Gentry culture and the politics of religion by Richard Cust Peter Lake

Author:Richard Cust, Peter Lake [Richard Cust, Peter Lake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Great Britain, Stuart Era (1603-1714), Social History, Religion, Christianity, Renaissance, General, Religion; Politics & State
ISBN: 9781526114433
Google: wtfsDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2020-06-24T16:10:13+00:00

Part II conclusion

In both politics and religion, secular and ecclesiastical affairs, the sorts of accommodations and collaborations that had contained what had always been intermittently considerable areas of tension in Cheshire had continued to operate until quite late in the day. In comparison with counties like Somerset and Northamptonshire, where there is considerable evidence of either factional divisions or opposition to the demands made by the crown, Cheshire was governed in a relatively stable and settled fashion during the 1620s and 1630s. Leading gentry, for the most part, subscribed to the values and ideals set out in Whitelocke and Grosvenor’s charges. Participation and active citizenship, consultation, mediation, promoting the ‘public’ interest, not the ‘private’, and defending the ‘country’s’ interests were acknowledged to be the guiding principles in the exercise of magisterial office. This unity was encouraged by the networks of kinship and intermarriage between long-established local families, the strong identification with the palatine traditions of self-government and the relative absence of factional division among leading gentry. It also helped that for much of the period the dominant voices on the commission of peace and lieutenancy were those of the likes of Booth, Wilbraham and Grosvenor, patriot gentry who did their best to balance the requirements of central government with the interests of ‘the country’ and were prepared to speak on behalf of their neighbours when grievances became pressing.

Pivotal roles were also performed by Savage and Aston, who acted as intermediaries between the court and council and the localities and did much to grease the wheels of local politics. Savage’s use of his connections and clout in both arenas lay at the heart of the relative success of the forced loan in Cheshire; and Aston operated in similar fashion to pursue the interests of the county in its disputes with the city of Chester, while using the local influence gleaned from the success of those efforts to enhance the success of ship money, and his own local standing, in the county. Aston may have over-reached in the end, but in putting various jurisdictional and ratings disputes with the city front and centre he certainly did manage to square the circle of defending local interests while pushing the effective collection of the levy. The effect of Aston’s having framed the issue in these terms almost certainly helped to ensure that controversy about the legitimacy of ship money itself came to Cheshire relatively late. It also established him as a leading defender of the county’s interests and thus had a central role to play in his election to the Short Parliament. The nature of Aston’s rise to prominence in the county, effected by these means, served to occlude the very considerable differences in political outlook and ideological orientation which divided him from much of the county elite – divisions the nature and depth of which emerged only at the time of the Short Parliament election. The consequence of all this was that for most of the 1620s and 1630s Cheshire earned a reputation for responding positively to the crown’s demands.

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