Gender and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1800

James Daybell, Svante Norrhem

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134883981
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Gender and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe investigates the gendered nature of political culture across early modern Europe by exploring the relationship between gender, power, and political authority and influence. This collection offers a rethinking of what constituted 'politics' and a reconsideration of how men and women operated as part of political culture. It demonstrates how underlying structures could enable or constrain political action, and how political power and influence could be exercised through social and cultural practices.

The book is divided into four parts - diplomacy, gifts and the politics of exchange; socio-economic structures; gendered politics at court; and voting and political representations – each of which looks at a series of interrelated themes exploring the ways in which political culture is inflected by questions of gender. In addition to examples drawn from across Europe, including Austria, the Dutch Republic, the Italian States and Scandinavia, the volume also takes a transnational comparative approach, crossing national borders, while the concluding chapter, by Merry Wiesner-Hanks, offers a global perspective on the field and encourages comparative analysis both chronologically and geographically.

As the first collection to draw together early modern gender and political culture, this book is the perfect starting point for students exploring this fascinating topic.

1 Introduction Rethinking gender and political culture in early modern Europe

James Daybell

Svante Norrhem

DOI: 10.4324/9781315542188-2

This book investigates the gendered nature of political culture across early modern Europe for the period 1400 to 1800. In so doing, it looks at the relationship between gender, power and political authority and influence, and contributes to a rethinking of what constituted ‘politics’, and a reconsideration of how men and women operated as part of political culture. At the heart of the volume is an awareness of the family or household as a basic political unit which allowed women to have informal (and sometimes formal) access to power and to play important socio-cultural roles in politics. In a society where birth was central and inheritance systems integral to power, it is perhaps worth noting that the family also functioned as a basic political unit for men, who additionally operated in spheres often closed to their female counterparts. At a very basic level, political culture is defined here as the prevailing conditions – social, economic and cultural – that governed the sorts of agency possible at a given time. We are thus concerned with underlying structures that enabled or constrained political action, as well as with social and cultural practices, the ways and modes in which political power and influence might be achieved. Political culture is thus broadly defined and extends far beyond any reductive sense of politics as represented by male-dominated political institutions, war and statecraft. Part of this study is a reconceptualising, for example, of power and diplomacy, to incorporate soft cultural and economic power, and recognise the importance of leading political families across Europe which created conditions that allowed not only male, but also female influence to flourish.

Central to the book is an excavation of early modern European political culture from a gendered perspective to uncover the kinds of differentiated roles undertaken by men and women; recognising the political contribution of social activities such as marriage-arranging, placing children in other households, gift-giving, sociability, networking, hospitality and letter-writing; the uncovering of gendered spaces, socio-economic structures and the ideas and ideologies that permitted or inhibited women’s political involvement in particular. These interlocking themes are encapsulated in many ways through an example such as the Elizabethan noblewoman Lady Penelope Rich (1563–1607), who through her familial and court networks (and in many ways her unique and dazzling personality) was an expert operator well-versed in the political culture of the period. ¹ Representative of her political agency is the role that she played in 1589 in making overtures to James VI of Scotland on behalf of her brother Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex and his friends at a time when it was thought that the current and unmarried, heirless sovereign Elizabeth I was not long for this world. During this time, Lady Rich secretly corresponded with the Scottish King through the auspices of Richard Douglas (nephew of the Scottish ambassador to England, Archibald Douglas) and Jean Hotman, a former secretary of the earl of Leicester (himself her stepfather), who acted as an emissary. The weekly letters written in secret code – Lady Rich using the name ‘Ryalta’ – were on Essex’s behalf and addressed to Douglas to be passed onto James VI, who ‘commended much the fineness of her wit, the invention and well writing’. Her role in opening up informal diplomatic channels with Elizabeth’s eventual successor was perhaps aided by the fact that she was a woman, and could thus operate in a way that if undertaken by a man might occasion charges of treason. ² The whole episode, however, failed and James lost interest when Douglas, whose credit had always been poor with the Scottish king, proved indiscrete and William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Elizabeth I’s chief minister, soon learned of the moves from his agent in Edinburgh, Thomas Fowler. ³ While the escapade was without success, it nonetheless illustrates to good effect the way in which Lady Rich interceded in politics at the very highest level: as a woman she could act as a political intermediary, was asked to do so by her brother, and this mediation was accepted by James (at least at first).

This example of Lady Rich’s covert correspondence with James VI of Scotland highlights not only the gendered practise of diplomacy – themes at the heart of the chapters in this present volume by Broomhall and Van Gent, and Lindström and Norrhem – but also the need to reconceptualise diplomatic activity for the early modern period, in order to recognise the significance of informal channels of communication, the political potential of familial and kinship networks to ambassadors and the degree to which women as well as men might act as important conduits where more formal (and male) diplomatic links might encounter censure. Letter-writing and gifts taking manifold forms (such as material objects, offices, honours, subsidies and other perquisites) were a key part of political culture of the period across European states in opening up links and fostering networks. Crucial to what might be described as Lady Rich’s ‘political potency’ were the socio-economic structures that conditioned her social position, and in many ways undercut the harsher prescripts of patriarchal thought which constrained female action. As the daughter of Walter Devereux, first earl of Essex and his wife, Lettice (née Knollys), later countess of Leicester, and as sister of Robert, earl of Essex, Penelope Rich enjoyed powerful family connections. From 1581, she was a Maid of Honour, which generated further political networks at Elizabeth’s court. ⁴ These important contacts allowed her to act as a political intermediary, operating through her brother and influential court contacts such as Lord Burghley, Sir Robert Cecil and Sir Julius Caesar in patronage affairs that include requests for male spaces, such as military posts, as well as offices, knighthoods and wardships. ⁵ The fact that her brother was the queen’s favourite (an informal male socio-political role) perhaps also allowed Lady Rich to flout gendered behavioural norms and enter into a public affair with Sir Charles Blount, later Baron Mountjoy and earl of Devonshire (1563–1606), from which relationship issued six children who were brought up alongside the offspring that she had by her husband Robert Rich, who appears to have long accepted their peculiar marital situation, which raises issues of masculinity and sexuality. ⁶ Lady Rich’s perceived influence transcended Essex’s tragic death, and her fall from favour due to her involvement in his ill-fated coup d’état in 1601, when he and his followers attempted to march on London. Her standing at court was restored under James VI and I; she accompanied Queen Anna from the border and was awarded the precedence of the earldom of Essex. ⁷ Sir Humphrey Ferrers also considered Penelope Rich to have sufficient power to ask her to move the king or queen on his behalf for a barony. ⁸ Such activities indicate the suppleness of her political influence, and the degree to which early modern women might on occasion act independently outside of family networks. At the root of Lady Rich’s political experience lay a blistering and mesmerising personality, as well as an able intellect, sharpened by an extensive education. She was a skilled linguist and well-versed in the literary arts and sophisticated forms of courtly writing indispensable in a patronage society; she operated within a literary milieu, had dedicated to her a range of works, and was familiar with the peculiarities of manuscript culture and enjoyed close connections with those active in printing. She also enjoyed a wide-ranging correspondence with writers across Europe; and as we have seen conducted secret correspondence (employing ciphers and codes) and utilised her letters to patronage and diplomatic ends. ⁹ In many ways, these educational characteristics mark her out as in some ways exceptional, but far from unique, during the early modern period.

More broadly though, throughout the period, the dominance of the household and the court – as loci of sociability and political contact – gave women access to political arenas and created distinctly female political spaces. It was a political culture based on patronage systems, where interpersonal relationships between monarchs and other heads of state, and members of the ruling elite and office-holders and their families, meant that access and face-to-face contact was of paramount importance. Sociability rituals therefore provided a key mechanism for female (as well as male) to advance political agendas. Throughout her life, Lady Rich maintained a presence at court, as a Maid of Honour under Elizabeth I, and later through contact with Anna of Denmark, consort to King James. At the outset of James’s reign she participated in Queen Anna’s court masques (alongside male and female courtiers), which were themselves the site of informal diplomatic engagements. ¹⁰ Networking and occasions of sociability are further detectible in Lady Rich’s involvement in the abortive Essex rising of 1601; she was accused of being one of the chief conspirators, having dined with the leaders the night before at Essex House and fetched the earl of Bedford on the morning of the revolt. ¹¹ Her role in the affair is in many ways difficult to reconstruct fully, partly because such activities are by their very nature informal and clandestine, and because they are often conducted in person, in private they therefore often go unrecorded in the historical record. What survives then is only fleeting glimpses of female agency reconstructed through fragmentary documentation, our interpretation of which is further complicated by the rhetorical gestures that enact the prescribed gender roles of the participants. In the aftermath of his trial, the earl of Essex allegedly accused his sister of taunting him as a coward in the eyes of his friends and followers – a direct challenge to active masculinity – while Lady Rich in her own defence downplayed her involvement, arguing that she was more a slave, counteracting the claims against her with stereotypical images of female domesticity. The degree to which the reassertion of gender norms threw a veil over Lady Rich, masking the true extent of her involvement in the turbulent politics at the end of Elizabeth’s reign is unclear. However, it is suggestive of the ways in which women might operate within a political culture that did not necessarily and publicly acknowledge women’s power and agency, in ways that were differentiated from their male counterparts. After a brief imprisonment and questioning by the Privy Council – not least for her part in composing an incendiary letter addressed to Queen Elizabeth that circulated widely in manuscript and print under Lady Rich’s signature – she was released, while her brother and co-conspirators were executed for treason. ¹² The political activities of Lady Rich within the wider context of the Essex circle highlight many of the aspects of the gendered nature of political culture (especially in this case at court) in the early modern Europe with which this volume is above all concerned. Through a series of detailed case studies the volume argues for the importance of various gendered spaces for political activities. Within the household it highlights the importance of family and kinship contacts as key networks through which men and women could operate, as part of coordinated strategies, and the degree to which diplomacy and gift-giving were gendered rituals and practices. Finally, the book emphasises the significance of patterns of landholding and inheritance, as well as how gender assumptions shaped men’s and women’s political involvement, including in the area of voting.

Gender and political culture in context

In turning to outline the main historiographical developments in the area of gender and political culture, Merry Wiesner-Hanks has helpfully pointed at three successive stages in the development of research in the history of women and political agency. The first concentrating on the formal level of politics, which in practice narrowly focussed on studies of female rulers or their equivalents; the second, looking at informal power structures and thus broadening the concept of politics. This included women who moved in circles where they had access to people, both men and women, with formal power; the third stage defines politics as a power relationship. This is not only between ruler and subject, but also in many other human relations, not least between men and women. ¹³ Gender history is by now a well-established field of research in many countries, and the historiography both too long and richly diversified to do it justice here. When Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott published their influential study Women, Work and Family (1978) it showed brilliantly how gender as an analytical category could open up so far unknown perspectives of the past. ¹⁴ By focusing on the family as the most important setting for women in the early modern period, and how family strategies coincided with women’s work it has become a classic in gender studies and an inspiration for many to follow. The household has since become a starting point for many studies of early modern gender, but also a focal point. Lyndal Roper’s pioneering 1989 study of the impact the Reformation had on gender relations in households in early sixteenth-century Augsburg showed conversely that the status of women rather than being enhanced by religious change was in fact worsened by the Reformation. ¹⁵ Early studies like these paved the way for more general overviews of gender history in Europe. In Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (1993) Merry Wiesner-Hanks took a broad perspective on women’s lives in not only the ‘great nations’ of Europe, but also in Scandinavia, Russia, Eastern Europe and the Italian peninsula. Comprehensive works on women and gender covering numerous European countries were to follow. ¹⁶ Work by scholars studying early modern England, Russia, Poland, France, Germany and Sweden, among other geographical territories, aimed not only at making women in history visible by a process of archival recovery, but also contributed to changing the perspectives on the history of whole societies by reinstating women, and reconceptualising male behaviour too, and therefore gender as a legitimate category of analysis that complemented and in many ways challenged traditional historical narratives. By doing this, these scholars were to become theoretical inspirations for gender-oriented research in many fields such as early modern work, religion, family, sexuality, economy – and importantly for the purposes of this volume – politics and political culture.

Research on women and work became important for those historians that wished to broaden the concept of politics and go beyond political historians’ traditional focus on institutions such as parliaments, offices and other decision-making bodies – institutions that for the early modern period (nearly entirely) excluded women. One of the few exceptions from this was royal courts where women either as queen regnants, queen consorts or queen dowagers were able to become formal political agents, and such topics of inquiry have a long-standing historical interest. ¹⁷ It is therefore not surprising that the study of women and politics began with court studies (Merry Wiesner-Hanks in her chapter in the present volume makes a comprehensive overview of queen studies). Queens are, however, in so many ways exceptional as women; their status and position being different from women in general. New questions, however, were raised about the role of queens, and the confessional upheavals wrought by both the protestant and catholic Reformations saw gender presenting ideological challenges to late medieval and early modern models of monarchical power, issues treated in Victoria Smith’s chapter on perspectives of female monarchy in England in the 1560s. ¹⁸ Stemming from this focus on royal women, scholars also began to look at the evident political role of women within a queen’s court or other royal households, thus questioning the idea of a male hegemony of high politics. ¹⁹ At the same time scholars were trying to look beyond the institutions and the formal decision-making within these, and involve the informal setting surrounding a politician – such as the household. The household carried the possibility for women to become influential political agents. The premise was that it was socially and financially strong, and that it gave women within it access to people with power. Scholarship of this sort has emphasised women’s operation through family court networks, of which they were an integral part. Such an approach, stressing the importance of marital alliances, kinship and wider social contacts, has developed alongside the kinds of more socio-political studies of politics and patronage undertaken by historians of early modern Europe, including Roland Mousnier, which have stressed the underlying social structures of politics and emphasised the importance of inter-personal connections, as definitions of what constituted political were broadened, and historians engaged in what might be termed, at least in a British context, ‘new political history’. ²⁰

Historians noted that there often was a gap between the early modern ideology of gender relations and how women and men practised their everyday lives. This difference in norms and practice seemed to have established a political culture that was in some ways less rigid in gender terms than it had appeared to be. In Germany Heide Wunder’s concept ‘arbeitspaar’ (1992) became influent...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Conventions
• List of Figures and Tables
• Introductions
• 1 Introduction: rethinking gender and political culture in early modern Europe
• 2 Gender, politics and archives in early modern England
• Part I Diplomacy, gifts and the politics of exchange
• Part II Socio-economic structures, gender and politics
• Part III Women and gendered politics at court
• Part IV Voting and political representation
• Conclusion Global perspectives
• 12 Gender and cultural power in global perspective
• Index