APPENDIX THE SURFEIT OF PEACE AND PLENTY We have already spoken in these pages of the idea that peace and prosperity tend to produce rebellion.1 The epistolary essayist James Howell states this idea in a general sense, though perhaps the insubordi­ nation he has in mind stops short of outright rebellion: The sword is the surest sway over all people who ought to be cudgelled rather than cajoled to obedience, if upon a glut of plenty and peace they should forget it.... Riches and long rest makes them [the common people] insolent and wanton.2 Clement Walker expresses a particularly full and elaborate form of the idea and applies it to the English Civil War in his The Mysterie of the Two Ivnto's (1647), later reprinted as part of his The Compleat History of Independency (1661): Before I conclude, let me give you the pedigree of our Miseries, and of their Remedies. A long Peace begat Plenty, Plenty begat Pride, and her Sister Riot, Pride begat Ambition, Ambition begat Faction, Faction begat Civil War: And (if our evils be not incurable, if we be not fallen in id temporis quo nec vitia nostra, nec eorum remedia terre possumus) our War will beget Poverty, Poverty Humility, Humility Peace again, Sic rerum revertentibus vicibus annulus vertitur Politic us. The declining spoak of the wheel will rise again. But we are not yet sufficiently humbled, ...3 1 See above pp. 19 (where an important passage from the Britania Triumphalis is quoted), 28, 54, 88, 200-201, 210, 215. For the idea that peace and prosperity result in foreign or domestic war, see G. R. Waggoner, "An Elizabethan Attitude toward Peace and War," Philological Quarterly, 33 (1954), 20-33; Paul A. Jorgensen, Shakespeare's Military World (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1956), pp. 192-200, and Sir George Clark, War and Society in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Eng., Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1958), chapter 6. 2 James Howell, Familiar Letters or Epistolae Ho-Elianae, 3 vols. (London, J. M. Dent and Co., 1903), 111,156 (letter XLVII). 3 Clement Walker, "The Mysterie of the two Juntoes, Presbyterian and Indepen­ dent, with some Additions," p. 17, in his The Compleat History of Independency 238 APPENDIX The idea is again applied to the English Civil War by the author of The Civil Warres of Great Britain and Ireland (1661), perhaps John Davies: never were Nations (had they known and been sensible of it) so happy in two succeeding Kings (James and Charles of glorious memory) as these were, blessed under their Governments, with near Forty Years of a continued Peace; which in the end filled them with so great Plenty and Riches, that grown proud, they fell into such a Surfeit, that nothing but a violent Bleeding could effect a cure.4 Sir Winston Churchill, the author of Divi Britannici (1675), expresses the same idea except that he speaks in terms of peace alone rather than peace and plenty: we may rather call him [Charles I] unfortunate then unhappy, since the in­ felicity of his, must be rather imputed to that of his Predecessors Govern­ ment, who finding that the People had taken a surfeit of his long Peace, indeavoured, when it was too late, to divert the Distemper he foresaw coming on; but only moving, and not removing the peccant humour that was then predominant, he dispers'd the Malignity into all parts of the Body Politick, and so corrupted the whole Mass of Blood, that that which at first seem'd to be only an ordinary Itch of Reformation, turn'd at last to the Leprosy of Rebellion, the Contagion whereof spread it self in this Planet-strook Kings Reign thorow all his Dominions.5 As the last two quotations suggest, the idea of the corrupting effects of peace and plenty as it existed in the seventeenth century had medical overtones. In order not to place an over heavy emphasis on its medical associations, we should note that the historians of this period had a fond­ ness for medical metaphors and showed it in dealing with other matters as well: thus (to take examples independent of the idea under consider­ ation) Hacket speaks of "the Running Gout of Factions," and another writer, perhaps John Davies, complains that in the Civil War the English (London, 1661). A passage describing a similar cycle based on peace, plenty, and pride appears in an anonymous play, Andronicus: a Tragedy (London, 1661), p. 38, and is quoted in James O. Wood, "Thomas Fuller's Oxford Interlude," HLQ, 17 (1953-1954),207. Wood argues in this article that Thomas Fuller was the author of the play. In Fuller's Church History the idea of the surfeit of peace and plenty barely appears, but he does mention that England began in the reign of Henry III "to surfeit of more than thirty years' peace and plenty." Fuller, Church History, II, 183. Possibly Fuller was hinting at the outcome of a similar period of peace and plenty in his own century. The cycle of which Walker and the'tragedy-writer speak is discussed in Jorgensen, Shakespeare's Military World, pp. 192-200, and in Clark, War and Societ'y, chapter 6, though these writers are not cited there. 4 Davies, Civil Warres, proem, sig. C. Manley, History of the Rebellions, p, 5, adopts or plagiarizes the last fifteen words of this quotation. 5 Churchill, Divi Britannici, p. 342. APPENDIX 239 in fear of a disease (instead of remedy) had ... taken so violent a Purge, as in the end proved their poison, and wrought so strongly upon them, that (not being sensible before they could not remedy it) they were brought over to the door of Death, to the jawes and brink of Destruction and Ruine; which they had assuredly fell into, had not God by his immediate hand helped them out.6 The idea under consideration sometimes takes the form of paralleling the sequence of corrupted satiety and upheaval in the people of a peaceful and prosperous state with the sequence of surfeit and the illness it intro­ duces in the individual. This parallel, of course, is based on the standard comparison of the state to the human body, but probably is usually in­ tended for illustration and vigor of expression rather than as a declaration that the writer is basing himself on a severely thought out comparison between the state and the human body and owes much more to reflections on society than to reflections on medicine. As the basic idea we have been considering remains the same in most cases, whether or not a specifically medical parallel is made and whether or not the word "surfeit" is actually used, we may, for the sake of convenience, constantly refer to the idea of the rebellious consequences of peace and plenty as the idea of the surfeit of peace and plenty. This term has already been used in the preceding chapters of this study. Connected with the idea of the surfeit of peace and plenty or, perhaps, in some cases simply a form of it, was the idea that the war was a divine punishment for the abuse of peace and plenty. Clarendon perhaps touch­ ed on this latter idea when he saw the avenging hand of God working through the process of the surfeit of peace and plenty. Whitelocke reports himself as saying in a speech he made in the House of Commons in the summer of 1642: Butt Sr, I looke uppon another beginning of our Ciuill warre, God blessed us with a long and flourishing peace, & we turned his grace into wantonness, our peace would not satisfy us without Luxury, nor our plenty without debauchery, instead of sobriety & thankfullnes for our mercyes, we prouoked the giuer of them by our sinnes & wickednes to punish us (as we may feare) by a Ciuill warre to make us executioners of diuine Vengeance uppon our selues.7 Perrinchief says that when Charles I succeeded his father, "He seemed not so much to ascend a Throne, as enter upon a Theatre, to wrestle with all the difficulties of a corrupted State; whose long Peace had softned 6 Hacket, SR, Part 1,78; Davies, Civil Warres, preface, sig. [A3]. 7 Whitelocke, "Annals," II (i.e., BM Add. MS 37343), f. 251 v, or Whitelocke, Memorials (London, 1732), p. 60. 240 APPENDIX almost all the Nobless into Court-pleasures, and made the Commons insolent by a great Plenty." But retribution fell upon the English, who were "wanton in Plenty." For God, "provoked by our sins, which had profaned his Mercies, and abused the Peace and Plenty he gave us, would chastise us by the scourge of Civil War, the corrective of too much feli­ city." 8 In the following quotation Gumble emphasizes that an event leading up to the English rebellion was a punishment for the people's ingratitude for the blessings of peace and plenty. Speaking of the Second Bishops' War, he says that this ill managed War proceeded not only from the treachery of men, but certainly from the hand of God, to punish these Nations for their sins, who did not know how to prize their Peace and Plenty with Thankfulness to God, and Obedience to their King: for murmuring and discontent under Gods Mercies procures the greatest Judgments.9 The idea of the surfeit of peace and plenty has a number of other sig­ nificant connections with the thought of the time. It is one aspect of the suspicion with which contemporaries sometimes regarded peace. Peace was, of course, recognised as being, in itself, a good thing, but there was a feeling that if not properly tempered it could prove dangerous.