The Constant Paradox: Constancy, Genre, and Literary Tradition in the English Civil Wars Rachel Zhang Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 Rachel Zhang All rights reserved ABSTRACT The Constant Paradox: Constancy, Innovation, and Literary Tradition in the English Civil Wars Rachel Zhang This dissertation interrogates writers’ references to “constancy” during the English civil wars, reading the debate surrounding this vexed and multifarious term as indicative of a broader examination of constancy as a concept. Through generic case studies of the emblem book, prose romance, epic, and country house poem, I show how writers used constancy’s semantic and contextual slippage to participate in key debates of the civil wars; Hester Pulter, Percy Herbert, John Milton, Thomas Carew, Mildmay Fane, and Andrew Marvell deploy constancy as they intervene in civil war polemic surrounding kingship, property ownership, liturgy, and England’s relationship with the wider world. These cases, I argue, show the interaction between writers’ reevaluation of constancy and their reevaluation of inherited literary traditions. In interrogating constancy, writers articulate and even inspire innovation in literary genre, thereby demonstrating not the destruction of literary form during the civil wars, but writers’ ability to accommodate established literary tradition to dynamic religiopolitical circumstances. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii PREFACE v CHAPTER 1 Carnival of the Animals: The Competing Constancies of 1 Lady Hester Pulter’s Emblems - Pulter and her Precedents - Heavenly Devotion and the Constancy of the Dove - Earthly Invective and the Constancy of the Elephant - Poetics of Ambivalence CHAPTER 2 49 Inconstant Constancy in Sir Percy Herbert’s Princess Cloria - Reimagining Romance’s Constancy/Inconstancy Opposition Constancy in the Arcadia Allegorizing Sidneian Constancy: Princess Cloria, Books 1-2 - Redefining Romance’s Narrative Multiplicity - Herbert’s Constant Readers? - Character Key CHAPTER 3 95 Cuckoo Constancy? Paradise Regained and the Book of Common Prayer Debates - Constancy Polemic and the Liturgical Debate of the 1640s - Constancy and Interiority in Paradise Regained - The Interiorized Hero in Milton’s 1671 Poems CHAPTER 4 139 An Enemy Within: Rewriting the Constancy/Inconstancy Dialectic in the Country House Poem - Early Country House Poems: Paradigms Aemilia Lanyer, “The Description of Cooke-ham” Ben Jonson, “To Penshurst” - Civil War Country House Poems: Revisions Thomas Carew’s “To My Friend G.N. from Wrest” Mildmay Fane’s “To Sir John Wentworth” Hester Pulter’s “Invitation into the Country” Andrew Marvell’s “Upon Appleton House” FIGURES 197 BIBLIOGRAPHY 209 i LIST OF FIGURES 1. Graph: Printed Publications with Form of “Constancy” in Title 197 2. Andreas Alciato Emblematum Liber (1531), sig. D7r. 198 3. Henry Goodere, A Mirrour of Majestie (1618), sigs. B1v-B2r. 199 4. Geoffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes (1586), 71. 200 5. Eikon Basilike (1649), frontispiece. 201 6. Sir Percy Herbert, Princess Cloria (1661), title-page. 202 7. Justus Lipsius, De Constantia (1654), frontispiece. 203 8. Johannes Kip and Leonard Knyff, Engraving, “Wrest House & Park in the County of Bedford the Seat of the Rt. Honble. Henry Earl of Kent,” ca. 1705, L33/143, Lucas Archive, Bedfordshire and Luton Archives, Bedford, UK. 204 9. Broadfield Hall, from Sir Henry Chauncy, Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire (1700). 205 10. Map of the County of Hertfordshire, from Sir Henry Chauncy, Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire (1700). 206 11. Inset of figure above. 207 12. Map of Hertfordshire, from Drayton, Poly-Olbion (1612). 208 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thinking of all the people involved in this dissertation reminds me a bit of the famous frontispiece to Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan; like Hobbes’ image of the monarch, this dissertation is composed of countless individuals, each of whom played his or her own role in the formation of the whole. Thank you, first of all, to Professors Molly Murray, Alan Stewart, and Julie Crawford: your work on my dissertation committee can truly be termed “service,” given the countless hours you spent reading always-loquacious drafts, delivering pep talks, and preparing for life beyond Columbia. Thank you also to Professor Nigel Smith, who first introduced me to the English civil wars and whose encouragement made me think I could actually explore them as a career. I am grateful as well for financial support for this project, coming from the Institute for Historical Research Pre-Dissertation Mellon Fellowship, the Harvey Fellowship, the Columbia- University of Glasgow Research Exchange, and the Columbia English archival research grant. Behind such scholarly endeavors, though, is also a personal support structure, without which this dissertation would not have happened. My husband and mother-in-law in particular have played a heroic role in supporting me behind the scenes, providing food, childcare, and emotional support when the light at the end of the tunnel seemed so very far away. I must also acknowledge my daughter Alitheia—who even as I write this sits babbling adorably in her crib; you have brought so much joy to dark days, while providing the sense of urgency which has pushed me towards completion of this project. Thank you also to my students: Your insightful, engaged discussions of everything from Homer to Toni Morrison reminded me of why I love literature so much. Moreover, your heartfelt expressions of thanks and encouragement were so appreciated in a process that is often as emotionally draining as it is intellectually. Lastly, I am thankful to God: may I always remember that my life and career are already known and in Your hands. iii To Phil: I love you more each and every day. iv Preface Discussion of the word “constancy” pervades the literature of the English civil wars. Of course, the virtue existed, and was debated, long before the seventeenth century. During the 1640s and 1650s, however, the number of printed publications with variations of “constancy” in their titles surged (see fig. 1).1 Pro-Parliament pamphlets attempted to define The Constant Man’s Character (1649); Charles I’s defenders termed him “the most constant of martyrs”; supporters of the New Model Army declared themselves “faithfull and constant to the Good Old Cause” despite the imminent Restoration.2 When Eikon Basilike (1649), the hagiographic political apology attributed to Charles I, asserted the king’s “constancy to [his] Wife, the Lawes, and Religion,” opponents shot back, terming “the late Kings constancy” an “abuse of the word.”3 On June 24, 1659, the English House of Commons asserted its claim to the virtue, voting to add the phrase “and constant” to its loyalty oath.4 The ubiquity of “constancy” during the civil wars testifies to a broad, cross-factional contest over the meaning of the word itself, with “constancy” acting as a lexical flashpoint in 1 A sampling of printed publications referencing “constancy” and “constant” in the text itself shows a similar trend. The graph does not represent these “constancy” titles relative to the overall growth in publication (documented in Corns, “Publication and Politics, 1640-1661”) although it is suggestive that the number of “constancy” titles declines after the Restoration. 2 S.W., The Constant man’s Character; An Elegie on the meekest of men, the most glorious of princes, the most constant of martyrs, Charles the I (1649); William Prynne, Remonstrance of the noble-men...who desire to shew themselves faithfull and constant to the Good Old Cause (1659). 3 Eikon Alethine (1649), 91. 4 Thereafter, Parliament declared, judges, justices of the peace, and other ministers must swear to “be true, faithful, and constant to this Commonwealth; without a single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers” (emphasis added). House of Commons Journal, 7:692-693. This oath derives from the Oath of Engagement required of all members of the Rump, which was extended to all adult males in January 1650. “January 1650: An Act For Subscribing the Engagement,” in Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 2:325-329; Worden, Rump Parliament, 2:219-220, 227. “The engagement was imposed on the nation chiefly out of panic,” Worden notes, as Parliament feared Charles II’s alliance with the Scots. Rump Parliament, 227. v debates ranging from the legitimacy of monarchy to proper ecclesiastical worship to the relationship between England and Scotland—in short, every major ideological contest of the civil wars. Many words functioned as similar lexical flashpoints, such as “innovation” and “liberty.”5 Yet the word “constancy” is unique, not only in the irony of its use—appearing with greatest frequency during the most inconstant time in English history—but also because the very presence of such debate turns the virtue into a self-defeating paradox: as various interlocutors compete for the right to define and claim “constancy” for their own political or confessional ends, they rely upon and enact the virtue’s semantic and contextual inconstancy. In 1643, for example, a subtitle of the Solemn League and Covenant adjured “all good Christians to the constant keeping of [the Covenant],” citing the virtue no less than three times in its short text. Even as the Covenant allied the Scots with the English Parliament against the king, it swore to “preserve the Rights and Priviledges