Urban Patronage in Early Modern England: Corporate Boroughs, the Landed Elite, and The Crown, 1580-1640 (review)

Urban Patronage in Early Modern England: Corporate Boroughs, the Landed Elite, and the Crown, 1580-1640. By Catherine F. Patterson (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 327 pp. $60

The instinct for social and political order in early modern Europe is visible at every turn. For all the disruptions of the Reformation, overseas discovery, and the many other unsettling forces of the time, the determination to maintain hierarchy and peace was vigorous and persistent, and in the long run, it almost always triumphed over the forces of disorder. Unpopular though his formulations may have been, Thomas Hobbes clearly embodied the aspirations of his age.

What Patterson seeks to show, in this broadly researched and closely argued book, is how the quest for order dominated local politics, and, in particular, the politics of medium-sized English towns. Faced with a multitude of threats to their authority, their prosperity, and their harmony--from ecclesiastical authorities, ambitious and greedy citizens and lords, exactions by the central government, religious differences, and military needs, not to mention open assaults that ranged from legal suits to piracy--municipal fathers throughout England mounted a steady and effective defence.

In the main, therefore, Patterson's account is dominated by the protective measures taken by urban elites: their long-running rearguard actions and their never-ending search for useful allies. Inevitably, the relationship of the towns with powerful patrons becomes central to her story. To attract the right connection, gifts were given, influence was accepted, and honors and offices were bestowed. Indeed, the office of High Steward of the Corporation, a largely honorific position that previously had not been widely used, spread rapidly in this period precisely because of its appeal to patrons.

Yet this was no one-way street. A leitmotiv of the book is embodied in a quotation from William Hunt: "The whole question of patronage and influence has often been treated much too simplistically, as if the only two alternatives . . . were defiance or servility . . . influence in seventeenth-century politics admitted of subtle gradations" (85). As Patterson emphasizes, it was also in the magnate's interest to secure a town's loyalty, because with this connection came respect, prestige, influence, offices, and parliamentary seats. It was essential, however, that the patron be able to protect his clients and to have their interests supported by the ultimate power, the royal court. Once this crucial power was lost--as happened to the Earl of Huntingdon in the reign of Charles I--a town felt free to look elsewhere.

Behind all the disputes and the fluctuations in fortune lay the constant quest for order and stability. For the patron-client relationship not only provided security from outside intervention, but also made possible the mediation of quarrels (and there were many) within the town. The system was designed to keep authority unchallenged and urban peace untroubled, and it linked the local with the national in a complex set of interlocking mechanisms to make sure that the entire realm enjoyed "good" government.

Urban Patronage in Early Modern England is well produced, though one wishes that Stanford University Press offered readers easier and more user-friendly access to footnotes, a shortcoming that is especially unfortunate in a book like this one, which makes its case with a wealth of detail. Occasionally, too, Patterson's argument, which is based on a close reading of a limited number of exemplary episodes, can become repetitive, but, cumulatively, this approach reveals an urban elite of growing confidence and canny political skills.

Patterson has added an important chapter to the growing literature on patronage and its ramifications in the early modern period. Within this subject, her predilection is to resist generalization and to emphasize "complex reality" at every turn (for example, 139). If, at times, one wishes that she had been a little more willing to use broad strokes, or...