David Hume: Historical Thinker, Historical Writer

Chapter 6: Medieval Kingship and the Making of Modern Civility: Hume’s Assessment of Governance in the History of England

Six medieval kingship and the making of modern civility: hume’s assessment of governance in the history of england Jeffrey M. Suderman David Hume paused in the middle of his second medieval volume, the last of The History of England to be published, to consider the reign of one of England’s most glorious monarchs, declaring: “There is not a reign among those of the ancient English monarchs, which deserves more to be studied than that of Edward III” (H 2:283). Such an endorsement could have been made by any of a multitude of admiring chroniclers since the time of Froissart. But Hume was no antiquarian. He was a moral philosopher, a political essayist, and a philosophical historian who had by the end of the 1750s attracted a large and admiring popular audience. One suspects that he did not intend to offer up Edward’s reign merely as an uncomplicated model of worthy kingship. And indeed Hume was quick to add: “Yet on the whole it appears, that the government , at best, was only a barbarous monarchy” (H 2:284). Hume seemed to suggest that although Edward III was a great king according to an antiquated standard of governance, he fell short of being a monarch worthy of the admiration of an enlightened audience. Nevertheless, there were a handful of rulers from these same barbarous ages who deserved to be called great kings, even by an enlightened historian. How did Hume distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving? The modern reader, already inclined to ignore Hume’s History in favor of his more overtly philosophical works, is tempted to pass lightly over the assessments of England’s kings scattered throughout the medieval volumes. Hume himself had written, in an earlier volume on the Tudor period, “Whoever carries his anxious researches into preceding periods is moved by a David Hume 122 curiosity, liberal indeed and commendable; not by any necessity for acquiring knowledge of public affairs, or the arts of civil government” (H 3:82). The medieval volumes were sequels of a kind, written to capitalize on the growing success of the Stuart and Tudor histories, and aimed less at a scholarly than at a popular audience.1 One wonders if Hume’s heart was really in these final volumes. Their organization is familiar, even old-fashioned, as if the iconoclastic philosopher could find no more innovative structure than an annalistic, reign-by-reign narrative. They were researched and written quickly relative to their bulk and to the breadth of the period covered. By the time he reached the fifteenth century, Hume could not help betraying obvious distaste, even revulsion , for the barbarity and lawlessness of European society and government before the modern age. Nevertheless, the modern reader should not forget that the two medieval volumes, appearing at the end of 1761, constituted the last major production of his literary career. His political and economic essays were almost all behind him, and there and in the earlier volumes of the History Hume had largely vented his spleen against the historical prejudices of Whigs and Tories. He had perfected his talent for character analysis by fashioning, in the style of his beloved Plutarch, moral and political assessments of nearly all of England’s rulers. In a real sense, then, the medieval volumes represent Hume’s most seasoned judgments on the nature of executive government. This matters because Hume had said remarkably little in his formal political essays about the qualities and character of a governor. But here in the medieval volumes we find ample reflections on the subject, covering the widest spectrum of ruling personalities from the very best to the very worst. Moreover, Hume’s assessment of medieval kingship throws light on a theme very much at the heart of Hume’s entire body of work, that of civility. The origins and development of modern civility is perhaps a theme less obvious than that of liberty, on which a number of modern scholars have focused their attention.2 But Hume’s conception of liberty, unlike that of his supposed Whiggish nemeses, was merely one aspect of a wide-ranging account of the origins of civility, perhaps the greatest of Hume’s goods. Hume consistently argued that there can be no true liberty without the rule of law, no law without the strict enforcement of equality before the law, and no such order without strong executive governance.3 If such civility (which included liberty) existed in fact in Hume’s enlightened...