Abstract
The disjuncture between a theory of political counsel predicated on male participants and a political reality of female political actors that occurred in Early Modern Europe has not been sufficiently studied. This introductory chapter lays out the fundamental tenets of the Early Modern discourse of counsel, especially as regards the role of women, and demonstrates the richness of a study which interrogates the relationship between queens and counsel. It also outlines extant scholarship on related subjects and the studies in this volume.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For a more detailed account of the changing discourse of counsel in the Early Modern period see Joanne Paul, “Counsel and Command in Anglophone Political Thought, 1485–1651” (PhD diss., Queen Mary University of London, 2013), forthcoming as a monograph with Cambridge University Press.
- 2.
See M. A. Manzalaoui, Secretum Secretorum: Nine English Versions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
- 3.
See John Guy, “The Rhetoric of Counsel in Early Modern England,” in Tudor Political Culture, ed. Dale Hoak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 292–310.
- 4.
See Richard the Redeless, in Richard the Redeless and Mum the Sothsegger, ed. James M. Dean (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000).
- 5.
Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Thomas Hoby, ed. Virginia Cox (London: Everyman, 1994), 338, 299. Notably, Castiglione still holds Aristotle (as well as Plato) to be an example of such a counsellor. They both “practiced the deedes of Courtiershippe and gave them selves to this ende, the one with the great Alexander, the other with the kynges of Sicilia” (337). This is opposed to Calisthenes, “who bicause he was a right philosopher and so sharpe a minister of the bare truth without mynglinge it with Courtlinesse, he lost his lief and profited not, but rather gave a scaundler to Alexander” (338).
- 6.
Thomas More, Utopia, ed. Edward Surtz and J. H. Hexter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 99. Our translation.
- 7.
Thomas More, Utopia, ed. George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 34–5. Latin from Yale (1977) edition.
- 8.
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, eds. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price, (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 82.
- 9.
Matthew Coignet, Politique discourses upon trueth and lying, trans. Edward Hoby (London, 1586), 69–70. See Joanne Paul “The best counsellors are the dead: counsel and Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” Renaissance Studies, 30, no. 5 (2016): 646–665, online at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12157/full.
- 10.
The consistent use of the male pronoun in the paragraphs above was, thus, conscious and intentional.
- 11.
Personal counsel, on the other hand, could be seen as being the purview of women; see Rosemarie Deist, Gender and power: counsellors and their masters in antiquity and medieval courtly romance (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2003), 171, 229, 231. For female counsel in medieval literature see Deist, Gender and power; Misty Schieberle, Feminized Counsel and the Literature of Advice in England, 1380–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). For the counsel of Pisan and Dowriche see Cary J. Nederman, “The Mirror Crack’d: The Speculum Principum as Political and Social Criticism in the Late Middle Ages,” The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 3.3 (2008): 28–9; Mihoko Suzuki, “Warning Elizabeth with Catherine de’ Medici’s Example: Anne Dowriche’s French Historie and the Politics of Counsel,” in The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe, eds. Anne J. Cruz, and Mihoko Suzuki (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 174–93.
- 12.
Leah Bradshaw, “Political Rule, Prudence and the ‘Woman Question’ in Aristotle,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 24, no. 3 (1991): 563–70.
- 13.
John Knox, The first blast of the trumpet against the monstruous regiment of women, (Geneva: J. Poullain and A. Rebul, 1558), 9–10.
- 14.
Schieberle, Feminized Counsel, 58 points out that this “marriage metaphor” had been utilized in by Ricardian poets in order to speak submissively and persuasively through female personae.
- 15.
Francis Bacon, Essayes (London, 1612), 59–60.
- 16.
Joanne Paul, “Sovereign Council or Counseled Sovereign: The Marian Conciliar Compromise,” in The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, eds. Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 135–53.
- 17.
Valerie Schutte, Mary I and the Art of Book Dedications (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
- 18.
Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock, eds. Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (New York: Palgrave, 2010).
- 19.
Ralph Houlbrooke, “What happened to Mary’s councillors?” in Hunt and Whitelock, Tudor Queenship, 210.
- 20.
For further details see the project website: http://www.marryingcultures.eu/about.
- 21.
Elena Woodacre, ed. Queenship in the Mediterranean (New York: Palgrave, 2013).
- 22.
Elena Woodacre and Carey Fleiner, eds., Royal Mothers and their Ruling Children: Wielding Political Authority from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era (London: Palgrave, 2015).
- 23.
Nadine Akkerman and Birgit Houben, eds., The Politics of the Female Households: Ladies-in-Waiting Across Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Helen Graham-Matheson (now Matheson-Pollock), “Petticoats and Politics: Elisabeth Parr and Female Agency at the Early Elizabethan Court,” 31–50; Una McIlvenna, “‘A Stable of Whores’? The ‘Flying Squadron’ of Cathrine de Medici,” 181–208 and Katrin Keller, “Ladies-in-Waiting at the Imperial Court of Vienna from 1550 to 1700: Structures, Responsibilities and Career Patterns,” 77–98.
- 24.
A. N. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Natalie Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
- 25.
Guy, “Rhetoric of Counsel,” 292–310; Jacqueline Rose, ‘Kingship and Counsel in Early Modern England’, The Historical Journal 54, no. 1 (2011), 47–71.
Notably, the vast majority of items on this list of scholarship focuses on England, including those which look at counsel as distinct from queenship. Although the prevalence of minor and female monarchs during the sixteenth century may have placed more importance on the role of counsel in England, the discourse was by no means specific to it, and there is need for more work on its expression on the continent and, indeed, beyond. The editors are aware that this volume too exhibits a certain Anglocentric bias and is limited to Europe, though there was an effort to expand this scope. We hope that the studies presented here provide foundation for examinations of the topic in other geographical areas.
- 26.
Jacqueline Rose, ed., The Politics of Counsel in England and Scotland, 1286–1707 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
- 27.
Susan Doran, “Elizabeth I and Counsel,” in The Politics of Counsel, ed. Rose, 151–161.
- 28.
Paulina Kewes, “Godly Queens: The Royal iconographies of Mary and Elizabeth,” in Tudor Queenship: the Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, eds. Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 47–62.
- 29.
Allyna E. Ward, Women and Tudor Tragedy: Feminizing Counsel and Representing Gender (Plymouth: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013).
- 30.
Glenda Sluga and Carolyn James, eds. Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500 (London: Routledge, 2016). Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox, eds. Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Tracey Sowerby and Jan Hemmings, eds. Practices of Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe, c. 1410–1800 (London: Routledge, 2017).
- 31.
Schieberle, Feminized Counsel; Deist, Gender and Power; Judith Ferster, Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).
- 32.
Francis Bacon, “Mr. Bacon’s Discourse in the Praise of his Sovereign,” in The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts), 134.
- 33.
See below, Fletcher, Chap. 6.
Bibliography
Adams, Robyn and Rosanna Cox. Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Akkerman, Nadine and Birgit Houben. The Politics of the Female Households: Ladies-in-Waiting Across Early Modern Europe. Amsterdam: Brill, 2013.
Bacon, Francis. Essayes. London, 1612.
———. ‘Mr. Bacon’s Discourse in the Praise of his Sovereign’. In The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, edited by James Spedding, 134. London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1861.
Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier. Edited by Virginia Cox. Translated by Thomas Hoby. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd/Everyman’s Library, 1994.
Coignet, Matthieu. Politique Discourses upon Trueth and Lying. London, 1586.
Dean, James M., ed. Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger. Kalamazoo, Mich: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000.
Ferster, Judith. Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
Guy, John. ‘The Rhetoric of Counsel in Early Modern England’. In Tudor Political Culture, edited by Dale Hoak, 292–310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Knox, John. The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. Geneva: J. Poullain and A. Rebul, 1558.
Manzalaoui, M. A. Secretum Secretorum: Nine English Versions. Oxford, 1977.
Machiavelli, Niccolò. 2000. The Prince. Ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
McLaren, A. N. Political Culture Reign Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth 1558–1585. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Mears, Natalie. Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
More, Thomas. ’Utopia’. In The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More: Utopia, edited by Edward Surtz and J. H. Hexter. Vol. 4. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965.
Nederman, Cary J. ‘The Mirror Crack’d: The Speculum Principum as Political and Social Criticism in the Late Middle Ages’. The European Legacy 3, no. 3 (1998): 18–38.
Paul, Joanne. ‘The Best Counsellors Are the Dead: Counsel and Shakespeare’s Hamlet’. Renaissance Studies 30, no. 5 (2016): 646–65.
———. ‘Sovereign Council or Counselled Sovereign: The Marian Conciliar Compromise’. In The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, edited by Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, 135–53. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
———. ‘Counsel and Command in Anglophone Political Thought, 1485-1651’, PhD Diss, Queen Mary University of London, 2013.
Rose, Jacqueline, ed. The Politics of Counsel in England and Scotland, 1286-1707. Proceedings of the British Academy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
———. ‘Kingship and Counsel in Early Modern England’. The Historical Journal 54, no. 1 (2011): 47–71.
Schieberle, M. Feminized Counsel and the Literature of Advice in England, 1380-1500. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2014.
Schutte, Valerie. Mary I and the Art of Book Dedications. New York: Palgrave, 2015.
Sluga, Glenda and Carolyn James Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500. London: Routledge, 2016.
Sowerby, Tracey and Jan Hemmings. Practices of Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe, c. 1410-1800. London: Routledge, 2017.
Suzuki, Mihoko. ‘Warning Elizabeth with Catherine De’ Medici’s Example: Anne Dowriche’s French Historie and the Politics of Counsel’. In The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe, edited by Anne J. Cruz and Mihoko Suzuki, 174–93. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
Ward, Allyna E. Women and Tudor Tragedy: Feminizing Counsel and Representing Gender. Plymouth: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013.
Woodacre, Elena, ed. Queenship in the Mediterranean. New York: Palgrave, 2013.
Woodacre, Elena and Carey Fleiner, eds. Royal Mothers and their Ruling Children: Wielding Political Authority from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era. London: Palgrave, 2015.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Matheson-Pollock, H., Paul, J., Fletcher, C. (2018). Introduction. In: Matheson-Pollock, H., Paul, J., Fletcher, C. (eds) Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76974-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76974-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76973-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-76974-5
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)