The Power of Gifts: Gift-Exchange in Early Modern England by Felicity Heal (review)

Felicity Heal’s rich and illuminating book is, essentially, a study of power dynamics and social relationships in England at a time when these modes of human interaction were changing significantly, owing to the cultural upheavals of the Renaissance, Reformation, and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. This mammoth task is made possible because Heal focuses on one social transaction: the process of gift-exchange. This immensely complex topic reveals economic, political, and cultural values of early modern Englishmen and -women through a forensic examination of the rituals around tokens and reciprocal giving and the language used to describe it. Using theories of gift giving and receiving developed in anthropology, Heal unpacks literary works, contemporary correspondence, morality tracts, commonplace books, ledgers of institutions and households—to name just a few of her sources—in order to uncover the important place of gifts in early modern English society.

Focusing on moveable gifts (so, not especially concerned with property or bequests), including money, the first section of the book chronicles behaviors, expectations, performance, and obligations associated with particular gifts, occasions, and seasons. Heal’s first chapter answers the question “What is a gift?” by outlining key anthropological assessments in the last half-century and then turning to early modern perceptions of gifts. She mines contemporary print literature, including proverbs, Erasmus’ Adages, classical authors in translation such as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca, and Tudor-era philosophical and moral tracts, to analyze contemporary gift-giving values. Key concerns were the circulation of benefits, unequal exchange, and the fears about the fuzzy line between gifts and bribes, as well as the importance of the spirit in which a gift was given. Chapter two examines “gifts small and great,” showing that the language and gesture of giving are what gave material gifts their meaning. Chapter three covers gifting occasions, such as visits, certain points in the life cycle (christenings and marriage), and seasons (specifically the New Year).

The second section of the book moves from issues of materials and occasions of gifts to their significance, studying Tudor-Stuart political culture through the lens of gift-exchange. The book is at its best here, as Heal’s expertise shines. Chapter four shows how royal giving and receiving were inextricably linked to gestures of majesty, most obvious at court at New Year and on progress. Chapter five shows that the Stuarts, like the Tudors, understood gifts as integral to open displays of loyalty, but there was continuity as well as change in this process; James did not care for the formalized exchanges that characterized the Elizabethan New Year at court, and he preferred “generosity governed by choice rather than custom” (132). From transactions between royals and their subjects, the book turns to giving and receiving among monarchs; chapter six examines the role of gifts in rituals of diplomacy, showing that though individual monarchs might have differing foreign policies and budgets (and their gift giving varied accordingly), there was always “great value attached to symbolic signals of royal attitudes ... and gifts were ... important signifiers of political interests” (178). Chapter seven analyzes “bribes and benefits,” looking at gifts’ place in the complicated patronage system in English politics (ecclesiastical or secular), which often led to accusations of political, clerical, or legal corruption.

There is much of value to take away from this book. Heal’s insights concerning the close relationship between market transactions (built as they were on moral creditability) and gifts are compelling, as is her reassessment of Thomas Cromwell’s susceptibility to bribes. Beyond historical revelations, readers will recognize much of their own society in this book about the past. The stress and obligation of our Christmas season was felt by those in the Tudor-Stuart era with regard to New Year’s gifts, for instance, but Heal’s note about the blessing/curse dichotomy, that “the spiritual and moral rewards of generosity, and the enhancement of friendship and loyalty that derive from giving, are...