BOOKS
R. H. Tawney
By CHRISTOPHER HILL
A NY short list of the greatest living English historians would inevitably include the name of Professor Taivney. The study of sixteenth and seventeenth century English history is today dominated by lines of inquiry initiated by his Work. Fifty-six years ago his Agrarian Problem in the 16th Century showed the importance of the rise of capitalism in agriculture and the social struggles which it caused. The Rise of the Gentry and Harrington's Interpretation of his Age related these economic developments to the causes of the Civil War. Professor Tawney's Introduction to Wilson's Discourse upon Usury did much to clarify the rise of modern attitudes towards lend- ing and investment, and to demonstrate that it was in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth cen- turies that a new 'capitalist spirit' appeared in England. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism re- lated this spirit to the ideas of Puritanism. Not all the conclusions of any of these exciting works are accepted in their entirety, but all are essential for the student of the period : all have stimulated
thought, discussion, further research. What other historian has started so many hares in so many thickets?
The present eagerly awaited book* deals with Lionel Cranfield, Merchant Adventurer, cloth exporter and land speculator, who rose to wealth in the early years of James 1. Purchase of a minor government financial office gave him additional Cash for money-lending; ruthless foreclosing on Mortgages brought in lands that could be resold at a profit ('Gotten by this bargain, for which Almighty God be praised, £1411'). But really big money came from 'the opportunities for specula- Linn offered by the co-existence of an embarrassed Governments with a mass of valuable rights of which uovernments could dispose' provided the his palms were greased. Cranfield made
nis pile in this murky borderland where business
and politics met. In 1613 the poacher turned gamekeeper, and was employed to clean up vari- °us government departments until finally he was made Earl of Middlesex and Lord Treasurer. The appointment of a plebeian to this high office was indicative of the government's desperate situation. Its difficulties were due in part to a century of rising prices and static income; in part to James l's Weak extravagance and the domination of his court by a grasping nobility; in part to constitu- tional quarrels which meant that Parliament NvPUld vote taxation only at the price of increased cQntrol of government. Cranfield's task was some- how to avoid both bankruptcy and surrender to Parliament. He was successful. He attacked the inefficiency and corruption of government departments, and established Treasury control over all expenditure, In the hope of saving James from his own inability ° say No. In four years expenditure was reduced wolves looked up and were not fed: but it was very BUSINESS AND POLITICS UNDER JAMES 1: LIONEL rANEIEL . D AS MER., 40s.) ANT AND MINISTER. By R. H. "ffieY (C.U.Ps.
brief. 'Such reforms had all the reason on their side, and all the influence against them.' Cranfield could not 'overthrow a system connived at by the very powers in whose interest his attacks on it were launched.' Worst of all, Cranfield turned against his erstwhile patron the Duke of Buck- ingham, trying to submit even his expenditure to some control. That was not what the upstart had been promoted for. Once financial order had been restored, the Duke and Prince Charles formed an unholy alliance with the opposition in the Com- mons to hound Cranfield out of public life. What the 'vain, pigeon-witted egoist' Buckingham failed to see, though James had warned him, was that with Cranfield's impeachment 'not only an indi- vidual career, but a system of government neared its close.' The English Turgot came too late and got too little support. His fall brought revolution nearer.
All Professor Tawney's writing gains its effect by richness of detail and the author.'s genius for finding the right quotation; by the confident skill with which the generalisations are marshalled and the felicitous wit with which they are expressed. It is impossible to summarise, for instance, the brilliant sketch given here of European economic geography in the early seventeenth century. But even the foregoing resurile may show the place which this book takes in the corpus of its author's work, and help us to assess his achievement as a historian. Like Sir Lewis Namier, another his- torian to whom no one could refuse a place on our short list, Professor Tawney has run the danger of establishing an orthodoxy; the Taw- neyites, like the Namierites, have come in for hard knocks from the angry middle-aged men of the next generati,n. (In agreeable contrast are Professor Tawney's own controversial manners. He names other historians in this book only to praise them or acknowledge indebtedness.) Pro- fessor Tawney, again like Sir Lewis, had the advantage of starting his career outside the strictly academic profession. He has retained a cheerfully unacademic willingness to stick his neck out, to try hypotheses—though these are more carefully qualified than careless Critics and enthusiastic disciples have sometimes supposed. He has thus fallen foul of those who believe that it is immoral to advance generalising propositions which the historian cannot prove a hundred per cent., i.e., that it is immoral to advance generalis- ing propositions : time is better spent in destroy- ing than in constructing hypotheses.
Others have suggested that Professor Tawney exalts economics at the expense of politics. It is indeed precisely in the interaction of economics, politics and ideas that understanding of the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries has advanced most in the last thirty years, and for this we owe more to Professor Tawney than to anyone else. But this book shows, if anyone needed showing, how far he is from ignoring the political narrative which he sometimes takes for granted. Cranfield's career is important because, as the title suggests, it knits up business and politics. The financial problems of a court called upon to maintain a
parasitic aristocracy in an age of inflation; the difficult relations between businessmen and gov- ernment at a time when the former thrive on laissez-faire at home yet want state protection overseas, whilst the government expects financial advantage from commercial prosperity; the clash between Parliament's demand for some control of an economic machine too complex to be left to the whims of featherweight favourites and the Crown's refusal to abandon its prerogatives, be- tween Parliament's demand for war against Spain and its refusal to pay for it, its desire to control Ministers and its reluctance to accept further responsibility—such are the thenies. Even Cran- field's own personality is paradoxical : the tireless and courageous public servant nevertheless made a good thing out of his public service, by methods which looked ugly when cited against him at his impeachment by men probably less honest than himself. Cranfield's career exemplifies the economic, political and moral unviability of the English ancien regime. This study crowns Pro- fessor Tawney's life work of analysing the decline and fall of that regime.
Finally there is Professor Tawney's style. Half the magic lies in its richness of texture, the elab- orate epigrams following thick and fast. 'James, whose taste in bores, though catholic, was his own . . ."One of the unforgivable characters who infuriate their critics by a shameless exhi- bition of appetites which the latter are anxious both to gratify and conceal . . .' To make Ireland ' "self-supporting," in the idiomatic Anglo-Saxon sense of supporting, not only herself, but English troops and officials as well.' Cranfield at the Trea- sury was 'a Sisyphus condemned, under the shadow of impending disaster, to roll uphill, not a rock, but a mountain of pebbles.'
The wit springs from an attitude towards the subject-matter that is at once detached and in- volved. Professor Tawney sees the goings-on of human beings sub specie aeternitatis, with amuse- ment and pity, and yet with a sense of the con- temporary relevance of some of their postures. His history has been described, by one who dis- likes it, as Fabian: but its ironic contemporaneity derives, I believe, from Christian rather than poli- tical premises. For his assumptions are that men are equal, that worldly rank is unimportant, that the meek should inherit the earth. The epigram- matic writing sets off and springs from a deeply moral sense of historic irony. The arrogant up- start Cranfield tries to save the aristocratic social order in its own despite; Buckingham and Prince Charles destroy themselves in destroying him; Parliament inherits much of the policy of the man whose head it demanded; the hard-faced business- man wins Professor Tawney's reluctant admira- tion as he is transmuted into tragic hero by his desperate fighting courage—and manages to sal- vage a lot of his loot from the wreckage. All Professor Tawney's work has emphasised the complexity and interconnectedness of the seven- teenth century conflicts. This majestic volume, spotlighting a single dramatic episode, illuminates the whole period..
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