il potere come problema nella letteratura politica della prima età moderna, ed. Saffo Testoni Binetti (Florence: CET, 2005), pp. 167–82. 61   Harrington, The Prerogative, p. 462. 62   Harrington, The Prerogative, p. 474n. 63   James Harrington, Pian Piano, in Political Works, p. 375. 64   James Harrington, The Stumbling-block of Disobedience, in Political Works, pp. 576–7. 59 60

Order, Conflict and Liberty

171

‘new Jerusalem’ in England.65 Thus Harrington’s recognition of the republic of Israel’s superior role over Rome is explained, as is his recalling of texts by the seventeenth-century Dutch protestant reformer Grotius, the source of knowledge on the orders of the respublica Hebræorum. Conclusion In light of this analysis, one may make at least three observations on English Machiavellianism between 1649 and 1660. First of all, re-reading the texts of Ascham, Nedham and Harrington not so much in the light of their conformity and even less as a corpus of doctrines and languages exemplifying English classical republicanism, but rather in the light of more neutral political categories (like those of order, conflict and liberty), it is possible to make out the presence of a Machiavelli who discussed conservation, state decadence, liberty and war in a complementary manner. Behind English Machiavellianism after 1649 there were works by Machiavelli with many aspects in common but which, even in the light of doctrines drawn from other authors, present undertones of differing significance. Between 1648 and 1650, in order to establish the Commonwealth and the obedience of citizens, Ascham proposed a synthesis between Machiavelli, Grotius and Hobbes underlining the priority of state order, over political participation, and justified war as a means of accessing power, only to confirm, on the basis of the ius conquestus, the necessity of re-establishing peace. In such a context, Machiavelli was read in the light of the preservation of the state and was seen by Ascham as more marginal. Nedham, on the other hand, defended a Machiavellian republicanism, based on the principle of liberty, and exalted the greatness of Rome. Furthermore, he took from Machiavelli the idea of a relationship between freedom (conceived in a republican sense as active citizenship and, by following Hobbes’s Leviathan, as the defence ‘of life, limbs and property’) and the republic’s conservation, but he associated it with Grotius’s theme of society as fons et custodia iuris (‘the source and the keeper of the law’). Hence, there was also on Nedham’s part an awareness that freedom derived not only from turmoil and conflict but also from the stability of the state; thus he decided to superimpose the Machiavelli of order, law and customs, on the Grotius of De Iure (embedding the authority of the state, independent of its form, in the argument of rights and institutions that constitute society) and partly on Hobbes’s monarchy (which, instead, highlighted the risk of oppression existing outside the state). The language of a commonwealth that was not necessarily republican was also at the heart of Harrington’s contradictory reputation. As with Nedham, Machiavelli’s influence on Harrington was greater than other sources but, nonetheless, his use answered, rather, the conservative aims of Ascham. The creation of an immortal Commonwealth could be achieved by correcting the errors made by his masters Machiavelli, Hobbes and Grotius. 65

  See Pocock, ‘Introduction’, p. 72.

172

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

The defects of classical Aristotelian liberty, as inherited from the Discourses, could be redressed (with Hobbes) by reducing the participation of citizens to mere ‘movement’ (Oceana). Or, following Grotius, by modelling the English republic on the republic of Israel which, more than every other republic, conformed to the laws of God and nature. The eclecticism of these English writers was not simply a juxtaposition of ideas, but rested on the rediscovery in Machiavelli, Grotius and Hobbes, of arguments on conflict, liberty and war, useful in facing the question of the best constitutional and social order of the republic in a historical moment characterized by extreme instability and great expectations of reform. The presence of Grotius’s and Hobbes’s doctrines of the state and of natural rights, alongside Machiavelli, strongly modified the meaning attributed to the Florentine. Such a conclusion, as indicated at the beginning, is not intended to refute the generally accepted thesis of the persistence in the mid-seventeenth-century English political debate of classical and Renaissance themes and languages. Rather, it is meant to highlight elements of novelty, particularly relevant to the great diffusion of Grotius’s and Hobbes’s doctrines (one could also include Bodin), which consequently force us to reconsider the nature and meaning of their allusions to Machiavelli. Therefore, before dealing with the relationship between Machiavelli and classical English republicanism, we should discuss the role and meaning that the Florentine’s ideas assumed within a complex doctrinal and linguistic context, which adapted the language of classico-Renaissance tradition to the new languages of political science and natural philosophy.

Chapter 11

Machiavelli’s Discorsi and Hobbes’s Leviathan: Religion as Ideology Fabio Raimondi

I. Machiavelli and Hobbes engaged in very different ways in the construction of a political science, theorizing the necessity of religion in order to ensure the government of the City (Florence) and the Commonwealth (England). In this chapter, I will discuss the specific function that Machiavelli and Hobbes give to religion. In Machiavelli the civil, republican religion of virtue which is a particular interpretation of the republican motto ‘pro patria mori’,1 has the aim to adjust permanently the composition of the factions (parti or fazioni and not partiti, parties) of the City to the needs of the present; in Hobbes, instead, a particular version of the Christian religion that I will call basic Christianity binds everyone to an unchangeable role. Also, if Machiavelli commends the tumulti2 because only through them is it possible to mix the humours of the City, Hobbes condemns any kind of internal conflict as it will subvert the dualistic hierarchy between the sovereign and the citizen-subjects of the Commonwealth. In the first case the City must provide for the possibility of the humours to mix, and in the second   See Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), chap. V, § 3. 2   Tumult means a specific event. Machiavelli takes the use of tumultus from Livius’s Ab urbe condita, in which a tumultus happens when the plebeians ‘in publicum proripiunt […] cum clamore’ (‘The disturbance was spread […] throughout the entire city’) and act not only ‘clamoribus modo apertis, sed, quod multo perniciosius erat, secessione occultisque conloquiis’ (‘with not only open protests but, what was far more dangerous, secret gatherings and conferences’): see Livy, The History of Rome: Books I–V, trans. and ed. Valerie M. Warrior (Indianapolis, Cambridge: Hachette, 2006), p. 111, p. 116. Machiavelli writes that during a tumulto it is possible ‘to see the people together crying out against the Senate, the Senate against the people, running tumultuously through the streets, closing shops, the whole plebs leaving Rome’ (Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 16–17). So, a tumultus is a riot, considering that Livius uses seditio synonymously, and not as ‘disorder’ (which has only a negative meaning). For Machiavelli a tumultus is the generative moment of the political order and not only its loss. On the difference between tumultus and bellum see Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 42. 1

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

174

the Commonwealth must prevent the reversal of political and social roles. Thus, Machiavelli believes that tumults, as in ancient republican Rome, could be the paradoxical guarantee of stability, safety, expansion and the freedom of Florence, while Hobbes thinks that only internal peace, intended as the absence of war, can ensure stability, safety, expansion and the freedom of the Commonwealth. The different times in which Machiavelli and Hobbes lived were undoubtedly influential, but a mere reference to the temporal context is not sufficient to explain the strong difference between the two approaches. Machiavelli maintains that tumults in the City may prove good instruments to introduce and secure freedom, if these conflicts happen in order to reach a common good and not to uphold personal interests.3 The paradox is that in Florence the common good is always identified with the part of the City desiring ‘neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great’.4 On the contrary, Hobbes deems it necessary to prevent any conflict in whatever form in order to live freely in a commonwealth. The central issue, therefore, is how to obtain and preserve peace. If in Machiavelli’s opinion one is free only when he fights for freedom, in Hobbes one is free only if he does not have to fight but can live in peace. Consequently, Hobbes sees freedom and peace as identical,5 while Machiavelli thinks that freedom does not necessarily coincide with peace. Both see the rise of the middle class as central to the fight against the nobles, but their conclusions are very different: Machiavelli bases his reasoning upon the value of political virtue, while Hobbes establishes his theory on the demands of capitalistic economy. In short, Machiavelli considers economic expansion subordinate to politics, because only virtuous politics can promote economic development and, at the same time, equality among citizens. Hobbes, on the contrary, considers politics subordinate to economy and to its main instrument, the law, whose only source is the sovereign. The task of the Hobbesian sovereign, in fact, is to neutralize political conflicts through the monopoly of force.6 Machiavelli’s reasoning is founded upon politics, 3

  Gennaro Barbuto, ‘Machiavelli e il bene comune. Una politica ossimorica’, in Antinomie della politica. Saggio su Machiavelli (Naples: Liguori, 2007), pp. 7–44. 4   See Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, with Related Documents, trans. and ed. William J. Connell, Chapter 9, p. 69; see also Machiavelli, Discourses, I, IV, p. 16 and I, V, p. 18. In Machiavelli’s political thought, humours are the natural political inclination of a social group, the formation of which is historical. Unlike the four humours of Galenic medicine or the Aristotelian hexis, which are identical for all human bodies, the two Machiavellian humours are the typical habits of the political parts inside the City. The humour of those who ‘desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed’ is addressed against the nobles and no-one else. 5   Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. MacPherson (London: Penguin, 1968), part II, Chapter 21, ‘Of the liberty of the Subjects’. 6   See Giuseppe Duso, ‘Introduzione: patto sociale e forma politica’ and Alessandro Biral, ‘Hobbes: la società senza governo’, in Il contratto sociale nella filosofia politica moderna, ed. Giuseppe Duso (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987), pp. 7–49 and pp. 51–108. See also Mario Piccinini, ‘Potere comune e rappresentanza in Thomas Hobbes’, in Il potere. Per la storia della filosofia politica moderna, ed. Giuseppe Duso (Rome: Carocci, 1999), pp. 123–41.

Machiavelli’s Discorsi and Hobbes’s Leviathan

175

and so upon the virtue necessary to face the conflicts between the humours, while Hobbes’s reasoning is founded upon economy and its specific rationale: the balance between debit and credit. Therefore, why is Machiavelli convinced that there is political order only if the humours collide with one another, continuously compounding and re-compounding the parts of the City, while Hobbes deems that social and political order is possible only if all citizens are forever subjects, that is, subjugated to the sovereign? Perhaps Hobbes’s aim is not only freedom but also safety. In Hobbes freedom and safety are closely linked, since only in a safe Commonwealth is it possible to live free; however, it is necessary to point out that also in Machiavelli there is no difference between safety and freedom: only a free City can be safe. Moreover, neither conceive freedom as the prerogative of an individual to act in complete conformity with his/her will as this would lead to license or anarchy: license because this is the typical behaviour of a tyrant who pursues his own benefit,7 and anarchy because one can follow one’s own will only through nature, and ‘the condition of mere nature, that is to say, of absolute liberty […] is anarchy and the condition of war’.8 One can solve this issue only by considering another aspect: the Hobbesian search of a guarantee for peace and security, the attempt to use the rules of commercial law in order to control the world of politics through regulations and norms. In fact, the diverging attitudes of Machiavelli and Hobbes towards the law explain their opposing political theories. While Hobbes maintains that the sovereign must be the guarantor of social order, Machiavelli upholds that the only paradoxical guarantee of social order is the political conflict between the humours and parts: tumults.9 Machiavelli argues that there is order only if the people are free because they fight for their safety, while Hobbes maintains that there is order only if the people have no need to fight as their safety is assured by the sovereign. Thus, republican order in Machiavelli is not compatible with any 7   Discorsi, I.10 and I.16, pp. 44–5. Tyranny means ‘an absolute power [una potestà assoluta]’ (Discorsi, I.25, p. 61), that is, absence of freedom for the citizens and systematic violation of the laws on the part of the prince; in a tyranny, the government is tied only by private interests and not to the common good (Discorsi, I.40, p. 88). 8   Hobbes, II.XXXI.1, p. 574; see also L II.XXI.1–10. 9   It is important to specify that there are only two humours (one is the expression of a desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, the other expression of the opposite desire to command and oppress the people), while the parts are variable because they derive from the clashes between humours. In other words, the clashes between the humours continuously modify and redefine the parts of the City. However, nobles will always be those who wish to dominate, and plebs, or people, will always be those who do not want to be dominated; see Fabio Raimondi, ‘Il paradigma-Firenze nel Discursus florentinarum rerum di Machiavelli: in principio sono i conflitti, i conflitti governano’, in Figure della guerra. La riflessione su pace, conflitto e giustizia tra medioevo e prima età moderna, ed. Merio Scattola (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2003), pp. 145–75 and ‘Machiavelli e il problema della costituzione mista di Roma’, Filosofia Politica 19 (2005): pp. 49–61.

176

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

kind of conflict10 but only with tumults, and, if in Hobbes there is a curt alternative between political or social order and any kind of conflict, in Machiavelli this alternative is between struggle in order to not be dominated and struggle in order to dominate. Consequently, if political order in Hobbes’s philosophy can only be brought about by a definitive renunciation of bodily force, in Machiavelli civil order, that is, republican order, is a product of the popular use of force against those who would dominate the People;11 to dominate bears the imprint of a feudal relationship between master (dominus) and servant (servus), and hence the right of the master to command and oppress the servant. II. Religion according to Machiavelli is a way of acting politically rather than a faith, as it is for Christianity. The Prince has to display a religious behaviour even if he is not a believer,12 because religion is an instrumentum regni. The role religion plays in Machiavelli emerges more clearly in the Discourses on Livy. Here he condemns the weakness of the idle Christian religion13 and praises ‘those who have been heads and orderers [ordinatori] of religions’,14 especially the founder of Roman religion: Numa Pompilio, who: as he found a very ferocious people and wished to reduce it to civil obedience with the arts of peace, he turned to religion as a thing altogether necessary if he wished to maintain a civilization; and he constituted it so that for many centuries there was never so much fear of God as in that republic, which made easier whatever enterprise the Senate or the great men of Rome might plan to make […] Whoever considers well the Roman histories sees how much religion served to command armies, to animate the plebs, to keep men good, to bring shame to the wicked […]: for where there is religion, arms can easily be introduced, and where there are arms and not religion, the latter can be introduced only with difficulty […] And truly there was never any orderer of extraordinary laws for a people who did not have recourse to God, because otherwise they would not have been accepted. For a prudent individual knows many goods that do not 10   See Roberto Esposito, Ordine e conflitto. Machiavelli e la letteratura politica del rinascimento italiano (Naples: Liguori, 1984), pp. 186–8. 11   In Florence the people were both divided among themselves (popolo grasso, popolo minuto, and so on) and militarily self-organized: see Fabio Raimondi, ‘La “cagione della prima divisione” di Firenze. Per un’indagine sul materialismo di Machiavelli’, in Machiavelli: immaginazione e contingenza, ed. Filippo Del Lucchese, Luca Sartorello, Stefano Visentin (Pisa: Ets, 2006), pp. 130–52. 12  Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter 18. 13  Machiavelli, Discourses, I, preface, p. 6; I.12, pp. 38–9 and II.2, pp. 131–2. 14  Machiavelli, Discourses, I.10, p. 31.

Machiavelli’s Discorsi and Hobbes’s Leviathan

177

have in themselves evident reasons with which one can persuade others […] Everything considered, thus, I conclude that the religion introduced by Numa was among the first causes of the happiness of that city. For it caused good orders; good orders make good fortune; and from good fortune arose the happy successes of enterprises.15

What I wish to highlight (omitting the details about prince and principality) is the relationship between religion and the good orders in a republic; if there is religion in a City there will be also good fortune and ‘the happy successes of enterprises’, and the citizens will avoid the ruin of the City itself. In other words, religion appears to be the guarantee of unity and freedom. But the religion Machiavelli discusses is a civil religion, like that of the Romans: a particular political practice that enables both the defence of the republic from external enemies and internal virtue, the only remedy against corruption;16 it maintains safety both outside and inside the City. However, there was one very important characteristic in Roman religion: it was principally used by the nobility as a tool for the expansion of Rome and, at the same time, to animate the plebs: they used religion ‘to reorder the city and to carry out their enterprises and stop tumults’.17 This statement is congruent with what follows I say that to me it appears that those who damn the tumults between the nobles and the plebs blame those things that were the first cause of keeping Rome free, and they consider the noises and the cries that would arise in such tumults more than the good effects that they engendered. They do not consider that in every republic are two diverse humours, that of the people and that of the great, and all the laws that are made in favour of freedom arise from their disunion, as can easily be seen to have occurred in Rome […] for good examples arise from good education, good education from good laws, and good laws from those tumults that many inconsiderately damn. For whoever examines their end well will not find that they had engendered not any exile or violence unfavourable to the common good but laws and orders in benefit of public freedom. If anyone said the modes were extraordinary and almost wild […] I say that every city ought to have its modes with which the people can vent its ambition, and especially those cities that wish to avail themselves of the people in important things. Among these the city of Rome had this mode: that when the people wished to obtain a law, either they did one of the things said above or they refused to enrol their names to go to war, so that to placate them there was need to satisfy them in some part.18

 Machiavelli, Discourses, I.11, pp. 34–5.  Machiavelli, Discourses, I.12, pp. 36–7. 17  Machiavelli, Discourses, I.13, p. 39. 18  Machiavelli, Discourses, I.4, pp. 16–17. 15

16

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

178

Roman religion was not the annihilation of tumults but a strategy to resolve the claims for public recognition that the plebs raised through them. On the contrary, the Hobbesian sovereign has to neutralize and annihilate any conflict using the moral suasion of religion. The republican religion, however, has a double task: it must facilitate the tumults between the nobility and the plebs while at the same time be the necessary condition to solve them. The two key concepts in understanding this antinomy are tumult and virtue. The Machiavellian civil religion is a religion of the City in which all the parts are necessary to build and preserve safety and freedom. The parts are nobility and plebs (or people); the former wishes to dominate and the latter does not want to be dominated. Yet in order to expand the City’s dominions the nobility needs the plebs, and often the plebs do not want to fight in the interest of the nobles. Thus, the nobles try to dominate the plebs in order to compel them to fight. This dynamic hides relevant issues: a City survives only if it expands,19 not necessarily because the nobles are greedy for new land, but because the City has to defend itself from enemy attacks; only the plebs who choose freely to fight against the enemies of their own homeland have a hope of winning,20 so the nobles need the plebs in order to fight and win against enemies. But the plebs who decide to fight for the protection of their homeland are free, and in order to be so must not be dominated by the nobles. Another issue is that the only way the plebs cannot be dominated is to deny their support of the nobles and of war: to be slaves in one’s homeland or in another country makes no difference. The plebs show their refusal by rioting, through which they ask the nobles to accept their requests. If the nobles accept the conditions of the plebs in order to go to war they will have an army and hence can succeed in expanding the dominion of the City, but, at the same time, the plebs will be free from the nobles’ yoke. Only in this way is it possible to keep Florence safe and free. The tumults are pivotal in this reasoning as they confront the nobles and the plebs with fortune; only through them can the citizens become virtuous. Moreover, only the tumults permit the supremacy of the plebs’ humour in the City. For this reason ‘Rome wished to remove the causes of tumults, it removed too the causes of expansion’,21 putting the ‘tribunes of the plebs’ in the place of the people, and not the nobles, as the ‘guard of freedom’.22 Civil religion realizes the City’s ambitions: expansion (the conquest of new lands) and freedom. Expansion is the only way to reconcile two opposite humours: the plebs accept war in exchange for the possibility of electing their representatives and the nobility accepts the election of the tribunes in exchange for the participation of the plebs in the military ranks. This civil or political religion corresponds to a specific way of life rather than to a faith: free way of life, in fact, is not a life guided by individual will, but a way of living in an incorrupt City. A  Machiavelli, Discourses, I.1, pp. 8–9.  Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapters 12–14. 21  Machiavelli, Discourses, I.6, p. 21. 22  Machiavelli, Discourses, I.5, pp. 17–18. 19 20

Machiavelli’s Discorsi and Hobbes’s Leviathan

179

City is incorrupt only when its plebs are free, that is, when its humour arouses virtue, meant as the ability to face fortune (even in the form of tumults) and obtain what they wish: not to be dominated by the nobles. Virtue, in short, means that men accept the risk of failing and also dying, because only in this way they are not dominated by death or by the fear of death. Men can only be really free by adopting this behaviour. Hobbes, however, argues that the Commonwealth has to be established upon the fear of violent death. The religion of a free way of life demands that people fight in order to remain free and not become slaves;23 this fight takes place both inside and outside the City. Therefore, there is no freedom without struggling, even when struggling means violence. Civic religion should be the political practice of a free way of life, and for this reason it is not a guarantee for stability, but the only way in which it is possible to obtain safety and freedom. Moreover, we know that nothing is more uncertain than the result of a tumult, as it mixes humours. The unity that arises from the humours’ clash is not a compromise, but a paradoxical unity because it is both based upon tumults and the result of the plebeian humour’s victory. Overall, civil religion is a guarantee because, without the tumults between nobles and plebs, a free way of life is impossible. At the same time, this free way of life it is not an inevitable consequence of tumults as it is realized exclusively by the victory of plebs: an odd victory since it does not produce the subjugation of the losers, but their liberation. This religion of equality springs from the idea that a free way of life is possible only in a republic and only through the clashing of all its parts. All parts are necessary to the free way of life; it would be a fatal error if the nobility could oppress the plebs or vice versa. The composition of the plebs depends on a political choice, and not on birth or on the economic and social conditions. The desire to not be dominated is not a prerogative of the poorest groups of the City: it can also be found in nobles. Much in the same way, the desire to dominate is not a specific characteristic of the nobility but also of parts of the people. Tumults are thus necessary in order to mix the humours and, in this way, innovate the parts and the orders of the City. The period of capitalistic development in which Machiavelli lived shows, particularly after the experience of the Ciompi rebellion in Florence, that no parts must be oppressed if a republic wants to maintain its free way of life. Moreover, this imperative (or necessity) is proposed:24 all parts of a city are equally indispensable   See Machiavelli, Discourses, I.16, p. 45. Freedom as non domination is the theoretical proposal formulated by Philip Pettit in his Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997). See also Stefano Visentin, ‘How Does “the People” Act? Philip Pettit’s Reception of Machiavelli’s Republicanism’, in Anglo American Faces of Machiavelli: Machiavelli e machiavellismi nella cultura anglo-americana (secoli XVI–XX), ed. Alessandro Arienzo and Gianfranco Borrelli (Monza: Polimetrica, 2009), pp. 625–44. 24   See Fabio Raimondi, ‘“Necessità” nel Principe e nei Discorsi di Machiavelli’, Scienza & Politica 40 (2009): pp. 27–50. 23

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

180

to safety and freedom. The equality of all parts makes it impossible for one to have more power than the other: every part needs the other and does not exist without its opposite. Therefore, there cannot be an impartial referee between the parts; any friction has to be solved internally. The only way to do so is to achieve a ‘balance based upon conflict’,25 because only a tumultuous conflict can mix the humours and support those who, not wishing to be dominated, exercise resistance against the oppressors, and in this manner keep open the possibility of a free way of life. III. Hobbes’s attempt to build a scientific theory of the Commonwealth runs into a series of difficulties and aporias of which he is conscious.26 The main problem consists in the permanent tension between the principle to guarantee life and peace to individuals and the sovereign laws which may sentence to death and command to go to war. Hobbes gives many examples in Leviathan II.XXI.10–25 that can be summarized in the following statement: ‘the obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them’.27 This principle undermines the foundations of the concept of Commonwealth, because nobody knows when the protection of the sovereign will cease. As a result, nobody can rationally calculate whether one should transfer one’s natural rights to the sovereign, and without calculation it is impossible (or at least irrational) to draw up a contract. Hobbes does not talk casually about a pact because, although disguised as contract, a pact is founded on a promise and not on an immediate exchange. First of all, every individual should trust the sovereign, knowing that this trust can be revoked upon proof of the sovereign’s explicit will to damage – in other words, proof upon which it is possible to demonstrate that the sovereign does not have the precise intention of preserving the life of his/her citizens-subjects. As in a scientific formula, the sovereign is the hypothesis, the pact is the real experiment, obedience is its possible success, and the revoke of

25

  I am here translating the expression ‘équilibre conflictuel’ used by Emmanuel Terray, ‘Une Rencontre: Althusser et Machiavel’, in Politique et Philosophie dans l’œuvre de Louis Althusser, ed. Sylvain Lazarus (Paris: PUF, 1993), pp. 137–69, p. 159. 26   See Fabio Raimondi, ‘Impossibile confine. Immaginazione e politica nel Leviatano’, Isonomia (2005): pp. 1–57. 27   Hobbes, II, XXI.21, p. 360. For this reason he is obliged to reconsider the importance of prudential norms that he would have wished to eliminate. On the simultaneous presence of prudence and reason in Leviathan see Gianfranco Borrelli, Ragion di stato e Leviatano. Conservazione e scambio alle origini della modernità politica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1993), pp. 223–55 and Il Lato Oscuro del Leviathan. Hobbes contro Machiavelli (Naples: Cronopio, 2009).

Machiavelli’s Discorsi and Hobbes’s Leviathan

181

trust is its possible failure. For this reason, the Commonwealth is not stable28 and is always in need of a device that gives it stability. This device is neither reason nor violence, but religion, because it is impossible to maintain order (peace) by force only.29 The political rationality based upon the Galilean principle of inertia30 (it is sufficient to remember the famous definition of liberty as ‘the absence of opposition; by opposition, I mean external impediments of motion’),31 has to be reinforced and consolidated by an irrational political instrument that is able to construct the necessary emotional social link. Only in a framework of shared values is the rational calculus of personal and common interests possible. What I hope to make clear is that Hobbes’s religion is not new: it already existed in England beyond the differences of the various sects; it can be summed up in the faith in Jesus Christ. This basic Christianity, the common substance of all different Christian confessions, has to be enforced by law. The Hobbesian religion, then, is in some sort of way already present even if not generally affirmed, as it still needs to be simplified and imposed by sovereign force. The Machiavellian religion of virtue, on the contrary, is present but not widespread. It is not a faith and cannot be forced by law, as good laws themselves are the positive effect of virtue. In short, if Hobbes’s atheism shows itself in the cynical use of religion as an instrumentum regni (see I.XII.20–22, as in Machiavelli’s Prince), Machiavelli’s atheism shows itself more clearly in the Discourses on Livy, where religion is both necessary and contingent: necessary because only virtue can make a republic free and safe, and contingent because virtue is a political act and not a person’s stable ownership, since, being indispensable in facing fortune, virtue is realized only in the fight for safety and freedom and not independently from it. Religion in both Machiavelli and Hobbes plays the role of unifier (from one of its possible etymologies: re-ligare), yet it acts in different ways. In Machiavelli’s opinion, religion unifies because a part (plebs or people) fights for a common aim (the free way of life), realized only through virtuous political behaviour. In Hobbes religion unifies through the common faith in Jesus Christ. In short, unity is obtained by tumults for the former and through a common belief for the latter. In the case of Machiavelli we are faced with a paradox since the City is founded upon tumults, upon division. Using the words of Nicole Loraux: ‘la cité est mélange, 28

  Hobbes writes that Leviathan is a ‘Mortal God’ (II.XVII.13, p. 282) because ‘in its own nature, not only subject to violent death, by foreign war; but also through the ignorance, and passions of men, it hath in it, from the very institution, many seeds of a natural mortality, by intestine discord’ (II.XXI.21, p. 360). 29   See Leslie Stephen, Hobbes (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), p. 213. 30   See Pierre Jacob, ‘La politique avec la physique à l’âge classique. Principe d’inertie et conatus: Descartes, Hobbes et Spinoza’, Dialectiques 6 (1974): pp. 99–121 and Douglas M. Jesseph, ‘Galileo, Hobbes, and the Book of Nature’, Perspective on Science 12 (2004): pp. 191–211. 31   Hobbes, II.XXI.1, p. 342.

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

182

à condition que l’on mêle entre eux les citoyens de toute sorte […] S’il n’y a pas agitation, il y a division. Ou encore: sans conflit, c’est la division’,32 a comment on a fragment of Heraclitus: ‘καὶ ὁ κυκεὼν διίσταται μὴ κινούμενος’.33 Machiavelli and Hobbes see the same problem but find different solutions: paradoxical in the former, aporetical in the latter. Machiavelli believes that only virtue can assure the free way of life but nothing and nobody can guarantee the citizens’ virtuous behaviour: the only political solution is the tumults as these are a form of fortune, and Machiavelli holds that only by facing fortune, people can become virtuous. In Hobbes we find an aporia because: 1) religion should support rationality and sometimes take the place of violence; 2) to do so there can be only one religion; but 3) there is not one religion because, on the contrary, there are many sects and each claims to profess true religion; 4) the cause of civil war is religious division and so the religion that should cement the Commonwealth is, instead, the cause of its destruction; 5) it is the duty of reason to decide the one religion people have to profess,34 but this leads to malfunctioning because 6) the inadequacy of reason should be corrected through religion, yet the plurality of sects can only be unified by reason. The result is that the Commonwealth (like the Machiavellian City, but for different reasons) is completely groundless, at least if we consider the question from a rational or a religious point of view. Religion needs rationality and rationality needs reason in order to have any foundation. Religion is unstable because it arouses war and reason cannot have any definitive foundation because it is unable to reach an absolute truth; and science is an ever open process of knowledge. In this way, Hobbes tends to hide what Machiavelli shows: City and Commonwealth are always products of violence (in various forms, such as conquering, blackmail, corruption and so on), even when it does not appear to be so. The distinction between Commonwealth by institution and Commonwealth by acquisition (see II.XVIII–XX) is a false one, because a pact (the Commonwealth by institution) cannot be drawn up without a religion that guarantees unity, and one religion is possible only if the sovereign interferes by violence (or by its threat) in order to reduce the plurality of sects into one. Even though he tries to hide it, Hobbes’s reasoning makes sense only in terms of violence because only the sovereign exercise of violence can decide the religious form that the subjects have to profess and only a unique religion can play the role of social link. This religion imposed by violence can be either a new religion or that professed by the 32

  ‘The city is a mixture, as citizens of all sorts are mixed […] If there are no riots, there are divisions. So, without conflict, there is division’, Nicole Loraux, La Cité Divisée. L’oubli dans la mémoire d’Athènes (Paris: Payot & Rivages, 1997), p. 108. 33   ‘Even the posset separates if it is not stirred’ (translation mine), Heraclitus, Fragments, DK B 125. 34   Hobbes writes that ‘the Scripture of the New Testament is there only law where the lawful civil power hath made it so’ (III, XLII.44, p. 846).

Machiavelli’s Discorsi and Hobbes’s Leviathan

183

majority of the people. The latter has the advantage of being a custom, habit or a stable institution upon which it is possible to establish a pact. The relationship between religion and sovereign power is clearly described here: the laws of God therefore are none but the laws of nature, whereof the principal is that we should not violate our faith, that is, a commandment to obey our civil sovereigns, which we constituted over us, by mutual pact one with another. And this law of God, that commandeth obedience to the law civil, commandeth by consequence obedience to all the precepts of the Bible; which […] is there only law, where the civil sovereign hath made it so; and in other places, but counsel; which a man at his own peril may without injustice refuse to obey (III.XLIII.5, p. 950).

God authorizes the sovereign and the sovereign authorizes religion in a vicious circle, the origin of which lies in the way Hobbes tries to resolve the problem of the preservation of human life in nature since there is no state in nature (the expression state of nature does not appear in the pages of Leviathan but in De Cive). The sovereign governs according to his/her own will, which is one and the same with that of the subjects due to his/her representative function (see II.XVIII), and the sovereignty is, in Hobbes’s opinion, ‘the only way’ (see II.XVII.13, p. 280) to solve the problem of war among people in nature. The sovereignty is a necessity, an absolute power without which mankind would live obsessed with the impossibility ‘of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war, which is necessarily consequent […] to [their] natural passions’ (II.XVII.1, p. 274). Moreover, nature is the manifestation of the irresistible power of God (II. XXXI.5 and 26, p. 578 and p. 588). In order to face the ‘absolute liberty’ of men in nature as well as the necessity, but not the sufficiency, of sovereignty to keep the movements of the various bodies in check, the sovereign needs to bind those who form the Commonwealth. This glue is the religion the sovereign selects (II.XXXI.38, p. 594) and enforces by law: ‘the points of doctrine concerning the kingdom of God, have so great influence on the kingdom of man, as not to be determined, but by them, that under God have the sovereign power’ (III.XXXVIII.5, p. 732). This religion is that professed by the majority and founded on habit. In the specific case of England during the Civil War, this religion corresponds to ‘the only necessary article of Christian faith: […] Jesus is the Christ’ (III.XLIII.11, p. 956). This religion is neither a written work nor a religio civilis, as Machiavelli augurs, as it is not based upon virtue but upon what today we call ideology; that is an interpellation35 of individuals on the basis of assimilated values in accordance to which they act in conformity with the laws of Commonwealth.

35   Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)’, in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, ed. Ben Brewster (New York, London: Monthly Review Press, 1971), pp. 127–86.

184

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

In this way, Hobbes reaches two conclusions: 1) God authorizes the sovereign and 2) the sovereign chooses religion, thus taking the monopoly of faith away from sects and churches; for this reason ‘the modern state must inculcate a uniform religion’ that ‘must be free of ideas that lead people to challenge authority’.36 Religion becomes a variable of reason of state because it depends on the sovereign (see III.XXXIII.1, p. 610, p. 612, and also III.XLII.79–81, p. 886, p. 888), and for this reason it can change according to place and custom. Therefore, conflict is also a part of Hobbes’s philosophy and precisely for this reason the religion of the Commonwealth has self-obedience as the function of control. Hobbes suggests that men place confidence in what they are already accustomed to because habit reassures, especially if it is lasting. Thus we have another difference between Hobbes and Machiavelli as the Hobbesian religion is an instrument by which self-obedience leads to the delegation of all power to the sovereign, while, on the contrary, the Machiavellian religion leads to a full assumption of collective political responsibility.

36   George Kateb, ‘Hobbes and the Irrationality of Politics’, Political Theory 17 (1989): pp. 355–91, p. 360.

Epilogue: Was England Different? Jacob Soll

Yet another study of Machiavelli begs the question: is there anything new to be learned about the Florentine father of political science? This book reminds us that a number of obvious elements of Machiavellianism have not been examined. In particular, there is the question of Machiavellian ideas and culture entering into collective political consciousness beyond the strict confines of formal philosophical debate. If Machiavellianism made a difference in the modern age, it would have to be part of a political culture which touched the widening audience, characterized by the rise of public political debate and opinion, as well as the professionalization of government. England’s political specificity was not simply in its constitution. Two revolutions and a remarkable tradition of public theatre provided a unique ground for the growth of Machiavellian culture. It can certainly be argued that the English Machiavellian philosophical debate took place in an international framework defined by the interaction of the Republic of Letters, as in the case of Sir Henry Wotton and of Italian thinkers such as Paolo Sarpi, and the regular appropriation of, or at least interest in French political ideas by thinkers such Hobbes (Wotton appropriated more than ideas from Italy – he also stole books!). As Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine showed, English readers read their Tacitus and Livy for political action like the rest of Europe did and English humanism took place in the sphere of the international Republic of Letters.1 England was a part of humanist Europe, Anglican, Puritan and Revolutionary island though it was. Even with England’s deep involvement with international humanist culture, politics included, it was, nonetheless, different. As the major monarchies of Europe embraced a trend towards Machiavellian and Lipsian reason of state, England’s constitution forced laws and political practices which opened the door to political transparency, thus complicating the culture of reason of state. Traditionally, the cardinal rule of reason of state was political secrecy: decisions and strategies were hidden and dissimulated, to be used on the often violent chessboard of European politics. But in a constitutional monarchy, some politics were open. In 1620, the English Parliament passed laws instituting practices of state accounting and political accountability.2 While the French did the same, these laws had no 1   Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, ‘Studied for Action: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy’, Past and Present 129 (1991), pp. 30–78. 2   Paul Seaward, ‘Parliament and the Idea of Political Accountability in Early Modern Britain’, in Realities of Representation: State Building in Early Modern Europe and

186

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

effect in the face of rising absolutism and strong and even legal traditions of royal secrecy. In England, political accountability might not have functioned ideally, but it was institutionalized to the extent that it was the basis of parliamentary complaints against Charles I. During the decade of civil war, not only did formal and subversive political criticism flourish, but the public realm of debate took stronger root than in France where Louis XIV’s resolution of the Fronde quashed much public political culture. In spite of Hobbes’s genius, England did not follow his political model. England’s parliamentary reforms, revolution, republicanism and constitutional monarchy all invited original uses of Machiavellian thought not possible within the confines of a true Leviathan. With its ideological ambiguity, Machiavellianism had more applications to practical politics and philosophy in a political field which was remarkably dynamic and changing. The importance of Machiavelli in the philosophical management and exploration of the possible bounds of English constitutional politics is apparent in James Harrington’s Oceana. As Felix Raab, John Pocock, Paul Rahe and others have shown, the growing secularization of English politics, republicanism and religious factionalism all invited the adoption of Machiavellian theories which ranged from monarchical to republican readings.3 Arguments about balanced power led to a Machiavellian reading of salus populi in relation to a reason of state which served not simply a king, but a shared common good. Machiavelli’s ideas of governmental mutability were also of particular interest in a country with truly evolving political regimes. Although absolutism was deeply Machiavellian and often politically innovative – crushing feudal constitutions and temporal religious power in some countries led to political modernization – continental Machiavellianism did not have the breadth of experimental possibility and application open to English philosophers and political actors. England had forums of political expression which did not exist on the continent. Geoff Baldwin has shown that Machiavellian ideas of reason of state emerged

European America, ed. Maija Jansson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 45–62, p. 59; William F. Willoughby, Westel W. Willoughby, and Samuel McCune Lindsay, The System of Financial Administration of Great Britain: A Report (New York and London: Appleton, 1917); P.G.M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit 1688–1756 (London: Macmillan, 1967), p. 81; John Torrance, ‘Social Class and Bureaucratic Innovation: The Commissioners for Examining the Public Accounts 1780–1787’, Past and Present 78 (1978), pp. 56–81, p. 65; Henry Roseveare, The Treasury, 1660–1870: The Foundations of Control (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973), p. 1. 3   Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500– 1700 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965); John G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Republican Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Paul Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), volume 2.

Epilogue: Was England Different?

187

in parliamentary debate.4 There is no other country in which Machiavellian and reason of state theory were formally debated in a public, official setting and were thus recorded as public policy. Indeed, this was contrary to rules of Machiavellian dissimulation, but part of the English move towards a Machiavellian theory of salus populi. This meant that a particular brand of Machiavellianism would develop in the public realm, and that those who followed politics, and not exclusively readers, would hear of and discuss such ideas. It is this public, performative aspect of Machiavellian reading and debate which is so remarkably English. As this volume shows, it was not just the public stage of Parliament where English Machiavellianism took its particularistic turn. In the seventeenth century, the theatre was to England what libraries were to Paris: their great cultural jewel. Nobles, merchants and scholars on grand tours sought beautiful gardens, Dutch and German Wunderkammern, Italian ruins, painting collections and Vesuvius, French libraries and salons, and attended the English theatre. The unique wealth of the English theatre, the staggering achievement of Shakespeare alone, and the remarkable focus of these plays on historical and political themes constituted an incomparable crucible for public references to Machiavelli. While Christopher Marlowe wrote of Machiavelli, Shakespeare filled his political plays with references to the Florentine. It is here and in the halls of Parliament that the English experienced something different: Machiavelli à haute voix. In England, Machiavelli’s name, work and ideas were verbalized, listened to, openly discussed and considered. The question is, how much? Was there a popular or generalized concept of Machiavellian ideas which did not circulate in the same way on the continent? Answering this question would open a window onto the long-term influence of Machiavelli on English culture in general. Another question remains unanswered. If Machiavelli existed in so many forms in England, what was his relationship to political economy? John Pocock connected Machiavelli to ideas of virtue, commerce and empire, exemplified in the work of Charles Davenant.5 If Davenant wrote about political virtue and taxes, he mixed classical political ideology with the numbers of excise taxes. Future government and administrative language would echo the new numerical language of the government of experts. The question remains as to Machiavelli’s place in the ever more impersonal modern government of tax collectors and financiers. There is a connection between Machiavelli’s language of political virtue and the administrative language of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that equated good government with professional competence and expertise. As Samuel Pepys insisted, the early modern salus populi was located in good administration. Yet aside from personal and bureaucratic self-interest, the extent to which Machiavellian   Geoff Baldwin, ‘Reason of State and English Parliaments 1610–42’, History of Political Thought 25 (2004), pp. 620–41. 5   Pocock, pp. 437–48; Jacob Soll, ‘Accounting for Government: Holland and the Rise of Political Economy in Seventeenth-Century Europe’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (2009), pp. 215–38. 4

188

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

ideas permeated the new world of state experts remains to be established. How Machiavellian, in the classical, republican sense, were the pencil-pushing clerks of the Admiralty and the Colonial Administration? The answer to this question is not simple. Politics, as we know, did not primarily take place in books. If political philosophy and culture exist, then there must be traces of them in legislation and public debate. The Reform Act of 1832 is one of the central reforming moments in British politics. It might even be seen as a half-way point between a traditional, post-humanist, enlightened discussion of political philosophy and economy, and modern technical administrative reform. Discussions of suffrage, human rights, corruption and ‘nabobs’ were big political questions for which old political language served. Reforms of the internal budgeting and accounting of system of state finance came out of critiques of corruption, but they were not necessarily solved with philosophical discussion. A friend of Jeremy Bentham, a radical reformer, England’s greatest polymath (he spoke 200 languages), and a state accounting reformer, John Bowring’s reports on accounts were major parliamentary moments in the process of the Reform Act.6 Yet they contained no traditional political language: they merely discussed how double-entry bookkeeping worked; why it worked well for state administration; which countries did it well; and how England could design its reforms by studying foreign public accounting methods. Rather, Bowring’s reports were purely technical, although good accounting did connect to a political language of accountability. However, he never expanded on that idea. Only on the application of administrative reforms. To understand how Machiavelli fits into the political modernity of government (and gouvernementalité), this key moment might be rich in revelations to understand the evolution of the political language actually used in politics (not simply in books) towards a more technical turn. Was Machiavelli truly a part of this new language? That remains to be seen, but Britain is certainly one of the primary places where scholars must look to answer this question.

6   See for example, Sir John Bowring, Third Report on the Public Accounts of France (London: Ordered by the House of Commons to be Printed, 1832).

Bibliography Abiteboul, Maurice. ‘Machiavel et l’Angleterre des Tudor’. In Machiavelli attuale/Machiavel actuel, edited by Georges Barthouil. Ravenna: Longo, 1982, 99–107. Allen, John W. English Political Thought, 1603–1660. London: Methuen, 1938. Althusser, Louis. ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)’. In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, edited by Ben Brewster. New York, London: Monthly Review Press, 1971, 127–86. Anglo, Sydney. ‘The Reception of Machiavelli in Tudor England: A ReAssessment’. Il Politico 31 (1966): 127–38. Anglo, Sydney. Machiavelli: A Dissection. London: Gollancz, 1969. Anglo, Sydney. ‘Crypto-Machiavellism in Early Tudor England: The Problem of the Ragionamento dell’aduenimento delli Inglesi, et Normanni in Britannia’. Renaissance and Reformation. Renaissance et Réforme 2 (1978): 182–93. Anglo, Sydney. Machiavelli – The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Arienzo, Alessandro and Gianfranco Borrelli (eds). Anglo-American Faces of Machiavelli: Machiavelli e machiavellismi nella cultura anglo-americana (secoli XXI–XX). Monza: Polimetrica, 2009. Armstrong, William A. ‘The Influence of Seneca and Machiavelli on the Elizabethan Tyrant’. Review of English Studies 24 (1948): 19–35. Babb, Howard. ‘Policy in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’. English Literary History 24 (1957): 85–94. Baldini, Artemio E. (ed.). La Ragion di Stato dopo Meinecke e Croce. Dibattito su recenti pubblicazioni. Genoa: Name, 1999. Baldwin, Geoff. ‘Reason of State and English Parliaments, 1610–1642’. History of Political Thought 25 (2004): 620–41. Barducci, Marco. ‘Marchamont Nedham e la pubblicistica politica inglese’. Il Pensiero Politico 38 (2005): 181–2. Barducci, Marco. ‘Grozio e la difesa della repubblica inglese. Gli scritti di Anthony Ascham, 1648–1650’. Il Pensiero Politico 42 (2009): 19–21. Bartlett, Kenneth R. ‘Morley, Machiavelli, and the Pilgrimage of Grace’. In ‘Triumphs of English’. Henry Parker, Lord Morley, Translator to the Tudor Court: New Essays in Interpretation, edited by Marie Axton and James P. Carley. 77–85. London: The British Library, 2000. Battista, Annamaria. ‘La penetrazione del Machiavelli in Francia nel secolo XVI’. Rassegna di politica e di storia 67–68 (1960): 18–32, 31–2.

190

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Battista, Annamaria. ‘Direzioni di ricerca per una storia di Machiavelli in Francia’. In Atti del Convegno Internazionale su il pensiero politico di Machiavelli e la sua fortuna nel mondo. Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1972, 37–66. Battista, Anna Maria. Politica e morale nella Francia dell’età moderna. Genoa: Name, 1998. Bawcutt, Nigel W. ‘Some Elizabethan Allusions to Machiavelli’. English Miscellany 20 (1969): 53–74. Bawcutt, Nigel W. ‘Machiavelli and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’. Renaissance Drama 3 (1970): 3–49. Bawcutt, Nigel W. ‘“Policy,” Machiavellianism, and the Earlier Tudor Drama’. English Literary Renaissance 1 (1971): 195–209. Bawcutt, Nigel W. ‘Machiavelli and the Elizabethans: A New Examination’. Études Anglaises 30 (1977): 455–62. Bawcutt, Nigel W. ‘The “Myth of Gentillet” Reconsidered: An Aspect of Elizabethan Machiavellianism’. Modern Language Review 99 (2004): 863–74. Berkowitz, Daniel S. ‘Reason of State in England and the Petition of Right, 1603– 1629’. In Staatsräson. Studien zur Geschichte eines Politisches Begrifs, edited by Roman Schnur. 165–212. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1975. Bertelli, Sergio and Piero Innocenti. Bibliografia machiavelliana. Verona: Edizioni Valdonega, 1979. Bertolo, Fabio Massimo. ‘John Wolfe, un editore inglese tra Aretino e Machiavelli’. In Il Rinascimento italiano di fronte alla Riforma: letteratura e arte: Sixteenth-century Italian Art and Literature and the Reformation, edited by Chrysa Damianaki, Paolo Procaccioli and Angelo Romano. 199–208. Rome: Vecchiarelli, 2005. Bireley, Robert. The Counter-Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1990. Bock, Gisela, Quentin Skinner and Maurizio Viroli (eds). Machiavelli and Republicanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Borot, Luc. ‘Machiavellian Diplomacy and Dramatic Developments in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta’. Cahiers Elisabéthains 33 (1988): 1–11. Borrelli, Gianfranco. Ragion di Stato e Leviatano. Conservazione e scambio alle origini della modernità politica. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1993. Borrelli, Gianfranco. Il lato oscuro del Leviathan. Hobbes contro Machiavelli. Naples: Cronopio, 2009. Burgess, Glenn. Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Burgess, Glenn. ‘Repacifying the Polity: The Responses of Hobbes and Harrington to the “Crisis of Common Law”’. In Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution, edited by Ian Gentles, John Morrill and Blair Worden. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1998, 202–28.

Bibliography

191

Chérel, Albert. La pensée de Machiavel en France. Paris: L’Artisan du Livre, 1935. Chiappelli, Fredi. Studi sul linguaggio del Machiavelli. Florence: Le Monnier, 1952. Chiappelli, Fredi. Nuovi studi sul linguaggio del Machiavelli. Florence: Le Monnier, 1969. Christiansen, Nancy L. ‘Rhetoric as Character-Fashioning: The Implications of Delivery’s “Places” in the British Renaissance Paideia’. Rhetorica 15 (1997): 297–334. Cramsie, John. ‘Commercial Projects and the Fiscal Policy of James VI and I’. The Historical Journal 43 (2000): 345–64. D’Addio, Mario. ‘Machiavelli e Antimachiavelli’. Il Pensiero Politico 2 (1969): 329–36. D’Andrea, Antonio. ‘Studies on Machiavelli and his Reputation in the Sixteenth Century’. Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 5 (1961): 214–48. D’Andrea, Antonio. ‘Machiavelli, Satan, and the Gospel’. Yearbook of Italian Studies 1 (1971): 156–77. Davis, James Colin. Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. De Camilli, Davide. Machiavelli nel tempo. la critica machiavelliana dal Cinquecento a oggi. Pisa: ETS, 2000. De Mattei, Rodolfo. Dal premachiavellismo all’antimachiavellismo. Florence: Sansoni, 1969. De Pol, Roberto (ed.). The First Translations of Machiavelli’s Prince: From the Sixteenth to the First Half of the Nineteenth Century. Tijnmuiden: Rodopi, 2010. Di Filippo Bareggi, Claudia. Il Mestiere dello scrivere: lavoro intellettuale e mercato librario a Venezia nel Cinquecento. Rome: Bulzoni, 1988. Dionisotti, Carlo. Machiavellerie. Storia e fortuna di Machiavelli. Turin: Einaudi, 1980. Donaldson, Peter S. ‘Machiavelli, Antichrist, and the Reformation: Prophetic Typology in Reginald Pole’s De Unitate and Apologia ad Carolum Quintum’. In Leaders of the Reformation, edited by Richard L. DeMolen. London, Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1984, 211–46. Donaldson, Peter S. Machiavelli and Mystery of State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Fink, Zera S. The Classical Republicans: An Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in Seventeenth-Century England. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1945. Firpo, Luigi. ‘Le origini dell’antimachiavellismo’. Il Pensiero Politico 2 (1969): 337–67. Firth, Charles H. ‘Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World’. Proceedings of the British Academy 8 (1918): 427–46.

192

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Franceschini, Chiara. ‘Nostalgie di un esule. Note su Giacomo Castelvetro (1546– 1616)’. Cromohs 8 (2003): online edition. Garver, Eugene. ‘Machiavelli and the Politics of Rhetorical Invention’. Clio 14 (1985): 157–78. Gasquet, Émile. Le courant machiavélien dans la pensée et la littérature anglaises du XVIe siècle. Paris: Didier, 1974. Gerber, Adolph. ‘All of the Five Fictitious Italian Editions of Writings of Machiavelli and Three of those of Pietro Aretino Printed by John Wolfe of London (1584–1588)’. Modern Language Notes 22 (1907): 2–6, 129–35, 201– 6. Gerber, Adolph. Niccolò Machiavelli. Die Handschriften, Ausgaben und Übersetzungen seinen Werke. Gotha: Perthes, 1912. Gilbert, Allan H. Machiavelli’s Prince and Its Forerunners: The Prince as a Typical Book De Regimine Principum. Durham: Duke University Press, 1938. Gilbert, Felix. ‘Machiavellism’. In Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, edited by Philip P. Wiener. New York: Scribner, 1973, 116–26. Ginzburg, Carlo and Adriano Prosperi. Giochi di pazienza. un seminario sul ‘Beneficio di Cristo’. Turin: Einaudi, 1975. Godman, Peter. From Poliziano to Machiavelli: Florentine Humanism in the High Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. Grafton, Anthony. What was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Grafton, Anthony and Lisa Jardine. ‘Studied for Action: How Gabriel Harvey Read his Livy’. Past & Present 129 (1990): 30–78. Greenblatt, Stephen J. Sir Walter Ralegh: The Renaissance Man and His Roles. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973. Gunn, John A.W. Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969. Harris, Paul Hyland. ‘Within Machiavellianism’. Italica 25 (1948): 28–41. Heidenheimer, Arnold J. ‘Politics, Policy and Policey as Concepts in English and Continental Languages: An Attempt to Explain Divergences’. The Review of Politics 48 (1986): 3–30. Hont, Istvan. ‘Free Trade and the Economic Limits to National politics: NeoMachiavellian Political Economy Reconsidered’. In The Economic Limits to Modern Politics, edited by John Dunn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 41–120. Horrocks, John Wesley. ‘Machiavelli in Tudor Political Opinion and Discussion’. DLitt diss. University of London, 1908. Houston, Alan C. ‘Republicanism, the Politics of Necessity and the Rule of Law’. In A Nation Transformed: England After the Restoration, edited by Alan C. Houston and Steve Pincus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 241–70.

Bibliography

193

Judson, Margaret A. The Crisis of the Constitution: an Essay in Constitutional and Political Thought in England, 1603–1645. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1949. Kahn, Victoria. ‘Revising the History of Machiavellism: English Machiavellism and the Doctrine of Things Indifferent’. Renaissance Quarterly 46 (1993): 526–61. Kahn, Victoria. Machiavellian Rhetoric: From the Counter-Reformation to Milton. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Kelley, Donald. ‘Murd’rous Machiavel in France: A Post Mortem’. Political Science Quarterly 85 (1970): 545–59. Kempner, Nadja. Raleghs Staatstheoretische Schriften. Die Einführung des Machiavellismus in England. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1928. Lievsay, John L. The Elizabethan Image of Italy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964. Lefranc, Pierre. Sir Walter Ralegh, écrivain, l’œuvre et les Idées. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1968. Loraux, Nicole. La Cité Divisée. L’oubli dans la mémoire d’Athènes. Paris: Payot & Rivages, 1997. Luciani, Vincent. ‘Ralegh’s “Discourse of War” and Machiavelli’s “Discorsi”’. Modern Philology 46 (1948): 122–31. Luciani, Vincent. Francesco Guicciardini e la fortuna dell’opera sua, edited by Paolo Guicciardini. Florence: Olschki, 1949. Luciani, Vincent. ‘Ralegh’s “Discourses on the Savoyan Matches” and Machiavelli’s “Istorie Fiorentine”’. Italica 29 (1952): 103–7. Luciani, Vincent. ‘Sansovino’s concetti politici and Their Debt to Machiavelli’. Publications of the Modern Languages Association 67 (1952): 823–44. Mansfield, Harvey C. ‘Machiavelli’s Political Science’. American Political Science Review 75 (1981): 293–305. Mansfield, Harvey C. Machiavelli’s Virtue. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Marchand, Jean-Jacques. Niccolò Machiavelli. I Primi scritti politici (1499–1512). Nascita di un pensiero e di uno stile. Padua: Antenore, 1975. Marchand, Jean-Jacques. ‘Machiavelli in limine: La figura dell’autore, dell’opera e del destinatario nei testi proemiali machiavelliani’. In Cultura e scrittura di Machiavelli. Rome: Salerno, 1998, 311–25. Mazzeo, Joseph Antony. ‘Cromwell as Machiavellian Prince, in Marvell’s “An Horatian Ode”’. Journal of the History of Ideas 21 (1960): 1–17. Meinecke, Friedrich. Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’État and its Place in Modern History. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1997, first edition 1924. Ménissier, Thierry. Machiavel, ou, La politique du Centaure. Paris: Hermann, 2010. Meyer, Edward. Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama. Weimar: Felber, 1897. Minshull, Catherine. ‘Marlowe’s “Sound Machevil”’. Renaissance Drama 13 (1982): 35–53.

194

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Morris, Christopher. ‘Machiavelli’s Reputation in Tudor England’. In Machiavellismo e antimachiavellici nel Cinquecento: Atti del convegno di Perugia, 30 X–1 XI 1969. Florence: Olschki, 1969, 88–105. Mosse, George L. The Struggle for Sovereignty in England, from the Reign of Queen Elizabeth to the Petition of Right. East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1950. Mosse, George L. The Holy Pretense: A Study in Christianity and Reason of State from William Perkins to John Winthrop. Oxford: Blackwell, 1957. Ong, Walter J. ‘Tudor Writings on Rhetoric’. Studies in the Renaissance 15 (1968): 39–69. Orsini, Napoleone. Bacone e Machiavelli. Genoa: Emiliano degli Orfini, 1936. Orsini, Napoleone. ‘Elizabethan Manuscript Translations of Machiavelli’s Prince’. Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937): 166–9. Orsini, Napoleone. Studii sul Rinascimento italiano in Inghilterra con alcuni testi inglesi inediti. Florence: Sansoni, 1937. Orsini, Napoleone. ‘Nuove ricerche intorno al machiavellismo nel Rinascimento inglese I: machiavellismo e polemiche politiche nel manoscritto harleiano 967’. Rinascita 1 (1938): 92–101. Orsini, Napoleone. ‘Nuove ricerche sul machiavellismo nel Rinascimento inglese II: appunti inediti dalle “Storie” del Machiavelli e del Guicciardini’. Rinascita 6 (1939): 299–304. Orsini, Napoleone. ‘“Policy”: Or the Language of Elizabethan Machiavellianism’. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 9 (1946): 122–34. Panizza, Diego. ‘Machiavelli e Alberico Gentili’. Il Pensiero Politico 2 (1969): 476–83. Peacey, Jason. Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Peltonen, Markku. ‘Politics and Science: Francis Bacon and the True Greatness of States’. The Historical Journal 35 (1992): 279–305. Peltonen, Markku. Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought, 1570–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Perini, Leandro. ‘Gli eretici italiani del ’500 e Machiavelli’. Studi Storici 10 (1969): 877–918. Petrina, Alessandra. Machiavelli in the British Isles: Two Early Modern Translations of The Prince. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997. Phillips, W. Alison. ‘The Influence of Machiavelli on the Reformation of England’. Nineteenth Century 40 (1896): 907–18. Pincus, Steven. ‘Neither Machiavellian Moment nor Possessive Individualism: Commercial Society and the Defenders of the English Commonwealth’. The American Historical Review 103 (1998): 705–36. Pocock, John G.A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.

Bibliography

195

Praz, Mario. ‘Machiavelli and the Elizabethans’. Proceedings of the British Academy 13 (1928): 3–51. Praz, Mario. ‘Un machiavellico inglese: Sir Walter Raleigh’. Cultura 8 (1929): 16–27. Procacci, Giuliano. Studi sulla fortuna del Machiavelli. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l’età Moderna e Contemporanea, 1965. Procacci, Giuliano. Machiavelli nella cultura europea dell’età moderna. Bari: Laterza, 1995. Prosperi, Adriano. Giustizia bendata. Percorsi storici di un’immagine. Turin: Einaudi, 2008. Purves, John. ‘The First Knowledge of Machiavelli in Scotland’. Rinascita 1 (1938): 139–42. Raab, Felix. The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation 1500– 1700. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965. Rahe, Paul Anthony. Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Rahe, Paul Anthony. Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Raimondi, Ezio. ‘Machiavelli and the Rhetoric of the Warrior’. Modern Language Notes 92 (1977): 1–16. Raimondi, Fabio. ‘“Necessità” nel Principe e nei Discorsi di Machiavelli’. Scienza & Politica 40 (2009): 27–50. Rebhorn, Wayne. ‘Baldesar Castiglione, Thomas Wilson, and the Courtly Body of Renaissance Rhetoric’. Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 11 (1993): 241–74. Ribner, Irving. ‘The Significance of Gentillet’s Contre-Machiavel’. Modern Language Quarterly 10 (1949): 153–57. Ribner, Irving. ‘Marlowe and Machiavelli’. Comparative Literature 4 (1954): 348–56. Richardson, Brian. ‘The Prince and its Early Italian Readers’. In Niccolò Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’: New Interdisciplinary Essays, edited by Martin Coyle. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, 18–39. Roe, John. Shakespeare and Machiavelli. Cambridge: Brewer, 2002. Roe, John. ‘Shakespeare and Machiavelli: The Prince and the History Plays’. In Seeking Real Truths: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Machiavelli, edited by Patricia Vilches and Gerald Seaman. Leiden: Brill, 2007, 357–87. Rosenberg, Eleanor. ‘Giacomo Castelvetro Italian Publisher in Elizabethan London and his Patrons’. Huntington Library Quarterly 6 (1943): 119–48. Rubinstein, Nicolai. ‘The History of the Word “Politicus” in Early-Modern Europe’. In The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, edited by Anthony Pagden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 41–56.

196

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Salmon, John H.M. The French Religious Wars in English Political Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959. Sanna, Laura. ‘Historie of Italie’. In Lezioni ai potenti, edited by Angelo Deidda, Maria Grazia Dongu and Laura Sanna. Cagliari: CUEC, 2002, 29–76. Sanna, Laura. ‘A Boke Excedyng Profitable to be Redde: William Thomas’s Italy’. In Una civile conversazione: lo scambio letterario e culturale anglo-italiano. Anglo-Italian Literary and Cultural Exchange in the Renaissance, edited by Keir Elam and Fernando Cioni. Bologna: CLUEB, 2003, 159–80. Sanna, Laura. ‘William Thomas and Machiavelli’. Letterature Straniere & 6 (2004): 141–61. Schelling, Felix E. The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne. Philadelphia: Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, 1894. Schmitt, Charles B. ‘John Case and Machiavelli’. In Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore, edited by Sergio Bertelli and Gloria Ramakus. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978, 231–40. Scott, Jonathan. ‘The Rapture of Motion: James Harrington’s Republicanism’. In Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, edited by Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 139–63. Scott, Jonathan. ‘The Peace of Silence: Thucydides and the English Civil War’. In The Certainty of Doubt: Tributes to Peter Munz, edited by Miles Fairburn and William H. Oliver. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1996, 90–116. Scott, Jonathan. Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writings of the English Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Scott, Margaret. ‘Machiavelli and the Machiavel’. Renaissance Drama 15 (1984): 147–74. Shrank, Cathy. Writing the Nation in Reformation England, 1530-1580. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Skinner, Quentin. Liberty Before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Soll, Jacob. Publishing the Prince: History, Reading, and the Birth of Political Criticism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Sommerville, Johann P. Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640. London: Longman, 1986. Sommerville, Johann P. ‘The Ancient Constitution Reassessed: The Common Law, the Court and the Languages of Politics in Early Modern England’. In The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays in Politics and Political Culture, edited by R. Malcolm Smuts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 39–64. Sorrentino, Andrea. Storia dell’antimachiavellismo europeo. Naples: Loffredo, 1936. Stapleton, Laurence. ‘Halifax and Raleigh’. Journal of the History of Ideas 2 (1941): 211–24. Strathmann, Ernest Albert. Sir Walter Ralegh: A Study in Elizabethan Skepticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1951.

Bibliography

197

Strathmann, Ernest Albert. ‘A Note on the Ralegh Canon’. Times Literary Supplement, 13 April 1956, 228. Sullivan, Vickie B. ‘The Civic Humanistic Portrait of Machiavelli’s English Successors’. History of Political Thought 15 (1994): 73–96. Sullivan, Vickie B. (ed.). The Comedy and Tragedy of Machiavelli: Essays on the Literary Works. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Tedeschi, John. The Italian Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture: A Bibliography of the Secondary Literature, ca. 17501997. Modena: Panini, 2000. Terray, Emmanuel. ‘Une rencontre: Althusser et Machiavel’. In Politique et philosophie dans l’œuvre de Louis Althusser, edited by Sylvain Lazarus. . Paris: PUF, 1993, 137–69. Trovato, Paolo. Con ogni diligenza corretto: La stampa e le revisioni editoriali dei testi letterari italiani, 1470–1570. Bologna: il Mulino, 1991. Tuck, Richard. Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Watson, George. ‘Machiavel and Machiavelli’. Sewanee Review 84 (1976): 630–48. Webb, Henry J. Elizabethan Military Science: The Books and the Practice. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965. Weinberger, Jerry. ‘The Politics of Bacon’s History of Henry the Seventh’. Review of Politics 52 (1990): 553–81. Weissberger, L. Arnold. ‘Machiavelli and Tudor England’. Political Science Quarterly 42 (1927): 589–607. Whitfield, John Humphreys. ‘The Charlecote Manuscript of Machiavelli’s Prince’. Italian Studies 22 (1967): 6–25. Worden, Blair. ‘James Harrington and “The Commonwealth of Oceana”, 1656’. In Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society 1649–1776, edited by David Wootton. 83–110. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Worden, Blair. Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Wormuth, Francis D. The Royal Prerogative, 1603–1649. A Study in English Political and Constitutional Ideas. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1939. Wyatt, Michael. The Italian Encounter with Tudor England: A Cultural Politics of Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Index

Acharisio (Alberto Accarisi) 6 Aconcio, Giacomo 128 Alexander the Great 66–8 Allde, Edward 48 Alunno, Francesco (del Bailo) 6 Ammirato, Scipione 140 Andrewe, Thomas 1 Anglo, Sydney 3–4, 36, 43–4, 159 Aquinas, Thomas 70 Aretino, Pietro 47n, 127–8 Ragionamenti 128 Aristotle 47, 62, 70, 161, 166 Ascham, Anthony 3, 10, 159–62, 170–1 Confusions and Revolutions of Governments 160 Discourse on the Confusions and Revolutions of Government 159–61 Reply to a Paper of Dr. Sanderson 159 Ascham, Roger 27, 29 Aubrey, John 74 Augustine of Hippo 70 B.A.D. (author of The Court of the Most Illustrious and Most Magnificent James, the first) 144–5 Bacon, Francis 3, 93, 127, 147–9, 151 Essays 93, 147–9 View of the Differences … 151 Baldwin, Geoff 186 Barbaro, Josafat 30, 34 Barksdale, Clement 160 Bawcutt, Nigel 95–6, 100 Bayle, Pierre 133 Bearne, Thomas 134 Bedingfield, Thomas 30 Bembo, Pietro 6, 47

Bentham, Jeremy 188 Berkowitz, David S. 149–50 Berman, Roland 101 Bertano, Giovanni Antonio 46 Bertelli, Sergio (with Piero Innocenti) Bibliografia Machiavelliana 4 Berthelet, Thomas 35 Birch, Thomas 60 Bireley, Robert 3, 22 Blado, Antonio 16 Boccaccio, Giovanni 127 Boccalini, Traiano 139 Bodin, Jean 9, 53, 61, 62n, 63n, 150–1, 160, 172 Bonfadini, Angelo 127 Borgia, Cesare 71, 130, 165 Botero, Giovanni 9, 63n, 74, 136, 150, 151n Bowring, John 188 Brucioli, Antonio 128 Bruno, Giordano 134–5, 139 Cena de le Ceneri 134–5 De la Causa Principio et Uno 47n Eroici Furori 134 Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante 134 on Machiavelli 134–5 on Queen Elizabeth 134–5 Buondelmonte, Zanobi 33 Cabinet-Council 56, 59–65, 72–3, 74n, 147 Campanella, Tommaso 129 Cappel, Guillaume 15 Carew, Richard 129 Case, John 13, 23, 129, 133 Sphaera Civitatis 129, 133 on Gentili 133 Cassio, Dione 47n

200

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England de Vitoria, Francisco 105–6, 109 Digges, Thomas 124 di Giunta, Bernardino 15 Di Valdes, Francisco 55 Dolce, Lodovico 45 Donaldson, Peter 23 Dudley, John, Earl of Warwick 29–30, 33–4, 38 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester 111, 130, 138–9

Castelvetro, Giacomo 49, 129, 130n, 134, 139 Castiglione, Baldassarre 26, 32, 34, 128–9 Castiglione, Giovanbattista 128 Catherine of Aragon 16 Cecil, Robert, Earl of Salisbury 48 Charles I, King of England 9, 142, 151–2, 157–9, 186 Charles II, King of England 165 Charles V, King of Spain 16–18, 22, 69, 136, 140 Charlewood, John 134 Cheke, John 29 Churchyard, Thomas 54 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 38, 47, 70, 108, 131, 166 Cicogna, Giovanni Matteo 55 Clerke, Bartholomew 129 Collins, Jeffrey R. 157 Corbinelli, Jacopo 45, 47n Courtenay, Edward 127 Cox, Richard 29 Craig, Hardin 4 Cranmer, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury 127 Cromwell, Oliver 155, 164 Cromwell, Thomas 5, 17, 19, 21, 24–6, 71, 144

Edward VI, King of England 17, 29–31, 34–5, 43–4, 127 Elizabeth I, Queen of England 6, 9, 27, 29, 54, 111, 115, 119, 128, 134–9 Elyot, Sir Thomas The Boke Named a Governour 34 Erasmus of Rotterdam 127

Dacres, Edward 147 Davenant, Charles 187 de Castelnau, Michel 134 degli Arrighi, Ludovico 14 degli Uberti, Farinata 42–3 de Guevara, Antonio 47, 47n, 136, 139 The Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius 136 della Casa, Giovanni 47 de’ Medici, Cosimo 36, 40 de’ Medici, Giuliano 36 de’ Medici, Giulio 130 de’ Medici, Lorenzo 14, 32, 36, 97 de Mendoza, Bernardino 132 De Pol, Roberto 4 Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex 107–8, 112–13, 130

Gager, William 110 Garrard, William 54–5 Garver, Eugene 31 Gascoigne, George 54, 57 Gentili, Alberico 2, 8–9, 105–17, 119, 129–34, 139–40 Commentatio ad legem codicis de professoribus et medicis 98, 110 Condicionum Liber 130n De Iure Belli 8, 106–10, 112–13, 130, 140, 163 De Iuris Interpretibus 130 De Legationibus 8, 110, 129–33, 140 Legalium comitorum Oxoniensium 130n Regales disputationes 140 on civil law 106n, 109, 115–16 on history and ars historica 131–2

Fairfax, Edward 129 Ferdinand of Aragon 99, 140 Fleming, Sir Thomas 151–2 Florio, John 135–40 First Fruites 135–9 New World of Words 136 and Petrarchism 137–9 and Queen Elizabeth 137–9 Fowler, William 25–6 Foxe, John 119

Index on ius gentium 109–10, 112 on just war 106n, 109, 112–13, 115, 119 on Machiavelli 110–12, 114, 117, 119, 130–1 on mendacious officiosum 110–12, 116 on preventive war 108, 110, 112 on the Spanish Empire 107–8 Gentili, Scipione 129–30 Annotationi 130 Gentillet, Innocent 3, 26, 53, 63n, 74, 75, 110–11, 133 Gheeraerts, Marcus 119 Gieskes, Edward 91 Gifford, George 107 Gilbert, Felix 72 Giovio, Paolo (Jovius) 36, 47n, 108, 121, 130, 140 Elogia 130 Historiae sui temporis 140 Golding, Arthur 127 Googe, Barnaby 54, 56 Gower, George (and Quentin Massys) 138–9 Grady, Hugh 89–90 Grafton, Anthony 185 Greenblatt, Stephen 71n, 90 Grey, Enoch 152–4 Grotius, Hugo 9–10, 106n, 158–66, 168–72 Annotationes ad Vetus Testamentum 170 De imperio summarum potestatum circa sacra 160–1, 169–70 De iure belli ac pacis 160–1, 163–4, 169–71 Guarini, Giovanbattista 128 Guicciardini, Francesco 7, 45–7, 56, 61, 121, 140 Ricordi 45, 47n Storia d’Italia 45, 140 Haggenmacher, Peter 106n Hammond, Henry 169 Harrington, James 3, 10, 148, 157, 159, 163–4, 166–71 The Art of Lawgiving 170

201

The Commonwealth of Oceana 164, 166–9, 171, 186 Pian Piano 170 The Prerogative of Popular Government 168, 170 The Stumbling-block of Disobedience 170 and Grotius 168–71 and Hobbes 167–8, 171 and Machiavelli 148, 157, 166–8, 170–1 and Polybius 166 and Wren 168–70 on respublica Hebraeorum 168–70 on the Venetian republic 166, 168 Harvey, Gabriel 13, 36, 56, 121, 124, 132 Hatton, Christopher 139 Helgerson, Richard 29 Henry III, King of France 76 Henry IV, King of France (Henri de Navarre) 134 Henry VIII, King of England 2, 5, 16–18, 22, 23–7, 29 Heraclitus 182 Hitchcock, Robert 46–57 The Arte of Warre 54 A Pollitique Platt for the Honour of the Prince 54, 57 The Quintesence of Wit 6–7, 45–57 Hobbes, Thomas 3, 9–11, 57, 157–9, 160–7, 168–9, 171–86 De Cive 183 De Corpore Politico 164 Elements 160 Leviathan 167, 171, 180–1, 183 and religion 173, 181–4 and sovereignty 175, 178, 180, 183–4 and Three Discourses 10 Hoby, Sir Thomas 128–9 Hoeges, Dirk 100 Hooker, Richard 115 Horrocks, John Wesley 4 Humble Petition and Advice 164–5 Index of prohibited books 15, 23, 124, 127 Innocenti, Piero (with Sergio Bertelli) Bibliografia Machiavelliana 4

202

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

James VI/I, King of Scotland and England 9, 137, 142–3, 146, 151 Basilikon Doron 137 Jardine, Lisa 185 Jonays, Nicholas 15 Jonson, Ben 142n Kahn, Victoria 3 Khoury, Joseph 6 Lefranc, Pierre 71–3 Lipsius, Justus 9, 148 Livy (Titus Livius) 7, 47n, 108, 131–2, 163, 166, 185 Lloyd, Llodowick 3 The Practise of Policy 145–6 Loraux, Nicole 63n, 66n, 69n, 71–3, 181–2 Louis XIV, King of France 186 Luciani, Vincent 47 Luther, Martin 127 Machiavelli, Niccolò 1–3, 5, 32–3, 36–44, 46–9, 56, 61–2, 66, 70–4, 78–9, 87–91, 93–7, 99–101, 110–14, 118–19, 121, 124, 127–36, 138–40, 144, 147–50, 152, 155, 157–68, 170–84, 187–8 Arte della Guerra (The Art of War) 1, 6, 8, 14, 48–9, 53, 55, 67, 69, 124 L’asino d’oro 124 Belfagor 124 I capitoli  124 Clizia 124 I Decennali 124 Discorsi sulla Prima Deca di Tito Livio (Discourses on Livy) 1, 3, 5, 8, 33, 43–4, 48, 52n, 65, 67, 69, 110, 113–14, 117–18, 124, 127–8, 131–2, 134, 139, 157, 161–3, 165–7, 173–81 La Mandragola 124 Il modo che tenne il duca Valentino per ammazzar Vitellozzo 124 Il Principe (The Prince) 1, 3–8, 14–27, 30–5, 39, 41, 44, 48, 51,

62, 65, 68–9, 73–83, 85–9, 93, 97, 99–101, 110, 118, 121, 124, 129, 131, 135–6, 139–40, 161–3, 165, 176, 178, 181 dedication to Lorenzo de’ Medici 14, 32, 97 Ritratto di cose di Francia e della Magna 124 Storie Fiorentine (Florentine Histories) 5, 8, 25, 30, 40, 47–8, 53, 69, 121, 124 Vita di Castruccio Castracani 124 and Machiavellianism 1–4, 7–9, 13–14, 23, 48–9, 59, 63–5, 69–72, 74–90, 95–7, 129–30, 134, 141–3, 149–50, 152, 155, 158, 162, 185–8 and republicanism 2, 8–10, 110, 129–33, 139, 142, 148–9, 152, 157–8, 163–72, 175–8, 186 on religion and civil religion 170, 176–8, 183–4 on tumults and conflict 167, 173–4, 173n, 176–80, 181–2, 182n on virtue 93, 100, 173–4, 178–9, 182 Machiavil’s Advice to his Son 1–2 Manheim, Michael 99 Manuzio, Paolo 45 Marchand, Jean-Jacques 37 Marlowe, Christopher 3, 5–6, 13, 48, 70, 175, 187 The Jew of Malta 6–8, 75–8, 80–8 Tamburlaine 6 Mary I, Queen of England 6, 29 Massys, Quentin (and George Gower) 138–9 Matchett, William 99 Mayer, Thomas F. 17 Meinecke, Friedrich 72, 141, 144, 149 Melanchthon 70 Melton, John 145–6 Meyer, Edward 3 Milton, John 60–3, 163 and the Cabinet-Council 60–1 Minshull, Catherine 6 Mirror for Magistrates, The 39 Monck, George 165 Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de 90, 148 More, Sir Thomas 19

Index Moryson, Sir Richard 26–7 Mosse, George 143–4 Nannini, Remigio 47 Nashe, Thomas 13 Naudé, Gabriel 133 Nedham, Marchamont 3, 10, 159, 162–6, 167, 170–1 The Case of the Commonwealth of England 163–5 The Excellencie of a Free State 164 and Mercurius Politicus 162–5 and Newes from Brussels 165 on The Humble Petition and Advice 164–5 Nifo, Agostino 13 Ochino, Bernardino 127 Orsini, Napoleone 4, 9, 95–6 Osorio, Jeronimo 13 Palingenio Stellato, Marcello 56 Panizza, Diego 112 Parker, Henry, Lord Morley 5, 25, 25n Parker, Henry (parliamentarian) 10, 154–5 Paruta, Paolo 136 Patericke, Simon 23 Peltonen, Makku 148 Pepys, Samuel 187 Perna, Pietro 8, 45, 129 Petrarca, Francesco 25, 137–9 Trionfi 25, 137–8 Pettit, Philip 179n Philip IV, King of Spain 160 Pigna, Giambattista 47 Plato 19, 47n, 56, 70, 146, 166 Plutarch 47n, 139 Pocock, John G.A. 142, 157, 186–7 Pole, Reginald 2, 5, 14, 16–27, 21n, 22n, 144 Apologia ad Carolum Quintum 5, 16–27, 144 De Unitate 16–17 Polybius 7, 47, 163, 166 Praz, Mario 3, 13, 72, 95–6 Prerogativa Regis, de (statute) 151 Preston, Thomas 132

203

Pufendorf, Samuel 57 Raab, Felix 3, 9, 22, 27, 143–4, 157, 186 Rahe, Paul 157, 186 Rainolds, John 110–12 Raleigh, Sir Walter 2, 7, 56, 59–74, 127, 147 History of the World 7, 60–1, 64–5, 67, 71–4, 147 and Cabinet-Council 56, 59–65, 72–3, 74n, 147 and Maxims of State 59, 62–4, 73, 147 Reynolds, Noel B. 10 Rich, Barnaby 54–5 Richardson, Brian 26 Rocca, Bernardino 55 Roe, John 6 Rosello, Lucio Paolo 128 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 26 Rucellai, Cosimo 33 Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor 47 Salicato, Altobello 50 Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus) 47, 166 Sanna, Laura 36, 44 Sansovino, Francesco 45–8, 50–1, 52n, 54 Concetti Politici 46–9, 54 Propositioni overo Considerationi in Materia di Stato 50 Sarpi, Paolo 185 Saumaise, Claude 164 Saxonhouse, Arlene W. 10 Schmitt, Carl 106 Scott, Jonathan 157–8 Scott, Walter, Laird of Buccleuch 25–6 Seaman, Lazarus 169 Seymour, Edward, Duke of Somerset 29 Shakespeare, William 3, 6, 8, 13, 29, 89–101, 103–4, 110, 112–19, 127, 137, 187 1 Henry IV 117 3 Henry VI 90 Henry V 6, 8–9, 103–5, 112–16 King John 8, 89–101 Measure for Measure 137 Midsummer’s Night Dream 117 Richard II 6

204

Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England

Richard III 90 Troilus and Cressida 110 and Alberico Gentili 103–19 Sidney, Sir Philip 2, 29, 110, 130, 132, 138 Sommerville, Johann P. 152 Spenser, Edmund 29 Spiekerman, Tim 6, 90 Spinoza, Baruch 129 Stockhammer, Niclas 100 Strathmann, Ernest 60–2, 64n, 72n, 73 Strype, John 44 Stubbs, John 138 Sutcliffe, Mattew 108–9 Tacitus, Cornelius 7, 47, 108, 139–40, 148, 185 Tamworth, John 30 Tasso, Torquato 104, 128–30 Aminta 128 La Gerusalemme Liberata 104, 129, 130 Solymeidos 130 Tegli, Silvestro 127, 129 Thesoro Politico 136 Thomas, William 2, 5–6, 26–7, 29–44, 121, 147 Common Places of State 30, 43 Discourses 5–6 History of Italy 5–6, 30, 33–6, 40–3, 121, 147 Italian Grammar 6, 30 Travels to Tana and Persia 30, 34 Vanitie of the World 35

Thomasius, Christian 57 Throckmorton, Nicholas 44, 132 Thucydides 47 Tillyard, Eustace M.W. 89, 91 Tremelli, Emanuele 127 Troublesome Reign of King John 8, 89, 91 Ubaldini, Petruccio 49 van Dyke, Paul 17 Vaughan, Virginia M. 91 Vermigli, Peter Martyr 127 Vizzani, Angelo 55–6 Weissberger, Arnold L. 13 Whetstone, George 56 Whitehorne, Peter 6, 49, 124 Whitfield, John H. 14–15 Williams, Roger 54–6 Wilson, Thomas 37n, 38 Wolfe, John 5, 8, 49, 121, 124, 127–9, 130–1, 135, 139 Dialogi del Machiavelli in Ottavo 124 preface to Machiavelli’s I Discorsi 124, 131 Wolsey, Thomas, Archbishop of York and Cardinal 24, 144 Wotton, Sir Henry 185 Wren, Mattew 168–70 Considerations upon Mr. Harrington’s Commonwealth of Oceana 168–9 Xerxes 66