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Prosopon: The Journal of Prosopography
1 (2006)
PROSOPON
The Journal of Prosopography
Volume 1
2006
UNIT FOR PROSOPOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH
Linacre College, Oxford
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1 (2006)
Editors:
David E. Thornton: Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
Katharine S. B. Keats-Rohan: Prosopography Centre, University of Oxford, UK
Copy-Editor: Olga Borymchuk, St Hugh’s College, Oxford, UK
Internet address:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~prosop/prosopon/prosopon.htm
Contact and Submissions:
For all information concerning submission of articles to Prosopon, including our
style sheet, please see our www-page.
Copyright:
All works are copyright of the author. Contributors bear sole responsibility for
statements of fact or opinion and general content of their works, which in no way
reflects views or opinions of the Editors, Prosopography Centre or the University
of Oxford.
Requests for permission to quote should be sent to the individual authors
concerned or, if in doubt of the address, to the Editors.
CONTENTS
Main Article:
Michael Stuckey:
Legal History
‘...this Society tendeth...’: Elite Prosopography in Elizabethan
3
Short Papers/Conference Papers:
Thierry Stasser: Où sont les femmes? Prosopographie des femmes des familles
princières et ducales en Italie méridionale depuis la chute du royaume lombard
(774) jusqu’à l’installation des Normands (env. 1100)
61
Jan Prell <: Onomastique, liens de parenté et pouvoir: Les vicomtes de Châtellerault
et leurs parents au Xe siècle
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‘...this Society tendeth...’:
Elite Prosopography in Elizabethan Legal History
Michael Stuckey
1. Introduction
The so-called Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries convened on a regular basis, mostly
during Term times and always in London, during the fifteen-eighties and fifteennineties. The group’s routine meetings continued into at least the first few years of the
seventeenth century, but in all likelihood these gatherings did not carry on very long
into the reign of the new king, James I. Although the company never achieved any
official sanction, this circle of associates included in their number many of the
sharpest legal and historical intellects of the period: William Camden, John
Dodderidge, John Stow, Robert Cotton, James Ley, William Lambarde, Francis
Thynne, John Davies, and Henry Spelman were some of the more renowned
participants of the apparent forty or forty-two members of the Society. Through its
enquiries, the Society of Antiquaries encouraged the establishment of a scholarly
environment amongst English thinkers which was eventually to become instrumental
to the critical examination of legal and institutional history.
The extant substantive product of the Society is a collection of papers, which
appear to have originally been read by particular members at some of the group’s
meetings. Collected and edited in the early eighteenth century, under the title Curious
Discourses, these short pieces communicate a real inquisitiveness about the
emergence and the history of English laws, customs, and institutions. The ‘discourses’
also demonstrate the adoption of novel methods of scholarly inquiry in that the papers
evidence attempts to utilise what we now describe as primary source materials, which,
after the dissolution of the monasteries, had become more readily available to a wider
community of scholars. More specifically however, the papers also evidence that
access to other primary source materials, in the form of legal, royal and heraldic
records, was exploited by group members who were, by profession, record keepers,
heralds and above all lawyers. The interests of the Society’s membership,
demonstrated through the particular topics chosen for discussion, were diverse.
However, legal and quasi-legal themes overshadowed all else. Legal topics were
nonetheless contextualised and linked with a multitude of distinct subjects such as
funeral customs, the extent of land, knights’ fees, titles of the aristocracy, castles,
shires, coinage, judicial procedure, lawful combat, the Inns of Court, heralds and
forest law. Accordingly, the topics discussed were normally confined, by general
consensus, to England, and English sources were similarly the preferred materials of
research.
These two parameters, the law and Englishness, define (to a certain degree)
the character of the Society. But the group was not as insular as might be thought
initially. Notwithstanding their backgrounds, the members’ writings show that in
many ways their thinking transcended the ideal-type of the contemporary common
law mind. A number of the members made occasional references within ‘discourses’
to the models of humanist ideas current on the continent, and the group’s collective
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method of inquiry went well beyond the lawyer’s narrowly purposive and precedentbased research. The advent of printing had recently facilitated a more rapid circulation
of new ideas and this, in turn, enhanced the possibilities for textual synthetics. There
is also evidence that some members had started to identify potentially disturbing
discontinuities in English legal history.
Who were the members of this impressive group? Can we say, with any
certainty, who was a member? What were they like? What were their backgrounds,
their experiences and their connections? Most importantly, perhaps, what were their
interests? What do we know about the interests of such a group - and what else might
this tell us about the kind of people they were and the times and circumstances in
which they lived? These are the questions which this article attempts to address.
2.1 Membership of the Society
This preliminary section of the article concerns the identification of the members of
the Society of Antiquaries. The sources reveal a pool of a little more than one hundred
candidates, all with certain degrees of common interests. The challenge faced here is
that of determining focus. An expansive focus can ensure that no actual ‘member’ is
excluded from identification - but it risks the inclusion of persons who were not truly
participants. A narrow focus, while more capable of excluding the red herrings,
necessarily risks the elimination of some legitimate members. However, if one can be
fairly precise about chronology of the Society, knowing (for example) the dates when
group meetings took place, then some of the candidates for membership might be
ruled out on the basis of age. Therefore, before turning to the documentary evidence
in itself, some attention should be paid to the initial question of defining ‘the group’
in terms of its temporal boundaries, thus excluding candidates who either died before
the group emerged, or who were too young to have been members when group
activities ceased.
The 1946 Van Norden doctoral thesis, entitled ‘The Elizabethan College of
Antiquaries’, totalling over six hundred pages, is an encyclopedic and exhaustive
study - but remains unpublished. Van Norden’s second chapter,1 entitled
‘Chronology’, considered the crucial questions of whether we can ascribe precise
dates to the formation of the Society or its meetings and (therefore) whether we can
say who its members could have been. The chapter provides a detailed analysis of
‘The Occasion of this Discourse’ by Henry Spelman. ‘The Occasion’ was written as a
preface to Spelman’s own ‘The Original of the Four Terms of the Year’.2 ‘The
Original’ was reduced to a manuscript after the abortive attempt to revivify the
Society of Antiquaries in 1614, where the tract would have been delivered orally
(although not, of course, necessarily from memory). Its preface (‘The Occasion’) is
1
L. Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation,
University of California (Los Angeles, 1946), pp. 71-118. This chapter, with some minor revision, was
subsequently published as an article: L. Van Norden, ‘Sir Henry Spelman on the Chronology of the
Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 13 (1949-50), 131-160. The
following references cite both the chapter and article. This article, coupled with its predecessor
(‘Peiresc and the English Scholars’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 12 [1948-49], 369-89) are the only
published elements of the thesis.
2
‘The Original’ survives in three manuscripts, only one of which is prefixed by ‘The Occasion’:
Oxford, Bodleian Library MS e Mus 107, fols. 1-31 (‘The Occasion’ is fols. 1-2).
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therefore ostensibly an explanation of the circumstances under which the ‘The
Original of the Four Terms of the Year’ came to be written - but (much more
importantly) is itself the only truly primary evidence of the Society’s chronology.
While Spelman dated ‘The Original’, he assigned no date to ‘The Occasion’. Van
Norden challenged the obvious construal - that ‘The Occasion’ can be taken to be
contemporaneous with ‘The Original’. After an exhaustive study she concluded that
‘The Occasion’ must have been completed some ten to twelve years after ‘The
Original’, estimating the date at sometime between February 1626 and July 1628.3
Van Norden’s contention is that if the reader takes Spelman’s sentence, ‘grew for
twenty years to be discontinued’, and then from 1628 subtracts twenty years of
idleness for the Society, one arrives at 1608, which is one year after the latest of the
extant ‘discourses’. If by his ‘twenty years’ Spelman means the time which elapsed
between the end of regular meetings and his time of writing, ‘a long slumber broken
only by the unrealized dream of 1614’,4 then his account is corroborated by the
existence of documents recording work of the Society up to 1607, and the
nonexistence of such documents after that year. For Van Norden, the only twenty-year
lapse Spelman can reasonably mean is from 1607 or 1608 until 1627 or 1628. She
discounts the simple arithmetical method in favour of a detailed analysis of the
context of ‘The Occasion’, and similarly suggests that: ‘[Spelman’s] statement is
blurred for modern readers by his use of the past tense “grew for twenty Years” where
good modern usage would require the present perfect, and his use of “then” in the
sense of “at - or during - that time” in a context where it could mean “after that
time”’. It is, on balance, a most convincing estimation.5 Van Norden’s inference is, at
face value, contrary to the statement of Richard Carew in his letter to Robert Cotton6
where in 1605 Carew refers to ‘so long discontynuance’. It seems reasonable to
interpret this discontinuance as referring to Carew’s own attendance at meetings
rather than the discontinuance of the group given that we have extant ‘discourses’ as
late as 1607. The fact the letter was written from Carew’s Cornwall estate in Anthony
lends credence to interpretation that the ‘discontynuance’ refers to Carew’s own
absence. Van Norden concluded, therefore, that one can rely on Spelman to say that
the Society of Antiquaries was established between 1584 and 1586; that it vanished
between 1606 and 1608; and that some of its members (and perhaps some others)
made a thwarted or unsuccessful attempt to resuscitate the group in 1614. Spelman’s
statements, interpreted in this way, are supported by the extant documents of the
Society and by other circumstantial evidence.
An elementary method for determining membership of the Society is,
accordingly, to accept the Van Norden position on chronology. If her hypothesis is
correct, then the names of a large number of potential candidates for membership of
the Society must be rejected. These would include any candidate who died before
1584 and any candidate who, in 1608, was too young for membership. This technique
3
Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, pp. 75-76, and Van Norden, ‘Sir Henry
Spelman on the Chronology of the Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, pp. 136-37.
4
Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, p. 112, and Van Norden, ‘Sir Henry Spelman
on the Chronology of the Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, p. 159.
5
Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, p. 112, and Van Norden, ‘Sir Henry Spelman
on the Chronology of the Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, p. 159.
6
BL, Cotton MS Julius C. III fol. 30 b
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would, for example, certainly disqualify Archbishop Matthew Parker who died in
1575. Other candidates who must be ruled out on the basis of lifespan and age are:
Gilbert Dethicke and Henry Fitzalan (Earl of Arundel). One might similarly question
the membership of Robert Harrison (the schoolmaster), who died in about 1585, and
Sir Philip Sidney, who died in 1586. This method probably, though not necessarily,
also eliminates John Selden, whose birth coincides with the first meetings of the
Society. He can therefore have been no more than twenty-two years of age at their
cessation in 1607/8. It must be admitted that this would not be an absolute bar to his
membership, if it is accepted that a brilliant young man like Selden might easily be
accepted into such a group of writers and scholars. This approach is effective in
marking out the possible boundaries of membership, but it is altogether too blunt an
instrument for the fine detail.
It must be possible to collapse this ‘possible’ field into a field of ‘proven’, or
at least ‘documented’, candidates. For this one must analyse closely the extant
documentary material. A thorough examination of the principal existing sources
relating to the Society still reveals roughly one hundred candidates for membership.
Of course there are some, like Camden, Cotton and Spelman, about whose
membership we can be quite certain. Their names are well substantiated across the
range of documentary evidence. But many other names, particularly those listed in
non-primary sources only, are much more doubtful. For convenience, the ensuing
examination divides the surviving sources into three categories: primary;
contemporary; and secondary. Under the heading `primary’ can be included the
Cotton petition, the list of names in Spelman’s The Occasion, a list from Spelman’s
Norfolk Record Office manuscripts, the marginal lists of names in Cotton MS
Faustina E.V. and Stowe MS 1045, I, Lailand’s list of names, names derived from
correspondence between potential members and a composite list of names which can
be identified from Hearne’s and Ayloffe’s compilations of the ‘discourses’.7
Collectively these documents form the rudimentary evidence for membership. Under
the rubric `contemporary secondary’ is to be found the remnants of Bolton’s and
Burton’s lists. Lastly, Thomas Smith’s list, from his Catalogus Librorum
Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Cottonianae, being nearly contemporary and
apparently sourced from primary materials, is the only ‘secondary’ evidence which
merits inclusion in the consideration of documentary evidence for membership of the
Society.
The evidence for membership of the group must therefore be assembled,
compared and interpreted. The following tabular summary presents the extant
evidentiary materials. The table is also a reference point for the discussion of the
evidence which ensues. Finally, some findings are offered in answer to the question
`who was a member of the Society?’.
7
Manuscript ‘Discourses’, outside the Hearne/Ayloffe composite, do not add to the list of possible
candidates for membership.
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TABLE 1. Evidence for Membership.
Primary Evidence
Tabular Summary of
Evidence for Membership
Name
Arthur Agard
C.P.
C.D.
Letters
9
Lailand
9
Contemporary Evidence
MSS SpelmanO Spelman N
9
Bolton
West
Bolton
Oldys
9
9
9
Robert Beale
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
Sir Henry Billingsley
Bolton
9
9
Bonser
9
9
Robert Bowyer
9?
9?
9?
9
9
9
Brerewood
John Broke
9
9
9
9
Broughton the preacher
Sir Thomas Brudenel
Sir George Buc
Richard Carew
9
9
Benefield
William Camden
9
9
9
Benedict Barnham
Richard Broughton
Smith
9
Atey
Henry Bourchier
Burton
9
Lancelot Andrewes
Secondary
Evidence
9
9
probably 9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
Lord Carew
9
William Cecil,
LordBurghley
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Tabular Summary of
Name
Primary Evidence
C.P.
C.D.
Letters
Lailand
Bolton
West
Bolton
Oldys
Secondary
Evidence
Burton
Smith
9
Bartholomew Clark
9
Anthony Cliffe
9
9
9
Sir Edward Coke
9
William Combes
9?
9
William Compton
9Mention
Walter Cope
9
ed C.D.
18
9
Richard Cosens
9
Robert Cotton
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
Dr Cowel
9
John Davies
9
Dent
9
Gilbert Dethicke
William Dethicke
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
Sir Daniel Donn
Thomas Sackville, Baron
Buckhurst, Earl of Dorset
Thomas Doyley
9
9
9
Dee
John Dodderidge
9
Sampson Erdeswicke
Sir Henry Fanshawe
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
John Ferne
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Tabular Summary of
Name
Primary Evidence
C.P.
C.D.
Letters
Lailand
Bolton
West
Bolton
Oldys
Burton
Smith
9
9
Henry of Ferrers
Henry Fitzalan Earl of
Arundel
9
William Fleetwood
9
9
9
9
Glover
9
9
Arthur Goulding
Arthur Gregory
9
Sir Fulk Grevile
9
John Guillim
William Hakewill
Secondary
Evidence
9
9
9
9
9
Robert Hare
Harrison the
Schoolteacher
Harrison the Minister
Abraham Hartwell
9
9
9
9
John Hayward
Michael Heneage
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
The Herberts, Earls of
Pembroke
Joseph Holland
9
9
9
9
9
9
Mr T Holland
9
Lord William Howard
9
Charles Howard, Earl of
Northampton
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Tabular Summary of
Name
Primary Evidence
C.P.
C.D.
Letters
Lailand
Bolton
West
Bolton
Oldys
Burton
9
William Jones
9
9
Martin Josseline
Roger Keymis
9
Thomas Lake
9
9
9
William Lambarde
Francis Leigh
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
John Lloyd
9
9
Lord John Lumley
Sir Peter Manwood
9
William of Nettleton
9
9
9
Roger Owen
William Patten
9
9
William Lisle
Arnold Oldisworth
Smith
9
Sir Henry James
Sir James Ley
Secondary
Evidence
9
9
9
9
“Mere”
9
9
Sir Edward Philips
Sir Walter Raleigh
Daniel Rogers
Henry Sacherevell
9
Sir Henry Savile
9
John Savile
Thomas Savile
Richard Scarlet
10
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
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Tabular Summary of
Name
Primary Evidence
C.P.
C.D.
Letters
Lailand
Bolton
West
Sir William Segar
John Selden
9
9
9
Sir Phillip Sidney
9
Original
9
9
Sir Richard St George
9
9
9
James Strangeman
9
9
9
9
9
Francis Tate
Francis Thynne
Hayward Townshend
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
Valence
9?
Robert Weston
James Whitelock
9
9
Gilbert Talbot, Earl
Shrewsbury
Thomas Talbot
Smith
9
Gilbert Talbot, Earl
Shrewsbury
John Stow
Burton
9
9
9
Sir William Sedley
Sir Henry Spelman
Bolton
Oldys
Secondary
Evidence
9
9
9
Wiseman
9
9
9
Wodhall
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LEGEND
C.P. The Cotton Petition, Cotton MSS Faustina E.V. 12, fols. 89-90b and Titus B.V. 67,
fol. 210.
C.D.
Curious Discourses.
Letters
exchanged by members, pertainingto the Society: Cotton MS Julius C. III,
fol. 30b, the ‘Andrews letter’ quoted through R. Gough, ‘Introduction’, Archaeologia, 1
(1770) i (p. xv) and Bodley MS Ashmole 763, fol. 7.
Lailand
Bodley MS Ashmole 763, fol. 7.
MSS
Cotton MS Faustina E.V. and Stowe MS 1045. I.
Spelman-O Spelman’s list of members in ‘The Occasion’, Bodley MS e Mus 107, fols.
1-2.
Spelman-N Spelman’s list of members in the Norfolk Record Office MS 7198.
Bolton
Society of Antiquaries MS, quoted by Gough, Archaelogia, pp. xvi-xx.
Burton
William Burton’s list, in Weever’s Ancient Funerall Monuments (see Notes
and Queries, Series I, 5, p. 365).
Smith
Thomas Smith’s list in ‘Vita ... Cottoni’, Catalogus, (Oxford, 1698), p. viii.
2.2 Primary evidence of membership
The Cotton petition8 bears just three names: ‘Mr Cotton’, ‘Mr James Lee’ and ‘Mr.
Dodorug’. The list of names in Spelman’s ‘The Occasion’9 is as follows: ‘Sir James
Ley Knight, then Attorney of the Court of Wards, since Earl of Marleborough and
Lord Treasurer of England; Sir Robert Cotton Knight and Baronet; Sir John Davies
his Majesty’s Attorney for Ireland; Sir Richard St.George Kent then Norrey, Mr.
Hackwell the Queen’s Solicitor, Mr. Camden then Clarencieux, myself, and some
others’. The tract later names Sir John Dodderidge.
Spelman’s Norfolk Record Office list enumerates the following names: ‘Will.
Fletewood, serjeant and Recorder of London...Garter King of Armes...Mr. Broughis
of ye Inner Temple...Mr. Heneage...Mr. Spilman...Mr. Ley of Lincolns Inne...Mr.
Bonser/Bouser of the Inner Temple...Mr. Savill of ye Midle Temple...Francis Tate of
ye Midle Temple...Mr. Patton...Mr. Holland of the inner Temple...Mr. Robert Cotton
of the Midle Temple...Mr. Agard (Arthu’ of ye Chequer)...Mr. Thinne...Mr.
Stow...Mr. Talbot...Mr. Cliffe...Mr. Strangeman...Mr. Wiseman...Mr. Lambart (Willm
that wrot the Perambulation of Kent) ...Mr. Beale (ye Clarke of the Cansell’)...Mr.
Camden (Will. Clarentieux)’.10
The marginal lists in the Cotton MS Faustina E.V. and at the beginning of
Stowe MS 1045, I, also provide primary evidence for membership. The former
contains just three names: Cliffe; Cope; and ‘Master Doctor Doyeley’. The latter
document contains a number of lists of names. Stowe MS 1045 consists of a
collection of Francis Tate’s notes concerning the Society, mostly in autograph. The
lists of names which are located across the first few pages of the collection, and which
8
BL, Cotton MS Faustina E.V. 12, fols. 89-90b which contains the three names the Titus B.V. 67, fol.
210 appears to be a rough copy of the same document, without any names appended.
9
Bodley MS e Mus 107, fols. 1-2.
10
Norwich, Norfolk Record Office MS 7198.
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vary as to their make-up, contain annotations - some of which have been affixed
subsequent to the applicable list. Many of the annotations, and at least some of the
lists themselves, are clearly later additions by another person. The enumerated list of
seventeen names: including William Fleetwood, William Dethicke, Richard
Broughton, Michael Heneage, James Ley, Robert Bowyer, John Savile, Francis Tate,
William Patten, Joseph Holland, Robert Cotton, Arthur Agarde, Francis Thynne, John
Stow, Thomas Talbot, Mr Cliffe, James Strangeman; is followed in the same hand by
an unnumbered listing of Mr Wiseman. This list (including Wiseman), although not
its marginal annotations, are in the same hand, Tate’s, as the first few pages of notes
in Stowe MS 1045 which record a meeting of the Society to examine the subject of
Dukes on the 25th and 26th of November 1590. It is this list, which appears on folios
4b and 5 of Stowe MS 1045, which should be regarded as our primary source from
this collection regarding membership. The only other names listed at the beginning of
this manuscript which may be included, as possibly in Tate’s hand, are those of
William Compton and Mr Weston.11
Lailand’s list12 is divided into two sections: ‘The names of all those wch were
somoned att this tyme...Mr. Garter [Sir William Dethicke]...Mr. Doderidge...Mr.
Tate...Mr. Clarentius [William Camden]...Mr. Cotton...Mr. Agard...Mr. Paton...Mr.
Holland...Mr. Stowe...Mr. Thynn...Mr. Doc. Doyley...Mr. Carew...Mr. Bowyer...Mr.
Hennage...Mr. Leigh...Mr. James Ley and...Mr. Erswicke’; and ‘not somoned...Mr.
Spilman...Mr. Broughton...Mr. Lake’ and is endorsed ‘per me Ch. Lailand’.
The Society was evidently the subject of two extant letters between potential
members. One is from Richard Carew to Sir Robert Cotton,13 the other concerns the
membership of the clergyman Lancelot Andrewes.14 This second letter was apparently
addressed to Abraham Hartwell and mentioned Camden and the addressee as
members. Other ‘correspondents’ include Bowyer and Stow, whose names appear as
the addressees of summonses attached to Lailand’s registers.
‘Discourses’ identified by their author’s name in Hearne’s and Ayloffe’s A
Collection of Curious Discourses provide further evidence of membership. From
Hearne’s original (1720) collection the names of Arthur Agard, Joseph Holland,
William Camden, Robert Cotton, James Ley, Francis Thynne, Francis Tate, Francis
Leigh, James Whitelock, Richard Broughton, John Dodderidge, Thomas Talbot,
William Hakewill, William Jones, Thomas Lake and Arnold Oldisworth appear as
authors. Walter Cope is also mentioned,15 not as an author but as the holder of one of
Cotton’s books (a book which had been in the possession of Agard and which was on
the topic of the ‘discourse’ in which this reference was made, namely about land).
Ayloffe’s additional discourses also include the names of Michael Heneage, Dr.
Thomas D’Oyley, William Dethicke, John Davies, William Patten, Abraham
11
This approach varies slightly with that of Van Norden as regards the emphasis to be accorded to this
list, cf. Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, pp. 159-160.
12
Bodley MS Ashmole 763. IV, 7, fol. 197a.
13 BL, Cotton MS Julius C. III, fol. 30b.
14
R. Gough, ‘Introduction’, Archaeologia, 1 (1770) i at xv; on which see Van Norden, ‘The
Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, pp.165-169.
15
T. Hearne, A Collection of Curious Discourses written by Eminent Antiquaries upon Several Heads
in our English Antiquities (Oxford, 1720), no. XVIII (p. 76).
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Hartwell, Henry Bourchier, Henry Spelman16 and John Stow as authors. Ayloffe’s
1771 additions also include a paper each from Edward Cook and Robert Plott, but
these papers, both detailed arguments about duels and the jurisdiction of the Earl
Marshal, and grouped towards the end of Ayloffe’s second volume together with
another anonymous one on the same topic, seem to be either Ayloffe’s (or one of his
unnamed source’s) interpolations. All of the other authors (with the exception of
Townshend)17 who are named by Ayloffe (but not also by Hearne) can lay claim to
some alternative item, or items, of primary evidence. The ‘Ayloffe only’ group, as a
group, can be corroborated by alternative primary evidence in roughly the same
proportion and depth as those mentioned by Hearne alone. There is, it is submitted, no
reason therefore to differentiate within this category of evidence according to its
editor.
2.3 Contemporary (secondary) evidence of membership
Edmund Bolton sought to resurrect the Society between 1618 and 1628, and produced
a number of documents, two of which contain a list of members. The lists are now
lost, but are known as ‘the West Manuscript’ and the Society of Antiquaries MS (‘the
Oldys paper’), both of which are quoted by Gough.18 Gough’s consolidated list does
distinguish between his two sources. From ‘the West Manuscript’ he quotes:
...a few of the friends and persons dying, whose names nevertheless do live
with honour; the late Earls of Shrewsbury and Northampton, Sir Gilbert
Dethick,...Lambert, Esq., Valence, Esq., Erdeswick, Esq., Heneage, Esq.,
Keeper of the Tower Records, Francis Thynne, Esq., Lancaster Herald, Sir
Henry Fanshaw, and _ Benefield, Esq., Mr. Talbot, Mr. T. Holland, and Mr.
Stowe...
From the Society of Antiquaries MS Gough quotes:
...The Lord William Howard, the Lord Carew, profound Judge Doderich, Sir
Thomas Brudenel, Sir William Sedley, Baronets; Sir James Leigh, Knight,
Attorney for your Wards, Sir John Davies, Knight, your Majesty’s Attorney
for Ireland, whose reports of Law-cases have a great fame, incomparable
Camden, and the other two Kings of Arms, Sir William Segar and Sir
Richard St. George, Knights; Sir Henry James, Knight, Sir Foulke Grevile,
Knight, Chancellor of your Majesty’s Exchequer, Sir George Buc, Master of
the Revels, Sir Henry Spilman, Mr. John Hayward, Doctor of Laws, Henry
Ferrars, of Badsley, Esq., Mr. Tate, Mr. Whitelock, Mr. Broke, York Herald,
Mr. Selden, Mr. Bolton, Sir Edward Coke, Knight, Privy Counsellor
Brerewood, of Gresham College, Sir Roger Owen, judge, Sir Edward Philips,
Master of the Rolls... To the deceased members the MS [the Society of
Antiquaries MS] adds Sir Philip Sidney, Fitzalan, last Earl of Arundel of that
name,...; Thomas Earl of Dorset, William Lord Burghley, the Herberts, Earls
of Pembroke, the learned Lord Lumley, Sir Henry Billingsley, Sir William
son of Sir Gilbert Dethick, Bartholomew Clark and Cosens, Doctors of Law,
and Deans of the Arches, Sir Daniel Donn, Master of the Requests; Sir
Walter Cope and Raleigh, Mr. Benedict Barnham, Alderman of London;
Doctor Cowel, Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Mr. Glover, Somerset; and
to those living at the time, Sir Peter Manwood, Knight of the Bath, and Sir
Henry Savile, Knight, Provost of Eton.
16
Spelman’s ‘Original’ (probably composed after the group disbanded).
On whom, see infra.
18
Gough, ‘Introduction’, pp. xvi-xx.
17
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A further list of members, prefixed by the rubric ‘Antiquarii temp. Eliz. Reg.’ in the
handwriting of the Society’s contemporary William Burton, on the fly-leaf of a copy
of Weever’s Ancient Funeral Monuments,19 is preserved as follows:
1. Recorder Fletewode, Wm.
2. Mr. Atey.
3. Mr. Lambard, Willm.
4. Mr. Cope.
5. Mr. Broughton ye Lawyer.
6. Mr. Leigh.
7. Mr. Bourgchier.
8. Mr. Broughton ye Preacher.
9. Mr. Holland, Joseph.
10. Mr. Gartier.
11. Mr. Cotton, Robt.
12. Mr. Thinne, Francis.
13. Jo. Stowe.
14. _ Combes.
15. _ Lloyd.
16. _ Strangman.
17. Hen. Spelman.
18. Arthur Gregory.
19. Anth. Cliffe.
20. Tho. Talbot.
21. Arthur Goulding.
22. Arthur Agard.
23. Willm Camden.
25. Samson Erdeswike.
26. _ Josseline.
27. Hen. Sacheverell.
28. Wm. Nettleton de Knocesborough.
29. John Ferne.
30. Robt. Bele.
31. John Savile de Templo.
32. Daniell Rogers.
33. Tho. Saville.
34. Henry Saville.
35. Rog. Keymis.
36. John Guillim.
37. _ Dee.
38. _ Heneage.
39. Rich. Scarlet.
40. _ Wodhall.
41. Dent de Baco Regis.
42. _ Bowyer.
43. Robt. Hare.
44. _ Harrison, schoolemr.
45. _ Harrison, ministr.
2.4 Other secondary evidence of membership
Smith’s catalogue, Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Cottonianae,20
is prefaced by a biography of Cotton entitled ‘Vita D. Roberti Cottoni, Equitis Aurati
& Baronetti’ which contains a list of members gleaned from the Cotton petition and
the remainder of Cotton MS Faustina E.V., the Andrewes-Hartwell and CarewCotton letters and the ‘discourses’. His list is as follows:
Paucos tamen, de quibis mihi ex certissimis indiciis constat, cum illud
illorum famae & meritis maxime debetur, ordine alphabetico memorabo. Ii
autem erant Arthurus Agard, Lancelotus Andreas, Henricus Bourchier,
Ricardus Broughton, Gulielmus Camdenus, Ricardus Carew, Robertus
Cottonus, Joannes Davis, Gulielmus Dethick, Joannes Dodderidge...Doyley,
Gulielmus Fleetwood, Gulielmus Hakewill, Abrahamus Hartwell, Michael
Heneage, Josephus Holland, Thomas Lake; Franciscus Leigh, Jacobus
Leigh...Oldsworth, Williemus Patten, Joannes Stow, Thomas Talbot,
Franciscus Tate, Franciscus Thynne, & Jacobus Whitlock. De caeteris sociis,
19
See ‘Antiquaries of the Time of Queen Elizabeth’, Notes and Queries, ser. 1, 5, (17 April 1852), 36566.
20
Oxford, 1696.
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praecipue post annum hujus seculi quintum admissis, nondum constat; licet
de Gulielmus Lisle, Henrico Spelmanno, & Joanne Seldeno non dubitandum
videtur; nec de aliis hariolari libet.
2.5 Membership of the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries: Commentary and
Analysis
The safest way forward in the interpretation of membership evidence is to give
primary weight to the primary documents. Then, where possible, one may attempt to
bolster initial conclusions by reference to non-firsthand and other secondary
materials. At the same time one must also resist the temptation to be swayed by
‘attractive’ candidates: candidates who may ‘look’ like the ‘type’ who we imagine
members to resemble. Where the documentary evidence is, as it is here, reasonably
detailed and meaningful - one should proceed from the evidence at hand, rather than
from the identification of ideal types: a clear methodological point which is often the
prosopographer’s downfall.
Examination of the primary evidence indicates forty individuals who are
referred to by at least one item of firsthand testimony for membership. This group of
forty consists of Arthur Agard, Robert Beale, Henry Bourchier, Robert Bowyer,
Richard Broughton, William Camden, Richard Carew, Anthony (or John) Cliffe, Sir
William Compton, Walter Cope, Sir Robert Cotton, Sir John Davies, Sir William
Dethicke, Sir John Dodderidge, Thomas D’Oyley, Sampson Erdeswicke, William
Fleetwood, William Hakewill, Abraham Hartwell, Michael Heneage, Joseph Holland,
William Jones, Sir Thomas Lake, William Lambarde, Sir Francis Leigh, Sir James
Ley, Arnold Oldisworth, William Patten, Sir Richard St. George, Sir John Savile, Sir
Henry Spelman, John Stow, James Strangeman, Thomas Talbot, Francis Tate, Francis
Thynne, Hayward Townshend, Robert Weston, Sir James Whitelock and Thomas (or
George) Wiseman. This is our ‘primary’ group. To this tally a possible addition is
Launcelot Andrewes whose claim rests upon the now lost letter to Abraham Hartwell.
The only actual ‘primary’ evidence for Andrewes’ membership is in fact secondary,
from Thomas Smith’s list, in Smith’s latin paraphrase of Andrewes’ letter to Hartwell
and the translation of the same by Gough.
Other justifiable inclusions relate to references to a person by a title. The
references to ‘Garter King of Arms’ in Spelman’s Norfolk Record Office list, to ‘Mr
Garter’ in Lailand’s list and to ‘Gartier’ in Burton’s list, are clearly references to Sir
William Dethicke. Lailand’s citation of ‘Mr Clarentius’ can equally be accepted as a
reference to Camden. The only name mentioned by a primary source which is not
included in the foregoing headcount is the Mr ‘Bonser’ (or perhaps it is ‘Bouser’)
mentioned in Spelman’s Norfolk Record Office list. It is reasonable to suppose that
this is either a reference to Henry Bourchier, or (more likely) to the Mr Bowyer
mentioned by Lailand and summoned in the attachment to Lailand’s list. Along
similar lines, there are three instances where it can be said (with a reasonable degree
of assurance) that members identified by primary sources are misnamed or confused
in a secondary source. First is Sir Gilbert Dethicke, who is mentioned only once, in
Bolton’s West Manuscript. This source does not include any reference to his son Sir
William Dethicke. Sir William lays claim to numerous other primary and non-primary
testimonies, and it is reasonable to suppose that the reference to the father should be
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to the son. Second, ‘Mr. T. Holland’ (presumably Thomas Holland) is likewise
mentioned only once, again in Bolton’s West Manuscript, a source which does not
include any reference to his cousin (Joseph Holland) - whose membership is well
attested. Third, Burton’s list refers to a ‘Mere. Patten’ and it would seem reasonable
to identify this designation with William Patten. Fourth, it is highly likely that the
anonymous discourse dealing with land in Cornwall was written by Richard Carew.
Subject to the above, the candidate with the greatest number of references in
primary materials is Cotton with seven. Ley appears in six primary sources, and
Camden and Stow appear in five sources each. Broughton, Heneage, Holland, Agarde,
Dethicke, Dodderidge, Patten, Thynne and Tate appear in four. Spelman, Bowyer,
Carew, Doyley, Bourchier and Talbot appear in three primary sources each, and
Cliffe, Cope, Davies, Hakewill, Hartwell, Strangeman, Lake, Lambarde, Fleetwood,
Wiseman, Leigh and Savile appear in two. This leaves ten candidates who can lay
claim to only one item of primary evidence: Andrewes, Beale, Compton, Erdeswicke,
Jones, Oldisworth, St George, Townshend, Weston and Whitelock.
he primary evidence for most of these forty-one ‘primary candidates’ is
supplemented by various references from the non-primary sources. Whilst none of the
candidates identified from the primary materials are mentioned by all of the four nonprimary sources, thirty-six (or about 90%) are mentioned by at least one. Twenty-nine
(or about 70%) are mentioned in at least two non-primary sources. Seven candidates:
Camden, Heneage, Holland, Spelman, Stow, Talbot and Thynne; are mentioned by
three of the four non-primary materials. Only five ‘primary candidates’: Compton,
Jones, Townshend, Weston and Wiseman; are not referred to by non-primary sources.
There is an important coincidence between the ten candidates referred to by
only one primary source and the five candidates who are not mentioned by any nonprimary source. Four of the five are included in the ten. These four, Compton, Jones,
Townshend, and Weston (along with Andrewes) constitute a sub-group of ‘primary
candidates’ whose membership should be regarded with some suspicion. However, a
further question arises: are there any more detectable patterns which emerge from
non-primary source corroboration of the identified ‘primary candidates’? Such
patterns might be discernable in either of two ways. They may emerge either in the
way in which a certain non-primary source corroborates a certain primary source or
sources, or in the way in which certain non-primary sources agree as to the
membership of certain ‘primary candidates’. As a straightforward example of the first
type of pattern, is it possible to discern a significant similarity between Smith’s list
with a list of candidates who are known to have written discourses? Alternatively, is it
possible to discern a significant similarity between those ‘primary candidates’ who
are identified by both Burton and Bolton (a potentially more complex example of the
second type of pattern)? The mathematical possibilities of such cross-referential
combinations are positively gigantic, but the questions are real. For example, there is
actually a very high degree of correspondence between Smith’s list and a list of
candidates who are known to have written discourses. This pattern could be said to be
explained by our understanding that Smith had access to the discourses, or at least
most of the ones we know of. It is equally possible to say that there is only a minimal
degree of agreement between Burton and Bolton when they list candidates who are
also mentioned in primary materials. This might suggest that they were working from
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different materials. Unfortunately the extremely large number of possible crossreferential combinations makes it unrealistic to thoroughly investigate such patterns.
It can also be argued, justifiably, that the ‘knowledge’ that might be revealed by the
discernment of any pattern would ultimately be only speculative. All such patterns are
speculative in the sense that the similarities which they may disclose are just that: they
do not, of themselves, establish correspondence or conformity. So the project, while
engrossing, has ultimately very little to add to the question of the identification of
members.
The reckoning of forty-one, ‘primary members’ obviously excludes from
membership significant numbers of candidates recorded by non-primary sources only.
The excluded candidates are: Atey; Barnham; Benefield; Billingsley; Bolton;
Brerewood; Broke; Broughton; Brudenell; Buc; Lord Carew; Cecil; Clerke; Coke;
Combes; Cosens; Cowel; Dee; Dent; Gilbert Dethicke; Donn; the Earl of Dorset,
Baron Buckhurst (Thomas Sackville); Fanshawe; Ferne; Ferrers; the Earl of Arundel
(Henry Fitzalan); Glover; Goulding; Gregory; Grevile; Guillim; Hare; John Harrison;
Harrison (‘the minister’); Hayward; the Herberts; the Howards (including Howard
earl of Northampton); James; Josseline; Keymis; Leigh; Lisle; Lloyd; Lord Lumley;
Manwood; Nettleton; Owen; Philips; Raleigh; Rogers; Sacheverell; Sir Henry and
Thomas Savile; Scarlet; Sedley; Segar; Selden; the Earl of Shrewsbury (Gilbert
Talbot); Sidney; Valence and Wodhall.
Because there are only four items of non-primary evidence to consider it is
actually feasible to undertake, speculative though the results may be, a crossreferential comparison of these sources. Of the forty-one ‘primary’ names, Smith
records twenty-six. Smith mentions only three names which are not corroborated by
primary evidence: Jacobus Leigh, William Lisle and John Selden. It is almost beyond
doubt that Smith’s Jacobus Leigh is in fact Sir James Ley who is not otherwise
referred to by Smith. William Lisle is not mentioned by any other source (primary or
otherwise), and the only other reference to John Selden (whose age must raise a
query) is in Bolton’s Society of Antiquaries MS (which contains a large number of
names not corroborated by primary evidence). Smith’s list of twenty-nine candidates
therefore clearly represents the most accurate contemporary (or nearly contemporary)
description. More problematic are the diverse names contained in Bolton’s and
Burton’s lists. From Bolton’s West Manuscript, which contains a total of thirteen
names, there are seven candidates whose membership can be supported by primary
evidence, and a further six postulants. Not one of these six: ‘the late Earls of
Shrewsbury and Northampton, Sir Gilbert Dethick, ...Valence, Esq ..., Sir Henry
Fanshaw, and _ Benefield, Esq.’; is mentioned by any other non-primary source, and
therefore this list is the only text where these names appear. From Bolton’s Society of
Antiquaries MS, which totals forty-three candidates, there are only ten names which
can be validated by the primary materials. Of the remaining thirty-three names
mentioned in the Society of Antiquaries MS only two, John Selden (recorded by
Smith) and Henry Savile, are also mentioned by another non-primary source. For
Henry Savile that source is Burton’s list which, totalling forty-five names, contains
twenty-two supplementary candidates whose membership cannot be confirmed by
reference to either primary or non-primary evidence. This is not to say, of course, that
Lisle, Henry Savile, Selden, the thirty-seven additional and distinct candidates
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registered by Bolton and the twenty-one additional and distinct candidates registered
by Burton cannot possibly have been members. However the alleged membership of
these supplementary nominees simply cannot be supported by primary evidence. It is
also apparent from the foregoing (and admittedly experimental) comparison of the
non-primary sources, that there is no meaningful degree of agreement between them
concerning these extra candidates. In fact it is perhaps rather conspicuous that where
the non-primary sources differ from the primary sources, they also differ from each
other. The telling fact is that the vast majority (about 95%) of candidates whose claim
to membership lies beyond the primary materials can only rely upon a single
reference in one non-primary document. As such the according of membership to
these candidates ought to be treated with considerable scepticism.
A less methodical approach to the sources, combined with an acceptance of a
simplistic interpretation of the group’s chronology, has sometimes resulted in the
inclusion of some candidates whose membership must be regarded as highly doubtful,
if not impossible. For instance, of those mentioned by modern writers, from
Schoeck’s list21 the membership of Sir William Cecil,22 Sir Henry Fanshawe,
Archbishop Matthew Parker,23 Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Sackville,24 John Selden25
and Archbishop John Whitgift26 must be seriously doubted. To these apparently
erroneous inclusions the names of Laurence Nowell27 and William D’Isle28 can be
added as persons most probably designated with membership by mistake.
3. Prosopography: the Group Experience
Prosopography is a term which is familiar to historians but almost unknown amongst
lawyers. Prosopography consists of the analysis of the shared conditions and
experiences of a group of individuals via the examination of their (collective) lives.
Typically such analysis involves the delineation of the ‘group’ and then the uniform
application of a selection of questions about factors like social class, wealth, religion
and occupation to each ‘member’. The answers to such questions may then be
assembled and examined for patterns, variables and affinities within the defined
group. The objective of the method is to unveil otherwise concealed influences within
political or social structures and organisations, influences which may not be apparent
from analyses of overt political statements or institutional arrangements. The
prosopographical method can be identified with two styles of historical research. The
first may be termed the elitist school. Elitist prosopography typically focuses upon the
21
R. J. Schoeck, ‘The Elizabethan Society of Antiquities and Men of Law’, Notes and Queries, 199
(1954), 417.
22
Also listed by W. W. Greg, ‘Books and Bookmen in Archbishop Parker’s Correspondence’, The
Library (December 1935), 243-79.
23
Also mentioned by W. W. Greg and E. N. Adams, Old English Scholarship in England from 1566 to
1800, Yale Studies in English, 55 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917); H. R. Steeves, Learned
Societies and English Literary Scholarship in Great Britain and the United States, (New York: AMS,
1913); and J. Evans, A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956).
24
Also listed by Greg, ‘Books and Bookmen in Archbishop Parker’s Correspondence’, pp. 24379.
25
Mentioned by Steeves, Learned Societies and English Literary Scholarship in Great Britain and the
United States.
26
Also listed by Greg, ‘Books and Bookmen in Archbishop Parker’s Correspondence’, pp. 243-79.
27
Mentioned by Schoeck, ‘Early Anglo-Saxon Studies and Legal Scholarship in the Renaissance’.
28
Mentioned by Steeves, Learned Societies and English Literary Scholarship in Great Britain and the
United States.
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micro-politics of small but significant groups such as ruling elites. The method is
apparent in the attention paid by historians of, for example, Members of Parliament as
a ‘group’, to factors such as their marriage connections, business interests and
educational backgrounds. The result is normally a series of detailed case studies of
‘members’, with the paradigm exemplified in the colossal and ongoing History Of
Parliament project.29 The historians of the Roman republican period (effectively
plotting the limits of the institution of amicitia) have worked the method almost to the
point of exhaustion, and in so doing they have also made some exceptionally valuable
and critical assessments of the reliability and utility of the method and its application
to ‘elites’.30 The second genre of prosopography may be termed the mass school. This
approach typically focuses upon a much wider ‘group’ than the elitist school, and
tends to be more consciously sociological and statistical in its analysis of broad social
phenomena.31 The attraction of prosopography is conspicuous: the method explicitly
shifts the analytical emphasis, from the recurrently desolate interpretation of the
famous acts of ‘great men’ and the ideal operations of institutional models, to another
level of human and social action. It offers a perspective which can be broader and
more profound than more traditional forms of history. Yet in accepting the obvious
appeal of this tool, one must not overlook the serious handicaps which attend its
employment. The method is dependent upon an extensive, if not comprehensive,
stockpile of data concerning the members of the identified group, a prerequisite which
almost never subsists. The usual starting point for the would-be prosopographer is a
fact-base which is fragmentary, lacking in detail about some members, and skewed in
different directions for each subject.32 This difficulty is exacerbated by ubiquitous
interpretative problems associated with the appropriate categorisation and
interpretation of what evidence does exist.33 Difficulties such as those referred to here
have driven Carney (and many others) to despair,34 but handled carefully it is possible
29
Volumes currently in print include: The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1386-1481,
ed. by J. S. Roskell, 4 vols (Sutton, 1992); The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 15091558, ed. by S. T. Bindoff, 3 vols (Secker and Warburg, 1982); Hasler, The History of Parliament: The
House of Commons 1558-1603, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1660-1690, ed. by
Basil Duke Henning, 3 vols (Secker and Warburg, 1983); The History of Parliament: The House of
Commons 1754-1790, ed. by Lewis Namier and John Brooke, 3 vols (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1964); and The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1790-1820, ed. by R.
G. Thorne, 5 vols (Secker and Warburg, 1986).
30
Some of the most significant examples of Roman republican elite prosopography in application
include: M. Gelzer, The Roman Nobility (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969, originally published in 1912); E.
Badian, Foreign Clientelae 264-70 BC (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958); and, E. S. Gruen, The Last
Generation of the Roman Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). See also, for
further discussion of the method in this context, T. R. S. Broughton, ‘Senate and Senators of the
Roman Republic: The Prosopographical Approach’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romishen Welt, 1.1
(1972), 250-65, and C. Wikander and Ö. Wikander, ‘Republican Prosopography: Some
Reconsiderations’, Opuscula Romana, 12 (1979), 1-12.
31
See L. Stone, ‘Prosopography’, Daedalus, 100 (1971), 46-79, passim.
32
See C. Nicolet, ‘Prosopographie et histoire sociale: Rome et l’Italie a l’epoque republicaine’ in
Annales: economies, societies, civilisations, 5 (1970), 1209-28 (p. 1226): ‘Il s’agira donc, dès le depart,
de bien mesurer le degré d’incertitude que comporte necessairement toute enquête prosopographique,
et d’abord d’ évaluer le rapport entre les individus connus et étudiés et le nombre total de membres du
groupe envisagé, tel qu’on peut l’etablir.’
33
See Stone, ‘Prosopography’, pp. 57-65.
34
‘The imponderables, even with contemporary levels of evidence, involve such subjectivity as to
make any findings questionable....The activists, for example, might be merely the "leg men" for power
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to utilise the prosopographical method in order to uncover important connections
between, and where justifiable even discern influences upon, individual actors. Stone
suggests some practical guidelines to the successful employment of the method: the
‘group’ under consideration must be relatively small and well defined, the recoverable
evidence must be reasonably detailed and reliable, and the examination can be pointed
to the resolution of a specific issue.35 At a broad level the application of the
prosopographical method to legal history is justified by the fact that, inherently,
lawyers have always been assiduous record keepers. In recent years this type of
analysis has been successfully applied by Ives, Clendenin, Prest and Lemmings to the
reasonably confined topic of the history of the English legal profession.36 This study
focuses more sharply upon the legal experiences of a group whose connection with
the law has, it is contended, been underestimated. Does the specific study of the
significance of legal influences upon the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries satisfy
Stone’s other prerequisites? The size of the group is quite small indeed, with
apparently not more than 106 possible members. Moreover, amongst this group a
sizeable proportion were fairly well known historical actors. The recoverable evidence
is considerable in quantity and also quite detailed in nature, and what exists can be
tested for its reliability. It would appear that, experimentally at least, that the
prosopographical method should offer some important insights to the resolution of the
designated issue.
Accordingly, having identified the existence of a group, and in so doing also
identified (with a reasonable degree of certainty) its members, the prosopographical
method can be employed to provide that study with a sharper focus: to ascertain and
evaluate the most important experiences which the antiquaries had in common. The
objective of this type of enquiry is to deepen our understanding of ‘who’ the members
of the Society were. In terms of status, educational background, legal experience and
office holding there was much to connect the members. As indicated, this approach
involves the utilisation of the prosopographical method, and it must therefore be noted
that the assayed ‘factors’, or ‘experiences’, can be often far from definite. For
figures who dominated the action without ostensibly participating in the decision making at all.’ T.F.
Carney, ‘Prosopography: Payoffs and Pitfalls’, Phoenix, 27 (1973), 156-179 (pp.170-71). The
imponderables, while recognised, do not often deter: see R. V. F. Heuston, ‘Judicial Prosopography’,
Law Quarterly Review, 102 (1986), 90-113.
35
Stone, ‘Prosopography’, p. 69. For a similarly optimistic attitude, albeit less detailed on the
methodological issues, see J. E. Neale, ‘The Biographical Approach To History’, Essays in Elizabethan
History (London: Cape, 1958), 225-37, and Baker, ‘English Law and the Renaissance’, pp. 49-50. An
example of its employment: L. Stone, ‘The Educational Revolution in England, 1560-1640’, Past and
Present, 28 (1954), 41-80.
36
E. W. Ives, ‘Some Aspects of the Legal Profession in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth
Centuries’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of London, 1955); E. W. Ives, The Common
Lawyers of Pre-Reformation England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); T. B.
Clendenin, ‘The Common Lawyers in Parliament and Society: A Social and Political Study of the
Common Lawyers in the First Jacobean Parliament’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of
North Carolina, 1975), pp. 4-10; W. R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early
Stuarts: 1590-1640 (London: Longman, 1972), especially p. 221; W. Prest, The Rise of the Barristers:
A Social History of the English Bar 1590-1640, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); and D. Lemmings,
Gentlemen and Barristers: The Inns of Court and the English Bar 1680-1730, (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1990). The method has also been utilised, in relation to the contemporary scientific community:
M. Feingold, The Mathematicians’ Apprenticeship: Science, Universities and Society in England,
1560-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), especially pp. 122-65 and 190-213.
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example, factors like a peerage or attendance at a particular University are more
unambiguous than general factors like ‘class’ or ‘education’. The investigation will
attempt, where feasible, to restrict itself to the more absolute variables. The study will
also focus, heeding Stone’s counsel,37 on the forty-one individuals identified by
primary evidence. At some points, however, it will be possible to juxtapose, if only
briefly, this smaller group with the broader group of all potential candidates for
membership of the Society. Some of the most interesting factors are then set out in a
table for comparison. The article also seeks to examine a ‘group enterprise’: involving
regular meetings, and the presentation of agreed seminar topics. This type of
investigation attempts to answer the questions of `why’, `when’ and ‘how’ the Society
operated as a ‘group’. These findings, also represented in part by a tabular summary,
are necessarily a combination of the prosopographical method and textual
interpretation. The article finally returns to a less interpretative stance, with an
examination of some absolute factors, age and death, which, it is submitted, offer a
possible (if non-controversial) explanation of the demise of the Society.
3.1 Group Characteristics
Prefacing Gough’s list of names in his transcription of the ‘West Manuscript’38 is an
interesting description of the members of the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries:
‘certain choice gentlemen, fathers of families, or otherwise free masters, men of
proof...’.
There was a distinct class identity amongst members. Barring John Stow, who
was a member of the London mercantile community, all the identified antiquaries
appear to have been ‘gentlemen’, or at least ‘esquires’ in the sense that they possessed
manors. They attended one of the two Universities and, or, the Inns of Court, and they
often occupied government positions. Fourteen of the identified members, of a
maximum total of forty-one, achieved a higher status in the course of their careers.
During the currency of the Society knighthoods were bestowed, either by Elizabeth I
or James I, upon Compton, Cope, Cotton, Davies, Dethicke, Dodderidge, Lake, Leigh,
Ley, Savile, Spelman and Whitelock; and Jones and St. George were dubbed
following the cessation of meetings. Compton, Cotton, and Ley were created peers
after the Society had discontinued its meetings.
Turning to regional associations, no significant motif emerges from the
examination of members’ counties of origin or provincial connections. While many
members can be associated with a county or region, usually because of landholdings
(for instance, Carew with Cornwall, Spelman from Norfolk and the Saviles from
Yorkshire), but sometimes also because of career directions (Jones, Davies and Ley
each spent much time in Ireland and Beale held positions of importance in the
‘North’), there is a noticeable London axis for all members. The link, however, is
unexceptional. London, naturally, was the location of Parliament and the courts, the
centre of business and trade and the scene the members’ meetings. Some members,
like Stow, can be considered as Londoners in the sense that they appear to been
permanently domiciled there. For the majority, however, there appears to have been a
37
38
Stone, ‘Prosopography’.
Gough, ‘Introduction’, p. xvi.
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characteristically ‘gentrified’ oscillation between the capital and provincial
responsibilities.39
Legal education of English gentlemen during the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries was quite routine. Given this, it is equally unremarkable that a
large percentage of members of the Society can be shown to have had some degree of
legal education. Thirty-four out of the maximum total of forty-one were definitely
admitted to one of the Inns of Court, or had manifest experience in the civil law. This
is about eighty-three percent of the membership identifiable by primary evidence, but
the figure is slightly elastic. Some members’ admissions to the Inns were surely
honorary: coming late in life and after an already distinguished career outside the law,
as was demonstrably the case with some of the members who were heralds. On the
other hand, the admissions records are not absolutely comprehensive, so it is more
than likely that one or more members’ admission records have been lost or
misreported. Although this represents extrapolation, it is probably fair to say that the
ratio of the Society’s members with some legal background was uncommonly high. It
is difficult to determine whether this proportion can be considered especially high
without reference to comprehensive data concerning population, social stratification
and educational achievements. Such data does not exist in enough detail to permit
definitive analysis. However it is possible to make a speculative comparison with a
body which drew its members from the same social level: Parliament. Stone finds that
in the Long Parliament, which he considers an exceptionally well educated group, in
1640 the proportion of members who attended an Inn of Court peaked at fifty-five
percent.40
It is unsurprising that there are only a few civil lawyers, because there were
only few in toto. What is nonetheless interesting is that it is not possible to discern
any Inn which can claim either a preponderance, or even any comparatively
significant proportion, of members. If there is any tendency towards Gray’s Inn, then
this should be discounted somewhat owing to what appears to be a disproportionate
number of honorary admissions. There therefore appears to be a roughly even balance
of members from all of the Inns, as well as a few civil lawyers.
Another distinguishing characteristic amongst those primary members with
legal training was their occupation and success as lawyers. Many of the gentry alumni
of the Inns returned to their rural estates to assume responsibilities as lords of manors,
as Justices of the Peace, or in the management of the estate’s properties. These alumni
were not, of course, practising lawyers, but their training at the Inns was of some
advantage in the execution of these duties. Amongst the membership of the Society
such responsibilities certainly interrupted members’ attendance at meetings to some
frequency, but Bourchier, Bowyer, Broughton, Davies, Dodderidge, Fleetwood,
39
A good example of this lifestyle is provided in Henry Spelman’s routine: C. H. Cooper, ‘On an Early
Autograph of Sir Henry Spelman, with Some New or Not Generally Known Facts Respecting Him’,
Cambridge Antiquary Society Communications, 2 (1860-64), 101-12.
40
Stone, ‘The Educational Revolution in England, 1560-1640’, p. 79. See also W. J. Jones, Politics and
the Bench: The Judges and the Origins of the English Civil War (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971), p.
46, and P. J. Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1969), pp. 4-7. Throughout Elizabeth’s reign the number and proportion of lawyers gaining
membership of Parliament steadily increased: J. E. Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons
(London: Cape, 1949), pp. 151-152.
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1 (2006)
Hakewill, Holland, Jones, Lambarde, Leigh, Ley, Oldisworth, Savile, Tate,
Townshend and Whitelock all certainly practised law as a career or at least to some
significant extent. This would mean the minimum proportion of practising lawyers in
the Society was about forty-one percent. Broughton, Davies, Dodderidge, Jones, Ley,
Savile, Tate and Whitelock were eventually appointed Judges, accounting for about
twenty percent of the membership and almost half of the practitioners, so amongst the
members who were practising lawyers themselves there was obviously a
conspicuously large number of Judges. Beyond traditional practice the practising
lawyers, and other members, also held positions as sheriffs, diplomats, clerks, keepers
of records, members of specialist committees and appointees to other official posts, all
of which demanded some legal experience. Broadening the focus to include the legal
careers of candidates whose membership cannot be supported by primary evidence
reveals a telling picture. Although many of these individuals were successful and even
prominent lawyers, as a group they do not match the ‘primary’ members in terms of
legal experience and success. The following table (entitled ‘Candidates for
Membership: Careers’) indicates, inter alia, the candidates’ degrees of legal
experience, and where applicable, their Inns and their credentials as lawyers.
A very significant number of the members of the Society were Members of
Parliament, often for more than one term and sometimes for different constituencies.
The parliamentary careers of those members identifiable by primary evidence were
extensive indeed. Beale was the Member of Parliament for Totnes in 1574, for
Dorchester in 1584, 1586, and 1599 and for Lostwithiel in 1593.41 Bourchier
represented Stafford in the Parliaments of 1589, 1593 and 1597.42 Bowyer was Clerk
of Parliament from 1609/10 (having previously been returned for Evesham as one of
its Members in 1601 and 1605).43 Broughton was the Member for Stafford in 1572
and for Lichfield in 1585, 1589 and 1593.44 Carew was Member for Saltash in 1584
and for Mitchell in 1597.45 Cope was Member for St. Mawes in 1588/9, Weymouth in
1601, Westminster in 1604 and for Stockbridge in 1614.46 Cotton had a lengthy career
in Parliament, as Member for Newtown (on the Isle of Wight) in 1601, County
Huntingdon in 1604, Old Sarum in 1624, Thetford in 1625 and Castle Rising in
1628.47 Davies also had a parliamentary career, representing Shaftesbury in 1597,
Corfe Castle in 1601 and Hindon in 1621.48 Dodderidge was also a Member of
Parliament, for Barnstable in 1588/9 and for Horsham in 1604.49 Fleetwood, in fact, is
principally known for his distinguished parliamentary career, sitting for Marlborough
in 1558, for Lancaster in 1559 and 1563, for St. Mawes in 1571 and for London in
41
Hasler, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558-1603, I, 411, and Dictionary of
National Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1917), pp. 3-7.
42
Hasler, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558-1603, I, 460; Neale, The
Elizabethan House of Commons, pp. 237-38; and J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments
(London: Cape, 1957), p. 363.
43
The Parliamentary Diary of Robert Bowyer, 1606-1607, ed. by D. H. Willson, (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1931), p. viii.
44
Hasler, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558-1603, I, 498.
45
Ibid., pp. 542-43.
46
Ibid., p. 650.
47
Ibid., p. 663.
48
Hasler, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558-1603, II, 22-23.
49
Ibid., pp. 42-43.
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1572, 1584, 1586 and 1588/9.50 Hakewill sat for Boissiney in 1601, Mitchell in 1604,
Tregony in 1614 and 1621/2 and Amersham in 1624 and 1628.51 Hartwell sat for East
Looe in 1586 and for Hindon in 1593.52 Heneage represented Arundel in 1571, East
Grinstead in 1572, Tavistock in 1588/9 and Wigan in 1592/3.53 Jones was returned for
Beaumaris in 1597, for Caernarvonshire in 1601 and for Beaumaris (again) in 1604
and 1614.54 Lake represented Malmesbury in 1593, New Romney in 1601, Dunheved
(Launceston) in 1604, Middlesex in 1614 and Wells in 1625/6.55 Lambarde served in
Parliament only once, sitting for Aldborough in 1563.56 Leigh was the Member of
Parliament for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in 1597, for Oxford in 1601 and
1604, for Leicester in 1614 and for Warwickshire in 1621.57 Ley sat for Westbury in
1597 and 1604, for Bath in 1614 and for Westbury (again) in 1621.58 Oldisworth was
Member for Tregony in 1593 and for Cirencester in 1604.59 John Savile sat for
Newton in 1572.60 Spelman represented Castle-Rising in 1593 and 1597 and
Worcester in 1625.61 Tate was Member for Northampton in 1601 and for Shrewsbury
in 1604.62 Townshend was also a Member of Parliament, for Bishops Castle in 1597
and again in 1601. He is well known as the great Elizabethan parliamentary
journalist.63 Whitelock was Member for Woodstock in 1609-10, 1614 and 1621-2.64
Bowyer, although not a Member, was the Clerk of Parliament in 1609/10.65 Of the
forty-one primary candidates for membership some twenty-four (including Bowyer),
accounting for fifty-nine percent, were Members of Parliament. Of those candidates
whose claim to membership is more doubtful, a parliamentary career was also
commonplace. The sixty-four ‘secondary’ candidates include twenty-seven Members
of Parliament (accounting for forty-two percent of their entire group). However this
calculation very likely under-represents the true levels of parliamentary membership
as it accepts, for example, the separate identities of possible ‘duplicates’ such as ‘Mr
50
Ibid., pp. 133-38.
Ibid., pp. 237-38, and Dictionary of National Biography, VIII, 894-95.
52
53
Ibid., pp. 289-90; Gough, ‘Introduction’, p. x; Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of
Antiquaries’, p. 567; and M. McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1971), pp. 77-78.
54
Hasler., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558-1603, II, 386-387.
55
Hasler, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558-1603, II, 428-29; J. Ayloffe, A
Collection of Curious Discourses written by Eminent Antiquaries upon Several Heads in our English
Antiquities, publ. by T. Hearne, 2 vols (London, 1771), II, 436-37; Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan
College of Antiquaries’, pp. 567-68; Dictionary of National Biography, XI, 417-19 and W. R. Prest,
The Diary of Sir Richard Hutton , Selden Society, Supplementary Series, 9 (London, 1991), pp. 16-17
and 20.
56
57
Ibid., pp. 453-454.
58
Ibid., p. 476, and Dictionary of National Biography, XI, 1084-85.
59
Hasler, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558-1603, III, 151.
60
Ibid., pp. 350-51.
61
Ibid., pp. 424-25.
62
Ibid., p. 479.
63
Ibid., pp. 516-17. See also Dictionary of National Biography, XIX, 1054-55.
64
Ayloffe, A Collection of Curious Discourses, II, 447-48; Gough, ‘Introduction’, p. xiii; Schoeck,
‘The Elizabethan Society of Antiquities and Men of Law’, p. 420;Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan
College of Antiquaries’, p. 573; Dictionary of National Biography, XXI, 117-119; and Prest, The Diary
of Sir Richard Hutton, pp. 25, 54 and 92.
65
Hasler, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558-1603, I, 471-76.
51
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Gartier’. The true figure must be closer to about forty-four percent. Making these
allowances, and then combining the two groups, results in an overall ratio of almost
exactly one in every two possible candidates possessing a parliamentary career.
Significantly, all of those members of the Society who were Members of Parliament
can be demonstrated to have also had some legal background or experience.
Along with these factors (which members of the Society had in common),
there are some things which we can say do not characterise the Society. Given that the
contemporaries of the antiquaries were William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Walter
Raleigh, John Donne and Francis Bacon66 it is clear that the Society was not an
essentially literary organisation. The members of the Society were thinkers and
writers in the sphere of English history, especially legal history, and only a few were
what we might suitably call literati. Carew and Davies were distinguished poets, and
Thynne was an amateur poet. Carew, Stow and Thynne were also literary scholars:
Carew was a translator of Tasso, and Stow and Thynne were Chaucer scholars. There
is evidence that Stow and Thynne assisted Holinshed with his Chronicles.67 But the
‘literary’ members of the Society seem to have been members chiefly because they
were scholars of English history and of English law, rather than for their literary
expertise. The subject matter of extant ‘discourses’ bears out this conclusion. This
proposition is, nevertheless, at odds with the theses of Adams and Steeves.68 Those
authors’ mistaken magnification of the membership and temporal boundaries of the
Society leads to an over emphasising of the literary (particularly Anglo-Saxon and
Old English) aspects of the Society’s interests.
Meaningful connections between the group and the Church can also be
eschewed. This is because of the manifestly scanty amount and quality of evidence for
such a correlation. The ‘evidence’, such as it is, includes the questionable early-origin
thesis (with Archbishop Parker and Archbishop Whitgift);69 the inconclusive letter
paraphrased in latin by Thomas Smith concerning the membership of the clergyman
Lancelot Andrewes;70 and the note made in Tate’s manuscript concerning the
membership of the clergyman ‘Hugh’ Broughton.71 In addition, the lack of
representation of the clergy can be implied by reference to Agard who, in his
‘discourse’ on the antiquity of the Christian religion in Britain, states ‘Although this
proposition of itselfe be more proper to be dilated by dyvines than by any other....’.
Van Norden contends that if ‘dyvines’ had been present at the meeting at which the
paper was delivered, Agard would have said something like ‘by our learned dyvines
here’ as this was the demonstrated custom when discussing an issue on which other
66
See Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple, pp. 19-31. Camden and Cotton were,
apparently, quite close friends with Jonson: B. Worden, ‘Ben Jonson among the Historians’, in Culture
and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. by K. Sharpe and P. Lake (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1993), pp. 67-89 (pp. 67-68).
67
D. R. Woolf, ‘Genre into Artifact: The Decline of the English Chronicle in the Sixteenth Century’,
The Sixteenth Century Journal, 19 (1988) 321-354, at p. 334.
68
Adams, Old English Scholarship in England from 1566 to 1800, and Steeves, Learned Societies and
English Literary Scholarship in Great Britain and the United State. A trap eschewed by Van Norden:
‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, pp. 276-80.
69
Bodley MS Ashmole 1157, No. 15, fols. 87, 89-102, on which see Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan
College of Antiquaries’, pp. 84-88.
70
Transcribed in Gough, ‘Introduction’, p. xv.
71
BL, Stowe MS 1045, I, fol. 4b.
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1 (2006)
members had specific knowledge or in which they had a professional interest not
shared by the speaker.72 Van Norden also notes that of all the extant ‘discourses’ there
are only five on religion, four of them dated on November 29th, 1604, and all of those
were, she suggests, presumably in answer to the question proposed for that particular
meeting. She concludes that in comparison with the numerous accounts on heraldry
and law this scarcity denotes that divinity was not the business of the antiquaries in
general.73 Although Spelman was later to develop a great interest in the study of
religion, there is no reason to conclude that during the active period of the Society
there were any discernable linkages between it (as a ‘group’) and the Church. This is,
of course, not to say that members were necessarily uninterested in ecclesiastical
matters. The period was one where, comparatively speaking, disinterest would have
been impossible - particularly for lawyers since the appointment of Hooker to the
mastership of the Temple Church in 1585.74
Study at either Oxford or Cambridge was as much a part of the lives of these
gentlemen as was their studies at the Inns. Certainly Camden and Carew knew each
other at Magdalen College, Oxford, and this connection may be significant.75
Erdeswicke was an Oxford university friend of Thomas Egerton.76 Van Norden argues
that there is no good reason to especially notice the university careers of the members
of the group. She submits that there are three reasons for this conclusion.77 The first is
what Van Norden accurately describes as the ‘total detachment’ of the group from the
universities. Of the forty-one candidates, none occupied any official position at either
Oxford or Cambridge, nor is there any evidence for any of the group’s meetings ever
having been held at either of the universities.78 This is clear. The second reason is that
while almost all the members Van Norden accepts were either graduates, or at least
can be demonstrated to have been admitted as students, there is no apparent leaning
(in terms of preferred institution) toward either Oxford or Cambridge. Of the fortyone ‘primary’ candidates twenty attended Oxford and fifteen attended Cambridge, and
so this is also agreed. Van Norden furthermore asserts that there no discernible bias
towards particular colleges within either of those institutions. This, however, is not so
certain. While we cannot say for sure what this might mean (because the numbers are
too small for any semblance of statistical validity), there does appear to be a
significant number of ‘primary’ members who attended Magdalen College, Oxford.79
Van Norden’s third reason is derived from the express words of the Cotton petition:
‘This society will not be hurtfull to eyther of the vniversities for yt shall not medle
with the artes, philosophy, or other fynall Studyes their professed, for this Society
72
Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, p. 271.
Ibid., pp. 271-72 and 538-39. She also suggests that the fifth, undated, Discourse on religion (by
William Camden) was delivered on the same day, on the basis of its prefatory words.
74
See Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple, pp. 62-66.
75
Dictionary of National Biography, III, 729-37 and 969-71.
76
See L. A. Knafla, Law and Politics in Jacobean England: The Tracts of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), passim, esp. pp. 42, 48.
77
For a summary of university connections, see Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of
Antiquaries’, pp. 560-81.
78
Ibid., p. 269.
79
I can identify five Magdalen, Oxford graduates: Oldisworth, Tate and Thynne (as well as Camden
and Carew).
73
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tendeth to the preservation of historye & Antiquity of which the vniversities being
busyed in the Artes tak little care or regard.’80
The petition certainly speaks clearly on this point. For these reasons it is fair to
say, in general agreement with Van Norden, that the group can be considered as
independent of the universities and, as such, the members’ individual university
backgrounds should be regarded as interesting, but non-essential data. All the same,
the tentative connections with Magdalen, Oxford represent a tantalizing morsel for the
conjectural prosopographer.
A final factor of group characteristics and experiences falls under the broad
description of government appointments. It includes (but is not limited to) diplomatic
service, membership of specialist governmental or parliamentary committees, and
appointments to provincial or municipal administrative positions. Nearly all of the
candidates were prominent in public affairs at some level. Some members were very
successful and powerful men. The group of ‘secondary’ candidates is no less
distinguished in this regard. Given this, the conventional prosopographical concern is
to ask whether it is possible to determine if the existence of the group demonstrates
something about contemporary politics. Is the group, for example, part of or in some
way connected to a political faction? This kind of enquiry represents the penultimate
boundaries of the prosopographical project - almost impelling one towards its most
speculative, and yet sometimes also its most fascinating, edges.81 Warily then, it can
certainly be shown that some members were connected with great magnates like
Essex, Whitgift and Cecil. Amongst the ‘primary’ members Bourchier and Broughton
were Essex men; Fleetwood, Hartwell, Heneage and Lake were connected with
Burghley; Cope was connected with Burghley’s son, Sir Robert Cecil; and Beale was
Walsingham’s sometime assistant. But Beale was also Walsingham’s brother-in-law.
In any society connections of consanguinity and affinity might also represent
significant ‘alliances’: is it important, for example, that Whitelock’s mother’s family
were tenants of the Bourchier family82 or (for that matter) that Hakewill was married
to the niece of Sir Francis Bacon. This type of inquiry can easily lose its initial focus.
It needs to be remembered that one of our expressed aims was to utilise the
prosopographical method in order to uncover important connections between, and
where justifiable discern influences upon, individual actors. To that end, one proviso
was that the examination was capable of being pointed to the resolution of a specific
issue. So, was the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries a ‘political’ group? In all, the
evidence at this stage does not support more than supposition.
Returning to the basal ‘factor’ of government appointments, of the many types
of positions, employments and commissions held or undertaken by the members of
the Society, offices which need not be characterised as exclusively ‘legal’, the
prominence of record keeping is significant. Agard, Bowyer, Heneage, Lake,
80
Cotton MS Faustina E.V., fol. 90b as quoted by E. Flugel, ‘Die Alteste Englische Akademie’,
Anglia, 32 (1909), 261-68 (p. 268).
81
Even the micro-politics of groups and factions form of prosopography can be extended – when it is
compounded with the equally speculative variables from the micro-politics of the relationships of
marriage and other familial alliances form of prosopography. For a very close example see Hasler’s
‘Introductory Survey’: Hasler, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558-1603, I, 1-66.
82
J. Whitelock, Liber Famelicus of Sir James Whitelocke, ed. by J. Bruce, Camden Society, 70 (1858),
p. 7.
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1 (2006)
Lambarde and Talbot were all professional record keepers. To this number we could
easily add Cotton. From the ‘secondary’ candidates we might consider Sir Henry
James. The record keepers therefore form a kind of sub-group within the larger group.
They all had more than a rudimentary legal education, and half practised the law. Two
thirds were parliamentarians. The record keepers seem to possess, collectively, a
routine selection of typical group characteristics. There is another occupational group
which stands out: the pursuit of heraldry as a profession marks out a number of
candidates. From amongst the ‘primary’ group Dethicke, Camden, St. George and
Thynne were heralds. Dethicke’s career was the most prominent, being appointed
Rouge-Croix-Poursuivant in 1567 and York Herald in 1570. He held the position of
Garter King-at Arms from 1586 until 1605. In 1597 Camden was made Richmond
Herald (for one day) and then Clarencieux-King-at-Arms. St. George was appointed
Windsor Herald in 1602 and Norroy-King-at-Arms in 1603. He succeeded Camden as
Clarenceux-King-at-Arms upon the latter’s death. Thynne was appointed BlancheLyon-Poursuivant in 1601 and Lancaster Herald in 1602. From amongst the
‘secondary’ group the heralds were Broke, Glover, Guillim and Segar. It needs to be
noted that the proportion of heralds to the overall membership of the Society, on any
reckoning, is quite small (at not more than ten percent). On the other hand, because
the total number of heralds (in England) was only about twelve, the membership of an
association of perhaps as many as a quarter or a third of all of the heralds must be
significant. How important were the heralds to the Society, and / or how important
was the Society to the heralds? How did they fit in with the other members?
Conspicuously, each of the four ‘primary’ heralds underwent legal training at one of
the Inns, or at least was an honorary member of (usually Gray’s) Inn.83 There was a
good reason for this association of heraldry and law. During the period in question
there was something of a mania for genealogy amongst the nobility, the gentry and
those who yearned to be officially recognised as holding a certain status. Forgeries of
charters and seals were common. The combined skills of lawyer and herald were
required to establish the validity of such status claims.84 But we should not leap to any
conclusions from this provisional connection. Herendeen’s thesis prioritises the parts
of the heralds within the Society, particularly Camden.85 Although his account is to a
certain degree weakened by its lack of recognition of the role of the lawyers, the role
of the heralds does emerge as a very interesting question. In other respects the heralds
were different to the majority of the Society’s membership. Although they had some
connections with the Inns, the heralds were not practising lawyers nor can they be, as
a group, characterised as Members of Parliament. As such the heralds form a special
sub-group within the broader group of members. They seem to be important, and
active, but they are not typical in terms of their attributes, experiences and careers
when compared with the other members.
83
The legal experiences of the four “secondary” heralds is demonstrably less certain: see the table
entitled ‘Candidates for Membership: Careers’, infra. See also C. E. Wright, English Heraldic
Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum Publications, 1973).
84
See McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age, p. 66 ff., and F. S. Fussner, The Historical
Revolution; English Historical Writing and Thought 1580-1640 (London: Routledge, 1962), pp. 42-44.
85
W. H. Herendeen, ‘William Camden: Historian, Herald, and Antiquary’, Studies in Philology, 85
(1988), 192-210 (pp. 206-09).
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The following table sets out, grouping firstly those candidates whose claim to
membership can be attested to by primary evidence, the career attributes of all
potential candidates. In a few instances a question mark has been used to indicate a
degree of doubt. Where this symbol accompanies a given name, details for the
suggested or likely candidate are recorded. Where the symbol accompanies a ‘factor’
(of experience), it indicates that some doubt exists as to whether the information
presented is accurate. The column denoted ‘Legal Education’ records attendance at an
Inn of Court, Chancery or a Civil legal education. Membership of an Inn of Court is
indicated thus: G for Gray’s Inn; I for the Inner Temple; M for the Middle Temple
and L for Lincoln’s Inn.
The correspondence of so many characteristics and experiences amongst the
individuals who constituted the members of the Society of Antiquaries at least
bolsters the argument for the group’s existence. If this was all the data which could be
recovered about the group then the assertion of its authenticity would be highly
speculative indeed. However, independent documentary evidence for the association
of particular individuals’ names as members of the group is ample in this regard.
Nevertheless, what the discernable coincidences in members’ social standing, legal
experience, membership of Parliament, government service, heraldry and record
keeping do demonstrate is a high degree of group cohesion. Comparison of the
individual lives of the members of the Society of Antiquaries reveals many striking
shared characteristics and experiences.86 In terms of social standing there was virtual
uniformity. That level of status-identity was almost matched by a shared legal
experience. Another very common characteristic was membership of Parliament.
Other significant coincidences were in the fields of government service. Although
many of the members entertained literary interests, they were mostly amateurs or parttimers in this field. While almost all the members had attended either Oxford or
Cambridge, their collective university connections cannot be considered as truly
remarkable. Similarly there is essentially no reason to attempt to associate the
membership of the Society with either ecclesiastical matters or regional affiliations.
Last, it is possible to isolate discrete sub-groups within the wider compass of
membership: the heralds and the record keepers. To a degree, and somewhat
tentatively, it can be demonstrated that the heralds (as a group) did not share some of
the characteristics which other members commonly possessed, whilst it appears that
the record keepers were more ‘typical’ of the broader membership.
86
For a concise, and basically accurate, summary of group characteristics, see Fussner, The Historical
Revolution; English Historical Writing and Thought 1580-1640, pp. 92-93.
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TABLE 2. Candidates for Membership: Careers.
Name
Primary
Oxford
Cambridge
Candidate
Legal
Inn
Education
Practising
Judge
Civil Law
MP
Herald
Common
Government
Courtiers
Appointment
Lawyer
Arthur Agard
Lancelot Andrews
Robert Beale
Henry Bourchier
Robert Bowyer
Richard
Broughton
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
William
Fleetwood
9
9
William Hakewill
9
9
9
9
William Camden
Richard Carew
Anthony Cliffe
William Compton
Walter Cope
Robert Cotton
John Davies
William Dethicke
John Dodderidge
Thomas D’Oyley
Sampson
Erdeswicke
Abraham Hartwell
Michael Heneage
9
9
G
9
9
9
9
G
I
M
I
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
M
9
9
9
9
9
L
G
G
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
G
M?
M
M
G
M
G
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
31
9
9
G
9
9?
9
9
9
9
9
9
Name
Primary
Oxford
1 (2006)
Cambridge
Candidate
Legal
Inn
Education
Practising
Judge
Civil Law
MP
Herald
Common
Government
Courtiers
Appointment
Lawyer
Joseph Holland
William Jones
Thomas Lake
William
Lambarde
Francis Leigh
James Ley
Arnold
Oldisworth
William Patten
John Saville
Henry Spelman
Richard St.
George
John Stow
James Strangeman
Thomas Talbot
Francis Tate
Francis Thynne
Hayward
Townshend
Robert Weston
James Whitelock
Thomas Wiseman
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
I
L
G
L
9
9
9
M
L
L
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
M
L
G
G
M
L
L
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
G?
32
9
9
9
9
Name
Primary
Oxford
1 (2006)
Cambridge
Candidate
Legal
Inn
Education
Practising
Judge
Civil Law
MP
Herald
Common
Government
Courtiers
Appointment
Lawyer
“Secondary”
Candidates
9
Atey
Benedict Barnham
M
9
9
Benefield
9
9
Henry Billingsley
9
Edmund Bolton
9
G
I
9
Brerewood
9
John Broke
Thomas Brudenell
9
9
George Buc
Lord Carew
William Cecil
Bartholomew
Clerke
9
Edward Coke
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
William ? Combes
9
9
Richard Cosens
Dr.Cowel
M
G?
M
M
or
G
G
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
M
9
9
Dee ?
Dent ?
Daniel Donn
Henry Fanshawe
9
9
9
9
33
I
9
9
9
9
Name
Primary
Oxford
1 (2006)
Cambridge
Candidate
Legal
Inn
Education
Practising
Judge
Civil Law
MP
Herald
Common
Government
Courtiers
Appointment
Lawyer
John Ferne
Henry Ferrers
9
9
9
9
9
9
I
M
9
Henry Fitzalan
Robert Glover
9
Arthur Goulding
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
G?
I
Arthur Gregory
9
Fulke Grevile
John Guillim
9
G
and
M
9
Robert Hare
9
9
9
I
9
9
G
9
9
Robert Harrison
Harrison
John Hayward
9
Herberts ?
9
9
G
William Howard
Charles Howard
9
Henry James
Josseline
Roger Keymis
John? Lumley
M
9
I
9
9
I
9
9
L
9
William Lisle
John? Lloyd
9
9
9
Peter Manwood
William Nettleton
Roger Owen
34
9
9
9
9
9
9
Name
Primary
Oxford
1 (2006)
Cambridge
Candidate
Legal
Inn
Education
Practising
Judge
Civil Law
MP
Herald
Common
Government
Courtiers
Appointment
Lawyer
9
9
Edward Phillips
Walter Raleigh
Daniel Rogers
9
9
Henry Sacheverell
Thomas Sackville
Henry Saville
9
9
9
9
Thomas Saville
M
M
G
I
M
G?
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
Richard Scarlet
9
William Sedley
William Segar
John Selden
Philip Sidney
Gilbert Talbot
9
9
9
9
9
L
G
I
G
Valence
G?
John? Wodhall
35
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
1 (2006)
3.2 Group Enterprise
Hearne and Ayloffe both claim that their collected Curious Discourses represent the
transactions of the Society. Hearne’s initial declaration, in his 1720 edition, was that:
Notwithstanding the dissolution of that Society, yet many of their Discourses
have been preserved, a collection of some of which is now at last published.
...But notwithstanding the Society was thus dissolved, yet great care was
taken to preserve many of the little Dissertations that had been occasionally
written by divers of the Members, Copies of some of which were at length
procured by my late...friend Dr Thomas Smith, who designed to publish them
himself, ... As soon as I saw the Collection, I could not but very much
applaud my learned friend’s design, and I presently began to think of printing
87
it my self; which, accordingly, I have at last done ...
Ayloffe, in 1771, expanded Hearne’s claim: ‘The editors ... offer to the public at one
view, a complete collection of all the discourses written, or delivered by the founders
of the society of English antiquaries ...’88
The internal evidence in support of this claim is not particularly strong. Within
the discourses themselves there are many references to the existence of the Society,
but no references to any collection of transactions. Spelman, our only first hand
commentator, speaks in ‘The Occasion’ of the Society’s proceedings being ‘enter’d in
a Book’, but no such register is referred to by any other primary source. Either
Spelman’s account is incorrect, or, much less than an actual series of ‘authorised
reports’, evidence of the existence of organised record keeping by the Society has
entirely vanished. Given the number of professional and amateur record keepers
amongst the members, the second alternative seems implausible. It is also manifest
that the Curious Discourses are an editor’s anthology, not an authorised edition. This
is not to say that Hearne’s claim is entirely hollow. The connections between the
Curious Discourses and extrinsic evidence about meetings and topics are convincing.
The summonses to Mr Bowyer and Mr Stow89 connect discussion topics and meeting
dates in a manner paralleling their connections in Curious Discourses.90 Van Norden
has demonstrated other extrinsic corroboration connecting discussion topics and
meeting dates.91
There is a total of one hundred and fifty-five ‘discourses’ collected by Hearne
and Ayloffe, and roughly that number again of unpublished papers (although this
latter figure includes some duplication where more than one manuscript version of the
same paper exists). My researches have revealed one further manuscript which
appears to be a recension of the Society’s discussions - Stowe MS 415, fols. 85-86.92
Extant manuscripts of the ‘discourses’, and the compiled (but now lost) ‘discourses’
of the Curious Discourses (by Hearne and Ayloffe), may be classified into three
distinct types: rough notes; polished lectures; and finished compositions. The ‘rough
87
Hearne, A Collection of Curious Discourses, pp. xxxv-xxxvi.
Ayloffe, A Collection of Curious Discourses, I, vii.
89
Bodley MS Ashmole 763, IV, 5 and 6.
90
Hearne, A Collection of Curious Discourses, pp. xxxix-xli.
91
Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, pp. 295-96.
92
The item, concerning the office of the Lord Chancellor, bears the characteristics of other
“discourses”: an etymological introduction and a reference to a “question”. Furthermore the item is
collated with other documents (mostly authored by Lambarde) about the Chancery, but unlike the
balance of Stowe MS 415 is not of a highly technical or procedural nature: M. Stuckey, ‘A “Discourse”
on the Antiquity of the Lord Chancellor’s Office by Francis Tate’, Fundamina, 7 (2001), 38-50.
88
36
1 (2006)
notes’ are simply that: very scratchy working notes. The best assortment is in Stowe
MS 1045, the entire manuscript being Francis Tate’s collection of ‘discourses’ (his
own and others’). There are one hundred and sixty-four folios, covering a couple of
dozen topics. Some are fairly neatly copied and may represent a speaker’s notes,
others are so rough as to have been unquestionably taken down during the progress of
an oral presentation. The ‘polished lectures’ show a greater degree of refinement.
However while evidence of some editing is apparent there is nevertheless an obvious
quality of spoken transmission about this class of the ‘discourses’. This type of
‘discourse’ contains references to the vocalisation of the subject and an awareness of
an assembly of listeners.93 Last, the ‘finished compositions’ clearly show a level of
detail and comprehensiveness which could not have been appropriate for an oral
presentation. Nearly half of the extant discourses would fall into this category.
There is a definite preference within the ‘discourses’ for the utilisation of
primary source materials. Time after time the antiquaries stressed those documents, or
‘monuments’ in their vernacular, which they had uncovered as first-hand testimony to
their subject matter. While many of the pieces contain elements of comment and
appraisal, some of the tracts are little more than reports on evidence. This emphasis on
direct evidence, often without initial critical analysis, and always without the
incorporated critique of others, means that the ‘discourses’ are frequently rather arid
as scholarly texts.94 They are often very dense with substance, but apparently lacking
in deeper judgement.
The prevalent tone of the ‘discourses’ is one of good natured and friendly
exchange. There is ample evidence of humour and sometimes even of cajolery and
semi-serious self-mockery.95 It is this sense of collegiality which invests the
‘discourses’ with a certain charm. However there is one quality, which twentieth
century scholars might expect from learned dialogue, which is conspicuously absent
from the ‘discourses’: critique. Unlike modern practice, these discussions, or at least
their written accounts, betray no real sign of critical disputation. Furthermore it
appears that it is not just the written versions which lack critique, because it emerges
from one of the comments of Agard that there was, at least for some time, a rule
against criticism and evaluation during meetings.96
In terms of general content, the ‘discourses’ encompass a multitude of topics
including sterling money, epitaphs, law, government, heraldry, arms, towns and
forests (to name just a small selection). The most remarkable attribute of the
‘discourses’ as a whole is their unequivocal Englishness. The phrasing of the
questions for discussion for the most part restricted the topics to English matters.
Where the topic was not one which was intrinsically English, for example in the cases
of sterling money or the Inns of Court, then in more than two thirds of cases the topic
specified was expressly limited to English concerns. Moreover the antiquaries, in the
majority, confined themselves to utilising exclusively English source materials in
93
See Ayloffe, A Collection of Curious Discourses, I, nos XXV (p. 66), LIX (p. 195), LXIV (p. 199),
LXV (p. 205), LXIX (pp. 215-16), LXXIV (p. 238), LXXXV (p. 278); II, nos V (p. 27), VI (p. 30),
XXXIII (p. 187), and XXXV (pp. 198-200).
94
Fussner, The Historical Revolution, pp. 94-95.
95
See Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, pp. 396-402 and 410-12.
96
Ayloffe, A Collection of Curious Discourses, I, no. LVII (pp.184-85). See also Fussner, The
Historical Revolution, p. 94.
37
1 (2006)
their researches.97 One expression of this proto-nationalist theme of indigenous
scholarship was overtly racial. The thesis of Kliger is very persuasive on this point. It
involves the affiliation, by writers such as Bodin and Bacon, as well as Camden,
Dodderidge, Spelman and Lambarde, of unique Englishness with a Germanic
heritage. With this German, or in some versions Nordic, ancestry went attributes of
innate tendencies towards liberty and a vigorous martial spirit, and it was juxtaposed
to a characteristically Mediterranean torpor. In summary, the aim of these writers, in
Kliger’s account, was to rediscover a golden age of freedom in England’s past.98 How
much of this is interpolation? Hirst posits the argument that the dissolution of the
Society of Antiquaries - effectively by James I’s rebuff in 1607, had more to do with
the Society’s increasingly articulate arguments about an English identity which were
at odds with James’ plans of Union, than with their researches into English
parliamentary and feudal liberties.99 The suggestion is at best hypothetical, because
while the subject of ‘Union’ elicited treatises (which have never been suggested to be
‘discourses’) from Spelman and Dodderidge, and despite the fact that a number of
group members expressed opinions in their capacities as Members of Parliament on
the question, there is no evidence of any organised group discussions on the topic.100
However, at the very least the distinctive Englishness of the ‘discourses’ demonstrates
a peculiarity of the lawyers’ professional orientation.
In more specific terms the content of the ‘discourses’ demonstrates that the
group was largely preoccupied with matters concerning English legal history. While a
majority of the papers deal with subjects such as: peerages; towns, cities and parishes;
sterling money; forests; the dimensions of land; funerals, tombs and epitaphs; heralds;
and castles (all of which could nonetheless be said to be ancillary to the core of legal
history), there are also many papers dealing with subjects such as the Inns of Court,
sealing, tenures, serjeants at law, the courts, lawful combat, the law terms and
constables. This latter array clearly represents a concerted effort to focus the group’s
thought squarely on the central questions of legal history. This nucleus of the
‘discourses’ reveals the fundamental interests of the group in the study of the history
of law, government and institutions.101 Was this preoccupation one of so-called
97
For example, in Ayloffe, A Collection of Curious Discourses, I, 276, II, no. LVI (p. 376), the
answers presuppose that questions were limited to England, and ibid., II, no. XXVII (p.160) where
Francis Leigh articulates a rule of the Society to limit itself to the use of English sources. See Van
Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, pp. 358-59 and L. Van Norden, ‘Celtic
Antiquarianism in the “Curious Discourses”’, Essays Critical and Historical Dedicated to Lily B.
Campbell (New York: Russell, 1950), 65-70.
98
S. Kliger, The Goths in England, A Study in 17th and 18th Century Thought (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1952), pp. 16, 119-29 and 243-49. The thesis is echoed, expanded and
reviewed in S. Piggott, Ancient Britons and the Antiquarian Imagination (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1989).
99
Hirst, ‘The English Republic and the Meaning of Britain’, Journal of Modern History, 66 (1994)
451-86 (p. 471) and n. 94; J. G. A. Pocock, ‘British History: A Plea for a New Subject’, Journal of
Modern History, 47 (1975) 601-21 (and the comments appended thereto, especially the short item by
A.J.P. Taylor at pp. 622-23).
100
See ‘Table: Meetings, Topics and Topicality’. See also B. P. Levack, ‘The Proposed Union between
English Law and Scots Law in the Seventeenth Century’, Juridical Review, 20 (1975), 97-115; A. H.
Williamson, Scottish National Consciousness in the Age of James VI: The Apocalypse, the Union and
the Shaping of Scotland’s Public Culture (Edinburgh: Donald, 1979), pp. 81-82; and B. Galloway, The
Union of England and Scotland, 1603-1608 (Edinburgh: Donald, 1986), pp. 30-53, and esp. pp. 38-41.
101
See McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age, pp. 155-69.
38
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disinterested scholarship? Or can these topics be regarded in some sense as politically
sensitive or controversial? One topic, or group of topics, seems to justify this
characterisation: those discourses which deal with the subject of duels and the
jurisdiction of the Earl Marshal. The matter was naturally of great interest to the
heralds, but it is also important to notice that the powers and functions of Earls
Marshal were indeed issues of considerable debate during the Society’s active years.
It was a major concern of Essex. The controversy, it might appear from the dates of
the relevant discourses, flared again - perhaps at about the time when James I ‘took a
little Mislike’ of the Society and when Dethicke and Segar were also in dispute.
Sharpe’s political thesis102 can, if we choose, provide a discursive matrix around
which the components of nationalism, legal precedent, historical scholarship can be
arranged to arresting effect. As with one of the inherent dangers associated with more
abstruse forms of prosopography, there is here a risk of over-connecting. The
approach can result, here for instance, in the conflation of scholarly discussion about
contemporary issues with speculation about faction and personal and collective
engagement. Peck has effectively detonated the imaginable connection between the
Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and the Essex campaign for the post of Earl
Marshal.103 Her argument is based precisely on the dates of the relevant discourses,
which place the discussions of the antiquaries after the execution of the Earl.
According to Peck, the interest of the group had more to do with a 1601 commission
by the Queen to the heralds,104 not only to hold the office of the Earl Marshal (in
commission), but also investigate and evaluate the duties and powers of the office.
This they appear to have done, in club with their colleagues, intermittently over the
next few years.105 There were a small number of cases before the courts where the
jurisdiction of the Court of Marshalsea was in dispute during the period of the
Society’s meetings, however the known dates of discourses dealing with heraldry
belies any effective nexus between these discourses and the relevant cases.106 So
while certainly topical, the interest of the group appears at least a little detached from
the bearpit of factional politics.
Nevertheless, some overall estimation of the topicality of the group’s
discussions may be illuminating. Many of the discourses can be dated, hence some
reasonable estimates can be made about the dates of meetings. The table below
chronologically sets out known group meetings, and where the date is unknown a
suggested or possible date is indicated by placing the undated paper(s) in a topical
context and sequence. The table also provides some information about the day of the
week on which meetings were held. In an attempt to contextualise the Society’s
102
K. Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 1586-1631: History and Politics in Early Modern England, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 17-32.
103
L. L. Peck, ‘Peers, Patronage and the Politics of History’, in The Reign of Elizabeth: Court and
Culture in the Last Decade, ed. by J. Guy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 87-108
(pp.101-06).
104
London, National Archives, PSO 2/20, Privy Signet Bills 44 Elizabeth, no. 6, 10 December 1601.
105
See J. V. Capua, ‘The Early History of Martial Law in England from the Fourteenth Century to the
Petition of Right’, Cambridge Law Journal, 36 (1977), 152-73 (p.157), and P. M. Ashman, ‘Heraldry
and the Law of Arms in England’, Journal of Legal History, 9 (1988) 50-86, esp. p. 53 on the civil law
emphasis of the legal aspects of the heralds’ work.
106
See D. G. Greene, ‘The Court of the Marshalsea in Late Tudor and Early Stuart England’, American
Journal of Legal History, 20 (1976), 267-81.
39
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meetings, and their ‘discourses’, the table includes further information about the law
term (if any) which subsisted during a meeting, and about whether Parliament was in
session on or near that day. Additionally an attempt is made, perhaps somewhat
speculatively, about whether it is possible to link the subject matter of the discourses
with the discussion of that topic by Parliament or in the courts.
In terms of “topicality” the tabular analysis reveals that, despite the fact that
the members of the group had extensive access to Parliament, there is little
correspondence to be found between the topics discussed at meetings and issues
before the Parliament. In fact there actually appears to be very scant correspondence
between even group meeting dates and parliamentary sessions. Nor can it be said that
there is a great deal of evidence to support an hypothesis which links ‘discourse’
topics with matters before the courts. Here the evidence is, however, a little stronger
and warrants some consideration.
The cases before the courts which can be experimentally synchronised, by
time and topic, to the extant ‘discourses’ are as follows: Anonymous,107 Dethick’s
Case;108 Clarencieux v Dethick;109 Ratcliff’s Case;110 and the Case of Corporations.111
In Anonymous112 the Court of Queen’s Bench considered the question of the proper
situs for the issue of process when an offence was committed in a forest. In terms of
the timing, the case precedes the one dated (but anonymous) ‘discourse’ on the topic
by about one year. There are an additional three ‘discourses’ on ‘forests’, by Agard,
Broughton and ‘Lee’, which may well have been delivered at the same time, or very
nearly the same time, as the anonymous one which is dated 3 November 1591.
However, despite the fact that there were always many cases where the law of the
forest was required to be determined by the courts, there does not appear to be any
other case (close in time to the specific ‘discourse’(s)) where the jurisdictional
question was raised so directly. The topic of forests was certainly the subject of some
debate in 1591 and 1592, and was in the process of being addressed by John
Manwood in his treatise on forests.113 In Dethick’s Case114 and Clarencieux v
Dethick115 the same questions were traversed: the issue was the proper use of a title in
naming a defendant to a suit. Dethicke claimed that he could avoid a suit relating to
the functions of his office where it was brought against him in the style ‘Dethick’
rather than in the style ‘Garter’.
107
(1590) Croke & Elizabeth 200; 78 ER 456.
(1591) 1 Leonard 248; 74 ER 227.
109
110
(1592) 3 Coke’s Reports 37a; 76 ER 713.
111
(1598) 4 Coke’s Reports 776; 76 ER 1052.
112
137
J. Manwood, A Treatise of the Lawes of the Forest, facsimile of the 1615 edition, no. 814 The
English Experience (Amsterdam: Da Capo, 1976). This work was first published in 1598, but it is
noteworthy that early drafts were circulated for comment amongst (in Manwood’s words) ‘the best and
learnest writers’ and ‘some of the most reverend and learned judges of the common law’: p. ii. See
Stuckey, ‘Property Law and Politics in the Discourses of the Elizabethan Antiquaries’.
114
(1591) 1 Leonard 248; 74 ER 227.
115
108
40
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TABLE 3: Meetings, Topics and Topicality.
Meeting Date
27.11.1590
undated116
27.11.1590
Day of
Week
Term
Friday
Michaelmas
Friday
Michaelmas
Topic
Number of
Papers
Author (s)
Parliament
in Session
Dukes
Dukes
Sterling
3
2
1
Tate (1), anon. (2)
D’oyle and Agard
Tate
Sterling
13
Thynne, Agard, Holland,
Heneage, Bourchier, Stow,
Broughton, Talbot, Patten,
Ley, Lake117 (1 ea.), anon.
(2)
Hilary
Marquises
2
both anon.
No
Easter 1591118
Easter
1
Agard
Easter 1591
Easter
Inns of Court
and Chancery
Shires
1
Agard
No (nor in
1601)
No (nor in
1601)
undated
Shires
4
undated119
Earls
2
Talbot, Broughton, Ley
and Thynne
Tate (1), anon. (1)
undated
11.02.1590/15
91
Thursday
116
Parliament
Discusses
Topic
Topic Before
the Courts
No
No
Dethick’s
The date may be either late November 1590, or possibly late November 1598, on which see the dated papers on the same topic below (in this table).
Lake’s sterling discourse is simply dated ‘1590’.
118
It is possible that this date, ‘Paschae 33 Eliz.’, may be misprinted for ‘Paschae 43’ (ie. 1601) which would link this discourse (and its companion by Agard) with the one
by Holland on the same topic (Inns of Court, dated 1 July1601). The antiquity of the shires may have also been discussed, therefore, at or around Easter 1601.
117
41
Meeting Date
Day of
Week
Term
1 (2006)
Topic
Number of
Papers
Author (s)
Parliament
in Session
Parliament
Discusses
Topic
Topic Before
the Courts
Case120
23.06.1591
23.06.1591
Wednesday
Wednesday
Trinity
Trinity
Sealing
Viscounts
2
3
03.11.1591
Wednesday
Michaelmas
Forests
1
Forests
3
undated
Tate (1), Thynne (1)
Tate (1), Thynne (1), anon.
(1)
anon.
No
No
No
No
No
25.11.1591
25.11.1591
Thursday
Thursday
Michaelmas
Michaelmas
Barons
Tenures
1
1
Agard (1), Broughton (1),
“Lee”122 (1).
anon.
anon.
10.02.1591/15
92
undated
10.02.1591/15
92
06.05.1592
12.02.1593125
Thursday
Hilary
Barons
2
Both Thynne
No
Thursday
Hilary
Barons
Tenures
2
1
Camden (1), Agard (1)
Thynne
No
Saturday
Friday
Easter
Hilary
Knights
Sergeants at
2
2
Both anon.
Both anon.
No
Yes126
119
Anonymous121
Ratcliff’s
Case123
Ratcliff’s
Case124
No127
A date early in 1591 appears to be most likely, evidenced from the positioning of the Tate paper in Stowe MS 1045. My inspection of this manuscript disclosed no reason
to doubt this suggestion by Van Norden, The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries, p. 497.
120
(1591) 1 Leonard 248; 74 ER 227.
121
122
See M. Stuckey, ‘Property Law and Politics in the Discourses of the Elizabethan Antiquaries’, Journal of Legal History 24.3 (2003), 237-49.
123
124
Ibid.
42
Meeting Date
Day of
Week
Term
1 (2006)
Topic
11.05.1594
11.05.1594
19.06.1594
Saturday
Saturday
Wednesday
Easter
Easter
Trinity
27.11.1594
Wednesday
Michaelmas
27.11.1594
Wednesday
Michaelmas
29.05.1595
Thursday
Easter
02.11.1598
Thursday
Michaelmas
Law
Esquires
Yeoman
Privileges of
Gentility
County
Palatines in
England
Antiquity of
Honours and
Manners
Most Ancient
Court of the
Realm
Arms
Michaelmas
Hilary
Arms
Dukes
Castles
undated
25.11.1598
09.02.1598/15
Saturday
Friday
Number of
Papers
Author (s)
Parliament
in Session
3
1
2
Thynne (1), anon. (2)
Thynne
Thynne (1), anon. (1)
No
No
No
1
anon.
No
1
anon.
No
1
No paper, just one (dated)
question
3
Heneage (1), Thynne (1),
Tate (1)
Doyle (1), Ley (1)
Holland (1), anon. (1)
Agard
2
2
1
125
No
Parliament
Discusses
Topic
Topic Before
the Courts
Clarencieux v
Dethick128
No
No
Plague Years in London, during the group’s meeting period, were 1593 and 1603: P. Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England, (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1985), esp. p. 151.
126
Writs issued, session commenced sittings on the following Friday (19 February).
127
No mention of topic in Parliament, however Fleetwood was made a Sergeant in late 1592.
128
43
Meeting Date
99
09.02.1598/15
99
15/16.05.1599
Day of
Week
02.11.1599
undated
20.11.1599
20/23/24.11.1
599
Topic
Number of
Papers
Author (s)
Parliament
in Session
Parliament
Discusses
Topic
Topic Before
the Courts
Friday
Hilary
Cities
1
Tate
No
Tuesday/
Wednesday
Easter
Castles
2
Tate (1), Holland (1)
No
Castles
Cities
2
2
Cotton (1), anon. (1)
Both Holland
No
Case of
Corporations131
Towns
3
No
Case of
Corporations132
Parishes
Parishes
Measuring Land
in Cornwall
Dimensions of
Land
1
1
1
Tate (1), Cotton (1),
Holland (1)
Tate
Holland
Probably Carew133
undated
03.06.1599130
22/23.06.1599
Term
1 (2006)
5 days
before
Trinity
Trinity
Friday/
Saturday
Friday
Michaelmas
Tuesday
Michaelmas
Tuesday/
Thursday/
Friday
Michaelmas
3
Holland (1), Agard (1),
Tate (1)
129
Case of
Corporations129
No
No
No
(1598) 4 Coke’s Reports 776; 76 ER 1052.
One paper is dated 1598, the other 1599. If 1599 is the correct date for both, and ‘1598’ is misprinted, this positions these papers with other papers around the same date on
similar topics such as ‘Castles’ and ‘Towns’. However, the 3rd of June 1599 was a Sunday (a day on which no other dated meeting occurred, being the Sabbath). It is
therefore possible (but far from certain) that the ‘3’ (3rd of June) is also misprinted.
131
(1598) 4 Coke’s Reports 776; 76 ER 1052.
132
Ibid.
133
Stuckey, ‘Property Law and Politics in the Discourses of the Elizabethan Antiquaries’.
121
44
Meeting Date
Day of
Week
Term
undated
1 (2006)
Topic
Number of
Papers
Parliament
in Session
Saturday
Hilary
Dimensions of
Land
Funerals
Saturday
Hilary
Knights’ Fees
1
anon.
No
Wednesday
Easter
Funerals
3
No
undated
07.06.1600
August 1600
Saturday
Trinity
Funerals
Tombs
Heralds
1
3
1
Holland (1), Agard (1),
Tate (1)
Ley
Tate (1), anon. (2)
Dodderidge
03.11.1600
Monday
Michaelmas
Epitaphs
7
Epitaphs
3
09.02.1599/16
00
09.02.1599/16
00
30.04.1600
undated
3
Author (s)
2
Dodderidge (1), Cotton
(1), anon. (1)
Dethicke (1), anon. (1)
No
03.11.1600
undated
Monday
Michaelmas
Parliament
Parliament
1
7
28.11.1600
Friday
Michaelmas
Mottoes
4
Thynne, Dethicke,
Holland, Hartwell,
Camden (1 ea.), anon. (2)
Ley (1), Agard (1), anon.
(1)
Camden
Holland, Cotton, Agard,
Camden, Tate,
Dodderidge, anon. (1 ea.)
Agard, Holland, Dethicke,
anon. (1 ea.)
45
No
No
No
No
No
Parliament
Discusses
Topic
Topic Before
the Courts
Meeting Date
Day of
Week
Term
undated
1 (2006)
Topic
Number of
Papers
22.05.1601134
Friday
Easter
Lawful
Combats
9
01.07.1601
undated
02.11.1601
Wednesday
Trinity
Monday
Michaelmas
Inns of Court
Inns of Court
Terms for the
Administration
of Justice
Terms for the
Administration
of Justice
Constables
Heralds
Heralds
1
2
1
Ley, Cotton, Camden,
Leigh, Hartwell, anon. (1
ea.)
Agard, Tate, Cotton,
Davies, anon. (2 ea.),
Whitelock, Holland (1 ea.)
Holland
Thynne and Whitelock
Holland
1
Thynne
1
2
4
Constables
6
The Earl
1
Holland
Holland and Whitelock
Leigh, Camden, Agard,
anon. (1 ea.)
Cotton, Agard, Leigh (1
ea.), anon. (3)
Cotton
undated
27.10.1601
28.11.1601
undated
Wednesday
Thursday
Michaelmas
Michaelmas
undated
05.11.1602
Friday
Michaelmas
Mottoes
6
Author (s)
134
Meeting postponed from 13 Fenruary1600/1601 (the day after the close of Hilary term) due to Essex Rebellion.
No specific mention, but other speeches made concerning the law generally. Townshend speaks on “solicitors”.
136
No specific mention, but other speeches made concerning the law generally. Bill/Act reforming the Exchequer.
135
46
Parliament
in Session
Parliament
Discusses
Topic
No
No
Yes
No135
Yes
Yes
No136
No
Topic Before
the Courts
Meeting Date
Day of
Week
Term
Hilary
1 (2006)
Topic
Marshal
The Earl
Marshal
The Earl
Marshal
Number of
Papers
12.02.1602/16
03137
undated
Friday
01/04.06.1603
Wednesday/
Saturday
Easter
The High
Steward
10
03.11.1603
Thursday
Michaelmas
1
29.06.1604
Friday
2 days after
Trinity
The Earl
Marshal
The Diversity of
Names in this
Island
The Diversity of
Names in this
Island
Christian
Religion
Christian
Religion
undated
29.11.1604
undated
128
138
Thursday
1 day after
Michaelmas
Author (s)
2
Agard, anon. (1 ea.)
7
Camden, Cotton, Davies,
Thynne, Holland (1 ea.),
anon. (2)
Camden, Tate, Agard,
Cotton, Davies, Thynne,
Holland, Townshend (1
ea.), anon. (2)
Camden
3
Oldisworth, Camden,
Agard (1 ea.)
1
Holland
4
Cotton, Agard, Dethicke,
Hakewill (1 ea.)
Camden
1
Parliament
in Session
Parliament
Discusses
Topic
Topic Before
the Courts
No
No
No
Yes
No
No
Yes138
Plague Years in London, during group meeting period, were 1593 and 1603: Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England, p. 151.
Recusancy debated in Parliament next February. Dodderidge participates. More generally, it should be remembered, that this was a topic which was constantly debated.
47
Meeting Date
03.03.1605
21.06.1607
undated
undated
undated
undated
139
Day of
Week
Tuesday
Tuesday
Term
Not in term
Trinity
1 (2006)
Topic
Heralds
Knights made
by Abbots
Knights made
by Abbots
The Chancellor
British [Welsh]
Antiquities
The Laws of
England
Number of
Papers
Author (s)
1
1
Thynne
Tate
1
Leigh
2
1
Ley and Tate139
Jones (question proposed
by Tate)
Hakewill and anon.
2
Parliament
in Session
No
No
Tate’s paper (Stowe MS 415 fol.s 85-86), see Stuckey, ‘A “Discourse” on the Antiquity of the Lord Chancellor’s Office by Francis Tate’.
48
Parliament
Discusses
Topic
Topic Before
the Courts
1 (2006)
LEGEND
1. For day of week, ‘Parliament Sitting’ and Terms, see F. M. Powicke,ed., Handbook of
British Chronology, 1st edition (London: Royal Historical Society, 1939), pp 420-422; E. B.
Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter and I. Roy, eds., Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd
edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); C. R. Cheney, ed., Handbook of
Dates for Students of English History (London: Royal Historical Society, 1945); and J. E. W.
Wallis, English Regnal Years and Titles, Hand-Lists, Easter Dates, etc. (London: Macmillan,
1921), pp. 84-85.
2. For ‘Topic in Parliament’, some parts of the Commons journals are now available online at
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/source.asp?sponsor=3. See also J. E. Neale, The Elizabethan
House Of Commons (London: Cape, 1949); J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I And Her Parliaments
(London: Cape, 1957); and W. Notestein, The House of Commons: 1604-1610 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1971).
3. For ‘Topic Before the Courts’ – while certainly not all-embracing – the CD-rom published
(and thus searchable and cross-referable) version of the English Reports has been used to
ascertain whether relevant or related matters were at least selected for reporting.
It is probably no wonder that litigation personally concerning one of the
members of the Society (in his capacity as a herald) might engender some degree of
interest amongst fellow members. If the two undated ‘discourses’ on Earls, one by
Tate and the other one anonymous, can be fixed with a date early in 1591140 then this
topic fits very neatly with the reported judicial pronouncements in Dethick’s Case141
later the same year (in Michaelmas). The court of Queen’s Bench drew an express and
extended analogy of the use of the styles ‘Earl’ and ‘Earl Marshall’ in reaching its
decision in the Garter’s favour. Similarly, Clarencieux v Dethick,142 a reprise of the
same matter, might possibly be synchronised with the Society’s ‘discourses’ on Arms.
There are extant three ‘discourses’ dated 2 November 1598, one each by Heneage,
Thynne and Tate, and to these we might add two undated ‘discourses’ on the same
topic by Doyle and Ley. The exact date of the decision by the Court of Queen’s
Bench is uncertain, but it may reasonably be determined (from its position in the
report) to have been in either Hilary 1597/8 or Trinity 1598. Again, if the connection
is valid, the Society’s discussions appear to precede judicial pronouncement. Ratcliff’s
Case,143 a lengthy and detailed matter involving the consideration of all aspects of
tenures, was decided in Hilary of 1592. It appears from the ‘discourses’ dated in
November 1591 and February 1591/2 that the Society also discussed the topic of
tenures. In the Case of Corporations144 the constitution and powers of cities and
towns was the subject matter of reported extrajudicial consideration by Coke and
140
On which see supra Table ‘Meetings, Topics and Topicality’ (and notes thereto).
(1591) 1 Leonard 248; 74 ER 227.
142
143
144
(1598) 4 Coke’s Reports 776; 76 ER 1052.
141
49
1 (2006)
other senior law officers in Michaelmas 1598. These reported discussions may be
synchronised with the series of ‘discourses’ by Holland, Tate and Cotton on the same
topic at around the same time. Our dating of some of these ‘discourses’ is open to
query,145 but (at least at a speculative level) the connection is conceivable.
In summary, recoverable associations between the discussion of topics in
Parliament and the subject matter of extant ‘discourses’ are tenuous to say the least.
Associations between the ‘discourses’ and matters before the courts are not much
easier to discern. There are really only a few instances where it is possible to parallel
group discussions with specific matters before the courts. If we exclude Dethicke’s
own litigation from the assessment, because of its personal nature, then any pattern of
topical engagement by design is quite difficult to distinguish. The result appears to be
that suggestions, which might be derived from Sharpe’s thesis, that the Society was
‘engaged’ in the ‘hot topics’ of contemporary political life, are simply not borne out
by the evidence. At the broadest level, it is possible to say that the common English
orientation of the group was one which may have enkindled ideas about things like
loyalty and geographical associations - topics which became public issues under
James I. At any more specific level however, one can only conclude that the purpose
of group meetings was not one which was especially motivated by current events and
topics save, perhaps, for the exceptional or personal legal matter which may have
stimulated some associated antiquarian interest.
We know scarcely more about the Society in terms of its formal organisational
structure. The Cotton Petition sets out an organisational design, but it must be
remembered that proposals of this kind frequently differ from experience. The
petition, it is submitted, is not evidence for the realities of practice: if there were
actual rules or customs of a general organisational nature, beyond the proposal of
topics and the presentation of ‘discourses’, then they have not survived in the sources
for our examination. The fragments of what is known about the conduct of the Society
in formal terms vary in detail and consistency. How was the Society constituted?
There may in fact have been no office bearers, beyond perhaps a secretary. Spelman’s
‘The Original’ simply designates Mr Hackwell ‘our Register, and the Convocator of
our Assemblies for the present’. However Spelman’s account is at odds with Bolton’s,
which depicts a more complex administrative structure. Furthermore, where Spelman
mentions that some of the ‘discourses’ were ‘enter’d in a Book’, Bolton describes a
‘Register’.146 Van Norden suggests that informality may have given way to
‘ossification’ with the passage of time147 but it is equally possible that Bolton’s
version tends to embellish, in order to make the Society appear to have been more
cohesive and permanent than perhaps it really was. There is nothing in the primary
evidence to suggest anything like the level of formality of constitution recorded by
Bolton.
The evidence is much firmer as regards the times, dates and places of the
Society’s meetings. Again it is Spelman’s ‘Original’ which provides a point of
departure: ‘...a College or Society of Antiquaries, appointed to meet every Friday
145
On which see supra Table ‘Meetings, Topics and Topicality’ (and notes thereto).
‘The Occasion’: Bodley MS e Mus 107, fols. 1-2, and Gough, ‘Introduction’, at xvi.
147
Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, pp. 302-03.
146
50
1 (2006)
weekly in the Term...The place, after a meeting or two, became certain at Darbyhouse, where the Herald’s Office is kept:...’.148
From the thirty-four ‘discourses’ which can be precisely dated to a certain day,
nine can be attributed to meetings held on Fridays. Other meeting days were, in
descending order of frequency: Thursday (eight meetings); Wednesday (seven
meetings); Saturday (five meetings); Tuesday (three meetings); Monday (two
meetings). There were no meetings held on a Sunday.149 The result is that although
Friday had the distinction of being the most habitual meeting day, the extant evidence
suggests that there was far from any strict rule about regular weekly meeting days.
Spelman’s identification of Term time is much easier to demonstrate. There are thirtysix meeting dates which can be identified with sufficient certainty (that is to say
within a day or two). Only three known meeting dates fall outside Term time, and
then only just.150 The makeup of the group obviously meant that the Term was a
convenient time to attend meetings in London. The significance of the Term periods
for the lawyer-members is transparent, but it should not be inflated. When Parliament
was in session, during the Term, the Westminster complex swarmed with both
lawyers and Members.151 Businessmen took advantage of the Terms to pursue
connections who might at other times be occupied in the counties. The Terms were
periods when public business, social and commercial pursuits of all kinds, were
conducted in the capital. The location of meetings also seems fairly uncontroversial.
According to Spelman the venue for meetings was Derby House, the former seat of
the Earls of Derby, and since 1555 the headquarters of the heralds. William Dethicke,
Garter King at Arms, had his apartments at Derby House, and the summonses to Mr
Bowyer and Mr Stow152 state that the meetings were to be held at ‘Mr Garter’s
house’. It is possible, but unfortunately not verifiable, that in ensuing years the venue
was shifted to Robert Cotton’s house in Westminster. For this we are reliant solely
upon the account of Thomas Smith.153
One matter of organisation remains largely unknown: the recruitment and
induction of new members. The matter has an important bearing on the question of
the character of the group in terms of its relative degrees of exclusivity and formality.
The only clue we have is the letter written by Launcelot Andrewes to Abraham
Hartwell. The letter, as recorded by Gough, is instructive:
To the right worfhipful my very good friend, Mr Hartwell, at his Houfe at
Lambeth.
SIR,
I have received the inclofed (as it was fayd) by direction from you: but the
partie I know not: it was not your hand: it had no mention of my name; and I
talkt with Mr. Clarentieux, and he would not certify me that I was made of
your number, and yet he was at your laft meeting, wher fuch things (as he
fayd) ufed to be agreed on before any came in, wherby I thought it likely the
148
‘The Occasion’: Bodley MS e Mus 107, fols. 1-2.
See Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, pp. 547-53.
150
Ibid., pp. 544-546.
151
See Clendenin, ‘The Common Lawyers in Parliament and Society’, pp. 13-15.
152
Bodley MS Ashmole 763, IV, 5 and 6.
153
T. Smith, Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Cottonianae cui praemittuntur Illustris
Viri, D. Roberti Cottoni, Equitis Aurati & Baronetti, Vita: et Bibliothecae Cottonianae Historia &
Synopsis (Oxford, 1696).
149
51
1 (2006)
partie might be miftaken that brought your note. But if I have notice from
yourfelf or Mr. Clarentieux, that you have vouchfafed me the favor, then you
fhall perceive well that I will not fail in obedyence, though unlefs it be that I
dare not promife, becaufe I cannot perform ought ells, for I learn every day
more and more gladly. But that this afternoon is our Tranflation time, and
moft of our company are negligent, I would have feen you; but no Tranflation
shall hinder me, if once I may underftand I fhall committ no error in coming.
And fo, commending me to you in myn ambition, and every way befide, I
take my leave, this laft of November, 1604, your verie affured poor friend,
154
L. Andrewes .
If this letter does refer to the Society, then it appears that new members were elected
at meetings by the extant membership. It is reasonable to assume that newly elected
members were then advised of their election to the Society by a written summons to
attend a meeting. What does this say about the character of the group? An election
does not necessarily betoken openness or egalitarianism. Whether a summons to a
new member was the same as one to an existing member will remain unknown,
however it is important to note that the Ashmolean summonses do warn existing
members not to bring with them to a meeting any person who does not possess a
similar written invitation. The group therefore looks to be exclusive and selective
rather than open or accessible.
On this question, the evidence of those commentators closest in time to the
group is intriguing, and by no means unequivocal. According to Carew there was at
least in some sense a formal introduction to the Society:
Sir, I praie you geeve me leave to impart unto you my greeff, that my so
remote dwelling depriveth mee of your sweete and respected Antiquarum
society, into which your kyndenesse towardes mee and grace with them made
mee an Entrance, and unto which (notwithstanding so long discontynuance)
155
my longing desire layeth a Contynuall clayme...
According to Spelman: ‘Two Questions were propounded at every Meeting, to be
handled at the next that followed; so that every Man had a Sennight’s respite to advise
upon them, and then to deliver his Opinion. That which seem’d most material, was by
one of the Company (chosen for the Purpose) to be enter’d in a Book; that so it might
remain unto Posterity.’156
There is very little in either of these statements to indicate what degrees of formality
or exclusivity might have prevailed at meetings. The idea of the group’s character and
function evolving over time into a more fixed, almost official form is advanced by
Smith. He contends that from the impromptu discussions of the group’s earlier years
there evolved specialisation, exclusivity, and an enormous seriousness of purpose:
...saepe prout ratio neotiorum sinebat, convenire consuevissent, de patriis
antiquitatibus investigandis in commune consulturi, sermonibus de hisce
rebus, prout in familiaribus amicorum congressibus solet fieri, ultro citroque
habitis.... ....“Propositis vero gravissimis de re antiquaria sive questionibus
154
Gough, ‘Introduction’, at xv n. l.
Cotton MS Julius C. III fol. 30 b. Reproduced in Ellis, Sir H., Original Letters of Eminent Literary
Men of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries, (London: Camden Society, 1843), pp. 98100.
156
H. Spelman, Reliquiae Spelmannianae. The Posthumous Works of Sir Henry Spelman Kt. relating to
the Laws and Antiquities of England. Publish’d from the Original Manuscripts. With the Life of the
Author (Oxford and London, 1698) p. 69.
155
52
1 (2006)
sive articulis, non confestim de iis quai tumultario erat disceptandum; sed tres
quartuorve, interdum plures, nominantur, ut quicquid ex vetustis libris
hauserint, quod iis illustrandis inserviat, proximo congrssu scripta exhibeant
coram operis veritas in profundo latens melius erueretur, resque a nostro
seculo remotissimae quasi praesentes sisterentur, illarumque origines clarius
patetierent.... Lemmata vero argumentorum, quae Viri illustres tractanda
susceperint, hic apponere longe consltius videbitur, ut Lectori manifestum
fiat, non de minutiis tricisque, nullam laudem, fructum nullumhabituris, sed
de rebus gravissimi momenti, quae veteris aevi historiam illustrant, &
quarum usus erit perpetuus in vita civlli apud omnes, qui paulo supra vulgus
157
sapiunt in commune consultum fuisse.
Hearne reiterates two of Smith’s themes, those of the great and serious project which
the group apparently pursued, and the increasingly formal nature of the meetings:
1) ‘Men that carry on such joint Labours should have their stated Meetings, and write
Dissertations upon intricate Subjects, in the same manner as was done by the Society
of Antiquaries in the time of Q. Elizabeth and K, James I’158
2) ‘The members of the Society used to be summoned when their Opinions were
desired’159
3) ‘For when Conferences were had upon such and such Topicks, the Members used
to be summoned, and their Answers were desired either in writing or otherwise ...
[and] they are to discuss the most intricate and obscure Points in our English History
and Antiquities. They should have their stated meetings, and give their opinions, not
only by word of mouth, but oftentimes in writing. This method will occasion many
short curious Discourse, that will be proper to be printed, ... In the time of Q.
Elizabeth and K James I. there was such a society made up of right learned
Antiquaries, that there is no doubt, but by this time we had had a compleat account of
the most material Things in our History and Antiquities.’160
Although not mentioned by Hearne, Smith’s other theme, of specialisation and
exclusivity amongst the membership, is taken up by Gough who envisions an even
more rigid organisational structure:
It seems ... probable, that, as these papers were the result of deliberations
previously proposed, the meetings were regulated by the time each member
required to prepare his memoir, and by the law terms … [and] More than one
157
[When the Society began] “Often, as the record of their activities set it forth, they were in the habit
of meeting to combine their efforts toward the study of their ancestral antiquities, in discussions about
these things, according to the wont of intimate gatherings of friends, held now here now there... [later]
...The most important topics on antiquarian matters having been proposed either in the form of
questions or of issues, the discussion would be carried on not chaotically by all at once, but three or
four (and sometimes many) were named, so that whatever they might glean from old books that could
serve as illustrations they would produce in transcript at the next meeting, to be read and investigated
communally, so that from that time the truth might be brought to light before one’s eyes, and things
very remote from our own century appear as if belonging to the present and their origins be
revealed....[and later still] ...The topics of discussion which these famous men took upon themselves to
handle will seem, quite obviously to the reader (at least from the point of view of all who know a little
more than the common people), to attach no importance to mere trifles, to seek no delight but in things
of the most tremendous moment, which exemplify the life of the past, and to discuss at meetings things
in relation to which there will be a permanent use in the civil life of all the people.” Smith, Catalogus
Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Cottonianae, pp. vii-viii.
158
Hearne, Curious Discourses, (Oxford: 1720), ‘Preface’, p. xxxiv, marginal note.
159
Ibid., p. xxxviii, marginal note.
160
Ibid. pp. xxxiv - xxxv.
53
1 (2006)
person wrote, or (as appears from the summons to Mr Stowe spoke, on each
subject; ___ the only method of investigating the truth by various
discussions. It appears from each summons, that none but Members were
admitted to the meetings; and that the questions of such Members as were
161
thought best qualified.
Ayloffe, reminiscent of Spelman, states simply:
... Questions as they thought proper, upon which each member was expected
at the subsequent meeting, either to deliver in, a dissertation on writing or to
speak his opinion:.... The opinions spoken were carefully taken down in
writing by the secretary, and, together with the dissertations delivered in.
After they had been read and considered, carefully deposited on their
archives.162
All of these commentators see a certain formality as one of the features of the group.
On the question of exclusivity Spelman and Hearne are effectively silent, but Smith
and Gough see a restricted group of specialists.
The style of the extant summonses, together with Lailand’s list of ‘those not
somoned’, provide stronger, but not really more conclusive evidence as to whether the
group was exclusive in the sense that only certain experts or specialists were invited
to attend particular meetings:
1) ‘...Your oppinioun in writinge or otherwyse is expected. The question is, ‘Of the
Antquitie, Etimologie and priviledges of parishes in Englande. Yt ys desyred, that you
giue not notice hereof to any, but such as haue the like somons.’163
2) ‘...Your opinioun either in writinge or otherwise is expected upon this question.
“Of the Antiquitie of Armes in England.” Yt is desired, that you bringe none other
with you nor geve anie notice to anie, but to such as have the like somouns.’164
There are two ways of reading these summonses. One valid interpretation is
that only (specialist) members who were required to present analysis were summoned
to attend a particular meeting. The alternative interpretation is that all members were
required to present an analysis on the question proposed for the particular meeting,
but that only recognised members of the ‘group’ might attend a meeting and that
strangers were forbidden. The latter interpretation, that each member, regardless of
expertise, was obliged to communicate his findings on the question at meetings,
points to a greater degree of openness and inclusiveness about procedure. This latter
interpretation is not, however, reinforced by the existence of Lailand’s alternate roster
of ‘those not somoned’ which appears within the same Bodleian manuscript as the
summonses. The suggestion to be derived from Lailand’s two lists, that not all
members were presumed to appear at all meetings, apparently strengthens the former
interpretation. Of course, the double list might also be explained away, simply as a
record of who was known to be in London and thus available for the meeting. If this
is the case then the evidentiary support for the latter interpretation is diminished and
we are thrown back upon the elusive texts of the summonses.
Internal references within the ‘discourses’ give the strongest indications about
the relative exclusivity of the group’s meetings and membership. Within the surviving
161
Gough, ‘Introduction’, pp. v-vi.
Ayloffe, A Collection of Curious Discourses, I, vii.
163
Bodley MS 763. IV, 5, fol. 195a.
164
Bodley MS 763. IV, 6, fol. 196a.
162
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‘discourses’ a number of the authors, from time to time, remark upon the practices
adopted at meetings. These utterances tend to support the more open, non-specialist,
theory of group dynamics. They also support, at the same time, a Society which
(despite an inclusive collective attitude) was one which exhibited an organised
structure with definite rules of procedure:
1) ‘I woulde willinglie keape silence in this proposition, were it not that I am taxed
there unto by a generall order designed to all, because it is quite besides the queshyon
of my profession, reading, or observation.’165
2) ‘And yet lest I should be deemed one that should begin to break order, I thought
good to put myself to the censure of your wise judgements....’166
3) ‘Were it not that the order of this learned Assembly doth forbid me to be allwayes
silent, this question having been so judiciously handled by others, and my self unable
to say any thing to it...’167
4) ‘But forasmuch as I am, according to the laudable custom of this company, either
to write or speak somewhat of the question propounded, I must first acknowledge my
own ignorance therein, and wholly rely myself upon the knowledge and observation
of the gentlemen here present...’168
5) ‘Which question falling most properly into the learning of officers of armes,
affordeth me little ability to speake of a matter so farre out of my province, more
especially as it is confined to the limits of our country; in experience of which, wee
are commonly most ignorant, as having therein less help from reading and history,
then we have in regard to other countries.’169
6) ‘...Whylst one treateth of one part of a question, and sume of another, there would
be nothing left for mee to utter concerning the antiquity...of combatts. But because I
would not seem to be silent, beinge otherwise enjoyned by the Laws of this
Assembly...’170
7) ‘In this learned assembly, there can be nothing ouerpassed,...but that will be
deliuered by some one, and therefore I might be silent: but synce by order I must say
something...’171
8) ‘Although this proposition of itselfe be more proper to be dilated by dyvines than
by any other, yet because I would bring some thynge to the encrease of our buildinge,
I hope that it shal be taken in good parte...’172
Taken together, these editorial excerpts go a long way towards focussing our
understanding of the group. They point to a group with certain fairly well understood
rules and formalities, in line with the portrayals of group activities by Smith and
Hearne. These internal references also support the theory of an ‘inclusive’ (rather than
an ‘exclusive’) group spirit. This conclusion is at odds with one interpretation of the
extant summonses: an interpretation possibly lent support, by inference, from
Lailand’s two lists, an interpretation nonetheless consistent with Smith’s and Gough’s
165
Ayloffe, A Collection of Curious Discourses, I, no. LXVIII (p. 212).
Arthur Agard: Hearne, A Collection of Curious Discourses, no. XVIII (p. 71).
167
Francis Leigh, ibid., no. XIX (p. 81).
170
Abraham Hartwell: Ayloffe, A Collection of Curious Discourses, I, no. LXXXV, (p. 278).
169
Francis Leigh: ibid., I, no. LXXXVI (p. 276).
170
John Davies: ibid., II, no. XXXIII (pp. 187-88).
171
Arthur Agard: ibid., II, no. XXVII (p. 160).
172
Ibid.
166
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representations of increasing specialisation. It appears, however, to be the most sound
postulate.
A final word, quite appropriately from Agard - the most loquacious of the
recoverable authors, is quite telling:
...There are not in anye of our former propositions anye judyciall or fynall
conclusion sett downe, wherby wee might say this is the...right opynyon that
is to be gathered out of every man’s speache...Therefore I wishe this
abuse...might in our nowe meetings be reformed. And that uppon every
poynt, men being heard, the soundest judgements might be thereuppon
173
concluded.
Perhaps it is too much to read into Agard’s words ‘anye judyciall or fynall conclusion
sett downe, wherby wee might say this is the...right opynyon’ to say that herein we
find some legal significance. On the other hand the comment is interesting because it
betrays an authentic and lawyerly desire, not just to reach a consensus, but to furnish
some kind of persuasive collective standpoint on the issue at hand.
Was the presentation of ‘discourses’, at the regular meetings, the only activity
of the Society? There is no direct evidence of any other operations. Although it
represents conjecture, another possible object of the Society may have been to
facilitate scholarly ‘borrowings’, mostly of books but perhaps also of other easily
transportable items. We know that the Cotton Petition included a proposal for a
library. We also know that some of the members (particularly Cotton, Spelman and
Camden) were certainly in the habit of borrowing and lending books and other items
of scholarly interest. There are instances in the discourses where a particular bailment
is mentioned in passing.174 The suggestion is interesting, but will remain
unsubstantiated.
3.3 Group Members: Other responsibilities, age and death
The plan for Society’s incorporation, embodied in the ‘Cotton petition’ which was
presented (or was at any rate drafted for presentation) to Queen Elizabeth, was never
realised. There is no documentary or other evidence to witness the continuation of
group meetings after June of 1607. Spelman’s prologue to his The Original, ‘The
Occasion’, indicates that endeavours to revive the Society in 1614 were unsuccessful,
the King having ‘took a little Mislike’ to the group.175 It can, moreover, be
demonstrated that the period was also one in which many of the members reached the
age of retirement and death. Spelman’s ‘The Occasion’ also allows some insight as to
some of the more plain reasons for the cessation of group activities: ‘as all good Uses
commonly decline; so many of the chief Supporters hereof either dying or
withdrawing themselves from London into the Country.’176
It is worth testing these explanations. We have already noted that, with the
possible exception of John Stow, all of the antiquaries seem to have been ‘gentlemen’,
at least in the sense that they possessed manors. Van Norden considers, on the
173
Agard: ibid., I, no. LVII (pp. 184-85).
Hearne, A Collection of Curious Discourses, no. XVII.
177
The King’s ‘mislike’ of the group is confirmed by Carew: Cotton MS Julius C. III, fol. 30 b. See
also Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, pp. 71-118, and F. J. Levy, Tudor
Historical Thought (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library Publications, 1967), p. 165.
176
Bodley MS e Mus 107, fols. 1-31 (‘The Occasion’ is fols. 1-2).
174
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authority of Carew and Spelman, that it was this responsibility for land that eventually
dispersed them.177 This conclusion is thoroughly plausible, but it is not verifiable by
reference to known facts about the movements of individual group members. There is
simply not enough evidence to say whether or not this was the primary factor in the
demise of the group. Age and death, on the other hand, are factors which can be
tested. In 1607/8 (Van Norden’s cessation date) at least thirteen of the forty-one
identifiable members had already died. They were Beale, Bourchier, Broughton,
Erdeswicke, Fleetwood, Hartwell, Heneage, Lambarde, Savile, Stow, Strangeman and
Thynne and Townshend. In the five years prior to this census there had been a death
of a member every year, and while there had been no deaths in 1602 there had been
two in 1601. With (at least) almost a third of identifiable members dead the rupture of
group ties must have been serious. There are a further nine members about whose date
of birth or death there exists some uncertainty. Of the remaining nineteen living
‘primary’ members the average age in 1607/8 was 55 years. Three of those nineteen
were above sixty, and a further six were between fifty and sixty. With fewer than ten
percent of the overall population at this time accounting for persons above the age of
sixty, it is clear that the group was moving collectively into old age.178
Whilst the obligations to attend to duties associated with substantial land
holdings appears to be a feasible explanation for the demise of the group it is
ultimately a solution which is unverifiable on existing evidence. The fact that many
members did continue active and successful careers in politics, law and civil service
(all of which required at least seasonal residence in London) might well suggest that
removal from the capital was not a significant consideration. The factors of the ages
of and deaths amongst the membership tell a more accurate story. These factors can
be, speculatively at least, added to another. The year 1607 was not a favourable one
for writers such as the antiquaries. Around this time the example of Dr Cowell
(unjustifiedly accorded membership of the Society by Bolton) would have made some
of these mature men wary about pursuing investigations which might attract royal
displeasure. It needs to be remembered that most of the membership had much to lose.
Almost all held positions of eminence and sinecures which might be squandered by
careless words. There is no direct evidence of such a tactical withdrawal from the
world of affairs by members, and certainly some members continued to write as
individuals, but the circumstances of the period coupled with age and the death of
friends might reasonably have lead more than a few to opt for a peaceful retirement.
4. Summary and Conclusion
The significance of the brief flowering of legal and historical studies represented by
the Society of Antiquaries is that glimpse which is afforded to the scholar, centuries
later, of the emergence of what we now refer to as a discipline. The members of the
Society, themselves now objects of our own historical inquiry, developed methods
179
Van Norden, ‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’, p. 265. It is worth noting that because both
Spelman and Carew were personally as active in the affairs of their respective counties of Norfolk and
Cornwall as in their London affairs it may be inferred that their views might over-represent the
provincial factor. See Cooper, ‘On An Early Autograph of Sir Henry Spelman, with Some New or Not
Generally Known Facts Respecting Him’, pp. 101-12.
180
E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541-1871 (London:
Arnold, 1981), pp. 215-19.
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and approaches to secure and utilise source materials with a view to the writing of
history.179 Unlike the mediaeval historians, and in line with the continental humanist
tradition (with which some of the members of the Society were in touch), it was not
regarded as satisfactory to merely reiterate and augment the work of a predecessor.
The dissolution of the monasteries, the dispersal of their libraries,180 and the invention
of printing181 had engulfed scholars with a volume of accessible information
inconceivable only a generation or two before. More information led, successively, to
two things: comparison and novel questions. The Society, as a group, gathered
information and did so purposefully. They met as a group, they proposed questions,
they scoured repositories and archives, took notes, compared documentation and
reported back to participate in discussion from which further questions emerged. The
historical method became linear and progressive rather than cyclical, and the results
became purposive rather than mere records of God’s work.182
In all of this the training of the members of the Society as lawyers, members
of the most significant secular fraternity in Europe, stood them in good stead. As
lawyers the members’ skills in documentary research and analysis, balancing of
evidence and supported argumentation in the face of disputed or uncertain assertions,
to a large degree moulded the new methodology to be applied to historical inquiry.183
This is not to say that in the Society of Antiquaries we find all the elements of modern
legal history in some embryonic state.184 Fussner and Rodgers both point out that
legal training had its disadvantages too, such as the rigid concept of the ‘legal record’
and its a priori factual status being inappropriate to historical studies where facts may
exist at differing levels of generality.185 This was a methodological problem which the
antiquaries never addressed.
So it needs to be noted that the importance of the Society should not be
exaggerated. Pivotal as they were, the endeavours of the antiquaries represented an
isolated recognition and a limited employment of the humanist method of historicolegal scholarship. Rodgers reminds us:
The common law was a highly practical discipline, however, and the
professional common lawyer found little interest in legal humanism, which
179
Herendeen suggests this had much to do with the changing definitions of the roles of ‘antiquaries’
and ‘historians’ in the period in question: Herendeen, ‘William Camden: Historian, Herald, and
Antiquary’, pp. 194-97. See also S. Piggott, ‘Antiquarian Thought in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries’, in English Historical Scholarship in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. by L. Fox
(London: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 93, and C. P. Rodgers, ‘Humanism, History and the
Common Law’, Journal of Legal History, 6 (1985), 129-56 (pp. 146-47).
182
C. E. Wright, ‘The Dispersal of the Libraries in the Sixteenth Century’, in The English Library
Before 1700, ed. By F. Wormald and C. E. Wright (London: Althone, 1958), pp. 148-71.
181
R. D. Dunn, ‘Fragment of an Unpublished Essay on Printing by William Camden’, British Library
Journal, 12 (1986), 145-49.
184
R. M. Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), pp. 76, 79, and 259-61. See also R. J. Terrill,
‘William Lambarde: Elizabeth Humanist and Legal Historian’, p. 161, and C. Ginzburg, ‘High and
Low: The Theme of Forbidden Knowledge in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Past and
Present, 73 (1976), 28-41.
185
The significance of legal training appears to have been neglected by many: see, for example, Evans,
A History of the Society of Antiquaries, pp. 11-12.
184
See T. D. Kendrick, British Antiquity (London: Methuen, 1950), p. 114.
187
Fussner, The Historical Revolution, pp. 98-99, and Rodgers, ‘Humanism, History and the Common
Law’, pp. 137-38 and 147.
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he saw as largely abstract, antiquarian and irrelevant to legal practice. The
insularity of the common law tradition ensured that even the modest
`reception’ of humanist ideas (represented in the work of the legal
antiquaries) that did occur was effectively delayed until well into the
186
seventeenth century.
The prosopographical temptation to see the Society as a culmination of a much earlier
lineage, stretching back to Leland, or for that matter as an origin of later scholarship,
centred on Selden, must be resisted.187 The human element of such lineages is
indefinite. The significance of individuals’ real and imagined connections defines the
prosopographical enterprise, and is therefore a question which, it is hoped, has been
approached with appropriate care.
On the other hand it is worth recalling that, as Cheney has noted, ‘the
sultriness of professionalism had not yet descended upon the historical world’.188 The
milieu was one of awakening, of ‘discovery’, so while the enthusiasm of these
scholars cannot entirely counterbalance technical weaknesses in analyses which are
obvious today, it is submitted that the group were genuinely great explorers in their
field. Their work directed the path to a more sophisticated and profound access-way
to the past. It was unique, but also represented only a fleeting interval in the sequence
of English legal-historical scholarship. In the years immediately following the demise
of the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries there were a number of inconsequential
successor organisations. These bodies, or proposed bodies, were: Prince Henry’s
‘Academe’; the Chelsea College; Bolton’s ‘Academe Roial’; Kynaston’s ‘Museum
Minervae’; Dugdale and Deering’s ‘Antiquitas Rediviva’; Gerbier’s ‘Academy’; an
innominate association referred to by Ashmole and Cowley’s planned foundation ‘for
the advancement of learning’. Although (to various degrees) the individual members
or sponsors of these groups were notable antiquarians, none of these organisations
made any significant or lasting mark on scholarship as an organisation per se.189 They
were, for the most part, futile attempts to establish some kind of learned academy or
society which never (or only barely) progressed beyond planning stages. It was not
until the incorporation of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1751 that such an
organisation took firm root. Such evidence as exists in relation to the membership and
interests of these bodies, including the Society founded in 1751, indicates none of the
especially legal flavour of the antecedent organisation.190 Nonetheless, the fleeting
186
Rodgers, ‘Humanism, History and the Common Law’, pp. 152-53.
For example, Levine’s ‘The Antiquarian Enterprise, 1500-1800’: J. M. Levine, Humanism and
History: Origins of Modern English Historiography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 73106. Another example, concerning the role of Camden and the heralds: Herendeen, ‘William Camden:
Historian, Herald, and Antiquary’, pp. 203-06. Cf. J. P. Carley, ‘Polydore Vergil and John Leland on
King Arthur: The Battle of the Book’, Interpretations, 15 (1984), 86-100.
190
C. R. Cheney, ‘Introduction’, in English Historical Scholarship in Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries, ed. by Fox, pp. 5-6. See also A. B. Ferguson, Clio Unbound: Perception of the Social and
Cultural Past in Renaissance England (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979), p.88.
191
See D. R. Woolf, ‘Erudition and the Idea of History in Renaissance England, Renaissance
Quarterly, 40 (1987), 11-48 (pp. 17-27, 31).
192
The comprehensive reference is: Evans, A History of the Society of Antiquaries. See Van Norden,
‘The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries’ pp. 440-87; Herendeen, ‘William Camden: Historian, Herald,
and Antiquary’, pp. 209-10; B. Nurse, ‘The Library of the Society of Antiquaries of London: Acquiring
Antiquaries’ Books Over Three Centuries’ in Antiquaries, Book Collectors and the Circles of Learning,
ed. by R. Myers and M. Harris (Winchester: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1996), pp. 153-58; and, more
generally, B. C. Southgate, ‘“No Other Wisdom”? Humanist Reactions to Science and Scientism in the
189
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glimpse provided by the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries allows us an invaluable
perspective - towards both the antiquaries’ distant past and their near future. As
Kelley recognises that ‘The ideological conflicts of the seventeenth century made
disinterested inquiry into the English past a luxury, a dangerous one at that, and
clearly the triumph of Parliament did not provide a more congenial atmosphere for the
kind of cosmopolitan-minded work exemplified...’191
Où sont les femmes?
Seventeenth Century’, The Seventeenth Century, 5 (1990), 71-92, and M. Feingold, ‘John Selden and
the Nature of Seventeenth Century Science’, in In the Presence of the Past: Essays in Honour of Frank
Maunel, ed. by R. T. Bienvenu and M. Feingold (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991), pp. 55-78.
193
D. R. Kelley, ‘History, English Law and the Renaissance’, Past and Present, 65 (1974), 24-51 (pp.
49-50).
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Prosopographie des femmes des familles princières et ducales en
Italie méridionale depuis la chute du royaume lombard (774)
jusqu’à l’installation des Normands (env. 1100)
Thierry Stasser
Mon projet est de mettre au point une prosopographie des femmes des maisons
princières et ducales d’Italie méridionale de la fin du VIIIe aux débuts du XIIe siècle,
c’est à dire depuis la fin du royaume lombard d’Italie et sa conquète par Charlemagne
dans les années 770/780 jusqu’à la conquête normande. Le point de départ sera donc
la famille du prince de Bénévent Aréchis II. L’étude se terminera aux premières
années du XIIe siècle, lorsque les Normands auront partout évincé les anciennes
familles régnantes, avec lesquelles ils se sont alliés par mariage. Le cadre
géographique du projet est l’Italie méridionale lombarde et grecque située au sud des
Abbruzes spolétines et du patrimoine de S Pierre, à savoir les principautés de Capoue,
Bénévent et Salerne, ainsi que les duchés de Naples, Gaète, Amalfi et Sorrente.
Cette étude n’est pas encore entièrement finalisée. Nos connaissances des
membres féminins des familles régnantes en Italie méridionale sont encore
actuellement très succinctes, car les sources ne sont guère prolixes à leur sujet. La
plupart du temps les femmes ne sont connues que par des allusions ou la mention de
liens de parenté entre les personnages masculins de ces lignées. Néanmoins un
examen minutieux de ces sources peut conduire à de nouvelles identifications et à
dégager certains personnages de l’anonymat.
Cadres chronologique et géographique
Avant de commencer le travail proprement dit, il convient de délimiter les cadres
chronologiques et géographiques de notre étude. En 774, le royaume des Lombards et
son roi Desiderius furent vaincus par Charlemagne qui prit le titre de roi des
Lombards et intégra le territoire au Regnum Francorum. C’est à cette époque que le
duc Aréchis II de Bénévent, gendre de Desiderius, se proclama prince de Bénévent.
Cette principauté s’étendait, à cette époque, sur la quasi totalité de l’Italie
méridionale, au sud des Abbruzes spolétines et du Patrimoine de Saint Pierre.
Echappaient à son contrôle les territoires autonomes de Naples-Amalfi et Gaète, ainsi
que les terres byzantines. Ce patrimoine demeura intact jusqu’au milieu du IXe siècle,
sous les principats de Grimoald II, Grimoald III, Sico et son fils Sicard. Au décès de
ce dernier, c’est le comte Radelchis qui reçut le pouvoir des mains des Bénéventains,
au détriment de Siconulf, frère cadet de Sicard. Une guerre civile s’ensuivit, qui se
termina par le partage de la principauté en 849: le nord et l’est restèrent aux mains de
Radelchis I qui garda Bénévent. Le sud et l’ouest en revanche passèrent à Siconulf
avec le titre de prince de Salerne. Les Sarrasins, appelés par les deux compétiteurs,
s’emparèrent des Pouilles qu’ils gardèrent un certain temps jusqu’à ce que les
Byzantins vers 875 occupent Bari et reconquièrent ce territoire qui échappa pour
longtemps à la domination des princes. Une troisième famille entra alors dans le jeu,
celle des gastalds de Capoue qui avaient aidé Siconulf dans sa conquête du pouvoir.
En 900, Aténulf I de Capoue s’empara de Bénévent et du titre princier. Ses
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successeurs régnèrent en indivision jusqu’au décès de Pandulf I en 981: à ce moment,
Capoue et Bénévent devinrent deux entités distinctes, avec le titre de prince, qui
perdurèrent jusqu’à ce que les Normands s’en emparent dans la seconde moitié du
XIe siècle. Pendant ce temps, la principauté de Salerne garda son indépendance,
jusqu’à la fin du règne de Gisulf II, brièvement déposé en 973 par son beau frère
Landulf, fils d’Aténulf II de Capoue Bénévent. L’intervention de Pandulf I, prince
régnant de Capoue Bénévent et également duc de Spolète, rétablit Gisulf sur le trône ;
en échange, Gisulf et son épouse Gemma, sans enfants, adoptèrent le second fils de
Pandulf I et l’instituèrent leur héritier. Au décès de Pandulf, le duc Manso II d’Amalfi
occupa la principauté pendant deux années, avant d’être lui même éjecté en 983 par le
comte du palais Jean fils de Lambert, d’origine Spolétine, et qui fonda la seconde
maison des princes de Salerne, laquelle régna jusqu’en 1077. Le petit-fils de Jean,
Gaimar IV, s’empara même à un moment des duchés de Sorrente et d’Amalfi, ainsi
que de la principauté de Capoue.
A côté de ces principautés, les enclaves de Naples, Amalfi et Gaète restèrent
dans la mouvance byzantine et dataient la plupart de leurs documents du règne des
empereurs grecs. Dès le VIe siècle, on voit apparaître un duc de Naples, mais pour
rester fidèle à ce cadre chronologique, on les envisagera à partir de Stéphane II (+ fin
VIIIe siècle). C’est cependant seulement avec Serge I (840-865) que la succession
devint héréditaire. Auparavant comte de Cumes, et membre d’une importante lignée
aristocratique, Serge I transmit le pouvoir à ses descendants, qui le gardèrent jusqu’en
1127.
Amalfi, qui faisait partie du duché napolitain, s’en détacha en 838, après une
brève occupation par Sicard de Bénévent, pour former un territoire indépendant. Ses
dirigeants portèrent d’abord le titre de préfet, pour adopter celui de duc dès 957.
Parmi les nombreux règnes, trois familles se détachent: celle du préfet Marinus, avec
ses fils Serge I et Puchcharius et son gendre Stéphane au IXe siècle ; celle de Manso I,
son fils Mastalus I, les fils de ce dernier Léon et Jean I, et le fils de Jean, Mastalus II,
dans la première moitié du Xe siècle ; celle enfin de Serge II, qui resta au pouvoir
jusqu’en 1077.
Gaète semble aussi avoir été dans la mouvance napolitaine jusqu’en 867 au
moins. On connaît deux hypatoi de Gaète, de la famille des Anatolii, à la tête de la
cité en 866. Dès 867, le pouvoir passe aux mains de la lignée des Docibilii, avec
l’arrivée de Docibilis I, sans doute allié par mariage aux Anatolii. Ses successeurs se
maintinrent au pouvoir jusqu’en 1032 au moins ; avant 1036, Pandulf IV de Capoue
occupa le siège ducal, dont il fut dépossédé en 1038, comme de sa principauté
d’ailleurs, au profit de Gaimar IV de Salerne. Raynulf d’Aversa dirigea ensuite la cité
puis on retrouve Aténulf d’Aquino, gendre de Pandulf IV de Capoue.
La dernière entité enfin est l’éphémère duché de Sorrente, envisagé seulement
au XIe siècle. Les noms des tenants du titre ne sont pas tous connus, à l’exception des
deux derniers, Serge I et Serge II. Ils sont étudiés principalement en raison de leurs
rapports avec les princes de Salerne.
La plupart de ces familles disparurent de la scène à l’arrivée des Normands,
mais beaucoup s’allièrent aux conquérants par mariage. Cette étude s’arrêtera aux
premières années du XIIe siècle.
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Description du projet
La prosopographie proprement dite sera précédée d’une première partie qui traitera de
différentes questions concernant ces lignées, ainsi que l’aspect onomastique avec la
transmission des prénoms, et les différentes stratégies matrimoniales élaborées par les
ducs et les princes. Cette première partie sera divisée comme la prosopographie en
huit chapitres. On tentera entre autres de donner des pistes quant à l’origine familiale
des différents princes, notamment grâce à l’onomastique et à la chronologie
comparative, et de reconstituer les branches cadettes des différents troncs princiers et
ducaux.
La prosopographie comportera 8 chapitres. Le premier traitera des princes de
Bénévent depuis Aréchis II jusqu’à Radelchis II (fin IXe siècle) . 26 dames ont déjà
été recensées. Le second chapitre étudiera les “Landulfides” de Capoue Bénévent,
depuis Landulf l’Ancien (second quart du IXe siècle) jusqu’à la fin du XIe siècle. Ce
chapitre sera lui même divisé en 4 parties: 1) les gastalds de Capoue, depuis Landulf
l’ Ancien jusqu’à Aténulf I, qui renversera le prince de Bénévent Radelchis II en 900.
On y recense 16 dames. 2) les princes de Capoue Bénévent depuis Atenulf I jusqu’à la
fin du XIe siècle: 24 dames. 3) les comtes de Téano, issus d’Aténulf II de Capoue
Bénévent et de Pandulf I de Capoue bénévent: 13 dames. 4) les comtes d’Isernia, issus
d’Aténulf II de Capoue Bénévent: 4 dames. Soit un total de 57 personnes.
Le troisième chapitre traitera de la première maison des princes de Salernes et
sera divisé en 4 parties: 1) les princes de Salerne, depuis Siconulf (mil IXe siècle)
jusqu’à Gisulf I (+ 977): 11 dames. 2) le lignage du comte Guy, issus de Gaimar I: 7
dames. 3) le lignage issu du comte Daufier, fils du prince Guaifier: 13 dames. 4) le
lignage issu de Guaifier, fils du prince Guaifier: 1 dame. Soit 32 personnes.
Le quatrième chapitre s’intéressera aux princes de Salerne de la seconde
maison, depuis Jean fils de Lambert (fin Xe siècle) jusqu’à Gisulf II (fin XIe siècle).
Ce chapitre comportera 5 parties: 1) les princes de Salerne: 11 dames. 2) les seigneurs
de Policastro, issus de Gaimar IV: 3 dames. 3) les seigneurs de Conza et de Giffoni,
issus de Gaimar III: 8 dames. 4) les seigneurs de Cappacio, issus de Gaimar III: 17
dames. 5) le lignage du comte Jean, issu de Jean I: 2 dames. 6) le lignage du comte
Pierre, parent de Jean I: 5 dames ; 7) le lignage du comte Lambert, issu de Jean I: 4
dames. 8) le lignage du comte Lambert, peut-être frère ou cousin de Jean I: 17 dames.
Soit 67 personnes.
Le cinquième chapitre étudiera la famille ducale de Naples, depuis les débuts
du IXe jusqu’à la fin du XIe siècle: 22 dames jusqu’à présent.
Le sixième chapitre s’occupera des ducs de Gaète, du IXe au XIe siècle: et
comportera 5 parties: 1) les ducs de Gaète: 26 dames. 2) les ducs de Fundi, issus du
duc Marinus: 4 dames. 3) les comtes de Traetto et Castro Argento, issus du duc
Marinus: 5 dames. 4) les comtes de Suio, issus de Docibilis II: 6 dames. 5) le lignage
du préfet Léon, issus de Docibilis I: 8 dames.
Le septième chapitre s’intéressera aux ducs d’Amalfi, de Marinus I (2e moitié
IXe siècle) jusqu’à Marinus II (fin XIe siècle): 1) famille ducale ; 28 dames. 2) le
lignage issu d’Adémar, fils de Serge I: 16 dames. Le huitième chapitre étudiera les
ducs de Sorrente au XIe siècle: 6 dames
On a donc jusqu’à présent recensé 303 dames pour 8 lignages principaux. La
plupart sont issues d’un de ces lignages et mariées dans un autre. Elles sont
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prioritairement recensées dans le lignage auquel elles appartiennent par mariage: par
exemple Adelchisa, soeur de Guaifier de Salerne et épouse de Sicard de Bénévent, est
reprise dans le chapitre qui traite des princes de Bénévent, bien que par la naissance
elle appartienne au genus de Salerne. Gaitelgrima, fille de Pandulf II de Bénévent (III
de Capoue), est mentionnée dans le chapitre consacré à la seconde lignée des princes
de Salerne, car elle avait épousé Gaimar III de Salerne. C’est pourquoi il y aura
chaque fois un renvoi aux tableaux généalogiques correspondants.
Chaque dame a droit à une notice. Celle-ci comprend les dates extrêmes où
elle est documentée; les dates de naissance et de décès si celles-ci sont connues ou
peuvent être déterminées avec plus ou moins de précision; les origines familiales
(noms des parents); l’état civil (mariée, religieuse, célibataire); la descendance; les
sources principales; la bibliographie; enfin un commentaire biographique.
L’identification des 303 personnes répertoriées dans la prosopographie repose
sur quatre cas de figure. Dans le premier cas, il s’agit d’une dame bien documentée
par les sources à notre disposition. Dans le meilleurs cas, on connaît son nom, sa
famille d’origine et celle à laquelle elle s’est alliée, et on possède également quelques
indications chronologiques à son propos. Par exemple Adelperga, fille du roi des
Lombards Desiderius, femme du premier prince de Bénévent Aréchis et mère de ses
cinq enfants. Ou encore Sichelgaita, fille du prince de Salerne Gaimar IV et mariée au
normand Robert Guiscard. Certaines sont également anonymes, mais bien identifiées
par nos sources, comme la mère du prince Aténulf I de Capoue, que le chroniqueur de
Salerne nous dit issue du génus des Roffrid et des Potelfrit, lignée illustre à Bénévent,
ou la fille de Guy de Conza, nièce du prince Gaimar IV de Salerne et donnée par son
oncle au normand Guillaume Bras de Fer.
Dans le second cas, la dame nous est connue par l’affirmation de liens
familiaux entre certains personnages masculins des familles princières et ducales.
Landulf de Suessola, fils du comte Lando de Capoue, est le gendre du duc de Naples
Serge I ; le comte de Capoue Lando III est le beau frère (cognatus) du prince de
Bénévent Gaideris ; le duc de Naples Serge II est le grand père des princes Landulf I
et Aténulf II de Bénévent. Ces indications nous indiquent que les ducs Serge I et
Serge II de Naples avaient chacun une fille qu’ils avaient mariée dans la famille des
Landulfides. Ces dames ne sont pas documentées en tant que telles, on ne connaît pas
leur nom et ces mentions seules nous permettent de déterminer leur existence et de
connaître leurs liens familiaux.
Dans le troisième cas, c’est l’apparition dans une lignée d’un nom spécifique
d’une autre lignée, ou la transmission d’un patrimoine, qui nous permet de suggérer
une alliance matrimoniale et partant l’identification d’une épouse ou d’une fille. Il ne
s’agit plus ici de certitudes généalogiques, mais bien d’hypothèses. Par exemple, le
nom de Gaimar donné au fils associé au pouvoir du duc d’Amalfi Manso II dans les
années 1048/1052 indique une alliance probable avec les princes de Salerne, dans ce
cas-ci, chronologiquement, avec une fille de Gaimar III. De même, l’apparition, au
XIIe siècle, des prénoms Bagelard et Hermann dans la famille des seigneurs de
Capaccio, lignée issue du prince de Salerne Gaimar III, suggère une alliance avec des
femmes de la famille de Homfroy de Hauteville, duc des Pouilles, dont le fils
Bagelard fut un des principaux rivaux de Robert Guiscard, avec l’aide de son demifrère Hermann. Il est probable que deux filles de ce Bagelard épousèrent les frères
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Grégoire et Tudinus de Capaccio, introduisant les noms de leur père et de leur oncle
dans la famille de leurs époux.
Le dernier cas de figure concerne les dames à propos desquelles on ne possède
aucune trace si ce n’est qu’on sait qu’elles ont existé. Lorsqu’un prince, un duc ou un
comte a des fils légitimes, cela signifie qu’il a eut au moins une, voire plusieurs
épouses. Toutefois, ces dames anonymes ne sont pas reprises dans la prosopographie.
Apport de l’onomastique
Sur les 303 dames identifiées jusqu’à présent, 79 sont anonymes. En ce qui concerne
les autres, on peut remarquer que dans la plupart des cas, les lignées de Bénévent,
Capoue et Salerne utilisent principalement des prénoms d’origine lombarde, tandis
que les 3 duchés tyrrhéniens préfèrent les noms d’origine grecque ou latine, voire
biblique comme Anna ou Elisabeth.
Dans la famille des princes de Bénévent aux VIIIe et IXe siècles, les 5 filles de
princes nommément connues ont des noms lombards: Adelchisa, Teoderada,
Sikelenda, Ageltrude et Gairichisa. Quant aux épouses, toutes ont des noms lombards
également, sauf la byzantine Evanthia. Les familles de 3 d’entr’elles sont connues:
Adelperga, fille du roi Desiderius, Adelchisa, fille de Daufier le Muet, et Arniperga,
fille de Pando de Capoue. Quant aux autres, une est anonyme, les 3 dernières,
Garetrude, Tasselgarda et Adeltrude sont certainement issues de lignées lombardes.
Chez les Landulfides de Capoue au Ixe siècle, la seule fille dont on connaît le
nom est Laidelaicha, fille de Lando I: un prénom bien lombard. Lorsque la lignée
s’empare de Bénévent et du titre princier, l’alliance avec les familles de Naples et de
Gaète introduit deux prénoms jusqu’alors inusités: Gemma et Maria. Ces prénoms se
retrouvent toutefois rapidement dans les familles lombardes. Les autres prénoms
connus sont Sikelgarde, Gaitelgrima, Adelgrima, Willa. Quant aux épouses, leur
origine familiale n’est pas toujours connue: à côté des anonymes, on trouve une
Aloara, une Arniperga, une Adeltruda, deux Altruda et 3 Maria. En ce qui concerne
les autres, celles pour lesquelles on possède quelques données quant à leur origine
familiale, 2 des 3 Napolitaines sont anonymes. Rothilde est fille du prince de Salerne,
Aloara est fille du comte Pierre et nièce du comte Lando, Gaitelgrima est fille de
Roffrid, toutes des familles lombardes.
Si on se tourne vers les Salerne, on remarque que les quelques filles des
princes dont on a gardé la trace (et le nom) se rattachent à l’onomastique lombarde:
Sichelgaita et Gaitelgrima, plus une Rothilde qui tient son nom de la famille de sa
grand mère Itta, issue des Widonides de Spolète, apparentés aux Carolingiens. Parmi
les femmes des princes, outre les capouanes Laidelaicha et Gaitelgrima, on retrouve
deux Itta, toutes deux issues des Widonides, une Gemma, fille d’un comte Alfan (fort
probablement issue du genus des Alfan de Salerne, alliés par la suite à la plupart des
familles comtales de la principauté), une Gemma, fille d’un comte Laidulf. D’origine
inconnue sont une autre Gaitelgrima, une Sikelgaita , 2 Purpura et une Maria .
Les branches cadettes, dont les alliances sont semble-t-il principalement
limitées à la principauté, nous offrent des Aloara, Sichelgaita, Gaitelgrima,
Sikelgarda, Adeltruda, Miranda, Gemma, Laidelaicha, Imelaita, Gaita, Radelgrima.
Toutefois, un mariage avec une romaine introduit le prénom de Théodora, un autre
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avec une Gaétane, celui d’Emilia. Enfin, avec l’arrivée des Normands, apparaissent
des Emma et une Sibilia.
Les ducs de Naples et de Gaète utilisent presqu’exclusivement pour leurs filles
des prénoms non lombards: Maria (5), Eupraxia (3), Anna (2 ou 3),Gemma (2), Bona
(2), Matrona (2), Megalu (2), Drosu (2), Euphemia (1), Elisabeth (1), Emilia (1).
Quelques exceptions toutefois: Jean I, hypathos et patrice impérial, a eu une fille
nommée Sichelgaita, qui épousa le prince de Capoue Bénévent Aténulf II. Le duc de
Naples Jean IV eut une fille qui épousa d’abord un duc de Gaète, probablement Jean
IV, puis le normand Rainulf d’Aversa, et qui se nommait également Sichelgaita. On
peut donc supposer que Jean I de Gaète, à la fin du Ixe siècle, et Jean IV de Naples à
la fin du Xe, s’étaient alliés à des lignées lombardes.
Le critère onomastique est un élément fondamental pour identifier et
déterminer l’appartenance familiale de nos dames lombardes et autres.
Deux exemples vont illustrer ici l’importance de cet argument onomastique
pour l’établissement de la prosopographie. Un troisième exemple montrera que
certains titres spécifiques permettent également de dégager des liens de parenté.
Le premier exemple sera celui du prince Aréchis II de Bénévent, dont
l’appartenance familiale est restée dans l’ombre. La principauté de Bénévent est née
de la disparition du royaume indépendant des Lombards d’Italie. En 774,
Charlemagne s’empara de Pavie, déposa le roi Desiderius et se fit couronner roi des
Lombards. C’est à ce moment que le duc de Bénévent, Aréchis II, gendre du roi
détrôné, prit le titre princier. Il avait été placé par son beau père à la tête du duché de
Bénévent en 758, suite à la révolte du jeune duc Luitprand. Son origine familiale est
inconnue. Il était, d’après Paul Diacre, stirpe ducum regumque satus. Cependant, bien
qu’il ait été établi par son beau père pour remplacer le jeune Luitprand, fils du duc
Gisulf II, il est probable qu’Aréchis appartenait à cette famille qui régnait sur
Bénévent depuis plus d’un siècle. On ne connaît pas le nom des parents d’Aréchis II.
Les noms qu’il donna à quatre de ses enfants de même que le sien, militent en faveur
de son appartenance à lignée des ducs de Bénévent descendants du duc de Frioul
Gisulf II, mis à mort par les Avars en 610. Les quatre fils de Gisulf II échappèrent au
massacre, et les deux aînés récupérèrent le titre ducal de leur géniteur. Les deux
cadets, Radoald et Romuald, après l’exécution de leurs frères aînés en 625, se
réfugièrent à Bénévent auprès du duc Aréchis I, leur parent. En 641/642, Aion I,
successeur d’Aréchis I, mourut en combattant les Slaves et Radoald lui succéda. Il
règna cinq années et disparut à son tour, laissant son frère Grimoald I maître du duché
durant vingt cinq ans. En 671, son fils aîné Romuald I le remplaça. Du vivant de son
père, vers 663, il avait épousé Teoderada, fille du duc Lupus de Frioul, laquelle lui
donna trois fils: Grimoald II, Gisulf I et Aréchis. Grimoald II fut le successeur de son
père en 687. Il était déjà adulte mais ne règna que trois ans. Comme il ne laissait pas
d’enfant, ce fut son frère Gisulf I qui reçut le titre ducal. Il semble qu’il était encore
mineur à cette époque, car sa mère Teoderada exerça la régence. Gisulf I régna dixsept ans et mourut vers 706. Son successeur fut son fils Romuald II, encore très jeune
au décès de son père. Son règne dura vingt six ans. Sa première épouse, Gumperga,
nièce du roi Luitprand, fut la mère de son héritier Gisulf II. Ce dernier, encore très
jeune au décès de son père en 731, fut écarté du pouvoir par une révolte palatiale qui
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plaça à la tète du duché un certain Audelahis, lequel fut bien vite remplacé par
Grégoire, un neveu du roi des Lombards Luitprand, tandis que Gisulf, qui était petit
neveu du roi, fut invité à résider à la cour de Pavie. Ce n’est qu’en 742 qu’il récupéra
le titre paternel, que lui conféra son grand oncle. A sa mort, son fils Luitprand, encore
mineur, hérita du titre sous la régence de sa mère Scauniperga. Majeur dès 756, il fut
déposé au printemps 758 par le roi Désidérius.
Comment Aréchis II se rattache-t-il à cette lignée ducale. Il est fort
probablement issu d’une branche cadette. Il est tentant de le faire descendre de cet
Aréchis, troisième fils du duc Romuald I. Celui-ci, on l’a vu, avait eu trois fils de la
duchesse Teoderada, qu’il avait épousée en 663. L’aîné était le duc Grimoald II, déjà
majeur au décès de son père en 687. Le second, Gisulf I, était par contre encore
mineur trois ans plus tard lorsqu’il succéda à son frère. Il était donc né après 672, et
son cadet Aréchis encore plus tard. Il est probable néanmoins que Gisulf II était
proche de sa majorité et qu’il se maria très rapidement, car il n’est nulle part fait
mention d’une régence pour son fils Romuald II, duc de Bénévent vers 706. Ce
dernier naquit vers 690, et se maria sans doute aux environs de 715 avec Gumperga,
fille d’Aurona, sœur du roi des Lombards Luitprand. Leur fils Gisulf, né aux alentours
de 720, convola avec Scauniperga vers 736/737.
Aréchis, on le sait par son épitaphe, naquit vers 736. Son père anonyme a du
voir le jour vers 710, et son grand père vers 680/690. Aréchis, troisième fils du duc
Romuald I, était né on l’a vu après 673, mais avant 687, date du décès de son père. Il
pourrait donc être l’aieul d’Aréchis II, lequel serait en ce cas cousin issus de germain
du duc Gisulf II de Bénévent. Allons plus loin. Le fils aîné d’Aréchis II de Bénévent
reçut le nom de Romuald. Le père d’Aréchis, grand père d’Aréchis II dans notre
hypothèse, était le duc Romuald I. Si, comme c’était la coutume, Aréchis II a donné à
son fils aîné le prénom de son propre père, ce dernier s’appelait Romuald. Si Aréchis,
troisième fils de Romuald I de Bénévent, a également nommé son fils d’après son
géniteur, il s’agissait également d’un Romuald. Ce Romuald supposé, petit fils de
Romuald I par son fils Aréchis, serait donc identique à Romuald, père d’Aréchis II de
Bénévent. Ce dernier serait donc bien issu de l’ancienne lignée des ducs de Bénévent
et de Frioul. Ses enfants portaient donc les noms de leurs illustres parents les ducs
Romuald, Grimoald et Gisulf et la duchesse Teoderada.
Le deuxième exemple concernera la famille du comte juge Grimoald, lignée qui
apparaît à Salerne au début du XIe siècle. Le comte Grimoald exerça la charge de juge
de 1031 à 1049. En 1038, il assista à la donation in articulo mortis d’un comte Alfan
fils du comte Alfan, dont il est le cognatus, c’est à dire qu’il en avait épousé la sœur.
Ses attaches familiales sont connues grâce à un acte des archives de l’abbaye de Cava
daté de juin 1105, qui contient le texte d’un acte de 1030. Cette année-là, douzième du
règne du prince Gaimar IV, le comte Grimoald, fils du défunt comte Roffrid, règla un
partage de terres avec les héritiers de ses frères défunts, à savoir son neveu le comte
Roffrid, fils du défunt Daufier, et ses trois nièces Rodelgrima, Aloara et Alferada,
filles de feu Poto. L’acte est signé par les comtes Alfan et Landulf, sur lesquels nous
reviendrons. De la fille d’un comte Alfan, le comte juge Grimoald a eu au moins trois
fils, les comtes Alfan et Roffrid, et Rolegrim: l’acte de juin 1105 cité plus haut met en
scène le comte Jean, fils du défunt comte Alfan, lui même fils de feu le comte et juge
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Grimoald, et son cousin paternel Jean, moine de la Cava et fils du défunt comte
Roffrid, frère du comte Alfan, et donc fils lui aussi du comte et juge Grimoald. Dans
ce document intervient également son consobrinus frater Adémar, fils du comte
Landulf. Comme Jean, fils de Roffrid fils du comte et juge Grimoald est désigné
comme patruelis frater du même Jean fils d’Alfan, on en conclut qu’Adémar fils de
Landulf est un cousin par les femmes, soit un fils d’une sœur du père, soit d’un frère
de la mère. Ce même acte contient le texte du partage de 1030 cité plus haut, qui est
souscrit comme nous l’avons dit par les comtes Alfan et Landulf. Ce comte Alfan est
sans doute le beau-frère de Grimoald. Quant au comte Landulf de 1030, il pourrait
être un gendre de Grimoald, père de l’Adémar de 1105.
Le frère de Grimoald, Poto, décédé avant 1030, avait engendré, on l’a vu,
trois filles. L’aînée, Rodelgrima, citée dès 1030, vivait encore en septembre 1065,
date à laquelle elle fit une donation à Landulf, fils du défunt comte Roffrid. Elle y est
qualifiée de fille de feu le comte Poto et de veuve du comte Ederrad, qu’on peut
identifier au comte Ederrad fils du comte Landemar, parent des princes de Salerne et
qui fut impliqué dans l’assassinat du prince Gaimar IV. Elle n’eut, semble-t-il, pas de
descendance, pas plus que ses sœurs, car les biens qu’elles reçurent lors du partage de
1030 firent retour au comte Jean, petit fils du comte et juge Grimoald. Le Landulf fils
du comte Roffrid à qui elle vend un bien en 1065 était probablement le fils de son
cousin Roffrid fils du comte Daufier, ce dernier étant le frère du comte et juge
Grimoald, fils donc du comte Roffrid.
Voici donc un lignage salernitain qui apparaît au début du XIe siècle, porteurs
de noms tels que Roffrid et Poto, inusités dans l’aristocratie salernitaine. D’où venait
donc le comte Roffrid, père du comte et juge Grimoald et de ses frères Poto et
Daufier ?
Ces noms de Roffrid et de Poto se retrouvent dans les familles de la noblesse
bénéventaine, principalement dans le lignage des comtes d’Avellino et de Larino,
issus de Roffrid et Potelfrid, fils de Daufier le Prophète, un noble bénéventain qui
vivait aux débuts du IXe siècle. Pandulf II prince de Bénévent était le fils du prince
Landulf III de Capoue Bénévent, dont l’épouse a été identifiée à la princesse
Gaitelgrima, fille de Roffrid, grâce à son épitaphe à S Pierre de Bénévent. Les comtes
de Larino de la même époque sont qualifiés de parent des princes Pandulf II et
Landulf V de Bénévent. En 991/992, Pandulf II et Landulf V de Bénévent, à la
requête de leur parent Roffrid, confirment les privilèges du monastère S Modeste de
Bénévent . Le 11 août 992, Pandulf II et Landulf V de Bénévent, à la requête du
comte Roffrid de Larino, leur frater (ici à prendre au sens de cousin) concèdent au
comte Randoisius la cité de Trivento avec ses dépendances. En mai 1001, le prince
Pandulf II de Bénévent et son épouse Adeltruda donnent à leur fidèle Madelbert des
biens situés à Aqirola, qu’ils ont reçu de leurs cousins (consobrini) les comtes
Madelfrid, Daufier et Magenulf, fils de feu le comte Daufier. Roffrid, comte en 992,
parent des princes Pandulf II et Landulf V, et Madelfrid, comte de 986 à 1006, fils du
comte Daufier, sont probablement apparentés. Le comte Daufier, père de Madelfrid et
mort avant 986, serait un frère du comte Roffrid de Larino de 970. Daufier serait
également frère de la princesse Gaitelgrima, fille d’un Roffrid et femme du prince
Landulf III de Capoue Bénévent. Cette famille avait des liens avec la principauté de
Salerne: en janvier 963, le gastald Adelfier, futur comte Adelfier d’Avellino, fils de
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feu le comte Roffrid était présent à Salerne lors d’ un accord au sujet de terres et de
vignes situées à Vietri sur le territoire de Salerne, accord passé entre ce gastald
Adelfier et trois autres nobles, tous qualifiés de Bénéventains. Il appartenait fort
probablement à la même famille: les comtes de Larino se rattacheraient donc aux
gastalds et comtes d’Avellino descendant de Roffrid, comte et référendaire du prince
Sicard de Bénévent.
On a donc un comte Roffrid d’Avellino, (I) de Larino, père de Gaitelgrima,
princesse, de Roffrid (II), vivant en 970, de Daufier, comte, mort avant 986, et
d’Adelfier, gastald d’Avellino. Daufier, à son tour fut père du comte Madelfrid I de
Larino, connu de 986 à 1006 et mort avant 1012, et de ses frères Daufier et Magenulf.
Il fut peut-être également le père de ce comte Poto, qui le 17 mai 988 reçut des
princes Pandulf II et Landulf V de Bénévent la cité de Greci, avec des domaines
dépendant du palais sacré de Bénévent. En effet, on retrouve ce prénom de Poto dans
la descendance du comte Daufier: le comte Madelfrid, fils du comte Daufier de
Larino, engendra deux fils, le comte Poto, possessionné dans le territoire de Campo
Marino et qui fit un don à S Maria de Tremiti en août 1016, et le comte Roffrid (III),
mentionné en 1016 comme parent des princes de Bénévent.
Comment rattacher la famille du comte et juge Grimoald aux comtes de
Larino ? Chronologiquement, le comte Roffrid, père des comtes Grimoald, Poto et
Daufier, ne peut être que le fils du comte Daufier de Larino, fils d’un Roffrid, père
d’un Madelfrid et frère d’un Poto. Le comte Roffrid, fils du comte Daufier de Larino,
naquit vers 955/960. Le nom qu’il donna à son fils Grimoald provient sans doute de la
famille de son épouse. Dans les années 1030 vivaient à Salerne les descendants d’un
comte Grimoald: en 1036, le comte Romuald, fils du feu comte Grimoald, intervient
dans un acte de l’abbaye de Cava avec ses neveux, fils de ses frères défunts. Ce comte
Romuald, fils de Grimoald, est probablement identique au comte Romuald, père des
comtes Madelfrid, Jean et Rodelgrim connus de 1035 à 1059. Le nom d’un de ses
trois fils, Madelfrid, suggère d’ailleurs une alliance avec les comtes de Larino.
L’hypothèse est donc la suivante: le comte Roffrid fils du comte Daufier de Larino, né
vers 955/960, prit pour épouse la fille du comte Grimoald, comte à Salerne, et il
donna à un de ses fils le prénom du père de sa femme, tandis que la fille du comte
Daufier de Larino, sœur donc de ce même comte Roffrid, de Madelfrid et de Poto,
épousait le fils du comte Grimoald, le comte Romuald, auquel elle donna les comtes
Madelfrid, Jean et Rodelgrim.
Un troisième exemple concernera les ducs de Naples et de Gaète, et la transmission
du titre de senator/senatrix. Peu après son avènement en 928, le duc de Naples Jean
III épousa Théodora, qualifiée de senatrix Romanorum. Ce titre, et le fait que son fils
cadet Landulf ait été élevé à Rome par la senatrix Marozia, a suggéré d’en faire une
petite fille du vestararius Théophylacte et de Theodora I, fille donc de Théodora II et
d’un nommé Jean. Elle fut la mère de deux fils, Marinus II et Landulf, ainsi que d’au
moins une fille, Drosu. Cette Drosu est citée dans un acte du 19 avril 996 émanant de
Maria, abbesse du monastère SS Grégoire et Sébastien. Elle y est appelée gloriosa
senatrix .Elle mourut avant 1019, date à laquelle elle est appelée quondam domina
Drosu gloriosa senatrix filia quondam vone recordationis domini Iohanni gloriosi
consuli et duci. On en fait d’habitude une fille du duc Jean IV. Cependant,
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chronologiquement, elle doit être une fille de Jean III: elle est déjà adulte en 996, et
les enfants de Jean IV n’ont pas pu naitre avant 985. Elle tenait de sa mère le titre de
senatrix. Le qualificatif senator /senatrix subsistera dans la lignée des ducs de Naples
descendants de Théodora: on le retrouve chez l’un de ses descendants à la sixième
génération, Jean, fils du duc Jean V.
Le titre de senatrix apparaît à la fin dès Xe siècle dans la famille des ducs de
Gaète. On le retrouve porté par deux dames de la famille ducale. La première est la
senatrix Maria, fille du défunt duc Jean II. La seconde est la duchesse Emilia,
l’épouse du duc Jean III, mère du duc Jean IV et régente quelques années durant au
nom de son petit-fils mineur Jean V. Maria est par son père Jean II la petite fille du
duc Docibilis II. Emilia est l’épouse de Jean III, petit fils du même Docibilis par son
fils Marinus. L’une ne l’a donc pas transmis à l’autre et Emilia ne le tient pas de son
époux qui n’est jamais qualifié de senator. Emilia transmit par contre le qualificatif à
ses fils Marinus et Léon, et ce dernier à son épouse Letitia. Au milieu du XIe siècle,
une troisième dame gaétane, du nom de Théodora, est à son tour qualifiée de senatrix.
Il s’agit de l’épouse de Léon fils de Docibilis, éphémère duc de Gaète en août 1012, et
arrière petit fils du duc Docibilis II de Gaète. Lorsque Théodora apparaît dans la
documentation en 1054 et 1055, elle est veuve et ses fils sont adultes. L’un
d’entr’eux, Docibilis, porte le titre de senator et la veuve d’un autre, Ageltruda, est
qualifiée de senatrix. Une quatrième dame à porter ce titre est Maria, l’épouse du duc
Adenulf de Gaète, de la lignée des comtes d’Aquino. Ce dernier n’était pas apparenté
à l’ancienne famille des ducs de Gaète, mais avait reçu le duché après le décès de
Rainulf d’Aversa et l’occupation de Gaète par le prince Gaimar IV de Salerne. Ce
n’est donc pas de son époux qu’elle tenait le titre de senatrix.
Comment ce titre s’est-il transmis à ces différentes personnes ? La première à
le porter était, on l’a vu, Théodora, issue d’une grande famille romaine où les femmes
le portaient. C’est donc elle qui l’a introduit dans la maison ducale de Naples. Peutelle également l’avoir fait passer dans la lignée ducale de Gaète ?
La senatrix Maria, fille du duc Jean II de Gaète, avait pour mère une certaine
Theodonanda, déjà morte en décembre 957. Ce prénom, peu usité dans la noblesse
gaétane, se retrouve par contre beaucoup dans les familles napolitaines. Théodonanda
pourrait donc être une fille de Jean III de Naples et de Théodora, et Maria fille de Jean
II de Gaète tiendrait son titre de sa grand mère Théodora.
La duchesse et senatrix Emilia, épouse de Jean III de Gaète, n’est
probablement pas par contre issue des ducs de Naples. En effet, son fils Jean IV a
épousé une Napolitaine: le duc de Naples Jean IV eut une fille qui épousa d’abord un
duc de Gaète, puis le normand Rainulf d’Aversa. Aimé, qui nous rapporte cette
alliance, ne mentionne pas le nom de la dame. Or, en 1029, Serge IV de Naples,
expulsé de sa ville, se trouvait à Gaète, où il émit une charte en présence de la
duchesse Emilia, régente pour son petit fils Jean V, de ce même Jean V et d’une
duchesse Sichelgaita dont l’identification reste sujette à caution. On a voulut y voir la
duchesse veuve de Fundi, épouse de Léon I et mère de Léon II, bien connue par
d’autres documents. Mais cette dame est la fille de Grégoire, fils du préfet Jean. Or,on
sait que la sœur de Serge IV, veuve d’un duc de Gaète épousa peu de temps après le
Normand Rainulf. Elle ne peut être que l’épouse de Jean IV. La veuve de Jean IV,
belle fille d’Emilia et mère du jeune Jean V, fut complètement éclipsée par sa
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formidable belle mère, à un point tel qu’on a pu la croire morte car elle n’intervient
jamais dans les documents. Dans ce cas-ci cependant, Emilia n’a pas pu écarter
complètement sa belle fille alors que le propre frère de cette dernière était reçu à
Gaète et c’est sans doute elle qui exceptionnellement est citée dans un document. Elle
portait donc un nom lombard, ce qui indique très certainement que son père contracta
une alliance lombarde. Si sa belle fille était la fille d’un duc de Naples, il serait
étonnant qu’Emilia ait fait partie de cette famille, car il en résulterait une
consanguinité prohibée. Emilia était donc fort probablement, comme Théodora
senatrix Romanorum, issue d’une famille romaine. On retrouve d’ailleurs une Emilia
dans la famille des Crescenzi dits Stefaniani, issus de Benoit, rector de Sabine, lui
même fils de la senatrix Stefania, tante maternelle de la duchesse de Naples
Theodora. Il est à noter que les grandes dames romaines qualifiées de senatrix au Xe
siècle sont issue de la famille du vestararius Theophylacte.
Sanfelice di Monteforte faisait de la senatrix Théodora, épouse de l’éphémère
duc Léon I de Gaète, une fille de la duchesse Emilia. Léon I de Gaète, fils de
Docibilis, était membre d’une branche cadette de la maison ducale. Son grand père
paternel Léon, duquel il tenait son prénom, était le plus jeune fils du duc Docibilis II.
Léon I de Gaète est témoin de divers actes des années 1009 et 1010, avant de
s’emparer brièvement du pouvoir lors de la minorité du jeune Jean V, fils et héritier
du duc Jean IV décédé prématurément entre avril et août 1012. En août de la même
année, Léon fils de Docibilis était duc de Gaète. En octobre, les partisans du jeune
Jean V, sous la conduite de la duchesse et senatrix Emilia, avaient replacé le jeune
garçon sur le siège ducal. On ne sait pas ce que devint Léon fils de Docibilis, sans
doute encore fort jeune à ce moment: ce n’est qu’à partir de 1042 que son fils Rainier
devint comte de Suio, et ses autres fils apparaissent dans la documentation après
1050. Léon I de Gaète était donc sans doute assez jeune lorsqu’il tenta son coup d’état
au printemps 1012. Peut-être fit-il alliance avec Naples et reçut-il en mariage une
princesse Napolitaine ? Théodora senatrix serait donc une fille de Jean IV, sœur de
Serge IV et de Sichelgaita, veuve de Jean IV de Gaète. Elle transmit à ses fils le titre
de senator.
On sait par Aimé du Mont Cassin que les comtes d’Aquino Adénulf et Lando
reçurent en mariage deux filles du prince Pandulf IV de Capoue. En 1045, Adénulf,
l’aîné des deux, devint duc de Gaète. Maria,son épouse, était donc une princesse
capouane. Comment put-elle porter le titre de senatrix ?
Sanfelice di Monteforte donne à Adénulf de Gaète deux épouses. L’une fut la
fille de Pandulf IV de Capoue. La seconde, Maria senatrix, aurait été une sœur du duc
de Gaète Jean V, petite fille de la duchesse et senatrix Emilia. Cette hypothèse est
renforcée par le fait qu’une fille d’Adénulf et de Maria portait le prénom très peu usité
d’Emilia.
Cependant, si Maria était une sœur de Jean V de Gaète, fille par conséquent de
Jean IV, elle serait née au plus tard en 1012, ce qui lui donnerait presque cinquante
ans en 1061 au décès de son époux. Pouvait-elle encore avoir à ce moment un fils en
bas âge, et être recherchée en mariage par le prince Richard de Capoue pour son fils,
le jeune Jordan, et par le normand Guillaume de Montreuil ? Assurément non. Maria,
veuve d’Adénulf I de Gaète, avait probablement une quarantaine d’années, et avait
donc vu le jour aux alentours des années 1020. Ce qui correspond à l’âge de la fille de
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Pandulf IV de Capoue, qui épousa Adénulf avant 1038. Mais d’où une fille de Pandulf
IV de Capoue pouvait-elle tenir le titre de senatrix ?
L’épouse de Pandulf IV de Capoue, la mère de ses enfants était une certaine
Maria, mentionnée pour la première fois en 1017 dans un diplôme de son époux. Elle
vivait encore en 1038 lorsque l’empereur Conrad II se rendit en Italie du Sud, appelé à
l’aide contre Pandulf par le prince de Salerne Gaimar IV et les moines du Mont
Cassin. Pandulf, réfugié dans sa forteresse de Sant’Agata, envoya alors sa femme et
son fils Pandulf au devant de Conrad pour lui demander la paix, proposant même de
lui remettre sa fille et son petit fils en otage. Elle pourrait être une fille de Jean III de
Gaète et de la senatrix Emilia, ce qui expliquerait pourquoi Pandulf IV de Capoue
estimait avoir des droits sur le duché de Gaète, puisqu’il s’en empara du titre ducal en
1036 et le garda jusqu’en 1038. Sa fille Maria, qualifiée de senatrix, transmit ses
droits à Adénulf d’Aquino, son époux, qui règna sur Gaète de 1045 à 1061. Le nom
d’Emilia qu’elle donna à sa fille témoigne bien d’une parenté proche avec la duchesse
Emilia, senatrix.
On a donc deux lignées de senatrices, l’une descendant de Theodora, l’autre
d’Emilia, toutes deux d’ascendance romaine. La survivance de ce titre dans leurs
postérités permet de suivre celles-ci sur plusieurs générations.
Alliances matrimoniales
Cette étude permet de dégager certaines lignes de conduite quant aux stratégies
matrimoniales. On distinguera les épouses des princes, ducs et comtes, et leurs filles.
Les épouses.
Beaucoup d’entre elles sont d’origine inconnue, pour ne pas dire totalement
inconnues. Si on s’en tient aux têtes de lignées, c’est-à-dire les princes de Bénévent,
Capoue et Salerne, et les ducs de Naples, Gaète, Amalfi et Sorrente, sans envisager les
branches cadettes, on comptabilise 70 dames: 9 pour le chapitre I, 19 pour le chapitre
II, 9 pour le chapitre 3, 6 pour le chapitre 4, 8 pour le chapitre 5, 9 pour le chapitre 6,
9 pour le chapitre 7, 2 pour le chapitre 8.
5 des princesses de Bénévent des VIIIe et Ixe siècles sont familialement
identifiées: une est fille d’un roi des Lombards, une est sœur d’une impératrice
byzantine, une autre est la sœur d’un évêque de Salerne, la quatrième est issue du
génus capouan et la dernière fille d’un noble bénéventain.
Chez les landulfides, 12 ont pu être rattachées à une lignée: 3 Napolitaines, 2
Gaétanes, 1 Amalfitaine, 2 Bénéventaines, 1 Salernitaine et 3 filles de nobles de la
principauté.
Dans la première famille de Salerne, sur 9 princesses, on connaît les familles
d’origine de 5: deux Spolétines, issues des Widonides, 2 Capouanes et une fille d’un
noble salernitain du génus des Alfans.
Pour la seconde famille de Salerne, 2 sur 6 sont rattachées à une lignée: 1
Capouane et la fille d’un comte Salernitain ou Capouan. On a par contre dédoublé les
Purpura, comme on le verra plus loin.
Les ducs de Naples, pour les alliances connues, épousent par trois fois des
filles de leurs prédécesseurs. L’un d’entre eux s’unit à une Romaine, et un autre marie
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son fils à une fille d’un hypathos de Gaète . Au XIe siècle enfin deux épousent des
normandes.
Six des alliances des ducs de Gaète sont déterminées: avec la nièce du
prédécesseur dans le cas de Docibilis I, avec une fille du duc de Naples pour Docibilis
II, Jean II et Jean IV, avec une princesse de Capoue enfin pour Aténulf d’Aquino.
Jean III épousa probablement, comme on l’a vu plus haut, une dame issue d’une
grande famille romaine.
Chez les ducs d’Amalfi, on a des unions avec des capouanes (3 fois), avec des
Salernitaines (3 fois), avec la sœur du prédécesseur (1 fois).
Les filles
On a dénombré 14 filles de princes de Bénévent entre 774 et 900: 10 d’entre elles ont
été mariées, une avec un Widonide de Spolète qui devint empereur, 2 autres avec des
gastalds de capoue (dont un succedera d’ailleurs à Bénévent), 7 avec des nobles de la
principauté.
Chez les Landulfides: 11 filles chez les gastalds aux Xe siècle: 5 sont mariées:
une avec un prince de Bénévent, une avec un prince de Salerne, une avec le fils d’un
prince de Bénévent, une avec le fils d’un préfet d’Amalfi, la dernière avec un fidèle
de son frère. Chez les princes de Capoue Bénévent aux Xie et Xiie siècles: 14 filles ;
11 sont mariées: 2 avec des princes de Salerne, une avec un duc de Gaète, une avec
un duc d’Amalfi, une avec un petit fils d’un prince de Salerne, 1 et sans doute 2 avec
des comtes des Marses, une avec un comte d’Aquino, deux avec des comtes toscans,
une sans doute avec un comte de Chieti . Une autre sera fiancée à un Normand
Première maison de Salerne: 2 filles identifiées, une mariée à un préfet
d’Amalfi
Seconde maison de Salerne: 6 filles de prince: 4 sont mariées: 3 à des
Normands, une quatrième probablement à un duc d’Amalfi. Il est à noter que 4 nièces
du prince Gaimar IV épousent également des Normands.
Ducs de Naples: 20 filles connues: trois épousent les successeurs de leurs
pères, trois autres se marient avec des ducs de Gaète ; deux autres convolent avec des
cadets des gastalds de Capoue, deux autres s’unissent à des princes de Capoue et deux
autres à des fils d’un prince de Capoue ; 8 enfin épousent des nobles du duché.
Ducs de Gaète: 20 filles: 12 sont mariées: trois épousent des princes de
Capoue Bénévent, une un petit fils d’un prince de Salerne, une autre le fils d’un duc
de Naples, une un gastald d’Aquino, une sixième un comte Lombard, une septième un
noble napolitain, les quatre dernières avec des nobles gaétans.
Ducs d’Amalfi: 5 filles connues, dont 4 se marient: une épouse un prince de
Bénévent, une autre le successeur de son frère, la troisième un Normand, la dernière
un noble lombard.
On a donc dénombré 92 filles dans les branches aînées. 67 sont mariées: parmi
celles-ci 32 épousent des membres des autres lignées régnantes, 6 épousent des nobles
« extérieurs « (c’est à dire hors des limites du cadre géographique fixé), 25 des
nobles locaux, 4 des Normands.
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Comparaison des sources
L’examen des sources a conduit à proposer certaines révisions de généalogies, et
l’identification de nouveaux personnages. On donnera ici un exemple: le
dédoublement de la princesse Purpura.
Un acte de l’abbaye de la Cava nous fait connaître une princesse Purpura,
épouse d’un prince Gaimar de Salerne. Cet acte, daté du mois de juillet de la 17e
année du prince Gaimar, indiction III, avait été attribué par les éditeurs du Codex
diplomaticus Cavensis à l’année 1035. Le prince était donc Gaimar IV, et Sanfelice de
Monteforte lui attribuait donc 2 épouses, une Purpura en 1035, puis Gemma qui lui
survécut.
Maria Galante a révisé cette datation et daté ce diplôme de 1005, qui
correspond à la 17e année de Gaimar III et à l’indiction 3. C’est donc Gaimar III qui
se trouve alors nanti de 2 épouses, Purpura d’abord, puis Gaitelgrima, fille de Pandulf
III de Capoue, et mère du futur Gaimar IV. Il est certain que le diplôme de La Cava
n’est pas de 1035, car dès 1032, Gaimar IV était marié à Gemma. On possède en effet
un document de mai 1032 où Gaimar IV est accompagné de Gemma, et un autre
diplôme de mars de la même année fait intervenir un comte Laidulf, beau père du
prince. On sait par d’autres documents du même monastère que ce Laidulf était le
père de Gemma, et on sait également que cette dernière vivait encore en 1070. Donc,
Gaimar IV ne pouvait pas être marié à une Purpura en 1035, et la princesse de ce nom
était bien une première épouse de Gaimar III.
Cependant, un acte de janvier 1087 émanant d’une comtesse Gaitelgrima nous
fait connaître sa famille: elle cite son père le prince Gaimar, sa mère Purpura, ses
époux les comtes Drogo, Robert et Affred. Or, Aimé du Mont Cassin nous apprend de
son côté que Gaimar IV donna sa fille en mariage à Drogo de Hauteville. Cette
comtesse Gaitelgrima est donc la fille de Gaimar IV et si sa mère se nomme Purpura,
c’est que Gaimar IV a bien eu une épouse de ce nom. L’union de la fille de Gaimar et
de Drogo peut être datée des environs de 1046, quand Drogo succéda à son frère aîné
Guillaume. Elle naquit sans doute aux environs de 1030, et sa mère décéda peu après,
puisqu’en mars 1032 Gaimar IV était déjà remarié à la fille du comte Laidulf.
On pourrait objecter qu’Aimé s’est trompé et ait confondu la fille de Gaimar
avec une demi sœur, née de la première union de Gaimar III et de Purpura. Mais une
demi sœur de Gaimar IV aurait eu en 1046 plus de 30 ans, car Gaimar III était remarié
avant 1018 à Gaitelgrima de Capoue, leur fils Gaimar IV intervient dès 1019 et était
déjà majeur et marié en 1032 (et sans doute avant). Après l’assassinat de son époux en
1052, la veuve de Drogo se remaria à Robert de Lucera, dont elle eut 4 enfants, puis
avec le comte Affred, dont elle eut 2 autres fils. Il est peu vraisemblable qu’elle ait vu
le jour vers 1010. Il s’agit donc bien d’une fille de Gaimar IV et on peut dès lors
concéder à ce dernier 2 épouses, Purpura, mère de Gaitelgrima et de Jean IV, fils aîné
associé à son père, et Gemma, fille du comte Laidulf, mère de Gisulf et de 8 autres
enfants.
Ces quelques exemples montrent que grâce à l’onomastique, la transmission
des biens et des titres, la chronologie comparative et l’étude des stratégies
matrimoniales, il est possible d’étoffer nos connaissances des femmes des familles
régnantes en Italie méridionale avant 1100.
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Onomastique, liens de parenté et pouvoir:
Les vicomtes de Châtellerault et leurs parents au Xe siècle
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Jan Prell<1
1. Onomastique et Leitnamen:
Toute recherche prosopographique à l’époque post-carolingienne qui se fonde sur des
sources diplomatiques se heurte à des obstacles majeurs:
une indigence – relative il est vrai – des sources. La quantité de sources
diplomatiques varie considérablement de région à région. L’aire géographique et
l’entité politique sur laquelle j’entends me fonder dans cet exposé, le Poitou, est, au
moins pour ce qui est du Xe et le début du XIe siècles, caractérisé par une abondance
assez spectaculaire des sources diplomatiques, dont une proportion assez élevée s’est
même conservée en original ; à la quasi-absence de tout cognomen pour la très grande
majorité des personnes.
Celui qui doit se fonder sur des sources diplomatiques pour mener à bien une
recherche prosopographique voit sa tâche compliquée surtout par la profusion de
noms ne comportant aucun titre ni cognomen. Cela lui interdit, à priori, d’identifier de
manière sûre des personnes de nom identique.
Cependant, toute étude d’ordre prosopographique pendant cette haute époque
n’est pas impossible, car la recherche historique a mis en évidence, depuis un peu plus
d’une cinquantaine d’années, les caractères spécifiques des noms de personnes et de
leur attribution au Haut-Moyen-Age.
En effet, les noms de personnes avaient, au Haut Moyen-Age, une
signification bien différente qu’à une époque plus basse, à partir du XIIIe siècle.
Comme l’ont établi une série de chercheurs au milieu de ce siècle, tout
particulièrement K. F. Werner, Tellenbach et Schmid, ils peuvent indiquer, pour ce
qui est des membres de la haute noblesse, des liens de parenté, car l’onomastique est
affaire de patrimoine. Propriété d’une famille, un nom, y inclus ses variantes, est
transmis de génération en génération. Une famille de la haute noblesse disposait d’un
patrimoine onomastique bien précis, qui pouvait être enrichi par des alliances
matrimoniales ou même par la proximité réelle ou voulue d’une famille par rapport à
une famille plus haut placée. Citons, à ce propos, K. F. Werner:
Dans le royaume franc et les Etats qui en sont sortis, c’est à dire du VIe au Xe
siècle, les parents appartenant à l’aristocratie ne donnaient pas à leurs enfants
n’importe quel nom...l’on ne pouvait normalement donner que des noms déjà
employés dans la famille du père ou de la mère, c’est à dire des noms dont la famille
était le propriétaire légitime. ... [Il] convient de souligner ici le caractère juridique du
nom, qui est propriété du porteur et de sa famille, ce qui correspond aux aspirations
sociales, comme nous les voyons exprimées...dans le monde des traditions romaines,
qui ont pu renforcer un élément déjà contenu dans les traditions germaniques.1
1
Sadly Dr Prell died in January 2004. This paper, originally given to a session at Leeds International
Medieval Congress in 2000, is printed here in tribute to him. A translation of his doctoral thesis,
Prosopographie, Pouvoir et Politique en Poitou (fin IXe -début XI siècles), will be published
posthumously in Prosopographica et Genealogica [http://users.ox.ac.uk/~prosop/publications.htm]
hereafter.
1
Karl Ferdinand Werner, ‘Liens de parenté et noms de personne. Un problème historique et
méthodologique’, dans Famille et parenté dans l'occident médiéval, edd. Georges Duby and Jacques
Le Goff, Collection de l'école française de Rome, 30 (Rome, 1977), pp. 13-18 et 25-34 (pp. 25-26).
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Karl Ferdinand Werner a étudié, dans les années cinquante, les familles nobles
apparentées aux Robertiens dans la région ligérienne et il est arrivé à des résultats
intéressants. Grâce à des études onomastiques, il a pu confirmer, entre autre, les
résultats des recherches du XIXe siècle sur l’origine des Robertiens.
Le fait que certains noms se transmettent de génération en génération au sein
de familles de la haute noblesse est l’un des éléments qui permettent de suivre les
membres de cette famille. Il est évident que la plus grande prudence est de mise, car
une homonymie seule ne suffit jamais pour procéder à une identification: d’autres
éléments, tels l’aire géographique de l’apparition et les dates doivent entrer en ligne
de compte. En même temps, dans la mesure où l’on s’appuie sur des listes de témoins,
des regroupements de noms récurrents doivent concourir à l`identification. Ainsi, s’il
n’est pas toujours possible d’identifier avec certitude des personnes, le système des
Leitnamen permet de retracer des groupes de personnes. Comme l’a écrit Karl
Schmid, c’est une chance, que l’historien doit mettre à profit.
2. la période: fin du IXe jusqu’au milieu du XIe
L’on étudiera un exemple dont les débuts remontent à la fin, voire au milieu du IXe
siècle et l’on ne descendra pas plus bas que les années trente du XIe siècle. En me
fondant sur cette méthode, j’examinerai un cas précis, celui des vicomtes de
Châtellerault et leur assise au sein de la noblesse. Cet exemple démontrera l’utilité de
la démarche onomastique, car, à cette haute époque, elle est, face à une indigence plus
ou moins grande des sources, souvent la seule qui s’avère possible.
3. La situation en Poitou
Le comté de Poitiers est l’un des plus grands comtés de la Francia de l’Ouest et de la
France. Contrairement à la plupart des comtés de la Francia de l’Ouest, qui
comprenaient une seule civitas, le comté de Poitiers comprenait plusieurs civitates,
notamment celle de Poitiers, l’Aunis dès le début du Xe siècle, très probablement
celle de Saintes et, depuis le début du Xe siècle celle de Limoges. A partir de la fin du
IXe siècle, ce comté fut gouverné par une famille dont les origines sont carolingiennes
et dont le prestige fut tel que l’un de ses membres, Ramnulfe II, a failli devenir, à la
fin du IXe siècle, roi de la Francia de l’Ouest. Disposant d’une assise extrêmement
solide dans le comté de Poitiers, il sut acquérir une certaine primauté dans le regnum
d’Aquitaine. Les comtes de Poitiers se succédèrent de père en fils entre 902 et 1137.
A partir des années soixante du Xe siècle, ils commencèrent à émettre des prétentions
sur le titre de duc d’Aquitaine, titre qui leur fut pleinement reconnu à partir de 987,
date de l’accession au trône de France d’Hugues Capet.
Dans son ensemble, la noblesse de cette vaste entité que constitue le comté de
Poitiers est très largement inexplorée, on connaît assez mal les groupements, clans et
familles qui la composent. Cela n’est pas tellement le fait d’une absence ou d’un
manque de sources, mais bien plus la conséquence de la qualité des sources. En effet,
il s’agit quasiment exclusivement de chartes et de notices de dons comportant des
listes de souscripteurs. Les listes de souscripteurs sont souvent l’unique endroit où
l’on trouve des renseignements d’ordre prosopographique, car, dans le ‘texte’ même
des chartes, il est assez rare qu’on trouve des noms autres que ceux des auteurs. Dans
les listes de souscripteurs, les indications de filiation sont, dans l’ensemble,
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extrêmement rares, trop rares pour en tirer suffisamment de renseignements pour
reconstituer des parentés, des clientèles, etc... C’est uniquement un dépouillement du
matériel patronymique qui permet, dans ces conditions, d’aboutir à quelques résultats,
sans que – conséquence logique de ce qui a été remarqué plus haut – l’on arrive à
identifier toujours ces personnes d’une manière certaine. Ce travail a permis, par
contre, la mise en évidence de groupes de personnes aux contours assez précisément
délimités.
J’ai été amené à étudier la noblesse poitevine des Xe/début du XIe siècle et je
voudrais présenter ici un exemple où l’onomastique et plus précisément la théorie des
noms leaders a contribué à débusquer, en plus de l’existence de groupes de nobles,
quelques relations de parenté. Je me fonde, dans le présent exposé, sur un
dépouillement des listes de témoins d’environ trois cents actes et notices poitevins
datant de l’époque allant du début du Xe au début du XIe siècles.
Je voudrais ici présenter un exemple particulièrement intéressant qui démontre
l’intérêt de la méthode onomastique. L’étude de la place des vicomtes de Châtellerault
au sein de la noblesse poitevine et ses implications au niveau ‘géopolitique’ par le
moyen de l’onomastique va démontrer surtout, je l’espère du moins, que la
prosopographie n’est pas une fin en soi, bien au contraire.
Si les comtes, dans la Francia de l’Ouest, disposaient, en général, d’un seul
vicomte, les comtes de Poitiers en disposaient, de plusieurs, aux compétences et
ressorts variés. Cette situation résulte probablement de l’étendue extraordinaire du
comté de Poitiers. Si, au début du Xe siècle, on trouve deux vicomtes aux
compétences restreintes, à Melle et à Thouars, il existe aussi un vicomte, Maingaudus,
dont le ressort n’est jamais précisé dans les sources: il s’étendit très probablement au
comté tout entier. Cette impression est confirmée par le fait que ses possessions sont
dispersées tout autant que ses interventions comme témoins dans les actes de tiers. Sa
place prééminente entre toutes est soulignée par la position de son signum sur les
chartes: constamment, on le voit suivre immédiatement celui du comte Eble.
La situation change des les années trente du Xe siècle. C’est alors que les
comtes Eble Manzer puis son fils Guillaume Tête d’Etoupe, procèdent à un
remaniement en profondeur de la structure administrative du Poitou. Le vicomte
Maingaudus, mort vers 925, n’est pas vraiment remplacé. Eble ou peut-être son fils
Guillaume Tête d’Etoupe, instituent deux nouveaux vicomtes qui avaient pour siège
des localités situés à la lisière du comté, à savoir Aulnay (à la frontière méridionale du
Poitou) et Châtellerault (situés sur la frontière nord du Poitou).
L’origine des vicomtes poitevins reste, du moins de la plupart d’entre eux,
obscure.
Pour ce qui est des vicomtes de Châtellerault, mentionnées pour la première
fois en 936 environ, l’onomastique est susceptible de fournir des renseignements
précieux, parfois hypothétiques. Depuis le Xe siècle, on voit bien figurer un Adraldus
dans l’entourage du comte Eble Manzer, que l’on pourrait identifier avec le vicomte
du même nom apparaissant vers 936, mais cela reste assez largement du domaine de
la spéculation.
Cependant, à bien regarder les possessions tout comme les interventions en
tant que témoins des vicomtes de Chatellerault au Xe et au début du XIe siècle, on
constate que leur influence se concentre sur deux aires nettement distinctes et bien
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délimitées situées l’une à une trentaine de kilomètres au nord de Poitiers, aux
alentours de la ville de Chatellerault, l’autre à une vingtaine de kilomètres au sud de
Poitiers, autour de la ville de Gençay. Cette bipolarisation peut suggérer que les
vicomtes de Chatellerault ne sont pas d’origine poitevine, mais qu’ils ont été
‘parachutés’ dans ce comté à un moment difficile à préciser, mais antérieur aux
années trente du Xe siècle et qu’on leur a attribué des biens dans ces deux aires. En
l’absence de renseignements précis sur les ancêtres de ces nobles, ce sont les noms
leaders des vicomtes de Châtellerault qui pourraient - éventuellement - apporter
quelques éléments de réponse à cette question.
Le premier vicomte de Châtellerault, Adraldus, qui donna peut-être son nom
au castrum (Castellum Adraldi) - attesté comme siège des vicomtes de Chatellerault
seulement dans la seconde moitié du XIe siècle - mourut, semble-t-il, sans laisser de
descendance. Il apparaît pour la dernière fois en 937. Un autre vicomte du nom
d’Adraldus apparaît entre 955 et 988 au plus tard. On ignore s’il existe des liens de
parenté entre ces deux vicomtes, d’autant plus qu’il n’est pas attesté entre 937 et 959.
Le successeur d’Adraldus [II] s’appelle Hacfredus et l’on ignore, à encore, quels liens
de parenté l’unissent à son prédecesseur. Un vicomte Hacfredus intervient par contre
en 954/955 comme témoin dans un acte du comte Guillaume-Tête d’Etoupe qui agit,
en l’occurence, comme abbé de l’abbaye de Saint-Hilaire de Poitiers. On ignore tout
de ce personnage. On sait par contre que le vicomte Hacfredus apparaissant après 988
environ avait un fils du nom de Boso.
Les noms Hacfredus et Boso sont parmi les plus usités dans cette famille
vicomtale jusque dans une époque qui s’étend bien au delà du Xe siècle.
Il s’agit ici de noms qui font partie du patrimoine onomastique des ducs
d’Aquitaine du début du Xe siècle, issus de Bernard Plantevelue. En effet, le fils cadet
du duc d’Aquitaine Guillaume le Pieux, mort avant 918, porta le nom de Boso, et le
neveu de ce duc s’appela Hacfredus (il est le fils d’Adelinde, sœur de Guillaume le
Pieux et d’Hacfredus, comte de Carcassonne et du Razès et fut duc d’Aquitaine entre
926 et octobre 927).
Nous voilà donc en présence de deux Leitnamen importants des vicomtes de
Châtellerault que l’on retrouve dans la famille de Guillaume le Pieux.
En revanche, le nom du duc d’Aquitaine lui-même, Willelmus, n’entre pas pas
directement dans le patrimoine onomastique de la famille des vicomtes de
Châtellerault. Cependant, à y regarder de plus près, on constate que ce nom est porté
par une personne qui est un proche parent des vicomtes de Châtellerault. En effet, un
Ingelelmus attesté entre 975 et le début du XIe siècle comme ‘consanguineus’ (‘S.
Ingelelmi consanguinei [Hacfredi vicecomitis]’) du vicomte Hacfredus a un frère du
nom de Willelmus. Cela ressort d’une notice de donation du cartulaire de SaintCyprien datée entre 986 et 987 qui relate le don par Ingelelmus de son alleu situé dans
la viguerie de Civaux, notamment pars que michi accidit ex parte fratris mei
Willelmi.2
Ingelelmus est vraisemblablement un des premiers châtelains de Mortemer,
localité située au sud de Poitiers et en même temps un endroit placé au milieu de l’aire
d’influence des vicomtes de Châtellerault.
2
Cartulaire de Saint-Cyprien, no. 365.
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1 (2006)
Il faut souligner que les familles en question se situent à un niveau social élevé
et qu’ils font partie d’un cercle assez restreint. En effet, on trouve, au début du XIe
siècle, un Willelmus miles, qui est fort probablement soit le Willelmus qu’on vient de
voir, soit un de ses proches parents.
L’étude onomastique suggère donc une parenté, ou du moins une proximité
des vicomtes de Châtellerault avec la descendance du duc d’Aquitaine Guillaume le
Pieux.
Une étude onomastique supplémentaire tenant compte des éléments de
géographie historique fait apparaître la place importante dévolue à ces vicomtes et
permet d’aboutir à des résultats d’ordre institutionnel importants.
Pendant une bonne partie du Xe siècle, plusieurs membres du chapitre
cathédral de Poitiers portent des noms leaders des vicomtes de Châtellerault,
notamment Hacfredus et Boso. Ces noms apparaissent dans toute une série d’actes
datant des années 930 et suscrits au nom de l’archevêque de Tours Teotelo ainsi qu’à
celui des évêques de Poitiers Frothaire et Alboinus. Dans les listes de souscripteurs de
ces notices, leurs noms apparaissent au milieu de ceux de dignitaires attestés du
chapitre cathédral de Poitiers. Cela devrait permettre de voir en eux des chanoines de
ce chapitre. Ils n’ont pas - à ce qu’on sache - de relations de parenté avec les premiers
vicomtes de Châtellerault.
Une personne du nom de Boso, assez probablement un parent proche du
chanoine Boso attesté au début du Xe siècle, apparaîtra au plus tard dans les années
soixante-dix dans la haute charge d’archidiacre de Poitiers.
Plusieurs éléments permettent de rattacher ce dignitaire aux vicomtes de Châtellerault.
D’abord, si l’on étudie la topographie de ses interventions comme témoin, on constate
qu’il est attesté dans l’une des zones d’influence des vicomtes de Châtellerault (à
proximité immédiate de leur siège), ensuite, fait plus significatif encore, on observe
qu’il souscrit la notice de donation d’Ingelelmus qu’on a mentionnée plus haut.
D’autres éléments, d’ordre onomastique et topographique, viennent renforcer
notre hypothèse: le Boso canonicus, très probablement identique à notre archidiacre,
est attesté comme neveu d’un Seguinus, futur abbé de la collégiale de Notre-Dame-laGrande de Poitiers. Ce Seguinus, attesté à seize reprises entre 962 et l’an Mil, est
possessionné, comme le démontre sa donation en faveur de l’abbaye de Saint-Cyprien
de Poitiers datée de 962/963, quasiment au siège même des vicomtes de Châtellerault,
et il intervient comme témoin à plusieurs reprises dans les zones d’influence des
vicomtes de Châtellerault.
L’hypothèse d’une proximité de ce haut dignitaire ecclésiastique avec les
vicomtes de Châtellerault se fonde donc à la fois sur des éléments onomastiques et sur
la géographie du patrimoine.
Ce Seguinus, qui fut abbé de Notre-Dame-la-Grande, était proche de la famille
des Ingelelmi, seigneurs de Mortemer et parents des vicomtes de Chatellerault. On
constate en effet qu’ultérieurement, Seguinus est l’un des Leitnamen de cette famille.
Les indices onomastiques tendant à rapprocher cet archidiacre des vicomtes de
Châtellerault sont renforcés par l’existence avérée de relations de parenté: nous avions
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1 (2006)
déjà mentionné que Ingelelmus, le futur châtelain de Mortemer, est un consanguineus
direct du vicomte Hacfredus.3
Ce nom de Segoinus nous permettra avec une assez grande vraisemblance de
confirmer le rattachement de Boso archidiaconus à la parentèle, sinon à la famille des
vicomtes de Châtellerault et en même temps, à la famille des futurs seigneurs de
Mortemer. Très probablement, comme nous l’avons vu, l’archidiacre Boson est
identique au canonicus attesté en 962/963 comme étant le neveu d’un levita du nom
de Segoinus et les liens entre Segoinus et l’archidiacre ont été assez étroits, puisqu’on
retrouve, parmi les souscripteurs d’une donation faite par Ingelelmus dans les années
980 en faveur de Saint-Cyprien de Poitiers, l’archidiacre Boson, l’abbé Segoinus et
d’autres dignitaires du chapitre cathédral.
Ces résultats se trouvent par ailleurs confirmés par le fait que Segoinus se
trouve possessionné à des endroits qui font partie du patrimoine de membres influents
du clergé séculier ainsi que d’Ingelelmus. En effet, il intervient fréquemment comme
témoin dans la villa Disnet (Dienné) située dans la vicaria de Civaux. Par ailleurs, il
est possessionné dans la villa Arciacus.
Conclusion:
Les indices que l’on vient d’exploiter démontrent l’existence de liens entre les
vicomtes de Châtellerault et de membres influents du chapître cathédral de SaintPierre de Poitiers ; ces liens, toutefois, ne peuvent être détectés, point qui mérite, je
crois, d’être souligné, qu’en se fondant sur des éléments onomastiques.
Les liens de parenté, rarement établies mais souvent présumées, prennent une
nouvelle dimension si l’on tient compte d’une liste de témoins qui présente l’abbé
Segoinus comme consanguineus de l’évêque de Poitiers Giselbertus (S. Gisleberti
episcopi. S. Segoini abbatis, consanguinei sui).4
Cela constitue la preuve non seulement qu’une partie du haut clergé séculier
du diocèse de Poitiers est apparentée à l’évêque de Poitiers, mais encore et c’est là
que réside le principal intérêt au point de vue des institutions, que, au moins dans la
deuxième moitié du Xe siècle, le vicomte de Châtellerault se trouve apparenté plus au
moins directement à l’évêque de Poitiers et à un groupe très influent du clergé séculier
poitevin, dont des membres détenaient des honores aussi important que l’archidiaconé
de Poitiers et l’abbatiat de la puissante collégiale Notre-Dame la Grande, subordonnée
au chapitre cathédral de Saint-Pierre de Poitiers. Face à cette constellation, le comte
de Poitiers eut certainement fort à faire pour se maintenir. On constate en tout cas que
ce cercle puissant de noble poitevins reste largement à l’extérieur de l’entourage du
comte, sur lequel celui-ci s’appuie pour gouverner, sauf, curieusement, aux alentours
de l’an mil. Nous sommes alors aux dernières années du règne de Guillaume Fier-àBras et aux débuts de celui de son fils, Guillaume le Grand. Pendant une vingtaine
d’années environ, l’évêque de Poitiers Giselbertus et de nombreux membres du clergé
séculier du chapitre cathédral de Poitiers fréquentent assidument, parfois
constamment, la cour du comte-duc. Or cette période voit le comte de Poitiers afficher
ses prétentions au ducatus en Aquitaine. Dans ces conditions, on peut interpréter la
3
4
Cartulaire de Saint-Cyprien, no. 341.
Cartulaire de Saint-Cyprien, no. 341, notice datée entre 987 et 990.
81
1 (2006)
présence de ce groupe très influent dans l’entourage comtal (qui devient ducal)
comme le signe de l’adhésion de l’église du diocèse de Poitiers aux aspirations
politiques du comte de Poitiers. Il reste cependant qu’on a bien du mal à cerner les
raisons du départ de ce groupe, aux alentours des années 1010 au plus tard.
82

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