The European World 1500 1700 Rebellions Naomi Pullin

The European World, 1500 -1700 Rebellions Naomi Pullin naomi. wood@warwick. ac. uk

Recap • Explored different concepts of power and authority in Europe • Saw expansion of monarchical power and attempts by rulers to consolidate territories: to make them less ‘composite’ • Stressed tension between state-building aspirations of monarchs, and existing structures, e. g. parliaments, regional assemblies, nobility. • Dutch Republic = product of rebellion against Spanish control.

Popular politics also provides check on monarchical power This lecture will explore rebellions in early modern Europe and ideology that underpins them. 1. Politics and popular politics 2. Different types of early modern European revolts – elite and popular 3. Rhetoric of popular protest that underpins conflict with states 4. The causes of European rebellions

1. Politics and Popular Politics

What is politics? • View pre-1980 s: politics relates to the machinery of state, e. g. legislation, crown, parliament, nobility, privy council. • From 1980 s with ‘New Social History’: relationship between rulers and the ruled • Can religion be considered a part of ‘politics’? • Was the strength of a state determined by the extent to which it was able to rule legitimately by managing local factions and regional interests?

Wayne Brake, Shaping History: Ordinary People in European Politics 1500 -1700: ‘it is useful to regard politics as an ongoing bargaining process between those who claim governmental authority in a given territory (rulers) and those over whom that authority is said to extend (subjects)’. Andy Wood, Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England: ‘Politics will be understood to occur where power is reasserted, extended or challenged. Politics is therefore the product of deliberate, human agency and is pre-eminently about conflict and change. In this analysis, politics does not occur where the distribution of power remains static and unchallenged. ’

2. Different types of early modern rebellions

Aristocratic revolts • Reaction against royal programmes for administrative standardisation and political uniformity • Often involves a defence of traditional practices – fear of encroaching royal administration – new taxes, officials and new elites. In Spanish territories: The Dutch Revolt: 1560 s • United Provinces = strongly influenced by Calvinism • Spanish try to impose Inquisition. • Strong Calvinist tenor to the revolt, but initiated in 1565 by Catholic Dutch aristocrats, who start to petition court of Madrid – felt interests undermined by centralisation.

Aristocratic revolts In France: The Fronde 1648 -1653 • Bureaucratic expansion of the Crown in 1620 s and 30 s under Cardinal Richelieu during regency of Louis XIII of France. • Thirty Years War had extended Crown authority through raising taxes and tariffs. • Fronde = Civil War. Coordinated by Catholic aristocrats – not just about religion, but also over right of Parlement of Paris to limit the king’s power. Britain • Tudor England brings Ireland Wales into political union between 1536 and 1541. • Centralisation projects in Ireland provokes unrest from aristocratic families • Kildare Rebellion (1534) and Desmond Rebellions (1570 s and 1580 s) led by officials appointed to serve the English Crown in Ireland

Popular revolts Naples revolt, 1647 -48 • June 1647 – major revolt against Spanish governance in Naples • Against high taxes and Spanish rule • Led by merchants, tradesmen and apprentices - planned and organised by Tommaso Aniello • Demanded abolition of taxes and reform in administration of the city – declared city a republic and asked for support of France • Revolt Collapsed in April 1648

Social protest in England • Poor often described as the ‘many-headed monster’ – prone to riot and unrest. • Christopher Hudson (Lancashire magistrate), 1596: the poor ‘always apt to rebel and mutiny. . . on the least occasion. ’ Food riots: England, 1590 s • Affect urban areas of cloth trade, esp. vulnerable to unemployment and trade depressions • Bad harvests in 1580 s and 1590 s = major cause • Crowds often requisition and seize supplies of grain

Poverty and rebellion Agrarian Riots: England • Centres on enclosure of common land in C 16 th and C 17 th= way of Crown raising profit from common land • Levelling of fences, walls and hedges by protesters – pronounced in 1530 s and 1540 s Germany – ‘The Peasants War’, 1524 -25 • Also begins as a response against enclosure > sparks revolt across South. West Germany. • Use Reformation as justification to demand agrarian rights against corrupt landlords, local officials and clergymen. Frontispiece to Twelve Articles of the Peasants Pamphlet (1525)

3. Rhetoric of Riots and Rebellion

The moral economy of the crowd George Rude, The Crowd in History (1964); E. P. Thompson ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd’ (1971) • Popular protest stimulated by more than purely material concern. • Thompson: Food rioters not just upset about loss of resources, but identifying what customs and practises were being violated • Crowds see themselves authorities because authority had been corrupted. • ‘Law of custom’ seen in food riots in 1626 at Essex ports, England; 1647 Naples rioters impale loaves of bread on stakes • Seeing rebellions as class warfare = unclear, because often involve mixture of social groups.

Grievances of major rebellions and protests cut across social classes: • • 1536 Pilgrimage of Grace • Major revolt against Henry VIII following Protestant Reformation. • Revolts spread from Lincolnshire, to Yorkshire. Drew 30, 000 men under leadership of lawyer, Robert Aske Grievances of rebels covered local and national concerns and issues affecting gentry and ordinary people, e. g. religion, inheritance rights, food prices, sheep tax’. Elite rebels demanded restoration of ‘Council of the North’.

Conservative rebellions? • Rebels often declare allegiance to the King, but claim he has been corrupted by bad council • Pilgrimage of Grace and just before start of English Civil War in 1641 - protested against the ‘evil counsellors’ who had misled the king. • Naples rebellion 1647 – ‘down with the government’ combined with ‘long live the King’ – want to restore C 16 th forms of governance. • Can be seen as an act of negotiation, e. g. as an extension of the petition– seek good government, not no government • Claimed restoration, rather than revolution

4. The escalation of rebellions

1. Representative Institutions • Support for representative institutions as a check upon the crown gives rise to alternative conceptions of how a kingdom should be governed. • 1536 Pilgrimage of Grace re-establish ‘Council of the North’. • 1620 s – Huguenot Rebellion – French Protestants protest against rule of Louis XIII. See regional parlements as preserving their religious liberties. • 1560 s – Dutch revolt against Spain. Invoke rights of 17 provincial assemblies in Netherlands.

2. Invoking regional identity Rebellions engender new conceptions of national identity Dutch rebels • Continually attack Spanish rule and see counterreformation as violation as ancient freedoms of Dutch provinces. • Mythology of Dutch nation linked to actions against Spanish (anthem, the Wilhelmus) Ireland • Language of Irishness created in opposition to English crown policy 1590 s – Nine Years’ War against English rule • Invoke association between Catholicism and Gaelic culture

3. Religion • • • Many rulers ruling over populations of mixed-religious composition Most serious rebellions happen when monarch’s identity distinct from nobles and subjects – becomes a way of asserting autonomy and uniting rebels. Faithful have a duty to overthrow ungodly rule > tensions of conscience – to whom should obedience be owed? John Knox (1544): Questioned ‘whether obedience is to be rendered to a magistrate who enforces idolatry and condemns true religion’. Regnans in Excelsis (1570): issued by Pope Pious V. Declares Elizabeth I a heretic and Catholics commanded to orchestrate overthrow

3. Religion German Peasants War 1524 -25 • followed Protestant Reformation – stress on individual faith and attack clergy abuses in Twelve Articles. Pilgrimage of Grace, England, 1536 • Full of religious imagery, e. g. ‘pilgrims’, banner with five wounds of Christ • Rooting out of heresy, restoration of monasteries and convents, renunciation of royal control over the church

Conclusions? • Rebellions can be escalated for a number of reasons: representative institutions, regional identity, and religion. • Real effort on part of rebels to stand for the forces of tradition • Rebellion presented as negotiation and a legitimate part of politics. • BUT dividing line between conservatism and radicalism often very thin. • Ability of rebels to win support from other European powers can transform rebellions into political revolutions.