BOOKS Commonwealth in crisis

JOEL HURSTFIELD

Tn most periods of history people do not concern themselves with fundamental poliA tical themes: they quarrel instead about the control of the machinery of state. But there are times when the very nature of society as such comes under review and men ask: what is the state, why does it exist, whom does it serve, to whom is it answerable? One such period occurred in ancient Greece, in the time of its greatness. Another was inaugu- rated as the result of the Renaissance and Reformation. This period lasted in England roughly from the early sixteenth century until the civil war, some five generations in all. Then the issues, again turned away from fundamentals and only rarely were the great debates resumed.

Half way through this 'Reformation' period, Shakespeare and his contemporaries were already aware that the old framework of their society and lives had gone for ever. John Donne was not alone in seeing that the new astronomy and much else had eroded the foundations and assumptions, so long preserved, of European thought and culture. But the first generation, living some sixty or seventy years before, could not see the prospects before them. What they did know was that things were changing rapidly and nothing was stable or secure as is well brought out by Mr Whitney R. D. Jones, in his stimulating book, The Tudor Com- monwealth, 1529-1559 (The Athlone Press 55s). He quotes Lawrence Stone on the cul- minating crisis of Edward w's reign: 'society itself seemed in danger of imminent dissolu- tion. Religious anarchy and extremism, ad- ministrative corruption, financial collapse, currency and exchange chaos, agrarian un- rest, extravagant and fruitless military enter. prises, political control by a group of most unscrupulous and irresponsible careerists, all combined with the most violent fluctuations in the main export trade to produce a situa- tion of acute crisis.'

I think that the language is here too strong but the crisis—intellectual no less than econo- mic—was acute enough; and Mr Jones des- cribes it throughout the book clearly and well. He has skilfully ransacked the rich pamphlet literature of the time, as well as recent studies of the period. He quotes ex- tensively—sometimes too extensively since several people say the same thing—but it is a facinating exploration of a rich source.

We must add a caveat. Mr Jones is deal- ing essentially with pamphleteers: men who want to write because they have something to say. Such men—in all ages—are usually reformers. And they are not typical. What we hear little about in this book is the politicians, the men with a job in hand : to govern, to deal with the day-to-day business. Of their views the evidence is less and it is more diffi- cult to interpret. But politicians no less than pamphleteers knew that they had a crisis on hand.

What was this crisis? We could, if we wished, call it the crisis engendered by the breach with Rome. But for our purpose it would be better to speak of the triumph of the state over the Church, for this victory was accomplished whether the country itself stayed Catholic or went Protestant. In many respects their crisis is also ours. They had

seen the collapse or grave weakening of the Church as an institution (though not yet the decline of religion); and they were searching for principles which would preserve the ethical codes of political and social behaviour which, at its best—and sometimes even at its worst—the mediaeval church had pro- claimed. These men wrote with great vigour, skill and resourcefulness on these problems; and they had some highly original—as well as some absurd—proposals to offer. They were sometimes known to contemporaries as `Commonwealth's Men'.

It would be a grotesque anachronism to call them a party; rather they were an assorted group comprising pamphleteers, like Starkey and Crowley; churchmen like Latimer and Ridleyi politicians like Hales and Morrison. Some of them enjoyed the patronage of Thomas Cromwell in the 1530s and of the Protector Somerset in the early years of the reign of Edward vt. It may be that some of their ideas were transmuted and passed on into the Elizabethan period with the sympathy of William Cecil, the Secretary of State. They did not possess a common pur- pose; but their writings have the same re- current theme. The social responsibility hitherto largely within the purview of the Church and the gild could now only survive, after the collapse or attrition of these organi- sations, if the state would shoulder their tasks. Wealth they still thought of in its mediaeval sense of welfare. One day wealth would mean material possessions; and there were already signs of the change. But they were Commonwealth's Men and the word meant common welfare. It should be the object of policy, Hales told Somerset, to en- sure 'that men seek not their own wealth nor their private commodity, but, as good mem- bers, the universal wealth of the whole body'.

So they urged the state and the munici- pality to embark on a poor law policy, not simply of relief but of rehabilitation. So they favoured control of rents and protection

Edward In from a painting in the NPG, against eviction. So they pressed for an agri- cultural policy which would provide cheap,

food yet a sound income for the farmers. So they worked for a flourishing export trade and a favourable balance of payments. Of course, some of their policies and some of the pamphleteers contradicted each other.

But what held these men together was a belief that the state had a massive social`problem on its hands, far greater than anything that a severely weakened Church could handle. The state must tackle the problem forthwith and on a grand scale. The Church is dead! Long live the State!

Yet, as we read their works we see that these men were not revolutionaries but con- servatives. They hoped to restore a past which had long since disappeared, if indeed it had ever existed. They were moved by a passionate—and pathetic—belief that the state could and would do God's work which had now passed to it. And it is in this, more than anything else, that they misread the situation. Some of their analyses of contem- porary ills were both subtle and profound; some of their schemes were brilliant and well- formed. But in their central concept they were tragically at fault. The mid-Tudor state had neither the will nor the power to take on these tremendous tasks, which would have daunted a twentieth century government with all its fiscal and administrative resources. The Protector Somerset was the exception, not the rule: his own ministers came in the end to despise and destroy him. The mid-Tudor commonwealth movement heralded a false dawn.

Out of high hopes were born extravagant claims, and violence. The idealists were over-

taken by events. The rebellion of 1549 and—

more important—the news coming in from abroad of Anabaptist communities which, it was said, abolished private property and established the common ownership of all things, including women, these things brought discredit on some of the commonwealth ideals which had nothing to do with develop- ments abroad. Yet these very ideals could not be wholly separated from the doctrines of self-government and social equality, though the Tudor pamphleteers would have repudiated these notions. The association in men's minds remained.

Government on behalf of the people came to be thought of as government by the people, and government by the people was in turn thought of an anarchy. 'A goodly realm shall that be', was the acid comment of Cranmer, 'that shall be ruled by them that never had experience to govern, nor cannot rule them- selves'. 'After the same sort', said the preacher Christopherson (an ancestor of Sir Derman Christopherson, Chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors, transmitting a necessary warning to his posterity?), 'did children order their parents, wives their husbands, and subjects their magistrates. So that the feet ruled the head, and the cart was set before the horse.' The result is 'Govern- ment turned upside down.' A common- wealth' said Sir Walter Ralegh, . . - is the government by the common and baser sort without respect of the other orders.' In the mid-seventeenth century commonwealth ideals were born again out of the turbulence of civil war but they scarcely survived it.

Yet some things survived. The Elizabethans had erected a poor law system which drew on the teachings of the commonwealth's men, and their system lasted on for centuries.

With all its faults it contributed towards pre- serving that social stability in England which was, and is the envy of Europe.