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PROOF Contents Acknowledgements ix Preface xi Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Key Themes of Elite Culture 40 Truths Ancient and Modern 40 Internationalism and its Alternatives 45 Conclusion 54 Chapter 2: The Formation of Elite Cultural Hegemony 56 The Novelty of Elite Cultural Identity and Leadership 58 The Creation of Elite Cultural Identity and Leadership 61 Chapter 3: Basic Agendas: ‘Science’, Political Culture and Religion 71 Introduction 71 Natural Philosophy or ‘Science’ 73 Political Culture 84 Religion 108 Conclusion 116 vii 99780333_613900_01_prexii.indd780333_613900_01_prexii.indd vviiii 112/17/20092/17/2009 11:13:31:13:31 PPMM PROOF viii CONTENTS Chapter 4: Media and Messages: the Arts 119 Introduction 119 Literature 131 Architecture 144 Painting 165 Music 179 Chapter 5: The End of an Age: the Mid-eighteenth Century 193 The Public Sphere 193 The Enlightenment 205 Conclusion 216 Notes 222 Bibliography 268 Index 287 9780333_613900_01_prexii.indd viii 12/17/2009 1:13:31 PM PROOF Introduction On 30 January 1649 King Charles I of England and Scotland was beheaded with one blow of an axe wielded by an executioner in a mask and heavy disguise. In the following March, the monarchy was formally abolished and a republic declared. The House of Lords was abolished as ‘useless and dangerous’. The Anglican Church and its prelates had already been abolished. They were replaced by a Presbyterian church without bishops. If ever there was an English Revolution, this was it.1 France simultaneously produced a slightly less alarming sequence of events by omitting the drastic surgery. But on both sides of the Channel the bedrock alliance of king, lords and clergy was shaken, in one case to the ground. No such calamity was to recur until the 1750s. Even then the explosion was not immediate, though signs of trouble were multiplying. The next revolu tion came in America in the 1770s, and fi nally in France in the 1780s. But between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries Europe was initially in shock and then in recovery: certainly in western Europe, stability was preserved. This intervening period is the subject of all that follows. Does history ever package itself so neatly into 100-year periods? Or is this merely a fantasy of a publishing industry which needs to chop it up in an orderly way? The reader must judge. It is argued here that in the 1650–1750 period absolute monarchy and its stately retinue of princes, prelates and aristocrats triumphed as never before or since. After the dust of the French Revolution and Napoleon had settled, dynastic monarchs and aristocrats were to retrieve some of their former power and glory. But, as lords of the earth and all they surveyed, the century between 1650 and 1750 was their last hurrah. It was the fi nal age in which the masses were dominated by the largely unchallenged rule of priests and kings. So it had been for the previous 5,000 years. 1 99780333_613900_02_intro.indd780333_613900_02_intro.indd 1 112/16/20092/16/2009 88:33:28:33:28 PPMM PROOF 2 THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN MONARCHY AND ITS ELITES A coherent epoch of roughly 100 years straddling two centuries is perhaps slightly less suspicious than alleged periods spanning exactly the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Here is an early statement of the artifi ciality of century divisions and of the pointlessness of studying them as if the lines they gouge across the historical process were anything other than arbitrary: To the art historian centuries rarely are neat and tidy units, which can be fi led away under one simple heading. This is particularly true of the 18th century. The fi rst half, even if we call it Rococo, is a continuation of the Baroque. Until about 1750 the arts stood in the service of architecture. Painters and sculptors did their most spectacular work in the decoration of churches and palaces. Their chief patrons were the church, kings, princes and nobles.2 Ettlinger’s remarks, written forty years ago, were impressively prophetic. In the 1960s, while 1648 had long been seen as the end of one period and the start of another, few had proposed the mid-eighteenth century as a signifi - cant turning point. It has now acquired its champions.3 The mid-seventeenth century has acquired even more.4 Yet, as far as the present author is aware, no history has yet been written of the 1650–1750 period in Europe, framed by the so-called General Crisis of the 1640s and 1650s at one extremity and the era of Enlightenment and Revolution at the other. Problems and Crises The Reformation of the sixteenth century had meant that monarchs could fi nd themselves professing a different religion from that of some of their nobles and clergy. This was dangerous in an age when religion was not only the key to eternal salvation but also the cement which bonded government and society. The Reformation had ruptured relations between monarchs and their traditional aristocratic and ecclesiastical allies, and in France a religiously motivated nobility nearly brought down the state. The post- Reformation wars of religion stretched from the mid-sixteenth to the mid- seventeenth century, the international Thirty Years War (1618–48) being in some respects the last and greatest of them. The potential for confl ict within ruling elites was thus fairly permanent in the early-modern period. The bal- ance of forces between them and the crown was also precarious.5 In the 1640s and 1650s many European states simultaneously subsided into varying degrees of chaos. Contemporaries noticed this disturbing coincidence 9780333_613900_02_intro.indd 2 12/16/2009 8:33:28 PM PROOF INTRODUCTION 3 of crises. In 1643 Jeremiah Whittaker announced in his sermon to the English House of Commons that ‘These days are days of shaking . and this shaking is universal: the Palatinate, Bohemia, Germania, Catalonia, Portugal, Ireland, England.’6 Though this perception was missed by subsequent historians until 1938,7 these episodes are now collectively known as the ‘General Crisis’ of the seventeenth century. In France the ruler lost his capital for a year; in Spain he lost two mighty provinces, Catalonia and Portugal; in Denmark–Norway he lost his right to make unilateral decisions; in Poland he lost the Ukraine; in England he lost his head. Charles I was supposedly the divinely appointed monarch of England, Scotland and Ireland. His beheading by his own subjects was perceived throughout Europe to fracture the seventeenth century’s political, social, religious and cultural certainties. The keystone which held in place the edifi ce of church, state and society was demolished with one blow of the axe. The shock effect was immediate. Advance copies of Eikon Basilike, a commemo- rative volume celebrating his life and martyrdom, appeared on the day of his execution and the fi rst print-run of the fi nal version was available within the week. By the close of 1649 it had appeared in 35 editions in England and eight on the Continent.8 Among other European hot spots, England was by far the most spectacular specimen of a world turned upside down. Once King Charles had been defeated in 1646 and the breakdown of press censorship had become total, blueprints had multiplied for establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth. Their creators regarded England as God’s appointed location for the reign of King Jesus. A miscellany of self-appointed messiahs, millenarian fantasists, embryonic democrats, primitive communists and gentle anarchists jostled to instal their personal version of paradise. The values of the old hierarchical society were rejected and anything seemed pos- sible.9 The climax, the public execution of a divinely appointed monarch, was for early-modern Europe the equivalent of the destruction of New York’s Twin Towers in 2001. What had happened to wreck relations between monarchs and their subjects in so calamitous a manner? The loss of religious unity and subsequent religious wars were the most obvious cause. The restoration of religious con- sensus was therefore a high priority of most rulers during the 1650–1750 period. As for the revolts of the 1640s and 1650s, common to most of them was a provocative tax hike. This was targeted by rulers (bankrupted in the Thirty Years War) against the customary rights of nobles and provinces – and without the consent of their assemblies.10 There was also a tendency, in the French monarchy especially, for royal offi cials picked from lower social groups to push aside established governing classes in order to bypass 99780333_613900_02_intro.indd780333_613900_02_intro.indd 3 112/16/20092/16/2009 88:33:29:33:29 PPMM PROOF 4 THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN MONARCHY AND ITS ELITES obstruction to royal initiatives. The opinions of people who mattered were ignored. Relations between monarchs and their elites therefore required fi xing. Defi nitions ‘Elites’ is a useful word for historians. The Who’s Who list of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they were relied on by monarchs to manage their government, lead their armies and police their peasantry. Yet their study has only become academically respectable in the last thirty years. Before that, Marxist concerns were dominant. As recently as 1980 a historian of aristocratic politics was informed by a professor of Edinburgh University that the material condition of the masses was the only thing that mattered.11 Elites can be defi ned as substantial possessors of land and the unique wealth, power and status which it conferred.12 Its unique allure is easy to explain. First, land in pre-industrial society was the most permanent of economic assets. Most elites recovered in the 1650–1750 period from preced- ing economic decline, and consolidated their estates on an unparalleled scale.

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