The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century; A reissue with a retrospect (review)

164 Reviews Pocock, J.G.A., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century: A reissue with a retrospect, Cambridge, C U P . , 1987; pp.xv, 402; paperback, R.RP. A U S $36.00. Pocock's Ancient Constitution was first published in 1957. It was a semind study which has since become one of the more enduring works in the shifting fashions of early m o d e m studies. Consequently its detdls will need no rehearsing here. In broad outline, the book concerns the ways in which men (largely politicians and lawyers) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England engaged with their past and with images of it, creating potent if highly comestible politicd mythologies of the English medievd and Anglo Saxon past; and, dbeit incidentdly to begin with, developed an increased sense of historicity much as we recognise it. The second edition of the book is particularly welcome as it is prefaced by a long introductoryretrospectwhich is an indication of where Pocock's work has gone since 1957 and is an exercise in quaUfied self criticism and self-defence. In particdar Pocock has been prepared to concede the somewhat 'whiggish' nature of the sections on developing historicd awareness; that he greatly exaggerated the insular nature of the 'English' common law mind; that millenarian and eschatdogicd discourse had been underestimated; and that the shift from a past centred idiom of political discourse to one of naturalrightswas depicted as too abrupt and clear cut (especiaUy with respect to LeveUer writings of the 1640s). Underlying this is a partid recantation of the belief that natural rights and customary idioms of political discourse were really competing dternatives. More needs to be sdd on this issue, for it is clear that contemporaries used them as distinguishable but complementary rhetorics rather than as antitheticd 'languages' (dthough 'language' is very much Pocock's favoured expression). This point has important consequences for the question of just how w e should characterise past politicd argument Perhaps the most pleasing aspect of the new edition is the sense of continuing inteUectud vitdity. It is a tour through many of the recent debates about politicd intellectud life of Early M o d e m England, taking as its starting point a thirty year old book, and as its terminus, if it redly has one, the work of the on-going Folger Center for the History of British Politicd Thought and the unpublished Sydney Ph.D. thesis of Debbie Stephan. Cond Condren School of PoUticd Science University of N e w South W d e s ...