S.R.Gardiner's anticipation of the 'county community' hypothesis

 S.R.Gardiner’s anticipation of the ‘county community’ hypothesis

Several decades ago, Alan Everitt argued in his study of the county of Kent that its rulers formed a community of their own, that this community was distinct from that of other counties and that, when its leaders spoke of their ‘country’ they meant Kent rather than England. It was in reaction to the demands of the King and his Privy Council that the community of Kent shaped its political and religious responses and that this form of localism helped to explain the antecedents and outbreak of the English Civil War or Revolution. There is no doubt about the stimulus that this hypothesis gave to the investigation of county histories across the period. The works of Anthony Fletcher, John Morrill and the late Clive Holmes testify to its impact. In historiographical terms, it was highly significant in the late-1960s and 1970s even though its influence has now faded.

At that time, I was sceptical partly because this argument did not appear to have medieval antecedents and did not feature in the case of the counties I was then studying. What I had not appreciated was that, in some respects, Everitt’s argument had been anticipated by S.R.Gardiner in his volume on the History of England between 1639 and 1641. He had written there that, in 1639,:

Both Charles and Wentworth under-estimated the strength

of the opposition against their policy too much, to make them

even think of recurring to violence. Nor is it at all

likely that even those who felt most bitterly against

conscious the Government were aware how strong was their

position in the country. In the seventeenth century, when

Parliament was not sitting, our ancestors were a divided people.

Each county formed a separate community, in which the gentry

discussed politics and compared grievances when they met at

quarter sessions and assizes. Between county and county there

was no such bond. No easy and rapid means of communication

united York with London, and London with Exeter. No

newspapers sped over the land, forming and echoing a national

opinion from the Cheviots to the Land's End. The men who

begrudged the payment of ship-money in Buckinghamshire could

only learn from uncertain rumour that it was equally unpopular

in Essex or in Shropshire. There was therefore little of that

mutual confidence which distinguishes an army of veterans

from an army of recruits, none of that sense of dependence

upon trusted leaders which gives unity of purpose and calm

reliance to an eager and expectant nation.

Gardiner’s claim anticipated the arguments that Everitt was to put seven decades later. I am not sure that either was correct. Similar demands were made of each county from the ‘political Court’ at the centre and were the subject of bargaining and negotiation, of compromise and conflict. These common experiences were felt across England and Wales. Newsletter writers like Mede, Pory and Rossingham made them widely known as the testimonies of men like John Rous and Walter Yonge showed. The carriers of goods and people conveyed news more widely than Gardiner appreciated in this passage.

When I was a postgraduate, I was often doubtful about the analysis of the past in the works of previous generations of historians. Since then, I have come to understand how perceptive they often were and that important insights remain to be found in their works. Gardiner and Everitt may not have been precisely right in their conclusions but it is striking how similar their formulations were. I shall go on reading the works of previous historians in the hope of gaining better insights into the lives of early modern people in the future.

16 July, 2023