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Contemplating Christian temperaments
In 1702, Richard Gough completed an account of Myddle, a Shropshire parish about nine miles north from Shrewsbury. The yeomanâs work was framed as a census of the local congregation. Untangling a web of genealogical and socio-political connections, he offered a pew-by-pew prosopography, explaining how his neighbours had come to the privilege of sitting in particular seats. That concern for worldly status intruded on divine services is now well known to social historians, and in one sense Goughâs survey proves unremarkable.1
More unexpected are his pen portraits, even if one is familiar with the manuscriptâs original title, âHumane Nature Displayed in the History of Myddleâ. Take, for instance, the figure of John Aston. âSort of a silly fellowâ fond of stealing poultry, locals were quite forgiving of Johnâs behaviour. A jury once found him guilty of a misdemeanour rather than a felony because, Gough implied, of the way Aston looked and acted: with âa deformed countenance and a misshapen body; his pace or gate was directly such as if hee had studied to imitate the peacockeâ.2 Given the ancient commonplace that oneâs physiognomy was indicative of oneâs mental disposition, Goughâs initial characterisation of Samuel Downton is, by contrast, rather curious. Notwithstanding his âcrooke [back] ⌠grim swarthy complection and long blacke haireâ, Gough reckoned that Downton had married well. He had done so thanks to a fatherâs careful arrangement, not any winning way of his own. Left a widower with five children, Samuelâs troubled temperament then reasserted itself. He hired a maidservant, a âyong Girle of obscure parentage, but some what faireâ. Taking her as his wife, he frittered away his patrimony and much of his own childrenâs maternal inheritance too. Leaving the family name in tatters, Downton relocated to a different parish âwhere hee kept an alehouse and had great custome â perhaps for his wifeâs sake whom the people there called white Leggs beecause shee commonly went without stockingsâ. Several years later, the pair abandoned their own offspring. Absconding to Staffordshire, âhee went a begging like an old decrepite personâ. She sold lace, an occupation that allowed her an opportunity to cuckold Samuel.3
At various times a manorial steward, grand juryman, and churchwarden, sixty-seven-year-old Gough was no doubt well-practised in both the social and moral scrutiny of his neighbours, particularly those of humbler status. However, harder to explain are the farmerâs remarks concerning individuals of standing equal or superior to his own. He had sometimes acted on these not always charitable observations. Moreover, given that he intended his manuscript for posterity, they were ultimately public reflections which were neither always modest nor entirely deferential. As if his vantage point were the pulpit rather than the centre of the nave, he tells us about
Richard Gittins the 3rd, marryed with Margery the daughter of Francis Peplow, a wealthy farmer in Fenemeare. ⌠[He] was of good account in his time but hee was too sociable and kinde hearted: and by strikeing hands in suretyship, hee much dampnifyed himselfe and family. Hee did not at all derogate from the charitable, meeke and comendable moralls of his father. ⌠[Richard the third] was somewhat faire of complection and his wife was very blacke (our English proverbe says that a blacke woman is a pearle in a faire manâs eye). Hee had 7 children, 5 of them were of his complexion and those are all dead.4
A âspare leane person, whose countenance shewed that he was a passionate cholerick man, and his actions proved him soe; for hee was allways at strife with his neighbours, and much in debtâ, Daniel Wicherley, esquire, was of still higher status but ranked lower in Goughâs esteem.5 In sum, Gough, a pious and retiring old man, was capable of engaging in the sort of Sabbath-time scrutiny and prying gossip we otherwise find recorded by that upwardly mobile man-about-London, Samuel Pepys.6 How was this possible? Surely once congregants in a country church were settled in their proper places, they turned to their minister and listened quietly as he spoke with higher purpose â bowing their heads, kneeling, standing, or speaking only as the liturgy required?
When it came to holding the knowing attention of their flocks, research has shown how clerics had their work cut out for them.7 Explaining doctrine and exhorting their parishioners to apply the churchâs teachings in their daily lives, ministers had to contend with parishioners who dismissed their words as mere âbibble babbleâ and compared attending service to âsharp shiting in a frosty morningâ.8 Yet whether it were the scene of drowsy observance or lustful ogling, church-going was everywhere an inherently sociable occasion and this was precisely why laity were encouraged to look deliberately at those around them as well as to themselves. Religious discourse schooled people to understand their bodies and therefore serves us as a useful primer to early modern humoralism. From the pulpit to the graveside, in moral tracts and religious polemic, people routinely heard and read explanations of human diversityâs original causes as well as injunctions to evaluate their own bodiesâ present condition.
Whether made in ancient English cathedrals or newly whitewashed American meeting houses, these evaluations often involved considering an archetypal physiognomy: that of Jesus. The leading account of Christâs portrayal in Anglo-American popular culture suggests that the iconic representation of him â dark hair, white skin, flowing beard, and bright, blue-grey eyes â is a modern composite. Edward Blum and Paul Harvey contend that Anglo-Americans had first to overcome a profound, iconophobic reticence dating back to the time of puritan Boston, if not quite to the more dissolute Jamestown which confronted Captain John Smith. While it may be strictly correct that âconcepts of racial hierarchy or white supremacy could not be mapped onto Christâs bodyâ, because the âracial lexicon and worldview of whitenessâ did not exist before the eighteenth century, this chapter will argue that earlier estimations of Christâs complexion still impelled discrimination on both sides of the early modern Anglo-Atlantic.9 For even as every body was thought somehow flawed and the burdens of the flesh a constant trial for all human souls, it was nonetheless assumed that one sort of complexion was better than the rest. Otherwise known as a sanguine complexion, a fresh, ruddy and fair skin was a sign not simply of physical well-being but also of spiritual health.
In the beginning
The humoral bodyâs fundamental origin was divine.10 Giving the eulogy for the Essex minister John Warren, Henry Lukin explained:
It is [He] that did form and fashion us in the Womb. ⌠And as the Painter mixes his Colours so as to give the right complexion to a picture; God doth so temper the several humours of the body as they [m]ay be serviceable to the mind in such manner and measure as he pleases, and hence proceeds the different temper of men whereby they are fitted for several businesses and employments: and it is God that makes to differ even in our natural Temper and Constitution.11
In 1702 as Matthew Hole went into print answering an infamous tract by the physician William Coward,12 which denied the existence of an immaterial human soul, this Somerset parson also gave a sermon, âPublished at the Request of the Hearersâ, insisting ââtis not in our power to be of what Stature and Complexion we please; these things are entirely in Godâs hands, who, like the Potter, molds the Clay into what Form and Figure he thinks fitâ.13 More prosaically, the artisanal image also came to mind for the antiquary Ralph Thoresby when visiting a Yorkshire ceramics factory that same year.14 The trope was a time-honoured if derivative one. As a notebook of Nehemiah Wallington, the puritan wood-turner living in civil war London, attests, it was drawn from the books of Isaiah [64.8] and Jeremiah [18.6] as much as from Genesis.15 Although the physiological mechanisms responsible for human reproduction were debated, there was a consensus that conception was, finally, somehow divine, and not simply because of ensoulment. Certainly this was the conclusion of Thomas Bedford after he described the anatomy of conjoined and short-lived twins in the preface to a printing of his sermon at their burial. His sermon did, however, outline several possible natural causes. He considered âdefectivenesse or excesse of seminall materialls ⌠the strength of Conceit or Imagination. ⌠the constellations of the planets, and the configuration of their aspectsâ, before emphasising that none was sufficient explanation.16 Rather, Bedford underscored Godâs providence and reminded his Plymouth parishioners that all were in some way deformed by original sin.
In late 1637, âfrom the very botome of my heartâ, Robert Woodford therefore prayed, âthou hast bene so gracious as to bestowe right shape & forme uppon the Children thou hast given to me, Lord continue thy m[er]cye still in that kind to us we are not able to make one Joynt or one hayre thou alone doest allâ.17 Woodfordâs thanks came after Hannah, his wife, had attended Goodwife Crutchleyâs labour and noticed that the newborn had mild polydactylism. Since both families moved in godly circles, Robert, a Northampton attorney, likely considered the girlâs irregularly shaped hands a test of faith; another instance of Godâs infinite wisdom. Woodfordâs humble recognition of Godâs mercy toward his own family may have been fulsome in this instance, but it was by no means unique. During Hannahâs earlier pregnancies he, likely they together, had paid similar devotions and probably continued doing so until the safe arrival of their fourteenth and last child.18 Moreover, Samuel, their firstborn, offered the same prayers when he was about to become a father.19 A near-contemporary, Elizabeth Egerton, penned humble appeals to God that her pregnancies would result in children with âperfect shapesâ, also remembering thanks when each baby was delivered with neither physical nor spiritual âdeformityâ.20 She implored His m...