Elizabethan men of business reconsidered

Elizabethan m e n of business reconsidered When Professor Patrick Collinson delivered the Neale Memorial Lecture in December 1987, he discussed the 'concept and category' of men of business in the Elizabethan parliaments. As he pointed out, the term was not contemporary Tudor usage, but appropriated from a later period of English history.1 Therefore, when it was employed to describe m e n who assisted Privy Councillors in the advancement of their parliamentary interests and designs, it was an historians' importation adapted to the Elizabethan parliamentary context. It is an artificial construct and, as such, leaves questions concerning its validity and utility, and the definition of those to be included in the category, open to debate. When the term 'men of business' was first used in the 1980s, it identified and encompassed a number of C o m m o n s members who were loyalists and who were connected with Privy Councillors as clients, kin, friends or by professional affinity. Although they often served other interests too, they were willing to promote conciliar business, even when this was at variance with the Queen's wishes. In the Elizabethan political spectrum they were lesser men, secondary politicians who did not figure prominently in royal service and so could not be identified as official spokesmen. As 'private' men they retained an independent persona in the House. The men of business, however, were not all cast from the same mould. There was a wide, if not infinite, variety of skill, priority and temperament among them. Some were more circumspect than others but, sooner or later, a number of them stepped over the mark and, in the words of Sir Christopher Hatton and Professor Collinson, they became 'froward': indiscretion ousted circumspection. Usually royal retribution followed in the form of public disgrace, lack of preferment or even prison.2 1 P. Collinson, 'Puritans, Men of Business and Elizabethan Parliaments', Pariiamentary History 7.2 (1988), p. 191. 2 M. A. R. Graves, "The Management of the Elizabethan House of Commons: The Council's "Men-of-Business"', Parliamentary History 2 (1983), 8-^21; idem, 'Managing Elizabethan Parliaments', in The Parliaments of Elizabethan England, ed. D. M. Dean and N. L. Jones, Oxford, 1990, pp. 50-51, 55-59; idem, 'The Common Lawyers and the Privy Council's Parliamentary Men-of-Business, 15841601 ', Pariiamentary History 8.2 (1989), pp. 189-90. P A R E R G O N ns 14.1 (July 1996) 112 M. A. R.Graves Such were the commonplace characteristics of the m e n of business in the early writings on the subject. They were studied in the context of the socalled revisionist historians' institutional approach, which focused on the functions of parliament, especially legislation. The revisionists were highly critical of Sir John Neale's image of parliaments as being characterised by frequent conflict and dominated by an assertive,risingHouse of Commons. Their researches caused them to conclude that, in contrast, Elizabeth's assemblies were optimistic and productive occasions; and, furthermore, that they were co-operative exercises, in which Privy Councillors were aided in the C o m m o n s by a support network, the men of business. They worked to fulfil royal needs, conciliar objectives and at least some governing class aspirations. Inherent in this reassessment, however, was that one myth, that of rising conflict, was in danger of being replaced by another, that of harmony, sweetness and tight. Although there was widespread acceptance of the existence and activity of parliamentary men of business, it was accompanied by criticism of the significance which revisionism attached to them, the political implications and consequences of their activities, and even the characteristics which qualified a man for inclusion in the category. One central concern expressed by Professor Collinson was the tendency of revisionism to understate, even deny, parliamentary politics. In particular he was concerned by the dismissal, expressed most forcefully by Sir Geoffrey Elton, of any kind of organised Puritan political presence in the Elizabethan Commons. And he challenged 'the concept and argument of serviceable men of business, with which Neale's critics have proposed to replace the category of Puritan troublemakers'. As Professor Collinson pointed out, men of business could...