Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: points of departure
- Introduction An uncommon tradition
- Part I The emergent commonalty
- Part II Accumulating a tradition: popular resistance and rebellion, 1327–1549
- 4 Discords, quarrels and factions of the commonalty: an ensemble of popular demands, 1328–1381
- 5 The spectre of commonalty: popular rebellion and the commonweal, 1381–1549
- Part III The English explosion
- Part IV The empowered community
- Index
- References
5 - The spectre of commonalty: popular rebellion and the commonweal, 1381–1549
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: points of departure
- Introduction An uncommon tradition
- Part I The emergent commonalty
- Part II Accumulating a tradition: popular resistance and rebellion, 1327–1549
- 4 Discords, quarrels and factions of the commonalty: an ensemble of popular demands, 1328–1381
- 5 The spectre of commonalty: popular rebellion and the commonweal, 1381–1549
- Part III The English explosion
- Part IV The empowered community
- Index
- References
Summary
Whan the comuynes began to ryse,
Was non so gret lord, as I gesse,
That thei in hert bigon to gryse,
And leide heore jolite in presse,
Wher was thenne heore worthinesse,
Of alle wyse men I take witnesse,
This was a warnynge to be ware.
(‘On the Earthquake of 1382’, anon., c.1400)It is a purpos'd thing, and grows by plot,
To curb the will of the nobility.
(Shakespeare, Coriolanus III, i)Haunting belongs to the structure of every hegemony.
(Jacques Derrida)Res plebeia
Debate on the meaning and significance of commonweal/th jargon has focused on the coming into existence of a literature that burst onto the public stage from the third to the fifth decades of the sixteenth century. It took the form of a body of texts which discussed and expanded upon the idea, and partook to some degree of the populist program of Protector Somerset. An elitist, classical-humanist (‘Renaissance’) provenance has usually been assumed. Steve Hindle describes ‘commonwealth’ as ‘a term derived from classical republicanism and mediated through Christian humanism’. Diarmaid MacCulloch writes that ‘talk of commonwealth had been pioneered by Thomas Cromwell's circle in the 1530s and not until Edward VI's reign’ do we find ‘it had spread down the social scale, and had become the property of humble people who were excited by it and yearned for justice and fairness in society’. This chapter argues that the top-down or ‘clerical authority’ provenance of ‘commonweal’ is wrong.
- Type
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- Information
- A Commonwealth of the PeoplePopular Politics and England's Long Social Revolution, 1066–1649, pp. 236 - 292Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010