Inflation in William Harrison's Description of England

Ever since money became a primary mode of exchange the economy has had an enormous effect on the ordinary day to day lives of people.  Of course we are currently in one of those periods of decline with recovery seemingly still somewhere far off in the distance.  During this recession many news outlets noted how different this economic downturn was to those in the past.  No doubt that is true, but it is surely equally true of all economic downturns.  No recession is precisely the same as another. 

On the whole it can be said that the standard of living in England rose during the sixteenth century but there were nonetheless two periods of high inflation that caused serious problems for the population.  In the last years of Henry VIII and first years of Edward VI debasement of the currency caused high inflation and then again towards the end of Elizabeth I’s reign prices rocketed due to bad harvests with somewhere around a 50% increase in costs. 

What did the chroniclers say about these periods of inflation and about the general rise in living standards?  Annabel Patterson argues that William Harrison (writing for the Holinshed Chronicles) commented on the economic situations – albeit in a fragmentary way – in his Description of England (see Patterson, Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles, ch. 5).  In the 1577 edition Harrison was optimistic and pointed out various ways that the people were better off: primarily the prevalence of chimneys which aired out houses, softer bedding material, and an increase of imported luxuries such as tapestries, pewter and plate.  This account was written during an upturn in real wages.  In his later revisions of 1587 Harrison amended his account to reflect on the downturn that had since occurred.  For instance the ‘amendment of lodging’ was recounted in 1577 as ‘great’ but in 1587 noted also as ‘not generall’ (Patterson, p. 82).

Simple adjustment of the words in a text between editions can be a useful indicator of fluctuations on the market during the early modern period.  It is equally true today.  If we look at the language used during the years of ‘boom’ compared to these years of ‘bust’ slight variations in word-use have been used to portray varying economic security.  Terminology used to describe the work of bankers and the stock exchange has been particularly revised.  Such thoughts leads me to a question (one which I don’t really have an answer to): how much of what happens in the economy is actually due to the words used to convey the situation compared to what the situation is actually about?  There is no doubt that words have power to control situations and direct them along certain lines.  So how far is our economy effected by words rather than facts and figures?  I’m no economist so I cannot answer such a series of questions but it is perhaps useful to consider these things when reading the newspapers and, equally as important, when reading medieval and early modern chronicles.  

Annabel Patterson, Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles (Chicago Press: Chicago, 1994)

BOOK REVIEW

Annabel Patterson’s 1994 Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles is a seminal work that brought the study of Holinshed back into historiographical favour.  For a long time Holinshed was perceived as only worthwhile studying as the base matter for the historical plays written by William Shakespeare.  Its content as far as historians and literary scholars were concerned was of nothing of importance – simply the final who-rah for the dying chronicle tradition.  This belief of course is in struck contrast to its ecclesiastical brother, John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, which has received serious scholarly study for many decades. 

Patterson’s thesis is divided into three main sections.  The first is to me the most interesting (although I differ to Patterson in this as she sees these chapters as introductory matter for her more original research).  The first four chapters focus on the intentions behind the Holinshed enterprise, its authors and the protocols involved in a collaborative project such as this, and the revisions made to the text for the second edition.  The first chapter (entitled Intentions) notes the members of the Holinshed ‘syndicate’ both for the first edition and second but talks more about issues of censorship and cohesiveness of narrative (or lack of) between the contributors than about the men themselves.  It is interesting, for example, that each contributor seems to have dedicated their piece to rival patrons.  Patterson also makes the case for Abraham Fleming as holding the role of chief editorial control of the second edition (which differs from some other interpretations). 

The second chapter (entitled Authors) is a short biographical account of each author of the Chronicles providing little that cannot be found elsewhere – but nevertheless useful in such a book as this.  The third chapter (entitled Protocols) is much more interesting.  Here Patterson lays out some of the historiographical and contextual protocols that lie beneath the narrative that each author contributed.  Thus elements such as referencing sources, adding a variety of opinions and voices to the arguments, and the use of eye witness accounts and anecdotes are reported as the basis for studying the various narratives.  The final chapter in the first section (entitled Revision) has a more limited focus.  It is about – of course – revisions made between the first and second editions of the Chronicles but more specifically it is about William Harrison’s prologue: Description of England.  This chapter has the feeling of preliminary work with much more to be done at a later date.  The revisions made by Harrison are interesting – they say much about his changing religious views (or at least about what he felt comfortable sending to print) and about his views of the Elizabethan state in general.           

Holinshed's Chronicles - Title page
from the 1587 edition 

The second section is used by Patterson to discuss the differing themes in Holinshed’s Chronicles: ‘economics’; ‘government’; ‘religion’; and ‘law’.  Although this section represents a more traditional approach to history research it is also where Patterson sees her conclusions as offering the most important results.  These chapters are, however, not so much about these themes in of themselves but about the perceptions of them in Holinshed.  This is not so much an attempt at institutional history but rather more an intellectual history focused around Holinshed and his collaborators; and thus in turn a study of late sixteenth-century Elizabethan historical scholarship.  Indeed the contributors for the two editions of Holinshed’s Chronicles reads like a ‘who’s who’ of late Elizabethan scholarship: Raphael Holinshed, Reyner Wolfe, Richard Stainihurst, Edmund Campion, William Harrison, Henry Bynneman, Abraham Fleming, John Hooker, John Stow, Francis Thynne, and William Patten. 

In the chapter on ‘Economics’ Patterson explains how the chroniclers believed that educated citizens should be alerted to price and currency fluctuations.  They achieved this aim chiefly through inserting information about economics in fragmented pieces throughout the text.  ‘Government’ is the topic of the sixth chapter.  Here Patterson takes Sir Geoffrey Elton to task over his conceptualisation of Parliament’s role in the sixteenth century showing that study of Holinshed can produce an alternative take.  Patterson argues that Holinshed regarded Parliament as the institution on which a secular history should be focused upon.  As an ‘evolutionary’ account of government, Holinshed shows how Parliament reached its peak in the reign of Richard II and that parliamentary responsibility was not sustained thereafter.    

Chapter seven is entitled ‘Religion’ but as Patterson points out this is not about doctrine or practice but ‘the convergence of church and state in the enforcement of religious orthodoxy’.  In particular Patterson focuses on the re-evaluation of the fifteenth century Lollard movement by Hall, Bale, Foxe, and Holinshed.

The trial of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton which resulted in his acquittal much to the fury of Mary’s government is the subject of chapter eight entitled ‘Law’.  Throckmorton was accused of complicity in a Protestant conspiracy but through extensive knowledge of the law was able to tear apart his accuser’s case.  According to Patterson:

‘in Holinshed’s eyes, Thorockmorton’s trial stood for his own theory of law in relation to the ancient constitution, and Throckmorton himself became the most articulate spokesman for what “indifference” meant in the territory of law’ (Patterson, p. 155).  

The final section of Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles moves away from the generalised and onto the tightly focused subjects of censorship and the ‘surprising’ (Patterson’s word) attention of the Chronicles to the underprivileged.  First we are treated to the idea of ‘popular’ history as found in the Chronicles especially where Holinshed and his collaborators focused on the Babington Plot and the phantom pregnancy of Queen Mary.  This chapter looks at the multi-vocal voice of the ordinary people (as far as it could be reconstructed or moulded into the chronicle framework).  Thus the account of the celebration for Mary’s claimed pregnancy includes gossip between ordinary people about whether or not they believed the queen to indeed be with child. 

The next chapter looks at gender history – or more specifically the visibility of women in the Chronicles.  Patterson notes that although Holinshed included several tales about women (other than the obvious female monarchs of the period) it was largely Abraham Fleming who, in an uneven form, brought in stories concerning women.  

We then move onto the topic of censorship (a thread that has run throughout the book).  Patterson interestingly shows how Holinshed and his successors were not only aware of the issues of censorship but on how they provided a commentary on ‘freedom of information’ through the use of history.  The argument here is that Elizabeth’s government was strong on enforcement of censorship and closely aligned to that of her sister’s policy.  The authors of the second edition of Holinshed, Patterson argues, were deeply aware of this continuity and sought to make their perceptions known to their readership. 

Finally, Patterson looks at ‘reception’ – to how the chronicle was transmitted to future generations and how it was received by them.  To my mind there is much more that could be said on this subject such as the use the chronicles were put to by each generation and if elements of Holinshed’s text found their way into other formats or not.    

As yet Patterson’s work has not been superseded (although the Holinshed Project promises further reassessment and refreshment of the subject in the near future).  The digitalisation of the Chronicles by the Holinshed Project is a giant leap forward for the study of both editions and will hopefully direct the rigor of historical scholarship in the same way that the Foxe Project has managed over the last twenty years for the Acts and Monuments.  Since Patterson’s monograph was published various articles have discussed Holinshed – most of which have made some sort of reference to Patterson’s research.  However, the only further monograph to have yet appeared was published in 2010 by Igor Djordjevic entitled Holinshed’s Nation: Ideals, Memory, and Practical Policy in the Chronicles. 

The use of sources

Annabel Patterson,
Reading Holinshed's
Chronicles (1994)

Over the last month or so I have been reading Annabel Patterson's 1994 book Reading Holinshed's Chronicles.  Here is the first of several thoughts I have on the subjects that she brings up. 

In her chapter on Protocols Patterson discusses the multivocality in Holinshed in some detail.  The marginalia contained notes to sources where relevant although these were far from complete.  Holinshed himself noted that he had ‘rather chosen to shew the diversitie’ of opinion among those sources that he relied upon rather than ‘by over-ruling them…to frame them to agree to [his] liking’ (Patterson, p.35).  Patterson notes that other histories written in the sixteenth century (such as that by Hall, Grafton and More) gave lip service to referencing sources although the re-issue of Fabian’s chronicles in 1559 did contain additional marginalia that noted the original source material.  Perhaps, then the protocol of noting sources in the margins was beginning to take shape as early as the 1550s.  Certainly John Foxe, in his Acts and Monuments, added copious marginalia noting his sources although these were often far from an accurate guide to what he had actually used.  For instance, many if not all his references to the Venerable Bede derived from other sources (prominently John Bale’s recent catalogue of English writers) and not from a copy of Bede at all.  In my researches on Foxe I could find no evidence that he had ever actually read Bede’s ecclesiastical history for himself. 

What is interesting about this marginalia (beyond the fact that it helps us to identify the sources that were used to compile the accounts in Holinshed and Foxe) is the reason for their inclusion.  As stated above, Holinshed had chosen to show the diversity of opinion in his sources.  The printer who had re-issued Fabian claimed a similar reasoning as to show ‘the diversities’ of Fabian’s sources.  Foxe made similar claims.  One of Patterson’s central arguments in her Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles focuses on the role of censorship in the writing of the chronicles.  In relation to the noting of sources, Patterson recognises that these marginalia might, in part, provide protection from censorship or rebuke as the words are clearly labelled as that of another.  However, Patterson is right to argue also that there was more to it than that. 

John Foxe often added marginalia to prove that he was telling the truth.  It was rare that Foxe would change an account taken from an original document.  What he would do instead is twist the meaning of that account by taking it out of context or ignoring other information contained in the source that was less useful to his argument.  He did this under the belief that the old chroniclers had been corrupted by the antichrist and had therefore written only a partially true account themselves.  Foxe therefore saw himself as doing a service by shifting the truth from the false.  So for Foxe sources were referenced to deepen the truth-claims that he was making.  What he wrote was not his own opinion but that of past writers (Catholic monks at that) who could not entirely suppress the truth. 

In Holinshed and Foxe sources were also noted so that the author could challenge their authenticity or even (in some cases) interact with that source.  Patterson has noted the inclusion of ‘I’ in various passages of Holinshed’s chronicles where the author has argued his opinion against that of the original source (Patterson, p. 36-7).  Indeed, Patterson shows that Foxes’ Acts and Monuments were used as a counter-balance to Holinshed and his successors in the accounts of Edward VI and Mary Tudor.  Holinshed intended for a more neutral stance on religion whilst Foxe obviously focused on his protestant revision of the past.  A comparison of Holinshed and Foxe is therefore interesting as opposing histories of their own period. 

In the Acts and Monuments Foxe used a similar strategy when dealing with Polydore Vergil’s history.  Vergil was viewed by Foxe as the most recent in a line of Popish writers whose goal was to distort the truth and destroy evidence that did not support the Roman Catholic position.  Indeed Foxe and others charged Vergil with the destruction of manuscript sources (a charge that was made somewhat ridiculous as it had been a partially protestant act that had destroyed the monastic libraries and thus hundreds of old manuscripts).  In the Acts and Monuments Foxe often noted Polydore Vergil in the margins in comparison to other older sources to show how distorted history had been written by Vergil.  Any error or uncertainty in Vergil was abused to its fullest in Foxe’s revisions.    

All of this suggests that sources were noted in sixteenth century histories (especially near the end of the century) as a means to defend and strengthen truth-claims, to protect against censorship or claims of heresy and treason.   Although sources were noted to allow others to find their base material this was not the priority and only served the purpose of making it more difficult for opposing historians to attack their truth-claims.  The reason for this evolution in historiographical practice I think must derive in part from increased debate and disagreement between historians over the authenticity of past accounts (made more essential due to the opposing sides of the reformation), the increased availability of accounts made possible from the expansion of the printing press as a medium of distribution, and from humanist as opposed to scholastic methods of looking at texts.