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rfmcdonaldWhat the subject line says--speaking notes from a presentation I delivered last month for my Renaissance cultural capital class.
***
I'd like to begin this presentation by referring to our edition of Utopia. On pages 15 and 16, Raphael Hythloday makes an interesting comment to the Cardinal in relationship to rigid and punitive systems of justice:
Further, on pages 63 and 64, Hythloday further comments that although full-time students are rare in his New World society, "every child gets an introduction to good literature, and throughout their lives many people [. . .] devote [free time] to reading," with studies conducted in the vernacular. Throughout their lives, the Utopians retain as is described on pages 75 and 76 a keen love of learning, particularly of the classics, which is translated into an advanced experimental science and technology as well as to a transparent and effective legal code (82).
The commentaries made by More's mouthpiece character describing a near-ideal society, demonstrate how Thomas More saw a direct correlation between the education of individuals and the nature of their society. The high importance placed upon education in perhaps the most famous text authored by perhaps the most famous of 16th century Tudor statesmen reflects a common theme throughout this period of English history.
For the statesmen of the 16th century, education was intimately bound up with the integrity of the political community. Indeed, the very term "commonweal" appears to have first been used in 1447 by Parliament, to complain about the lack of schoolteachers in London, which it saw as threatening general welfare (Starkey 19), drawing upon broader European traditions (that of le bien publique, alternatively la chose publique or le bien commun, as well as the Latin res publica) refering to the conduct and wise governance of a human community. For Tudor statesmen of the 16th century, balance was critical between Catholic and Protestant leanings, between secular and religious knowledge, and so on. Alistair Fox has observed that the humanist curriculum was not consistently secular-minded, as some critics suggested. Take John Colet, mentioned last class as the benefactor of St. Paul's School in London:
The concern for public order was manifested not only in a religious context of Christian mores and ethics, but in a secular context of a centralizing British monarchy. Geoffrey Elton observed of Henrician England that
Education played a critical role in the formation and justification of this new "united and unitary realm free from foreign control," by socializing the rising generation. Thomas Cromwell was a person who rose from relatively humble stock to a position of preeminence under Henry VIII, only to lose his life to that monarch's whims. He himself highly valued education:
though according to Elton, Cromwell did not see this as contradicting the goal of benefiting the recipient and 'the common weal.' Further, in his First Injunctions to the Clergy (1536) Cromwell went out of his way to arrange for the promotion of higher education, arranging subsidies for students attending universities as well as for established scholars, to aid with living expenses and to allow scholarly travel. In 1535, in fact, Cromwell acquired the high stewardship and chancellorship of Cambridge following the deaths of those positions' incumbents. At that energetic and up-and-coming university, he took an active role in the curriculum of Cambridge, issuing orders "encouraging the study of Greek and improving other disciplines" (32) against the resistance of conservative staff. These reforms, however, curbed abuses, curtailed privileges, eliminated the canon law of Catholicism, modernizing the arts course in short, they were very practical solutions to the problems of Cambridge; Cromwell's reforms did not extend so far as to entirely reform the institution, simply making it better suited as a Protestant body. Education, for Cromwell, was necessary for the purposes of the state, to create a class of educated people capable of supporting the changes of Henry VIII. Even after his execution, Cromwell's interventionist education policies were continued, through the 1540 adoption of Lily's Grammar as a standardized school text, for instance.
Nicholas Bacon was born to prosperous gentry parents of the agricultural district of Suffolk, in East Anglia, in 1509 or 1510, proceeding to Cambridge University in 1523 with a scholarship to Corpus Christi, then called Benet College. He seems to have been circumstantially involved with the White Horse group of young reformers, who shared radical humanist or Lutheran views. Based on surviving records, Bacon appears to have been a dedicated student, making lifelong friendships there and remaining in touch with the university community even after he appears to have entered Gray's Inn a radical inn of the court to pursue law studies, becoming an "ancient" that is, an established lawyer in a remarkably short four years.
In the late 1530s, Bacon began working for the Tudor court. In the late 1530s, he co-authored the so-called "Denton-Bacon-Cary Report" on the Inns of Court. The report could be divided into two parts: firstly, an in-depth survey of the operation of the Inns, their programs, their social conventions, and their governmental principles; secondly, a proposal to establish a fifth Inn alongside the existing four, "designed to provide for the systematic training of statesmen and diplomats, and of lawyers with a strong orientation towards such professions" (Tittler 30). Comprising a hand-picked group, these students would be given immediate practice, along with complete government funding for their education. This report would have constituted a notable and highly productive change from traditional concepts of professional education.
Although it was never implemented, when Bacon acceded to the Privy Council with the accession of Elizabeth I to the throne, he did. Thomas Starkey commented on the need to provide a better education for the wards of the crown two decades before Bacon's proposal for the establishment of an elite academy for wards of the state:
Many of these principles were adopted, if in necessarily moderated style, for the grammar schools under his supervision. Discipline was relatively light for the era, while he offered scholarships to and encouraged the admission of the poor. In educating his own children including the later famous Francis Bacon, scientist and spy Bacon hired the best tutors, sending his five sons off to be educated at Cambridge and Gray's Inn. For Bacon, education was a necessity
For William Cecil, Lord Burghley from 1571, brother-in-law to Nicholas Bacon, and chief minister to Elizabeth I for some four decades, education served similar purposes. The Cecil family, Welsh in origin, traced its position at the Tudor court to its support in 1485 of Henry Tudor later Henry VII at Bosworth, rising from the ranks of the minor Welsh country gentry to a position of some national prominence. William Cecil was born, in September 1520 or 1521, and as his parents' only son (he had three sisters) he was propelled , undergoing education at the grammar schools of Grantham and Stamford, and undergoing education at Cambridge's St, John's College after the reforms of Cromwell. Cecil was an inveterate student. The Anonymous Life records him as
The author claims that "he was as famous for [being] a scholar in Cambridge as afterwards for a grave and great councillor" (45), though he left Cambridge without receiving a degree and later received an honourary MA only in 1564. He proceeded to practice law at the inns of court, and slowly rise to greater prominence. It was only halfway through the reign of Edward VI, in September of 1550, that Cecil became a Privy Councillor and one of the Secretaries of State, successfully surviving the period's politics and gaining the trust of others he was able to see, in 1552, a draft of Archbishop Cramner's 45 articles of faith. For most of the reign of Queen Mary, Cecil retired to his estate as a country gentleman, being made Secretary of State by Elizabeth in November of 1558 and inaugurating his power.
Cecil was concerned with managing England at a time when its domestic and international situation was terribly unsettled, concerned with maintaining England's independence and stability in the late Tudor pattern. The author of the Anonymous Life claims that "[h]e would say there could be no firm nor settled course in religion without order and government, for without a head there could be on body, and if all were heads there should be no bodies to set the heads upon. [. . .] He held there could be no government where there was division" (113). He was by nature a conservative man, concerned with legalistic and controlled movements almost to the point of inactivity; he did not, for instance, effectively modernize England's taxation systems so as to allow for greater revenues. To this end, Cecil made frequent use of propaganda to demonstrate the correctness of royal policies towards Roman Catholics and the Spanish, for instance. As minister, he claimed greater knowledge based on his "experience, memory, and notable invention" (126), with a great command of detail. By the time of his death in 1598, Cecil had succeeded in stabilizing the awkward Tudor state, and allowing greater continuity of traditions.
Thomas Smith was born in 1513. He studied at Queen's College, Cambridge University, gaining an MA in 1533. He was created Regius Professor of Civil law and Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge University in 1544. From the late 1540s on, he steadily rose through the ranks of the Tudor court, being both created Secretary of State and knighted in 1548, later ambassador to France from 1562 to 1566, and rejoining the Privy Council in 1571, dying in 1578. His posthumously published De Republica Anglorum (1583) went through 10 editions between its publication and 1640. This text can be thought of as a description of England's social and political structure under the Tudors; further, the text's creation by a person located at the heart of Tudor political life gives it a certain quasi-official status.
For Smith, it was an important element of English society that upward social mobility be possible through education. In chapter 14 of book one,
***
I'd like to begin this presentation by referring to our edition of Utopia. On pages 15 and 16, Raphael Hythloday makes an interesting comment to the Cardinal in relationship to rigid and punitive systems of justice:
[T]his way of punishing thieves goes beyond the call of justice, and is not in any case for the public good. The penalty is too harsh in itself, yet it isn't an effective deterrent. [. . .] In this matter not only you in England but a good part of the world seem to imitate bad schoolmasters, who would rather whip their pupils than teach them. Severe and terrible punishments are enacted for theft, when it would be much better to enable every man to earn his own living, instead of being driven to the awful necessity of stealing and then dying for it.
Further, on pages 63 and 64, Hythloday further comments that although full-time students are rare in his New World society, "every child gets an introduction to good literature, and throughout their lives many people [. . .] devote [free time] to reading," with studies conducted in the vernacular. Throughout their lives, the Utopians retain as is described on pages 75 and 76 a keen love of learning, particularly of the classics, which is translated into an advanced experimental science and technology as well as to a transparent and effective legal code (82).
The commentaries made by More's mouthpiece character describing a near-ideal society, demonstrate how Thomas More saw a direct correlation between the education of individuals and the nature of their society. The high importance placed upon education in perhaps the most famous text authored by perhaps the most famous of 16th century Tudor statesmen reflects a common theme throughout this period of English history.
For the statesmen of the 16th century, education was intimately bound up with the integrity of the political community. Indeed, the very term "commonweal" appears to have first been used in 1447 by Parliament, to complain about the lack of schoolteachers in London, which it saw as threatening general welfare (Starkey 19), drawing upon broader European traditions (that of le bien publique, alternatively la chose publique or le bien commun, as well as the Latin res publica) refering to the conduct and wise governance of a human community. For Tudor statesmen of the 16th century, balance was critical between Catholic and Protestant leanings, between secular and religious knowledge, and so on. Alistair Fox has observed that the humanist curriculum was not consistently secular-minded, as some critics suggested. Take John Colet, mentioned last class as the benefactor of St. Paul's School in London:
The educational system Colet prescribed for his grammar school at St. Paul's was certainly not secular in its bias. Quite apart from good literature in Latin and Greek, Colet declares that the boys are to study 'specially Cristeyn auctours that wrote theyre wysdome with clene and chast laten other in verse or in prose, for my entent is by thys scole specially to incresse knowledge and worshipping of god and oure lorde Crist Jesu and good Cristen lyff and manners in the Children' (25-6).
The concern for public order was manifested not only in a religious context of Christian mores and ethics, but in a secular context of a centralizing British monarchy. Geoffrey Elton observed of Henrician England that
[t]he demand for the divorce [of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon] produced the assertion that England was an empire, a united and unitary realm free from all foreign control and organized as both state and Church under one person, both king and supreme head. This 'break with Rome' needed to be widely publicized and enforced against possible and actual opposition, work which required a ceaseless output of information and propaganda (15).
Education played a critical role in the formation and justification of this new "united and unitary realm free from foreign control," by socializing the rising generation. Thomas Cromwell was a person who rose from relatively humble stock to a position of preeminence under Henry VIII, only to lose his life to that monarch's whims. He himself highly valued education:
David Clapham, who at one time tutored young Gregory Cromwell [Thomas Cromwell's son], has recorded his knowledge that the lord privy seal especially wanted to ensure a good education for all. The children of the upper classes were to be brought up properly 'in good literature'; other children 'after their abilities, wits, and aptness, in science and crafts.' To this safely Erasmian sentiment [. . .] Cromwell characteristically added an insistence that all education should include an earnest instruction to 'obedience to God, to the King's highness, and to such rulers and laws as his majestry shall ordain' (29)
though according to Elton, Cromwell did not see this as contradicting the goal of benefiting the recipient and 'the common weal.' Further, in his First Injunctions to the Clergy (1536) Cromwell went out of his way to arrange for the promotion of higher education, arranging subsidies for students attending universities as well as for established scholars, to aid with living expenses and to allow scholarly travel. In 1535, in fact, Cromwell acquired the high stewardship and chancellorship of Cambridge following the deaths of those positions' incumbents. At that energetic and up-and-coming university, he took an active role in the curriculum of Cambridge, issuing orders "encouraging the study of Greek and improving other disciplines" (32) against the resistance of conservative staff. These reforms, however, curbed abuses, curtailed privileges, eliminated the canon law of Catholicism, modernizing the arts course in short, they were very practical solutions to the problems of Cambridge; Cromwell's reforms did not extend so far as to entirely reform the institution, simply making it better suited as a Protestant body. Education, for Cromwell, was necessary for the purposes of the state, to create a class of educated people capable of supporting the changes of Henry VIII. Even after his execution, Cromwell's interventionist education policies were continued, through the 1540 adoption of Lily's Grammar as a standardized school text, for instance.
Nicholas Bacon was born to prosperous gentry parents of the agricultural district of Suffolk, in East Anglia, in 1509 or 1510, proceeding to Cambridge University in 1523 with a scholarship to Corpus Christi, then called Benet College. He seems to have been circumstantially involved with the White Horse group of young reformers, who shared radical humanist or Lutheran views. Based on surviving records, Bacon appears to have been a dedicated student, making lifelong friendships there and remaining in touch with the university community even after he appears to have entered Gray's Inn a radical inn of the court to pursue law studies, becoming an "ancient" that is, an established lawyer in a remarkably short four years.
In the late 1530s, Bacon began working for the Tudor court. In the late 1530s, he co-authored the so-called "Denton-Bacon-Cary Report" on the Inns of Court. The report could be divided into two parts: firstly, an in-depth survey of the operation of the Inns, their programs, their social conventions, and their governmental principles; secondly, a proposal to establish a fifth Inn alongside the existing four, "designed to provide for the systematic training of statesmen and diplomats, and of lawyers with a strong orientation towards such professions" (Tittler 30). Comprising a hand-picked group, these students would be given immediate practice, along with complete government funding for their education. This report would have constituted a notable and highly productive change from traditional concepts of professional education.
Although it was never implemented, when Bacon acceded to the Privy Council with the accession of Elizabeth I to the throne, he did. Thomas Starkey commented on the need to provide a better education for the wards of the crown two decades before Bacon's proposal for the establishment of an elite academy for wards of the state:
All male wards whose land brought in an excess of œ100 per annum were to be enrolled in the academy at the age of nine, and were to remain until they attained their majorities twelve years later. The curriculum during the first years was to include French and other modern languages in addition to Latin and Greek. Music, physical education, and regular Christian devotion rounded out the offerings for the younger students. As they progressed, the pupils were also introduced to the fundamentals of the common law, horsemanship, and the martial arts, all of which Bacon considered necessary training for such an elite group of gentlemen (Tittler 59-60).
Many of these principles were adopted, if in necessarily moderated style, for the grammar schools under his supervision. Discipline was relatively light for the era, while he offered scholarships to and encouraged the admission of the poor. In educating his own children including the later famous Francis Bacon, scientist and spy Bacon hired the best tutors, sending his five sons off to be educated at Cambridge and Gray's Inn. For Bacon, education was a necessity
For William Cecil, Lord Burghley from 1571, brother-in-law to Nicholas Bacon, and chief minister to Elizabeth I for some four decades, education served similar purposes. The Cecil family, Welsh in origin, traced its position at the Tudor court to its support in 1485 of Henry Tudor later Henry VII at Bosworth, rising from the ranks of the minor Welsh country gentry to a position of some national prominence. William Cecil was born, in September 1520 or 1521, and as his parents' only son (he had three sisters) he was propelled , undergoing education at the grammar schools of Grantham and Stamford, and undergoing education at Cambridge's St, John's College after the reforms of Cromwell. Cecil was an inveterate student. The Anonymous Life records him as
being so diligent and painful as he hired the bellringer to call him up at four of the clock every morning, with which watching and continual sitting there fell abundance of humours into his legs, then very hardly cured[.] One Metcalf, then Master of [St. John's College, seeing his diligence and towardness, would often give him money to encourage him. He was so toward, studious, and so early capable as he was reader of the sophistry lecture being but sixteen years old; and afterwards, he read the Greek lecture there as a gentleman (43-44).
The author claims that "he was as famous for [being] a scholar in Cambridge as afterwards for a grave and great councillor" (45), though he left Cambridge without receiving a degree and later received an honourary MA only in 1564. He proceeded to practice law at the inns of court, and slowly rise to greater prominence. It was only halfway through the reign of Edward VI, in September of 1550, that Cecil became a Privy Councillor and one of the Secretaries of State, successfully surviving the period's politics and gaining the trust of others he was able to see, in 1552, a draft of Archbishop Cramner's 45 articles of faith. For most of the reign of Queen Mary, Cecil retired to his estate as a country gentleman, being made Secretary of State by Elizabeth in November of 1558 and inaugurating his power.
Cecil was concerned with managing England at a time when its domestic and international situation was terribly unsettled, concerned with maintaining England's independence and stability in the late Tudor pattern. The author of the Anonymous Life claims that "[h]e would say there could be no firm nor settled course in religion without order and government, for without a head there could be on body, and if all were heads there should be no bodies to set the heads upon. [. . .] He held there could be no government where there was division" (113). He was by nature a conservative man, concerned with legalistic and controlled movements almost to the point of inactivity; he did not, for instance, effectively modernize England's taxation systems so as to allow for greater revenues. To this end, Cecil made frequent use of propaganda to demonstrate the correctness of royal policies towards Roman Catholics and the Spanish, for instance. As minister, he claimed greater knowledge based on his "experience, memory, and notable invention" (126), with a great command of detail. By the time of his death in 1598, Cecil had succeeded in stabilizing the awkward Tudor state, and allowing greater continuity of traditions.
Thomas Smith was born in 1513. He studied at Queen's College, Cambridge University, gaining an MA in 1533. He was created Regius Professor of Civil law and Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge University in 1544. From the late 1540s on, he steadily rose through the ranks of the Tudor court, being both created Secretary of State and knighted in 1548, later ambassador to France from 1562 to 1566, and rejoining the Privy Council in 1571, dying in 1578. His posthumously published De Republica Anglorum (1583) went through 10 editions between its publication and 1640. This text can be thought of as a description of England's social and political structure under the Tudors; further, the text's creation by a person located at the heart of Tudor political life gives it a certain quasi-official status.
For Smith, it was an important element of English society that upward social mobility be possible through education. In chapter 14 of book one,
Now as time bringeth an ende of all thinges, these brethren being all dead, and their ofspring encreasing daily to a great multitude, and the reverence due the old fathers in such and so great a number of equals fayling by reason of the death or doting of the Elders: eche having their merites of education apart to their fathers and grandfathers, and so many arising and such equalitie among them, it was not possible that they should be content to be governed by a fewe (16).
In chapter 20 of the same book, Smith defends a vision of social mobility being enabled by education. English society and English liberties could be guaranteed only through ensuring social mobility, which could in turn be guaranteed only through an educational system capable of coopting talent and socializing talent in the conventions of the Elizabethan state before it could be drawn away into a position of opposition.
Works Cited
The Anonymous Life of William Cecil, Lord Burghley. Ed. by Alan G. R. Smith. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen, 1990.
Elton, G.F. Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal. London: Cambridge University, 1973.
Fox, Alistair. "Facts and Fallacies: Interpreting English Humanism." Reassessing the Henrician Age. Ed. by Alistair Fox and John Guy. Oxford, United Kingdom: Basil Blackwell, 1986. 9-33.
Graves, Michael A.R. Burghley: William Cecil, Lord Burghley. London: Longman, 1998.
Smith, Thomas. De Republica Anglorum. 1580. Menston, England: Scolar Press, 1970.
Starkey, David. "Which Age of Reform?" Revolution Reassessed: Revisions in the History of Tudor Government and Administration. Ed. by Christopher Coleman and David Starkey. Oxford, United Kingdom: Clarendon Press, 1986. 13-28.
Tittler, Robert. Nicholas Bacon: The Making of a Tudor Statesman. Athens, Ohio: Ohio State University, 1976.
