Andy Wood, Riot, Rebellion & Popular Politics in Early Modern England

Summary

Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England reassesses the
relationship between politics, social change and popular culture in the period
c. 1520-1730. It argues that early modern politics needs to be understood in
broad terms, to include not only states and elites, but also disputes over the
control of resources and the distribution of power. Andy Wood assesses the
history of riot and rebellion in the early modern period, concentrating upon:
popular involvement in religious change and political conflict, especially the
Reformation and the English Revolution; relations between ruler and ruled;
seditious speech; popular politics and the early modern state; custom, the law
and popular politics; the impact of literacy and print; and the role of ritual,
gender and local identity in popular politics.

Review

In my reviews of books on early modern rebellion's such as the Pilgrimage of

Grace and the Western Rising, I've noted that the question of why people rise
is often a complicated one. All too often uprisings are described as "religious"
or "economic" as though there is a simple explanation for these chaotic events.
Andy Wood's book arrives then, as a breath of fresh air. In it he attempts to
understand the surprisingly complex question of "what is politics?" and finds
that while "early modern labouring people constituted their political identities
within strong senses of locality" they were also shaped by, responding too,
and helping to shape wider, national politics too.

Unusually, Wood tries to define politics, coming up with the following

definition

politics will be understood to occur where power is reasserted,

extended or challenged. Politics is therefore the product of
deliberate, human agency and is pre-eminently about conflict and
change. In this analysis, politics does not occur where the
distribution of power remains static and unchallenged.
In other words, the author see politics as a dynamic engagement between
people and wider society. Thus changes to material conditions - access to
food, or infringements on historic rights - become the subject of wider
"politics" for the community.

Wood argues that the early modern state was actually quite limited in its
"coercive powers", relying instead on a "broad acceptance" of "widely shared
notions of law, custom and patriarchal order" to maintain control. He points
out that "the early modern English state operated in a highly legalistic form...
early modern rulers could not simply string lower-class dissidents up from the
nearest tree". Though Wood also recognises that there are exceptions to this,
but these often prove the rule, such as the massacres in the wake of the
Western Uprising of 1549 committed under martial law by a local
commander. Drawing on the work of Gramsci, and his ideas of cultural
hegemony, Wood says that

presumes not only that social power operates to its greatest effect
the through the domination of culture, but also that it thereby
produces the terms of its own subversion. We also look at how, in
order to press claims upon their rulers, subordinates exploited the
very concepts that had been designed to win their loyalties: the same
notions of law, custom and household order that integrated the early
modern polity were also deployed by plebeians in popular politics

Thus we see rebellious groups and individuals using the language of the ruling
class to justify their actions, appealing to the king over the heads of his lords
and advisers, or expecting justice from gentlemen if they present their case
fairly. Wood draws on Edward Thompson's work, noting how he argued

There is a sense in which rulers and crowd needed each other,

watched each other, performed theatre and counter theatre to each
other's auditorium, moderated each other's political behaviour. This
is a more active and reciprocal relationship than the one normally
brought to mind under the formula 'paternalism and deference'.

There is a sense in which rulers and crowd needed each other, watched each
other, performed theatre and counter theatre to each other's auditorium,
moderated each other's political behaviour. This is a more active and
reciprocal relationship than the one normally brought to mind under the
formula 'paternalism and deference'. There is a sense in which rulers and
crowd needed each other, watched each other, performed theatre and counter
theatre to each other's auditorium, moderated each other's political behaviour.
This is a more active and reciprocal relationship than the one normally
brought to mind under the formula 'paternalism and deference'.

This perhaps helps explain why rarely in the early modern rebellions (the
noted exception is the Peasants' Rebellion of 1381) do the rebels clamour for
radical change. While revolution is in the air simply because large numbers of
people are in arms, their is rarely an enormous desire for change. Actually
what is taking place (classically during the Pilgrimage of Grace) is an mass
struggle for the maintenance of the status quo. Indeed this helps to explain
why those taking part in rebellions often came from all strata of rural life.
Gentlemen pressed into joining rebellion, who then (at least for a time) appear
to commit themselves whole heartedly to the cause. Wood notes for instance,
that in times of food shortages in England, food riots were common. But the
participants rarely rioted for the distribution of free food. Instead they forced
vendors to sell at a fair price.

This is particularly true of rural events during the English Civil War. Wood
examines in detail the "clubmen" of the First Civil War those rural movements
which often originated in attempts to protect food and land from marauding
Royalist and Parliamentary Armies. While these seem superficially radical
they "conservative: suspicious of innovation, hostile to outsiders, defensive of
the established place off the united village community within the larger
polity". Wood contrasts these to the radical Levellers and Diggers, who had
more radical visions of an alternative society, but he points out that they also
often focused on the village and small town as the way to organise society,
imagining a sort of Utopian agricultural community, albeit one without
landlords and rulers.

Wood notes how, particularly in terms of Digger statements, their language

was often rooted in historic ideas and demands that would not have been out
of place in 1549 or 1536, but go much further. This has less to do with
demands to kill the gentlemen or the rich (a common enough cry for many
centuries) but more to do with a vision of collective transformation of society.
As one group of Diggers declared

Therefore you of the poorer sort, understand this, that nothing but
the manuring of the common Land, will reduce you into a
comfortable condition.

Through the book Alan Wood places great emphasis on the language of
ordinary people and their rebellions. While this isn't really a history of those
rebellions, there are many details here that will point the reader to further
information and sources. He concludes,

Over the course of the early modern period, we have charted an

uneven, contested, messy process by which the legitimising
language of community and the institutional apparatus of parochial
organisation passed into the hands of parish elites... But we have
also seen how local resistance to the exercise of social power helped
to form collective plebeian identities within individual villages,
'countries' and regions.

This brings to mind Marx and Engels' famous quote about the history of early
class societies being that of class struggle. Alan Wood has placed such
struggles, both open and hidden, at the heart of his attempt to understand the
dynamics of the early modern period. While his book might not be accessible
to those who haven't got at least some knowledge of the period, it is a fine
introduction to an formative period of English history that deserves a wider
readership.