Swann, Adam (2014) 'Nature’s coyn must not be hoorded': Milton and the economics of salvation, 1634-1674. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4823/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] ‘Nature’s coyn must not be hoorded’: Milton and the Economics of Salvation, 1634-1674 Adam Swann Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. in English Literature School of Critical Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow January 2014 2 Abstract Milton’s use of economic tropes has attracted very little critical attention, and the connections between economics and theology in his thought have not yet been explored. Blair Hoxby’s Mammon’s Music: Literature and Economics in the Age of Milton (2002) focuses on the influence of economic ideas on Milton’s political thought, arguing that the poet persistently associates trade monopolies with autocratic abuses of monarchical power. David Hawkes places Milton’s lifelong professional usury at the centre of his 2009 biography, John Milton: A Hero of Our Time, and his 2011 essay, ‘Milton and Usury,’ fruitfully reads key passages from Paradise Lost in relation to contemporary tracts on usury. Hoxby and Hawkes have astutely highlighted the relationship between economics and Milton’s thought, but neither scholar has pursued these connections into Milton’s theology. Economic ideas lie at the very heart of Milton’s soteriology, and my thesis offers a historicised investigation of Milton’s corpus, demonstrating that the tropes of contemporary economic thought were crucial to his understanding of sin and, more importantly, salvation. Chapter 1 traces the roots of this economic soteriology to the economic and theological treatises of the 1620s and early 1630s, which argued that money must be not stockpiled but circulated, and that salvation was a transaction between man and God. Chapter 2 considers how Ben Jonson and George Herbert, whose work Milton was familiar with in his youth, used The Staple of Newes (1626) and The Temple (1633) to respond to contemporary developments in economic and theological thought. Chapter 3 reads Milton’s early works as studies of hoarding and consumption, traced through the debate over sexual stockpiling in Comus (1634), the sinfulness of a hoarding nation in the History of Moscovia (early 1640s), and the clergy torn between their compulsions to covet and consume in Of Reformation (1641). Chapter 4 finds in Gerrard Winstanley’s Fire in the Bush (1650) an explicitly economic understanding of the Fall, and demonstrates how Milton’s political and religious writings of the 1650s betray an anxiety that the English cannot govern their economic appetites and, therefore, themselves. Chapter 5 examines how Milton uses tropes of investment, profit, loss, and repayment in the Christian Doctrine and Paradise Lost (1667) to represent redemption as a transaction between Jesus and God on man’s behalf. Chapter 6 reads the History of Britain (1670) as an indictment of isolationist economic policies, with Milton demonstrating that free interactions between peoples facilitate national refinement, and thus strangers become saviours. 3 Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 4 A Note on Editions 5 Introduction 7 Chapter 1 – ‘The husbandman in the seed-time … casteth away 23 much good corn into the ground’: Early Seventeenth- Century Economic and Theological Thought Chapter 2 – ‘Is the ballance thine?’: Jonson, Herbert, and the 61 Capitulation to Commodification Chapter 3 – ‘Golden Chalices and wooden Preists’: The Service 95 of God and Mammon Chapter 4 – ‘Nothing now stands in the way of Englishmen, but 128 inward covetousness’: Winstanley, Milton, and Self-Government in the 1650s Chapter 5 – ‘Account mee man’: The Price of Redemption in 145 the Christian Doctrine and Paradise Lost Chapter 6 – ‘As Wine and Oyl are Imported to us from abroad: 166 so must ripe Understanding, and many civil Vertues’: The Fallen State in the History of Britain Conclusion 193 Bibliography 195 4 Acknowledgements As this thesis was started at one university and finished at another, I must begin by thanking two pairs of supervisors. The early stages of my research were made less daunting by Jonathan Sawday and Alison Thorne at Strathclyde University, whose judicious nudges helped me recognise which avenues were worth pursuing and which were not. Willy Maley and Donald Mackenzie at Glasgow University helped me along the cragged and steep path towards completion, and I am deeply grateful for both their enthusiasm when my own was waning and their patience when my progress was slow. I am thankful to Willy for inviting me to collaborate with him on two other essays, which I hope will be the first of many. It was also a pleasure to teach alongside Donald in the ‘Writing the English Revolution’ seminars, and running through Milton’s corpus during this module proved very useful as my submission deadline approached. I am beholden to my examiners, Rob Maslen and Gordon Campbell, whose meticulous comments saved me from numerous infelicities; any remaining errors are my own. Preliminary portions of this thesis were presented at conferences and seminars in Glasgow, Birmingham, London, Boston, Toronto, and Oxford, and I am obliged to the participants for their insightful comments and suggestions. The staff at the Strathclyde and Glasgow University Libraries were immensely helpful, and I am especially grateful to the indefatigable interlibrary loans teams for tracking down a number of obscure requests. I am also indebted – both literally and figuratively – to my family, without whose unwavering support I could not have completed this thesis. While Raisin and Simon Johnson will never understand that they have been mentioned here, I am grateful for their knowing when to chew my notes and when to just fall asleep in my lap. Most of all, I would like to thank Anikó, who never once complained about all the late nights I spent with Milton instead of her. This thesis is dedicated to her, with love. 5 A Note on Editions Milton’s prose works are quoted from Complete Prose Works, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953-82), and cited parenthetically as CPW by volume and page number. Paradise Lost is quoted from Paradise Lost, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (London: Wiley- Blackwell, 2007), and cited parenthetically as PL by book and line number. Milton’s English poetry and Comus are quoted from Complete Shorter Poems, ed. Stella P. Revard (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), and cited parenthetically by title and line number. Milton’s Latin poetry is quoted from John Milton, Milton’s Latin Poems, trans. David R. Slavitt (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), and cited parenthetically by title and line number. Herbert’s poetry is quoted from The Temple: A Diplomatic Edition of the Bodleian Manuscript (Tanner 307), ed. Mario A. Di Cesare (Binghamton, NY: Renaissance English Text Society, 1995), and cited parenthetically by title and line number. Jonson’s Staple of Newes is quoted from Works, ed. C. H. Herford, Percy Simpson, and Evelyn Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), and cited parenthetically by act, scene, and line number. Winstanley’s works are quoted from Complete Works, ed. Thomas N. Corns, Ann Hughes, and David Loewenstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), and cited parenthetically as WCW by volume and page number. All biblical quotes, unless otherwise noted, are from the Authorised Version. Where possible, I have quoted primary texts from editions which preserve original spelling and punctuation, although for ease of transcription and reading I have silently modernised i/j, v/u, and ſ/s, and expanded superscript contractions. 6 We must draw out the bill of our receipts and expences. The bills of receipt are framed thus: we must call to remembrance what graces, blessings, and gifts we have received of God, whether temporall or spirituall … our bills of expences … are nothing els, but large considerations of our owne sinnes … Tradesmen for their temporal estates, keepe in their shoppes bookes of receipts and expences: shall not we then much more doe the like for our spirituall estates? – William Perkins, A Treatise of the Vocations, or, Callings of Men (1603, 131) 7 Introduction In the title of his 2004 essay, Paul Harrison asked ‘What Can We Learn for Today from 300-Year-Old Writings about Stock Markets?’ In a country which is lurching from one economic crisis to the next, where universities are run by economists and the government is rife with enough cronyism and financial mismanagement to make a Stuart monarch envious, the question is timely indeed.1 The dire financial situation in Europe continues to provide a ready source of political capital for right-wing parties, and UKIP’s gains in the 2013 English local elections suggest that isolationist rhetoric is resonating with voters.2 The idea that England’s interests must be protected was a recurrent trope of seventeenth- century political and economic discourse, and ailing economies have recently been buttressed with protectionist policies which would not have been out of place in the early modern period.3 The other end of the political spectrum is also finding inspiration in the seventeenth century. To mark both the first anniversary of the Occupy camp in St.