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Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30.2 (2000) 275-308



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Rastell's Pastyme of People:
Monarchy and the Law in Early Modern Historiography

Peter C. Herman *

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QUEST. What law is there to take upp Armes against the prince in Case hee breakes his Covenant?

ANSWER. Though there bee no written law for it yet there is Custome which is the best Law of the Kingdome; for in England they have allwayes done it.

--Selden, Table Talk

The prevailing view among literary critics and historians is that early modern historiographers wrote conservative texts, monarchist in orientation, which unreflectively supported the legitimating myths of the Tudor dynasty. 1 Even though Annabel Patterson overturned this model in Reading Holinshed's "Chronicles" by providing copious evidence for reading the Chronicles as multivocal, ideologically capacious, and sympathetic to "instances of active social protest," subsequent scholarship has, it seems, decided to remain unconvinced. 2 In Engendering a Nation, Jean Howard and Phyllis Rackin still maintain that early modern historiographers provided "a traditional rationale for newly acquired power and privilege. Invoking the legendary names of Brute and Arthur, Tudor historians produced fables of ancient descent and providential purpose to validate a new dynasty's claim to the English throne." 3 And in Historiography and Ideology in Stuart Drama, Ivo Kamps continues in this vein, arguing that early modern historiography is essentially "orthodox" and that it never "called for radical changes in the monarchy." 4

This refusal to accept Patterson's conclusions about historiography in general and the Chronicles in particular certainly demonstrates how at times, not even overwhelming evidence can displace a deeply entrenched [End Page 275] critical paradigm that provides a highly seductive straw argument. An additional reason, however, for the resistance to Patterson's revisionary thesis might be her sense that contestatory historiography begins with the Chronicles, that this massive volume constitutes the exception rather than the rule. 5 One can find, however, similar positions to the ones Patterson rightly finds constitutive of Holinshed's Chronicles in much earlier texts, as in John Rastell's important but neglected The Pastyme of People (1529). 6 Like Thomas More's History of King Richard III (ca. 1515) and anticipating Holinshed's Chronicles, Rastell uses history as a vehicle for dissent, in particular to register his distaste for the domestic results of Henry VIII's French wars. Rastell's Pastyme demonstrates that English historical writing did not always construct "its readers as hereditary subjects of the English kings whose narrative of dynastic succession it recounts." Nor did it always endorse the proposition that "[t]o be English is to be a subject of the English king." 7 Quite the opposite, for Rastell's history is more about the customary limits on monarchical power and what happens when monarchs overstep the bounds set for them by English common law.

It is possible that the source for Rastell's ideological independence lies in his formative years in Coventry, as A. W. Reed suggests. 8 Following the family tradition (his father and grandfather were lawyers), Rastell attended the Middle Temple in London, and then returned home to Coventry to practice, where he succeeded his father as coroner. Rastell's immersion in local affairs is significant, for Coventry was a town in serious economic trouble due to the combined effects of the enclosure movement and the evaporation of the town's textile industry. The rapidly deteriorating economic decline led to an exodus of people seeking better opportunities elsewhere, including John Rastell. 9 But before he left, Rastell would have been fully exposed to the class and social tensions resulting from economic dislocation. The town had a history of enclosure riots (1421, ca. 1430, 1469, 1473, 1495, and 1509), and these led to "a general resentment under a sense of oppression," as Reed puts it. 10 Yet while Coventry provided Rastell with many examples of exploitation, it also provided instances of wealthier citizens taking the side of the less fortunate, and Rastell seems to have taken these role models to heart...

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