Reformation, Resistance, and Reason

of State (1517-1625) Sarah Mortimer

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 T H E OX F O R D H I ST O RY O F
P O L I T IC A L T HOU G H T
The books in The Oxford History of Political Thought series provide an authoritative
overview of the political thought of a particular era. They synthesize and expand
major developments in scholarship, covering canonical thinkers while placing them
in a context of broader traditions, movements, and debates. The history of political
thought has been transformed over the last thirty to forty years. Historians still return
to the constant landmarks of writers such as Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau,
and Marx; but they have roamed more widely and often thereby cast new light on
these authors. They increasingly recognize the importance of archival research, a
breadth of sources, contextualization, and historiographical debate. Much of the
resulting scholarship has appeared in specialist journals and monographs. The Oxford
History of Political Thought makes its profound insights available to a wider audience.

Series Editor: Mark Bevir, Professor of Political Science and Director of the
Center for British Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
 OX F O R D H I S T O RY O F P O L I T IC A L T HOU G H T

Reformation, Resistance,
and Reason of State
(1517–1625)
S A R A H M O RT I M E R

1
 1
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 Acknowledgements

When Mark Bevir invited me to contribute to a new series on the history of pol­it­
ical thought, I realized it would be a challenging but exciting opportunity. I am
grateful to him for that invitation and for his support, advice, and patience
throughout this process. The book has been written in Oxford, where I have
bene­fit­ted greatly from a thriving early modern community and from a growing
programme of intellectual history. I would like also to thank my colleagues in the
History Faculty and in Christ Church for their encouragement, kindness, and
friendship over these years, particularly when times have been difficult. I am
especially grateful to Christ Church for providing some extra leave during which
this book was completed. The book has been greatly improved by conversations
and discussions with many people over the years and I would like to thank in
particular Rowena Archer, Teresa Bejan, George Garnett, John-­Paul Ghobrial,
Matthew Innes, Dmitri Levitin, Avi Lifschitz, Sophie Nicholls, Sophie Smith,
Noël Sugimura and Brian Young. Teaching and sharing ideas with Alexandra
Gajda and our ‘special subject’ students has been a deeply enriching experience
and I would like to thank them, and all my students. Our early career academics
have been a wonderful presence and I am grateful to all those with whom I have
taught classes or shared tea, particularly Joshua Bennett, Deni Kasa, Tae-­Yeoun
Keum, Michelle Pfeffer, and Mariëtta van der Tol. I would also like to thank John
Robertson, who first introduced me to some of the themes of political thought
and who has discussed versions of this project as it has changed and developed.
Jon Parkin and Noah Dauber read sections of the manuscript and I am grateful to
both of them for so many conversations about its themes.
Versions of some of the ideas in this book were presented at seminars in
Harvard, Princeton, Göttingen, Helsinki, Cambridge, Leiden, and the London
School of Economics. The feedback and discussions were immensely helpful and
my thanks to Eric Beerbohm, Eric Nelson, Russ Leo III, Tim Stuart-­Buttle, Martti
Koskenniemi, Mónica Garcia-­Salmones Rovira, Lisa Kattenberg, Thomas Poole,
and Nehal Bhuta. I have been fortunate to be involved with the ERC funded pro­
ject ‘War and the Supernatural’ led by Ian Campbell at Queen’s University Belfast,
and have learned much from the team members – Todd Rester, Floris Verhaart,
and Karie Schultz – and from their conferences and workshops. I am also very
grateful to Ian for reading a draft of the manuscript and for his generous sugges­
tions. Thanks are also due to Oxford University Press and particularly Dominic
Byatt, and to the readers of the original proposal and full manuscript, for their
knowledgeable and constructive comments.
Finally, my heartfelt thanks to all my friends and family, but particularly my
husband David.
 List of Maps

a. Habsburg, Ottoman and Valois lands c. 1517 2

b. Europe divided by religion c. 1559 3
c. Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires in 1625 5
d. Europe and the Ottoman Empire c. 1625 6
 1
Introduction

Without her [this science of politics] it would not be possible to live

either together in public or privately, nor to deal with human beings
and their affairs at all. For, by honouring and rewarding of virtue, and
condemning and punishing vice, and by making all our actions
upright, she has given us a way of living together happily, in peace
and concord, and with plenty.1

In 1567 the French humanist and scholar Louis Le Roy published a brief treatise
On the Origin, Antiquity, Progress, Excellence and Usefulness of Politics. Le Roy,
like many of his contemporaries, believed he was living through troubled and
unsettled times, but was convinced that the study of politics was one important
way of restoring peace and prosperity to his native land. In 1567 Le Roy felt the
need to justify his claim, finding the roots of political science (as he often termed
it) in the classical world while showing how ancient precepts could be updated to
fit the new realities of his own age. Half a century later, however, the value of
political science was well established and in 1608 one German scholar could even
liken it to a lush but sprawling estate. In his view, ‘the boundaries of political sci­
ence [Politica] are so wide, its possessions so rich and diffuse, that its rule is dis­
ordered in many things’—and what was now needed was for some proper method
and order in the discipline.2 He was to be disappointed, for no single method tri­
umphed in this period. Yet the fascination with political thought grew, among
scholars, statesmen, and a growing segment of the public.
By 1625 political thought was certainly diverse and diffuse, and yet even with­
out a unifying method it is possible to see some core themes within it. Most
importantly, this period saw a concern to understand the political or civil com­
munity as bounded, limited in geographical terms and with its own particular
structures, characteristics, and history. Political science had therefore to be sep­ar­
ated from ethics or philosophy, which dealt with individual virtues or with uni­
versal truths. Its aim was to ensure the survival and prosperity of one political
unit; it needed to be sensitive to time and place. This did not mean abandoning
the quest for universal values, but it did shape the way those values were under­
stood. The second, and related, development was a growing focus on civil or

1 Louis Le Roy, De l’origine, antiquité, progrès, excellence et utilité de l’art politique (Paris, 1567), p. 10.
2 G. Paulus, preface to B. Keckermann, Systema Disciplinae Politicae (Hanau, 1608).

Reformation, Resistance, and Reason of State (1517–1625). Sarah Mortimer, Oxford University Press.
© Sarah Mortimer 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199674886.003.0001
 Habsburg, Ottoman and Valois lands c.1517 Habsburg lands
NORWAY SWEDEN
Ottoman lands after 1526
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Map A. Habsburg, Ottoman and Valois lands c. 1517

 Europe divided by Religion c.1559 Lutheran
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Map B. Europe divided by religion c. 1559

4 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

political authority as distinct from the Church or religious authority. Although

some writers advocated the independence of the political sphere, this was highly
unusual. Most sought instead to tease out and explain the relationship between
these two authorities, in order to understand the scope but also the limitations of
politics, as a discipline geared towards earthly rather than heavenly goals. A final
theme is the increasingly detailed analyses of structures and institutions, analyses
which also began to take into account the impact of social and economic change.
As new men rose and as some of the old aristocracies declined, older theories of
order and status within society were adapted and rewritten, sometimes allowing
for social mobility and sometimes seeking to restrict it.
These broad themes were, it will be suggested, common across Europe and can
also be seen in the Ottoman empire, as well as (to a lesser extent) in the Safavid
and Mughal empires. In part this was because so many of the traditions that
shaped political thinking can be traced back to the ancient world and constituted
a shared intellectual heritage. Furthermore, the processes of economic change,
particularly the monetarization of the economy and the development of new
military technologies, were not restricted to one area and their impact could be
felt across a range of different societies. Yet there were also important differences;
in the West the Christian Church had institutionalized a separation between
clergy and laity which was not so firmly established in Islamic societies, and the
Reformation led to a heated and multifaceted debate in Europe about the rela­
tionship between the Church and the civil authorities. Indeed, it was in those
areas where religious tensions ran high, and where localized political loyalties
were simultaneously both entrenched and vulnerable, that some of the most
innovative and influential political thinking took place. Just as soldiers took up
arms to defend their homelands, so scholars took up their pens in the service of
their community, anxious to legitimize that community. By the end of the period,
some writers were keen to do so by appeal to principles which, while still reli­
gious, were explicitly detached from particular confessional commitments.
The book begins in the 1510s, a decade of heightened imperial and religious
excitement, and ends in 1625, with the publication of Hugo Grotius’s ground-­
breaking treatise On the Rights of War and Peace, which explicitly sought to dis­
tance civil authority and natural law from Christianity. Grotius, a Dutch jurist
and historian, was no friend of the Habsburg empire against which his native land
had long been struggling, and his work was also an attempt to justify the diverse
political arrangements which prevailed across Europe, protecting local customs
and arrangements. Yet Grotius was himself invested in the pursuit of certain
kinds of colonial projects, he had written in defence of one of the Dutch trading
companies, and he spent the final years of his life hard at work on a series of theo­
logical texts, including a landmark commentary on the books of the Bible. As his
example demonstrates, the period did not see a retreat from religion or an exclu­
sive focus on sovereignty and on the emerging nation states. But it did see a new
 Don
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Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires in 1625
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0 1000 km

Map C. Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires in 1625

 Europe and the Ottoman Empire c.1625 SWEDEN Austrian Habsburg lands
IRELAND North Sea DENMARK RU SSIA Spanish Habsburg lands
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Baltic Sea Swedish lands

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Map D. Europe and the Ottoman Empire c. 1625

 Introduction 7

interest in theorizing and justifying local political communities, where civil

authority was seen as independent of confessional orthodoxy and of the Church.
Defining the scope of a study of political thought is difficult. I have chosen to
concentrate on the early modern discussion of just what it is that constitutes a
political community, and on how early modern authors explained its distinctive
character. I have emphasized those debates which are recognizably part of the
history of political thought rather than any broader category of intellectual his­
tory; and I have prioritized those texts or parts of texts which discuss, more or
less explicitly, how a community should be governed or arranged in order to
ensure this-­worldly values of peace and prosperity. The focus of the book is,
therefore, on the ideas and concepts which we associate today with political the­
ory, but I have sought to understand the early modern debate in its own terms.
Often those texts were written by authors with strong views about the broader
purposes of human life, and my aim has been to show how their visions of pol­it­
ical science fit into their overarching concerns and aspirations. Very often, early
modern interest in these ideas was driven not by narrowly political agendas but
by a wider concern to understand the role and rationale of the earthly community
for human beings whose ultimate purpose lay elsewhere.
Though the book does not offer a linear narrative of the development of a
modern style of political thought, it does seek to draw out the key themes which
shaped the political ideas of this period and of future generations. In this sense, it
is an account of the intellectual possibilities opening up and the resources becom­
ing available; it outlines the shape of the debates as they unfolded. The following
account does not prioritize any particular ideological concept, such as liberty,
virtue, or representation, but it does seek to show how early modern people wres­
tled with a range of ways of theorizing their communities, drawing on ideas cur­
rent in legal, theological, and classical writing as they did so. I have drawn
attention to these theorists’ creation of boundaries, between Church and state,
between one political community and another, between the individual and the
ruler. And I have intended this book to be both broad and focused, indicating the
wide variety of political thinking at the time.
At the core of my account are the early modern debates about the basic con­
cepts of legitimacy, particularly natural law. The idea of natural law as a set of
universal moral principles can be found in ancient philosophy and in many reli­
gious traditions including Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, though opinions dif­
fered as to the precise content and origins of this law. In the early modern period,
it proved to be a particularly complex and contested concept; it offered a means of
analysing, defending, and critiquing authority and could be applied across pol­it­
ical and territorial borders. Arguments from natural law became common across
Europe, as scholars and writers appealed to different versions of natural law as
they worked for their own diverse ends. Natural law could be invoked in order to
8 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

build up state power, to defend the legitimacy of resistance, or to pronounce upon

the authority of the Church. In a context of political and religious upheaval, many
writers appealed to natural law as a stable source of authority and morality,
although their increasing awareness of the diversity of human societies led some
to question the validity and force of a law which was supposed to apply to
all people.
Meanwhile, and particularly in the wake of the Reformation, early modern
Europeans were particularly anxious to understand the relationship between nat­
ural law and Christian ethics. This was a crucial issue because the value of natural
law stemmed in large part from the shared belief that God himself upheld and
endorsed it, a belief that was, as we shall see, much less straightforward than has
commonly been realized. Although it had long been pointed out that the ethics of
the Christian New Testament were not especially conducive to political success,
this claim became more common in the sixteenth century. It was articulated most
notoriously by the Italian humanist Nicolò Machiavelli, but on this point—if on
little else—he was joined by many radical Christians, particularly those associ­
ated with the Anabaptist movement. At the same time, the exigencies of war,
state-­building, and political survival required new powers for rulers which often
seemed to exist in serious tension with Christian teaching. Thus a large part of the
project of political theory was showing how these new powers had a place in the
divine scheme and could be both legitimate and effective.
There were a number of different approaches to natural law and the book traces
these out across several chapters. Chapter 2 shows how the expansion of empires
in the first decades of the sixteenth century led to renewed interest in the sources
and scope of law, and the relationship between law that was often conceptualized
in universal or cosmopolitan terms as well as embodied in local political practice.
I then suggest that the groundwork for the sixteenth-­century debate on natural
law was laid in the 1510s, before the Reformation and during the controversy
over the Council of Pisa. In these years, some churchmen wanted to use natural
law as a moral standard which applied to the Church as well as to civil communi­
ties, while others insisted that the Church, founded as it was by Christ himself,
stood above the law of nature. Soon all sides agreed that the civil community
could be understood in terms of natural law, but because they differed about the
place of the Church, they also differed about the value of natural law itself and its
reach. Was it a universal moral standard, or was it inferior to the Christian ethics
and morals upheld by the Church? Meanwhile, the new thinking starting to
emerge in Italy from the pens of men like Machiavelli led to a heightened sense of
the potential conflict between political success and the Christian faith. These ten­
sions would be exacerbated after the Reformation, when leading Protestant
­writers would come to argue that the natural law and the principles of Christian
ethics were one and the same. This had the dual advantage of solidifying political
 Introduction 9

authority and allowing magistrates to take control of their Church—just so long

as they upheld the natural and divine law. Many Catholics, on the other hand,
tended no longer to see natural law as applicable to the Church and instead
limit­ed its scope to the civil community.
As the century went on, some writers came increasingly to appeal to the nor­
mative principles of natural law in order to provide a framework for human social
life. Indeed, I argue that the appeal to popular sovereignty was quickly coupled
with a strong set of claims about the natural law, because ‘the people’ had an
alarming tendency to support the wrong movements. Protestants and humanists
found that people were too often swayed by Catholicism, while Catholics feared
that their countrymen put peace above the true faith. Meanwhile, the need to
translate those normative principles into real and effective action led to important
discussions of concepts of representation, covenant, and contract. It was generally
agreed that the people’s authority needed to be wielded by responsible and le­git­
im­ate officers, though whether these should be magistrates, aristocrats, or priests
was hotly contested and a range of different arguments were offered in defence of
these different claims.
While some writers saw natural law as a stable, universal system, others
believed that discretion was necessary, either within it or beyond it; those in
power needed the freedom to adapt laws and policies as circumstances changed
around them. The key author here was the French jurist Jean Bodin, who defined
sovereignty as, primarily, the power to make laws—but who placed sovereign
power within as wider conceptual setting dominated by what he called ‘harmonic
justice’. This was a dynamic balance between Aristotle’s two different kinds of just­
ice: distributive and arithmetic, constantly adapting to the different needs and
circumstances of time and place. Bodin argued that the sovereign’s role in main­
taining this balance was analogous to God’s and he downplayed the need for any
additional religious authority. Although he gave great discretion to the sovereign,
he also argued that there were principles of the natural law, notably the binding
nature of contracts, to which the sovereign must himself adhere. In the wake of
Bodin’s work, the question of sovereignty became much more pressing, not least
because Bodin’s view of sovereignty was seen as incompatible with the Catholic
insistence on the role of the Church. One response to this was a Catholic ‘reason
of state’, which blended Christianity and political pragmatism, thereby avoiding
questions of sovereignty; another was the increasingly sophisticated explication
of papal ‘indirect’ power designed to allow civil power genuine autonomy, at least
in its own, natural sphere. Finally, some authors, Catholic and Protestant, insisted
that monarchy was the best form of government, endorsed by God himself,
ar­ticu­lat­ing the theory that would become known as the ‘divine right of kings’.
As the discussion of sovereignty became more complex and sophisticated,
scholars began to analyse more fully the relationship between sovereign power
10 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

and society, particularly as social hierarchies seemed to be shifting. The changing

methods of warfare meant that states needed more money and more bureaucracy;
knowledge of politics and administration was becoming a route to power and
influence while the old aristocracies were co-­opted into more centralized states,
with differing degrees of success. Those writing political theory tended, on the
whole, to defend meritocracy and the distribution of office according to virtue
and ability; certainly they were often very critical of the sale of office. But they had
little desire to see radical social change, and they expected the sovereign to uphold
and maintain, at least in broad terms, the stratified society he ruled. Meanwhile,
in the Ottoman Empire the changing economic and military circumstances also
led to new analyses of office holding and justice, often understood as the correct
balance between the different classes.
Thus, this book is a study of political thought which places it within the broader
systems of ethics, law, and religion operating in the sixteenth century. It does not
assume the primacy of the political and it takes seriously the notion that what the
‘political’ is will always be contested. Nevertheless, by examining what early mod­
ern people thought constituted a political community, I hope to show how the
history of political thought can both benefit from, and remain distinctive within,
the wider field of intellectual history. I have also sought to make connections
between Christian Europe and the Muslim states that lay to its south and east,
lands where religious authority was less clearly institutionalized and where reli­
gious and political power were more closely intertwined. Like Western Christians,
Muslims and others had to work out how to view political power which some­
times seemed at odds with religious teaching, and how to understand the process
of change through time.
Early modern authors thought about politics using a range of different dis­
courses, or what John Pocock has referred to as ‘languages’, and they wrote in a
range of different genres. My account prioritizes the languages of law, especially
natural and Roman law, but it acknowledges that there were alternative languages,
particularly those based upon historical research and scriptural commentary,
which could also be used to examine the nature of a political community.3 The
boundaries between these languages were porous, yet the expertise required to
master each of them meant that in practice authors tended to prioritize one or
other. Often the choice of language was shaped by the genre within which the
work was imagined, and in the sixteenth century political ideas came to be dis­
cussed across a widening range of genres. Systematic works written by trained
academics, lawyers, and theologians offered the most explicit reflections on

3 J. G. A. Pocock, ‘The Concept of a Language and the Métier d’Historien: Some Considerations on
Practice’, in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-­Modern Europe, edited by Anthony Pagden
(Cambridge, 1987), pp. 19–38; Mark Goldie, ‘The Ancient Constitution and the Languages of Political
Thought’, The Historical Journal 62 (2019), pp. 3–34.
 Introduction 11

pol­it­ical thought, though the sixteenth century did also see a steady increase in
the number of pamphlets, sermons, plays, and other works of imaginative litera­
ture, many of which offered direct or indirect commentrary on political ideas. I
have foregrounded those writers who dealt explicitly and systematically with
political questions, while suggesting more briefly the ways in which a range of
early modern authors touched upon those questions. Given the academic train­
ing and resources necessary to enter into printed debate about political thought,
it is perhaps not surprising that it was largely the preserve of a male elite. Very few
women had access to the same experiences or opportunities, even if at times they
wielded significant political power; by the seventeenth century, however, the bal­
ance was shifting and women began to enter more fully into political debate.4
That the sixteenth century was a seminal period in the history of political
thought has long been acknowledged. The claim is today perhaps most familiar
from Quentin Skinner’s highly influential Foundations of Modern Political
Thought, published in 1978. Skinner placed the origins of the modern state in
what he called the Ages of Renaissance and Reformation; by 1600, he argued, ‘the
concept of the State . . . had come to be regarded as the most important object of
analysis in European political thought’.5 But Skinner was also keen to show that it
was not the religious ideas of the period which drove the move towards mod­ern­
ity, but rather a new theory of popular sovereignty which was independent of
religion. That theory enabled Europeans to see the state as separate from its ruler
and so to resist the absolutist monarchies being consolidated as the sixteenth cen­
tury drew to a close. Skinner argued forcefully that the important intellectual
achievement of this period was the creation of ‘purely secular and wholly populist
doctrines’ which would then be ‘available to be used by all parties in the coming
constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century’.6 Skinner suggested that
although these constitutionalist arguments had developed in a religious context,
their theological elements could be discarded—although the impact of such an
alteration remained unclear from his work. In Foundations, Skinner made an ele­
gant and persuasive case for the importance of early modern political thought,
but by insisting on its increasing independence from religion he closed off a series
of crucial questions about the relationship between the two, and particularly
about the relationship between natural law, political obligation, and Christianity.
In the chapters that follow I have tried to re-­open some of those questions and to
show how important ideas of religion could be to the development of political
thought—even in its most apparently secular or civil guises.

4 The development of women’s political thinking is discussed in Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green,
A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700 (Cambridge, 2009).
5 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1978), p. 349.
6 Ibid., p. 347.
12 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

Historians have not, of course, ignored the complex interplay between religion
and political ideas in this period, although they have tended to focus on the ten­
sion between the two. In the 1920s, the German historian Frederick Meinecke
argued that Nicolò Machiavelli was the first to see that politics sometimes
required tragic choices, a commitment to empirical necessity rather than the
moral law. For Meinecke, the writing of this Italian humanist posed a serious
challenge to the belief that individual morality would lead to political success and
suggested that ethics, particularly Christian ethics, may not in fact be compatible
with politics.7 This fed into the tradition which became known as reason of state,
a tradition in which political prudence was separate from morality or Christianity
and geared towards the welfare and survival of the state rather than to any abstract
or universal standard of ethics. Yet although this was a language of statecraft
rather than law or morality, it soon became intertwined with the concept of nat­
ural law, as Richard Tuck has shown. Indeed, he argued for a ‘remarkable trans­
formation’ of the culture of raison d’état ‘into the great natural law theories of the
mid [-seventeenth] century’.8 In Tuck’s view, Hugo Grotius was particularly cre­
ative in showing how a natural law theory could be based upon the concept of
(individual) natural rights, and could resist sceptical critique by insisting that
natural rights flowed from the universally acknowledged principle of self-­
preservation. Grotius could therefore provide a conceptual foundation for natural
law which was not only independent of Christianity but also detached from clas­
sical accounts of morality or virtue.
In Tuck’s account, the ‘modern’ natural law developed by Grotius provided the
most important element of a new theory of both sovereignty and individual lib­
erty, one which would be articulated most powerfully by Thomas Hobbes. In the
writing of both Hobbes and Grotius, he argued, the sovereign was accorded
immense power but, at the same time, that power depended upon contract and
upon the people’s consent; it existed to preserve the people and could in principle
allow a high degree of religious and philosophical toleration. Yet, as studies of the
reception of Grotius and Hobbes have shown, seventeenth-­century readers strug­
gled to understand how their theory of natural law could in fact oblige human
beings, let alone Christians. The roots of this problem—and early modern answers
to it—lie in the debates of the sixteenth century, when political science, natural
law, and natural right first began to be analysed as distinct from, but related to,
Christianity. In the following chapters I show how the problem of the obligation
of natural law, indeed of the principles of statecraft and prudence, was already live
in some scholarly circles even before Grotius’s intervention in the debate. I
emphasize that the early modern language of sovereignty was, from its inception,

7 F. Meinecke, Idee der Staatsräson in der neueren Geschichte (Munich, 1924), translated by D. Scott
as, Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’état and Its Place in Modern History (London, 1957).
8 Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge, 1993), p. xiv.
 Introduction 13

designed to challenge the authority of ecclesiastical power; its proponents under­

stood that a powerful civil state was often the best guarantor of individual liberty.
But I demonstrate that this language of sovereignty was not secular or religiously
neutral, for its proponents understood that it could only be seen as valid and
obligatory if it were anchored in the divine will, even if that will tended to be
understood in heterodox ways.
For all the innovation of early modern political thought, scholars still drew
heavily and creatively on the writings of ancient philosophers, particularly those
of Rome and Greece—and historians continue to assess the role and importance
of this classical legacy. Perhaps the most important resource for early modern
scholars in their efforts to understand political science was the writings of
Aristotle, and the vitality of this Aristotelian tradition has increasingly been rec­
ognized. The central concepts within it were justice, particularly the just distribu­
tion of office, honour, and reward within the community, and the balance between
unity and diversity among the citizens. One of my aims in this book has been to
show how integral these themes were to sixteenth-­century thinking, especially to
early modern thinkers who sought to understand just what it was that held their
own particular polity together, and what might limit the claims it could make on
its citizens.9 I have indicated the rich and varied use made of the classical heri­
tage, but particularly this Aristotelian tradition with its concern for justice and
unity, and therefore for the correct distribution of power, office and status within
the community. Drawing on work on the Ottoman Empire, I have also suggested
that these concerns were not limited to Europe, although they played out differ­
ently in a different political, religious, and intellectual context.
Within the current discipline of the history of political thought, an earlier
focus on the state and on sovereignty has been supplemented by a new attention
to relationships between human beings and the different authorities under which
they lived—issues which often loomed large in classical and medieval thinking.
Annabel Brett, for example, suggests we should place the state within a broader
juridical landscape, with the state as just one institution among others.10 Among
those institutions were, of course, the Church and the religious orders, both of
which functioned as alternative loci of allegiance, and scholars have explored the
political thinking generated by men whose loyalty to the state was necessarily
conditional.11 Meanwhile, powerful notions of honour and service continued to
shape political action and political ideas, and studies of the intellectual world of

9 E.g. Annabel Brett, ‘The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-­wealth: Thomas Hobbes and
Late Renaissance Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics’, Hobbes Studies 23 (2010), pp. 72–102; Noah
Dauber, State and Commonwealth: The Theory of the State in Early Modern England, 1549–1640
(Princeton, 2016).
10 Annabel Brett, Changes of State: Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law
(Princeton, 2011).
11 E.g. Harro Höpfl, Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State, c. 1540–1630
(Cambridge, 2004); Christoph Strohm, Ethik im frühen Calvinismus: Humanistische Einflüsse,
14 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

particular noblemen have highlighted the creative ways in which they fashioned
themselves and their image. They have also drawn attention to the growing inter­
est in this period in the education of the young, but especially young nobles.12
Like those studies, this current book recognizes that ‘political’ thought cannot be
studied in isolation, for early modern conceptions of the political were shaped
and conditioned by wider commitments, be they ethical, religious, or familial.
As historians have placed the state within wider intellectual landscape, they
have also become increasing interested in how early modern people conceived of
an international human community. The sixteenth century has long been seen as
a foundational moment in the history of international law, with the discovery of
the New World prompting early-­ modern Spanish scholars in particular to
develop sophisticated accounts of what we might now think of as international
law. Modern translation projects have made those early modern texts easily avail­
able to modern readers, and the ongoing relevance of the issues with which they
deal—especially empire and international intervention—have ensured a steady
stream of scholarship on these themes.13 This has helped to dilute an earlier con­
centration on the internal structure of states, but it has also raised questions about
how contemporaries understood the wider laws and norms which applied to their
own political community as well as to the international sphere. In a period when
empires were emerging and being challenged, and the boundaries between states
were far from fixed, writers and statesmen discussed the scope and limits of their
own political community within the context of these wider international com­
munities. Whether they sought to defend expansionist policies, or to protect their
homeland from the exactions of an imperial power, their writings helped to define
both local and international political thought—as I have sought to indicate.
Recent studies have drawn our attention to the importance of imaginative lit­
erature in shaping early modern ideas of community, both local and international.
The ideas developed in William Shakespeare’s plays, for example, have long been
of interest to political theorists as well as historians and literary scholars.14
Meanwhile the interplay between legal scholarship, poetry, and prose has been

philosophische, juristische und theologische Argumentationen sowie mentalitätsgeschichtliche Aspekte

am Beispiel des Calvin-­Schülers Lambertus Danaeus (Berlin, 1996).
12 E.g. Arlette Jouanna, Le devoir de révolte: la noblesse française et la gestation de l’État moderne,
1559–1661 (Paris, 1989); Alexandra Gajda, The Earl of Essex and Late Elizabethan Political Culture
(Oxford, 2012); Mark Bannister, Condé in Context: Ideological Change in Seventeenth-­Century France
(Oxford, 2000).
13 Much of this is summarized in Edward Keene, International Political Thought: A Historical
Introduction (Cambridge, 2005); see also two recent collections: Martti Koskenniemi, Walter Rech,
and Manuel Jiménez Fonseca, eds, International Law and Empire: Historical Explorations (Oxford,
2017) and Martti Koskenniemi, Mónica García-­ Salmones Rovira, and Paolo Amorosa, eds,
International Law and Religion: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Oxford, 2017).
14 For example: David Armitage, Conal Condren, and Andrew Fitzmaurice, eds, Shakespeare and
Early Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 2009); Andrew Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism
(Cambridge, 2005).
 Introduction 15

examined in greater depth, especially as scholars have recognized the rhetorical

dimension to so much early modern thinking about justice and law. The ‘rich
three-­way conversations’ between law, literature, and history form the basis, for
example, of a recent Oxford Handbook.15 In the pages that follow I have indicated
some of the connections between early modern works of fiction and political
thought; more broadly I have suggested some of the ways in which political think­
ing required imagination and a willingness to place oneself outside existing con­
ceptual structures.
Although most historians of early modern political thought have focused on
Europe, particularly Western Europe, there are a growing number of studies
which range beyond this area. In an important collection of essays entitled
European Political Thought 1450–1700, the editors explain that one of their inten­
tions was to explore the diversity of European thinking and to draw the bound­ar­
ies of Europe widely, including chapters on Muscovy and on the Ottoman
Empire.16 Meanwhile, the study of Ottoman political thought has thrived recently,
and the publication of Marinos Sariyannis’ A History of Ottoman Political Thought
up to the Nineteenth Century in 2019 was a major landmark in this field. This new
scholarship has allowed historians to make more informed comparisons across
political and religious boundaries, deepening our appreciation of both the diver­
sity of political thinking and the common themes within it.
As even such a brief survey will suggest, my book is deeply indebted to the
works of previous scholars but it also offers my own interpretation of the period. I
am sympathetic to many of the claims made for the creativity of early modern
political thought, especially its new emphasis on the state and on the independ­
ence of natural law from Christianity. But I also argue that these ideas emerged in
dialogue with theology, and with classical ideas of justice, empire, and universal
laws; and I draw attention to the role of social as well as constitutional structures
in the writing of political theorists. In this way I have tried to offer an account
which suggests the richness of early modern political thinking, indicating the
central themes of the period and the key questions which troubled, engaged, and
excited the people of the sixteenth and early-­seventeenth centuries. Those ques­
tions, fundamentally about the nature, the boundaries, and the legitimacy of the
political community, are questions still asked by human beings today, and my
hope is that this account will not only be of historical interest but also shed light
upon some of our own societies’ answers to those crucial questions.
Although I have tried to include material from beyond the standard canon of
political thought, I am acutely aware of the limitations of this study. Its centre of

15 Lorna Hutson, ‘Introduction: Law, Literature and History’, in The Oxford Handbook of English
Law and Literature, 1500–1700, edited by Lorna Hutson (Oxford, 2017), p. 3.
16 Howell A. Lloyd, Glenn Burgess, and Simon Hodson, eds, European Political Thought,
1450–1700: Religion, Law and Philosophy (New Haven, CT, 2007).
16 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

gravity is Western Europe, partly because so much of the surviving literature

comes from the conflicts which ravaged this area but partly also because this lit­
erature is easily accessible to the modern scholar. I have benefitted greatly from
recent work on Ottoman political thought and on theories of kingship in the
Islamic world and hope that by including some discussion of these areas this
study may help to broaden the geographical field of political thought. As yet,
however, there remains relatively little work on the political thought of early
modern Orthodox communities, and it has not been possible to include these in
the present study.17 A longer study would certainly have included more discus­
sion of the ways in which early modern people themselves reflected on the diver­
sity of political, cultural, and religious institutions, but readers interested in these
questions are well served by the works of others, most notably Noel Malcolm’s
study of European ideas about the Ottoman Empire or Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s
work on ideas of India.18 It is also true that there is comparatively little on the
relationship between the state and the household in this study, a topic which is
gaining increasing attention and which will no doubt become more prominent in
future work.19 But my aim has been to sketch a broad outline of the political
thought of this period which, I hope, others will find stimulating and which will
give rise to new work and new interpretations.
To make the text as accessible as possible I have provided translations of book
titles and quotations, also giving the original version where the text is commonly
known by that name. Where possible I have used existing English translations of
texts, either contemporary or modern; where no translator is indicated, the trans­
lation is my own. I have kept footnotes and references to a minimum, and in ref­
erencing primary sources, I have tended to use the first edition and to give page
numbers. Where the first edition is not easily accessible either online or as a
physical copy, I have included section numbers to aid the reader in finding the
relevant passage.

17 For one recent study see Paschalis M. Kitromilides, ‘The Byzantine Legacy in Early Modern
Political Thought’, in The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, edited by Anthony Kaldellis
and Niketas Siniossoglou (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 653–68.
18 Noel Malcolm, Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought,
1450–1750 (Oxford, 2019; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Europe’s India—Words, People, Empires, 1500–1800
(Harvard, 2017).
19 For example, Anna Becker, Gendering the Renaissance Commonwealth (Cambridge, 2019) and
Christoph Haar, Natural and Political Conceptions of Community: The Role of Household Society in
Jesuit Political Thought c.1590–1650 (Leiden, 2018).
 2
Empires and Cities—Political Thought
in an Age of Expansion

In 1519 a Flemish teenager became the most powerful figure Europe had seen for
generations, ruling over a vast collection of lands which stretched from the
Iberian coast to the Baltic Sea. The unique position of the young Charles V
seemed to many to herald the dawning of a new imperial age, ruled over by a man
divinely ordained to bring peace and Christianity to the whole world. To the East,
however, the position of the Ottoman sultan Selim I was no less auspicious. Not
only had he amassed a large territory through conquest and force of arms, but he
had established himself as Protector of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina.
Both men seemed blessed by their respective Gods and charged with authority
both political and religious. Their empires would exert a powerful hold over the
early modern imagination, as people wrestled with the intellectual as well as the
practical implications of imperial rule. Across these lands, the concept of empire
was challenged as well as defended, and Charles’s reign in particular saw a
renewed interest in the defence of local rather than universal political
communities.
The imperial claims of both men were impressive, but they drew on existing
ideas about rule and authority stretching back to a past that was classical and reli­
gious. In Europe, those ideas were already in flux, especially after the invasion of
Italy by the French king Charles VIII in 1494, a move which ushered in a period
of turmoil and conquest on that peninsular. In the Islamic world, the conquest of
Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II had been a particularly significant moment
for the Ottoman dynasty, allowing it not only to expand its territory but also to
lay claim to the heritage of imperial Rome. From the late fifteenth century, there­
fore, rulers found themselves dealing with multiple territories, each with their
own institutions, laws, and religious customs. Empire and expansion challenged
the ways in which those local political communities were understood and le­git­
im­ized, prompting new and often intense reflection on the nature of those com­
munities and their relationship to the apparently universal norms associated with
both Muslim and Christian religion and with these newly powerful empires.
Sixteenth-­century political thought was shaped in profound ways by claims to
empire and the reactions which they provoked.

Reformation, Resistance, and Reason of State (1517–1625). Sarah Mortimer, Oxford University Press.
© Sarah Mortimer 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199674886.003.0002
18 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

Charles V and Images of Empire

Charles’s election as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519 marked the culmination of his
meteoric rise to power. By this time Charles had inherited from his parents a vast
swathe of territories in Europe, including Castile and Aragon from his mother
Joana (declared unfit for rule in 1506) and the Burgundian lands of his father
Philip the Handsome, lands which made him a suitable candidate for the imperial
throne. The political hopes and expectations nurtured in all these lands, espe­
cially in the second half of the fifteenth century, were now projected on to the
young Charles, the new Christian Emperor who might fulfil a dream of rule over
the whole world. Charles’s court publicists encouraged this speculation, drawing
together a series of different conceptions of empire—juridical, historical, and pro­
phetic—to offer a vision of unified rule endorsed by God which would usher in a
new age. Chief among these publicists was Charles’s Grand Chancellor Mercurino
de Gattinara, trained as a jurist but attracted to the heady brew of apocalyptic and
messianic prophecy circulating in both Italy and in the Habsburg lands. In a
speech to Charles, Gattinara explained that God has ‘constitut[ed] you the great­
est emperor and king who has ever been since the division of the [Roman] empire’
and has drawn ‘you to the right path of monarchy in order to lead back the entire
world to a single shepherd’.1 To Gattinara, Charles’s accession marked a dramatic
turning point in history, when the lands of Christendom could be united
once more.
Charles’s lineage certainly encouraged speculation about his destiny. His
Habsburg grandfather, Maximilian I, was thought to be descended from the great
heroes of the ancient world, notably Aeneas and Augustus, heroes associated with
the foundation of Rome and the establishment of its empire, respectively. Their
centrality in Christian history had long been emphasized; after all, Jesus Christ
had been born in the reign of Augustus and the ‘pax Romana’ or Roman peace
was seen as preparing the way for a new ‘pax Christiana’. In 1477 Maximilian
married Mary of Burgundy, whose family traced themselves back to Charlemagne,
the first of the Holy Roman Emperors in Western Europe, and Mary’s grand­
father, Philip the Good, had founded the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1429 in
preparation for his mission to deliver Jerusalem from the hands of the Turks.
Although the mission failed, the symbol of the Golden Fleece became an
important and prominent attribute of the dynasty, linking pagan and Christian
expectations of conquest over evil.2

1 John Headley, ‘The Habsburg World Empire and the Revival of Ghibellinism’, Medieval and
Renaissance Studies 7 (1978), pp. 93–127, quotation from p. 98.
2 Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor
(New Haven, CT, 1993).
 Empires and Cities 19

These apocalyptic expectations were further fuelled when Maximilian’s son

Philip married Juana, daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. In
Aragon there was already a long and rich tradition of prophesy reaching back to
the early 1300s, when the royal confidant and mystic Arnold of Villanova had
associated the Aragonese kings with the events presaging the Last Days. The
Aragonese rulers would, according to this tradition, spearhead the reform of the
Church, crush Islam, and recover Jerusalem, thereby heralding a new age of uni­
versal peace. With the union of the houses of Castile and Aragon in 1469, such
expectations had intensified and spread across the Iberian peninsular, especially
among the Spiritual Franciscan order.3 After the conquest of Muslim Granada in
1492 this apocalyptic speculation reached a new level, encouraged by Ferdinand
himself who from 1510 even included ‘King of Jerusalem’ among his titles. With
the discovery of the ‘New World’ and the election of Charles as Holy Roman
Emperor, all these prophesies seemed to be coming closer to fruition and the new
era of peace and spiritual renewal seemed imminent. Charles was willing to take
advantage of these ideas and expectations, which were promoted not only through
the words of his Grand Chancellor Gattinara but also through portraits and
imagery. Perhaps the most famous of these was his adaptation of the Columns of
Hercules, expressing his ambitions to extend the empire beyond the boundaries
once established by Hercules at Gibralta. The device blended imperial, Spanish
and Old Testament references and became a potent symbol of divine and univer­
sal monarchy.
An exalted view of empire was also transmitted through the study of Roman
law, a discipline which continued to exert a powerful hold over the political
im­agin­ation of sixteenth-­ century Europeans. The meaning and relevance of
Roman law was much debated, but its central texts did contain some clear state­
ments about the supreme legal authority of the Roman emperor. The Digest of
Justinian, the influential compilation of Roman Law, and common starting point
for juristic discussion at the universities, even included a reference to the emperor
as dominus mundi, the lord of all the world (Digest 14.2.9). Gattinara was there­
fore able to draw on Roman law teaching to present Charles as the source of all
law, especially after his election as Holy Roman Emperor, and to suggest that in
Charles the ancient ideal of an emperor with supreme jurisdiction had at last
been revived. In one of his defences of Charles’s imperial power, this time a denial
that the emperor owed any feudal obligations to the king of France, Gattinara
maintained that ‘from the empire as if from a fountain, as the laws [of Justinian]
attest, all jurisdictions come forth and thence they flow back’.4 On this reading,

3 S. Nalle, ‘The Millenial Moment: Revolution and Radical Religion in Sixteenth Century Spain’, in
Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, edited by P. Schafer and
M. Cohen (Leiden, 1998), p. 152.
4 Quoted in John Headley, ‘Gattinara, Erasmus, and the Imperial Configuration of Humanism’,
Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 71(1980), p. 90.
20 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

the French king’s hold over his lands came originally from the emperor himself,
who could hardly be expected to owe his subordinates any feudal service.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, jurists had tended to
emphasize that that the powers of the emperor himself, whatever they might be in
theory, were limited in practice. In reality, they believed, cities and kings were
independent of imperial rule. This situation was summed up in the formula of the
Italian jurist Bartolus of Sassoferrata, who wrote of a ‘civitas sibi princeps’, a city
which was a ruler to itself. Variations of this theme can also be found in France,
where lawyers for the French monarchy described their king as ‘imperator in
regno suo’. The advantage of this approach was that it granted to the individual
monarchs or cities the kind of sovereignty which the Roman law had reserved for
the emperor himself. The process by which sovereign power had been relocated
from the empire to the cities and kingdoms was further theorized by jurists, not­
ably Baldus de Ubaldis, another Italian keen to explain the independence of city
states. Like his contemporaries, he began from the premise that there were some
fundamental laws which provided the normative framework for all human
actions, namely the divine law, natural law, and the ius gentium or ‘law of peoples’.
These concepts could be found in Roman law, though there was some ambiguity
over just what exactly the relationship between natural law and the law of peoples
was. The majority view, shared by Baldus, was that the ius gentium was the spe­
cific application of the natural law, by natural reason, to particular circumstances
of time and place. The multiplicity of cities and principalities was therefore part of
the ius gentium, sanctioned by custom which was an expression of consent. For
Baldus, the ius gentium expressed humanity’s political nature, allowing human
beings to agree over time to set up legitimate arrangements for rule.5
On this reading of Roman law, cities and kingdoms were distinct entities, and
to explain these entities Baldus used the language of corporations. To him, fol­
lowing earlier legal developments, a corporation was distinct from the individuals
who made it up; it was a fictional—or artificial—legal person. As such, it could do
things and perform actions separately from its members. Initially applied to bod­
ies like universities and cathedral chapters, by the end of the fifteenth century this
kind of language was commonly being used to describe kingdoms and cities.
Baldus wrote that ‘the person of the king is the organ and instrument of that intel­
lectual and public person’—the king as an individual human being acted for the
public ‘person’ which was the kingdom itself.6
The texts of Roman law raised for all their commentators a set of questions
about the relationship of the ruler to the law. The Digest included lines from the
Roman jurist Ulpian which seemed to exalt the authority of the ruler—in 1.4.1 it
was said that because the people have given their authority to the emperor, ‘what

5 See Joseph Canning, A History of Medieval Political Thought, 300–1450 (London, 1996), pp. 168–70.
6 Joseph Canning, The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (Cambridge, 1987), quotation from p. 216.
 Empires and Cities 21

pleased the prince has the force of law’ and in 1.3.31 that ‘the prince is not bound
by the laws’, he is legibus solutus. Elsewhere in this legal compilation could, how­
ever, be found the passage known as Digna Vox (Code 1.14.4), which stressed that
it was fitting for the emperor to obey the law because his own power came from
that law. The most common way to square this circle, by the end of the fifteenth
century, was by explaining that the emperor was ordinarily bound to obey the
laws, including the positive laws of the land, but that in extraordinary circum­
stances he could override them. At all times he was bound to obey the laws of
God and of nature, from which he was never exempted; but positive laws could be
set aside in particular moments of emergency.7 This was a model developed with
the help of theology, particularly the distinction between God’s absolute power,
grounded in his omnipotence, and the ordinary or regulated power by which he
governed the universe.8
Bartolus, Baldus, and the other late-­medieval jurists who had been commen­
tating on these ideas had often used them to defend cities or monarchs outside
the empire rather than to exalt imperial power. But the agglomeration of territory
by Charles V offered a fresh opportunity to resurrect the ideal of the emperor as
dominus mundi, whose geographical reach knew no bounds. Perhaps the most
strident articulation of the claim of Charles to universal empire came from Michel
de Ulcurrunus, a jurist and a member of Charles’s council in Navarre whose writ­
ing suggests the lingering appeal of a unitary world order. Ulcurrunus insisted
that when the imperial crown was bestowed on Charlemagne in 800 he became
the true heir to the ancient Roman Empire. For him, it was now the Holy Roman
Emperor who was responsible for ensuring the peaceful ordering of earthly soci­
ety, for peace could only be maintained if there was one single locus of authority.
Ulcurrunus was well aware of his fellow jurists’ claims about the origins of cities
in the ius gentium, but he cast the emperor as the ultimate arbiter of that law and
denied that cities or peoples were free to adapt it to their own needs and circum­
stances. ‘The law of peoples and the law of the Emperor are one and the same’, he
wrote, endowing his master with the authority to reshape political arrangements
across the globe.9 Indeed, Ulcurrunus did not confine the emperor’s authority
merely to Christendom, but insisted he had responsibility for the social and pol­it­
ical (but not religious) life of all human beings, even the infidel.
As we shall see, these visions of empire proved to be highly contentious but
they formed a crucial part of the political imagination of the early modern period.
It was largely in response to these assertions of imperial might that the necessity

7 Keith Pennington, The Prince and the Law, 1200–1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western
Legal Tradition (Berkeley, CA, 1993), ch. 6.
8 See Francis Oakley, ‘Jacobean Political Theology: The Absolute and Ordinary Powers of the King’,
Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (1968), pp. 323–46.
9 Diana Perry, ‘Catholicum opus imperiale regiminis mundi. An Early Sixteenth-­ Century
Restatement of Empire’, History of Political Thought 2 (1981), quotation from p. 243.
22 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

and importance of smaller political communities were articulated, as the consoli­

dation of power in Europe encouraged new ideas about the legitimacy and the
purpose of political authority. Both Roman law and the language of divine provi­
dence proved double-­edged and would be employed to critique empire as well as
defend it. Meanwhile, the growing prominence of classical literature in literate
European society helped to shape the claims being made about political power
and its extent, as writers and statesmen turned to the ancients for advice and
inspiration.

Humanism and the Political Thought of Rome and Greece

By the early-­sixteenth century, the elites of Europe were increasingly fascinated

by the writing, learning, and values of the ancient world, as the movement which
has come to be known as humanism began to spread beyond Italy. The writings of
the ancients seemed particularly attractive compared with the complex and
unwieldy scholastic Latin of the universities, for they seemed to offer a guide to
persuasive speech and practical statesmanship which could be put to use in con­
temporary culture. Moreover, the research and discoveries of the fifteenth century
had revealed more of the variety and diversity of that world, as new manuscripts
circulated and existing texts were translated afresh. Sixteenth-­century humanists
were therefore able to adopt the elements of that classical legacy which best served
their own purposes and adapt them to new situations—including the growing
power of monarchs and the implications of that power for citizens and their own
political role. Classical texts could serve both to uphold monarchical and imperial
values but also to challenge them, promoting the liberty and freedom of cities and
their independence from the growing princely powers.
The Roman author who seemed most relevant in an age of monarchy was
Seneca, perhaps best known for his efforts to instil virtue and justice in the
Emperor Nero through his essays. Seneca was a Stoic philosopher committed to
universal principles of reason which, he believed, could and should be embodied
in the emperor. His short essay De Clementia (‘On Mercy’), written in 55–56 CE,
held up to Nero an ideal of rule, aiming to advise and inspire in equal measure. It
was the first essay of the ‘mirror of princes’ genre, in which writers offered coun­
sel to a ruler by describing the exemplary action of the perfect prince. Here,
Seneca tied the power of the prince to his exercise of virtue, within a Stoic uni­
verse in which the principles of justice, reason, and law were common across the
whole world. Such a prince would act with justice, serving a common good which
transcended any particular human community; his commands would be in con­
formity with the principles of reason which should govern all societies. Indeed,
Stoic cosmopolitanism was well suited to princely expansion, for it downplayed
the particularities of local law and custom in favour of a universal set of values,
 Empires and Cities 23

ideally embodied in the prince himself. It had been heavily invoked by the sup­
porters of King Alfonso V, for example, after his conquests of Naples and Sardinia
in 1442, and literally set in stone in the triumphal arch erected to mark Alfonso’s
entrance into Naples. Here, the King was described as ‘Pius, Clemens, Invictus’
(‘devout, merciful, unconquered’)—three words which summed up the Senecan
ideology and proclaimed the legitimacy of Alfonso’s rule in terms of his own per­
sonal qualities.10
Seneca had written explicitly for princes but his younger contemporary,
Marcus Tullius Cicero, had sought to keep some of the ideals of republican Rome
alive. Cicero’s work had long been a staple of the European educational curricu­
lum and his De Officiis (On duties) was the first classical book to be printed in
Germany. Like Seneca, Cicero was attracted to Stoicism but his extant works dis­
played a profound concern with the respublica or commonwealth as a self-­
governing community, free from domination by any individual or external body
and sustained by the virtue of its citizens (understood, of course, as a narrow male
elite). Cicero had been championed by the humanist and poet Petrarch in his
quest to promote the study of rhetoric and philosophy in his homeland. If young
men could be educated properly, Petrarch thought, then they would become men
of virtue, pursuing the true civic ideals and striving for the common good.
Cicero’s many surviving speeches, masterpieces of classical rhetoric, were an
important part of this educational programme, but the centrepiece was De
Officiis. In this work, one of the last he wrote, Cicero insisted on the importance
of correct and virtuous action, denying that there could be a clash between what
was right and what was useful or advantageous. Here Cicero offered a perspective
which was both potentially universal and also focused on the commonwealth or
respublica, initially tied to his own city of Rome but easily transferable to a con­
temporary world. From Cicero and others, the Italian humanists developed what
one modern scholar has termed a ‘virtue politics’, centred upon the need to fash­
ion reasonable and virtuous rulers to ensure peace and good government.11
Early modern scholars were not only interested in Roman political theory, they
also drew on classical historical writing to provide examples of past actions which
could serve as a guide in the present. Cicero himself had endorsed this approach,
announcing in his De Oratore (On Oratory) that ‘history . . . [is] life’s teacher’ (his-
toria magistra vitae).12 In the early sixteenth century, it was Livy and Sallust who
were preeminent among the ancient historians, praised for their eloquence, com­
prehensiveness, and clarity. Both had discussed foreign policy in particular,
emphasizing Roman victories on the battlefield and the relationship between

10 Peter Stacey, Roman Monarchy and the Renaissance Prince (Cambridge, 2007), p. 190.
11 See James Hankins, Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge,
MA, 2019).
12 Cicero, De Oratore, edited by H. Rackham and E. W. Sutton (Cambridge, MA, 1942), p. 224 (2.9).
24 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

warfare and politics. By 1500 the writing of Tacitus was also coming to be known,
with its bleak assessment of the factionalism and corruption at the courts of the
Roman Emperors. Taking up these themes, humanist historians had begun to
write accounts of their own cities and kingdoms, accounts which served both to
nurture a sense of pride, or at least distinctiveness, and to offer practical guidance
for political behaviour in the present. The history of King Richard III, for ex­ample,
written by the English statesman Thomas More in the 1510s, was modelled in
large part on Roman histories, especially those of Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus. It
offered a caustic analysis of Richard’s tyranny which drew much of its power from
More’s ability to adapt Roman historical conventions to English affairs.13
At the same time, Greek political thinking was gaining greater prominence
within the humanist movement. From the thirteenth century, Aristotle’s Politics
and Ethics had been known in the West, although primarily through the rather
literal Latin translation of William of Moerbeck completed sometime before his
death in 1286. In 1438, however, a new translation of the Politics was completed
by the Florentine Leonardo Bruni, using a much more Ciceronian vocabulary;
though it was printed for the first time only in 1469 it soon became the transla­
tion of choice in learned circles. In 1506 the French humanist Jacques Lefèvre
d’Etaples produced a new edition which, with its summaries and paraphrases
was, in effect, a student guide to the work.14 Aristotle’s Politics offered a different
perspective from the Stoic cosmopolitanism of Seneca or the republicanism of
Cicero—it focused on the city state as a community which arose from the pol­it­
ical nature of men and it discussed the kinds of practices, attitudes, and constitu­
tional forms which would best enable the city to survive and flourish. The Politics
offered a rich set of resources, including a long discussion of constitutional
arrangements, which early modern scholars and politicians could use alongside
the Roman texts.
The Politics contained a critique of some of the ideas of Plato, whose approach
dominated Greek philosophy in the generation before Aristotle. Plato’s Republic,
well known to the fifteenth-­century intellectual elite, had outlined an ideal city
characterized by its unity and stability.15 Indeed, Plato’s Republic was so unified
that there was community of property and of wives. Aristotle denied that such
unity was either practical or desirable, a position much more congenial to his
early modern readers. But Aristotle shared Plato’s concern with the interplay
between the ideal and the possible, and the relationship between the contemplative

13 See The complete works of St. Thomas More Volume 2: The History of King Richard III, edited by
Richard S. Sylvester (New Haven, CT, 1963), pp. lxxxii–civ.
14 Thomas Izbicki, ‘Badgering for Books: Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and Leonardo Bruni’s
Translation of Aristotle’s Politics’, in Essays in Renaissance Thought and Letters in Honor of John
Monfasani, edited by A. Frazier and P. Nold (Leiden, 2015); J. Lefèvre d’Etaples, Politicorum libri octo
(Paris, 1506).
15 Alison Brown, ‘Platonism in Fifteenth-­Century Florence and Its Contribution to Early Modern
Political Thought’, The Journal of Modern History 58 (1986): pp. 384–413.
 Empires and Cities 25

life of individual fulfilment and the active life of civic participation. For Aristotle
as for the wider Greek tradition, the ultimate aim of human life was not glory or
expansion but eudemonia, usually translated as happiness or flourishing in
accordance with nature. And for Aristotle, political justice meant giving to each
person within the city the role best suited to their nature and qualities.
As early modern scholars came to study the works of the ancient world in
greater depth and to recognize the diversity of ideas within it, they evolved differ­
ent strategies to cope with this. Some sought to combine insights and examples
from across these traditions, blending them into a synthesis which often also
included Christianity. Others began to historicize the ancient world, emphasizing
that these texts had been produced under political and social conditions often
very unlike those of their own time. This concern to place texts historically would
have important implications for law and religion, as we shall see. Many humanists
adopted both these approaches, albeit to varying degrees, and drew on the wis­
dom of Roman, Greek, and Christian traditions as they sought to counsel rulers
and leading citizens. As this study proceeds, we shall encounter the various and
often innovative syntheses created by early modern writers forged—at least in
part—from these classical texts.
To see how classical wisdom could be incorporated within the broad frame­
work of a ‘mirror for princes’, we can turn to Desiderius Erasmus’s The Education
of a Christian Prince (1516), a work which demonstrates both the strengths and
the limitations of this genre as it moved into the sixteenth century. Erasmus, the
leading humanist in Northern Europe, had written the work for Charles on the
occasion of his accession to the thrones of Castile and Aragon. Like his fellow
humanists, Erasmus believed the texts of the ancients offered wisdom and insight
to his own contemporaries; The Education was perhaps the best example of Greek
and Roman learning adapted and repackaged as advice for a modern ruler.
Indeed, the most striking feature of The Education is Erasmus’s effort to synthe­
size the wisdom of the classical (and Christian) world, and it shows clearly the
limits of that synthesis in a Europe where princes sought expansion, glory, and
imperial power.16
By 1516 Erasmus had achieved renown across Europe for his eloquent prose
and textual scholarship, and had been made a member of Charles’s council. When
Erasmus addressed the new king, therefore, he sought to cultivate in him the vir­
tues of piety, justice, and wisdom because it was these personal abilities which
would best ensure the good of Charles’s subjects. ‘A country owes everything to a
good prince’, he wrote, and for this reason the education of the prince was of vital
importance.17 The country fortunate enough to have a good prince ‘owes [him]
to the man who made him such by his moral principles’—that is, his teacher.

16 Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince, edited by Lisa Jardine, (Cambridge, 1997).
17 Ibid., p. 6.
26 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

Erasmus pulled out all the rhetorical stops in his efforts to show Charles that it
was his own inner virtue which mattered most in the great task before him, that
‘there can be no good prince who is not also a good man’ and that ‘you will not be
able to be a king unless reason is king over you’. Erasmus’s concept of kingship is
one in which external restraints, such as custom, law, or institutions, matter little
compared with the character of the king. Erasmus even encouraged the virtuous
king to abolish long established customs or laws if he believes they have become
pernicious. This lack of check or balances is not problematic, for when the king is
virtuous and wise then ‘it is pretty well agreed among the philosophers that the
most healthy form [of a state] is monarchy’. This vision of kingship owed much to
Seneca’s writing but it was given new lustre by Erasmus and its Christian creden­
tials burnished—at least on the surface.18
The key criterion for political success, in Erasmus’s view, is the ‘common good’.
Here he was echoing Aristotle who had, in his Politics, distinguished forms of
government into six types: the three—monarchy, aristocracy, and ‘polity’—which
aimed towards the common good and the three—tyranny, oligarchy, and democ­
racy—which sought only the private interest of the rulers. But Aristotle was writ­
ing for small Greek city-­states, where generating a shared sense of the common
good was far from impossible, not for far-­flung empires where the needs of one
group might run counter to those of another. When this Aristotelian notion of
the common good was inserted into the Stoic, universalist framework, it began to
unravel. Erasmus’s appeal to Charles to serve the common good begged the most
important question facing the new ruler, namely how to balance the differing and
even conflicting interests of his new territories.
In Erasmus’s writings it is possible, therefore, to see the limits of the ‘mirror for
princes’ genre in sixteenth-­century Europe. He was writing, as we have seen, on
the occasion of Charles’s accession to the Castilian and Aragonese thrones, when
Charles would become ruler of a collection of territories in the Iberian peninsula
and Italy, as well as his Burgundian lands. Yet Erasmus was hostile to such con­
glomerations of land and critical of expansion through marriage alliances, believ­
ing instead that a prince should be ‘born and brought up among the people he is
to rule’.19 He was well aware of the need to foster ties of unity and goodwill
between the prince and the people, and argued that this was difficult to do unless
the prince lived among his people and was well known to them. Given the cir­
cumstances of the text—the accession of Charles to a foreign throne—this was
hardly advice that his intended reader could follow. Instead, Charles had to bal­
ance somehow the different demands and expectations placed on him in each of
his lands, a steep uphill struggle for him in the first years of his rule. Yet Erasmus
said nothing about how to maintain the affection of different peoples and subjects,

18 Ibid., quotations from pp. 51, 52, 37. 19 Ibid., p. 67.

 Empires and Cities 27

divided by customs, laws, and traditions. In this way, the text gestured towards
some of the problems with multiple monarchy, at least among Christians and in a
Europe where local customs and traditions remained strong. Charles’s accession
to a new throne is both celebrated and critiqued; it offers the potential for peace
and unity and yet it threatens to destroy the relationship between ruler and ­people
on which true political authority rests.
Even more striking to the contemporary reader was Erasmus’s appeal in The
Education for a pacific policy, one which eschewed war and conquest as far as
possible. Such counsel set him squarely at odds with the current ambitions of
contemporary rulers, as Erasmus himself was all too well aware. Charles’s
grand­father, Ferdinand II, had fought hard to maintain control over Naples, and
Charles himself could be expected to continue Ferdinand’s efforts to maximize
Spanish control in Italy. Moreover, Ferdinand’s greatest achievement—at least
to contemporaries—was the completion of the Reconquista in Spain with the fall
of Granada. Charles could be expected to take on his grandfather’s bellicose
mantle, but Erasmus’s text offered him little guidance in the practicalities of
successful warfare.
Erasmus was not blind to the realities of 1510s Europe, of course, but his own
commitments had led him to shape the Senecan legacy in a particular direction.
To him the Senecan image of the prince was not complete, for Seneca was a pagan
writer and Charles was to be a true Christian prince. As a Christian, Erasmus
argued, Charles had even more incentive to act with justice and virtue;
Christianity should deepen Charles’s commitment to principles of wise rule com­
mon to all peoples and found no less in pagan writers than Christian ones. Here,
Erasmus was careful to show that Christian commitments of the prince and
­people did not undermine the model he was setting forth, but rather confirmed it.
A Christian prince would not chase vainglory, false honour, or wage war un­neces­
sar­ily, Erasmus insisted; instead he would seek the true glory found in virtuous
deeds, and would maintain peace and co-­operation with his fellow rulers. In The
Education, Erasmus claimed that Christian and classical principles can exist har­
moniously, that a careful synthesis of the wisdom of all these traditions would
provide an effective pattern for rule in the modern, Christian world. But his stir­
ring exhortation to peace and brotherhood at the end of the tract surely reflects
Erasmus’s own unease, his sense of the deep divisions within Europe which would
render such pious invocations doomed to failure. In the next chapter we will
explore some of the tensions between Christianity and political thinking
more fully.
Though Erasmus failed to cultivate in Charles the peaceful qualities he desired,
he did manage to create a work of lasting influence which would be widely
read across Europe. The Education of a Christian Prince was a crucial text in the
schoolroom of Tudor and Stuart royal children and was read well beyond the
halls of palaces—there were eighteen editions of the book in Erasmus’s lifetime
28 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

alone.20 Its success points to the continuing appeal of a moralized concept of

kingship, in which the most virtuous and most Christian man is the best prince.
Yet the tensions within the work concerning the management of composite king­
doms, the expansion of territory, and the role of laws and institutions within the
prince’s realm, could not be ignored. New ideas about kingship and rule began to
develop, geared more towards the needs and demands of ambitious princes.

Virtù and the City

The classical and Christian tradition of political thinking on which Erasmus drew
was powerfully subverted by the writing of Italian humanists, which was con­
cerned less with universal principles of justice than with the power and status of
their own cities and princes, especially as these extended their territory outwards
to fulfil their own imperial ambitions. The most influential of these humanists
was Niccolò Machiavelli, who mounted a sustained attack on some of the core
principles of contemporary political philosophy in the name both of princely
power and of republican liberty. Machiavelli’s reflections developed out of his
own experience; from 1498 he had served in the second chancery in Florence, a
city which had cast out its Medici rulers and restored republican government
under Piero Soderini. But in 1512 the Medici managed to regain control of the
city, with the help of Spanish troops; Machiavelli was deprived of office and
retired to his estates. Anxious not to waste his knowledge and expertise, he wrote
The Prince to outline the means by which the Medici could consolidate their grip
on power. It offered the fruits of his long expertise for, he explained in a letter of
1513, ‘during the fifteen years I have been studying the art of the state I have nei­
ther slept nor fooled around’ and the Medici would, he hoped, ‘be happy to utilize
someone who has had so much experience at the expense of others’.21 Even more
controversial, perhaps, was a different work written at roughly the same time, his
Discourses on Livy. Both works were published only posthumously, The Prince in
1532 and the Discourses in 1531; in 1559 all of Machiavelli’s works were placed on
the Index of Prohibited Books and forbidden to Catholics but their influence can
be felt throughout the sixteenth century.
In The Prince, Machiavelli echoed some of the conventions of the ‘mirror for
princes’ genre while at the same time turning others upside down, as Quentin
Skinner has shown.22 Machiavelli’s central concern was with new rulers, those

20 See Aysha Pollnitz, Princely Education in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2015).
21 J. B. Atkinson and D. Sices, eds, Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence
(DeKalb, IL, 1996), p. 264.
22 Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli (Oxford, 1981); a new edition was published as Machiavelli: A Very
Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000). See also his The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1
(Cambridge, 1978), pp. 128–38.
 Empires and Cities 29

who had acquired territory through what he called ‘virtù’ and the force of their
own arms, and those who had gained power through good fortune and the help
of others. From the start, therefore, there was a dynamic quality to Machiavelli’s
argument as he explained the practices necessary not merely to sustain authority
but to enhance, protect, and expand it in a world of clashing princely ambitions,
where the greed and fickleness of human beings could not be denied or ignored.
A central theme of Machiavelli’s predecessors had been the duty of the prince
to cultivate and display all of the moral and Christian virtues in order to achieve
both honour and glory in a world seen as largely static and potentially harmoni­
ous. But Machiavelli contested these assumptions. He insisted that honour and
glory could only be achieved by the prince if he were willing to set aside conven­
tional morality and ‘be prepared to act immorally when this becomes necessary’.23
Machiavelli argued that, given the nature of human beings and the course of
events in the world, following the prescriptions of virtue as it was commonly
understood would often lead to ruin and disaster rather than success and se­cur­
ity. It was important for the prince to learn to distinguish when virtue would be
effective in strengthening his grip on the state and when it would not; as this sug­
gests, the central criterion for political action was not justice or morality but the
maintenance of power. Thus the prince ‘need not actually possess’ standardly
acknowledged good qualities, rather he must ‘certainly seem to’ have them. This
artifice need not be too demanding, for most people will not be in a position to
scrutinize the prince’s actions very closely and they will judge him by the appear­
ances and results of his actions. In Machiavelli’s view, a man who ‘contrives to
conquer and to preserve the state’ will ‘always be judged to be honourable and be
praised by everyone’.24
Yet Machiavelli recognized that even the most illustrious reputation for virtue
is not sufficient to ensure successful rule. The prince also needed military force—
a lesson which Machiavelli had learned not only from reading history but from
watching events unfold on the Italian peninsular. The ‘main foundations’ of every
state were good arms and good laws, he argued, and of these two it was good arms
which came first.25 Having seen the havoc which mercenary troops could wreak
on the cities around him, Machiavelli urged the prince to recruit and train a citi­
zen militia which he must then command himself. As this suggests, Machiavelli
believed that a new ruler should build a strong powerbase among the people
(rather than the nobles); ‘if he knows how to command . . . and maintains the
morale of his people’ then he will find them an indispensable resource in difficult
times. Indeed, Machiavelli looked to new rulers not only to display individual and
personal virtù but to devise new laws and new practices—‘nothing brings so

23 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, edited by Quentin Skinner and Richard Price (Cambridge,
1988), p. 55.
24 Ibid., pp. 62–3. 25 Ibid., p. 42.
30 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

much honour to a new ruler’ than these, he argued. In Italy in particular, he saw
that ‘there is no lack of matter to shape into any form’; what was required was a
prince capable of moulding the people through the obedience he inspired but also
through the laws and institutions which would cement his own rule.26 The work
ends with a stirring exhortation to the Medici to liberate Italy through the
strength of their leadership and to the honour and glory of their own family, but
Machiavelli recognized that this could only be achieved through a combination of
Medicean virtù, good fortune, and effective systems of rule.
In The Prince, Machiavelli addressed the ruler, who comes to shape the city he
commands, but in his Discourses, written at around the same time, he turned
instead to deal with republics or free cities, foregrounding the institutions and
practices of the city which can encourage greatness and collective as well as indi­
vidual virtù. The works have sometimes seemed to stand in contrast with each
other, one encouraging tyranny and the other republicanism, but both texts are
concerned with the pursuit of glory and greatness, and the relationship between
individuals and the structures in which they operate. Furthermore, The Prince is
directed to a new ruler working to consolidate his power in his own lifetime while
the Discourses shows how a city can survive and expand over a longer period of
time. The nominal subject of the latter work is a commentary on the first ten
books of Livy’s history of Rome, in which the Roman historian had covered the
rise of the city to pre-­eminence after the expulsion of the kings, but it is looser
and more wide-­ ranging than this description might suggest; as it unfolds,
Machiavelli explores both ancient and modern history to provide lessons for his
fellow countrymen. There are hints within both books that princely rule is inher­
ently less stable than republican government and in the Discourses Machiavelli
discussed the practices and institutions which were necessary if the city was to
endure over time and to resist the forces of decay and corruption to which all
earthly beings are subject.
Machiavelli’s central case study is, of course, Rome and he highlighted the fea­
tures which enabled it to grow great and to foster the practice of virtù among the
citizens. From the city’s very foundation, with the murder of Remus by his brother
Romulus, Rome’s leaders had shown their willingness to set aside conventional
morality for the sake of the city. A little later, as Machiavelli pointed out, the con­
sul Junius Brutus had had his own sons killed when they threatened Rome’s lib­
erty. The culture of Rome had fostered this spirit of patriotism and desire for civic
glory: its religious practices in particular had emphasized the good of the city and
the pursuit of honour through martial valour, deifying the heroes of Rome’s
past.27 Meanwhile, Rome’s constitution had encouraged strife between the different

26 Ibid., p. 89.
27 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, edited and translated by J. Bondanella and P. Bondanella
(Oxford, 2003), pp. 252–3, 50–60 (3.3, 1.11–14).
 Empires and Cities 31

social classes, pitting the plebeians against the patricians in a dynamic balance
which prevented one side becoming dominant. Finally, its aggressive foreign pol­
icy had enabled it not only to remain free from foreign rule but to expand and
conquer, and its broad-­based constitution ensured a good supply of men of virtù
who could lead its armies to victory. Whereas Venice and Sparta sought stability,
Rome sought greatness and, for Machiavelli, it was only through an active pursuit
of glory and empire that the city could hold out against the pressures of change
and decay.28
This concern for the fate of the city in a world marked by change and corrup­
tion is one of the most remarkable features of the Discourses, as John Pocock
showed in his Machiavellian Moment. Where Machiavelli’s contemporaries hoped
to create political and social structures that could echo the stable harmonies of
heaven, this Italian humanist insisted that the city could not escape the flow of
time but must engage with it. The working of time and fortune led to shifting cir­
cumstances and called for different strategies, but individual people were ill-­
equipped to deal with this, failing to adapt to the times. Only a city like Rome
could flourish in the face of fortune, for her culture and institutions nurtured citi­
zens with different skills and methods, and the city could call upon the most
appropriate men where necessary. At the same time, Rome had an active policy of
expansion, growing its pool of citizens through conquests and alliances—a policy
Machiavelli contrasted with the less ambitious but not unsuccessful policy of the
ancient Etruscans in forming a powerful league in Italy. Addressing his Florentine
readers, he suggested that imitation of their expansionist practices ‘should not
seem so difficult, especially to the Tuscans of the present’ and reminded them that
the Etruscans’ measured and pragmatic growth not only secured their power but
brought ‘the highest glory in empire and arms and the greatest renown for their
customs and religion’.29
For Machiavelli, the city’s liberty and empire could only be preserved if conflict
were embraced; this aspect of his thought has been highlighted in recent studies
which challenge the more conventional, ‘humanist’ reading associated with
Skinner and others. Machiavelli believed that the constitution itself could help to
maintain the dynamic equilibrium so important for liberty, and he argued—using
a medical metaphor—that a successful city would also have accepted and or­din­
ary means of release for the ‘humours’ which arose within it.30 These means could
certainly include disturbances and tumults, and Machiavelli’s willingness to allow
and even praise such actions set him apart from his contemporaries who valued
concord so highly. His admiration for Roman religion, with its acts of ‘sacrifice

28 Ibid., esp. pp. 29–38 (1.4–5).

29 Ibid., p. 167 (2.4); see also A. Ardito, Machiavelli and the Modern State: The Prince, the Discourses
on Livy, and the Extended Territorial Republic (New York, 2015).
30 Ibid., pp. 29–31, 38–9 (1.4, 1.7).
32 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

full of blood and cruelty’ which ‘inspired awe and rendered the men who witnessed
it equally awesome’, was part of this strategy of drawing attention to the im­port­
ance of stage-­managed episodes of violence within civil life. His contemporaries’
ideal of a static concord was misguided, he believed, and the true way to stabilize
the city was in fact to allow certain kinds of discord and development into the
fabric and ordering of the city itself.31
Machiavelli’s interest in time, change, and the liberty of cities was shared by his
fellow Florentine Francesco Guicciardini, whose Dialogue on the Government of
Florence explored some of the same themes. Guicciardini had been rather more
successful in gaining the favour of the Medici and was serving as President of the
Romagna under Pope Clement VII when he completed the Dialogue in 1524. In
this work, set in 1494, Guicciardini’s speakers questioned whether the interests of
the city were best served by the rule of one man or whether liberty—in the sense
of rule by some or all the citizens—was in fact necessary for the city to flourish.
The dialogue format allowed Guicciardini to offer several perspectives, to suggest
that a regime should be judged by its effects rather than its constitution, and to
explore the value and limits of citizens’ participation. One of his key concerns was
the ambition and pride of men in general, which led them to seek honour and
office even when they were poorly qualified. In one of a series of political maxims
which he wrote at about the same time, he noted that the ‘fruit of liberty . . . was
not to enable everyone to rule, since only those who are qualified and deserve it
should do so’. Instead, liberty meant that ‘good laws and regulations are observed’,
which was much more likely in a republic than where one man controlled the
city.32 Those good laws needed to channel and to restrain the ambition of the
­people, allowing the most virtuous to rule; Guicciardini was sceptical about the
possibility of fostering a shared civic spirit and preferred instead to focus on cre­
ating mechanisms and structures which would stabilize the city.
All these works reflect the central political realities of the 1510s, when ter­ri­tor­
ies were changing hands and worldly success seemed to depend more on force
than on Christian virtue. Erasmus insisted on a single, universal concept of divine
justice and the common good, even as he gestured towards the problems of com­
posite monarchy and absentee monarchs. Machiavelli emphasized the glory and
greatness of the ruler or the city, won at the expense of their neighbours in con­
quest and war. His brief comments about Christianity suggest his frustration with
a religion which did not prioritize those civic ends. Indeed, in Machiavelli’s
writing we see a sharp rejection of ideals of universal harmony or even earthly

31 Ibid., p. 159 (2.2); see also Gabriele Pedullà, Machiavelli in Tumult: The Discourses on Livy and
the Origins of Political Conflictualism (Cambridge, 2018); Yves Winter, Machiavelli and the Orders of
Violence (Cambridge, 2018).
32 Francesco Guicciardini, Dialogue on the Government of Florence, edited and translated by Alison
Brown (Cambridge, 1994), quotation from p. 173.
 Empires and Cities 33

peace, in favour of the city as a community which can flourish only by embracing
a world of competition and discord.

Communities and Kingship

The relationship between imperial or universal authority and the nature of the
commonwealth was also explored by writers and theologians who were con­
cerned to show how universal laws might in fact find expression and obligation
within the context of a particular community. These writers were keen to
strengthen the power of monarchy, but monarchy understood as operating
through a framework of fundamental laws.33 These fundamental laws were spe­
cific and particular to the community, developed through time, anchored in cus­
tom and history, and often expressed through the commonwealth’s representative
institutions. The monarch was responsible for upholding these laws but also for
adapting them to the needs of the present time, he (or even she) could be flexible
and creative so long as he remained within the framework provided by the funda­
mental laws. Texts exploring these ideas helped to strengthen the power of both
the monarch and the community—with important implications for the expand­
ing monarchies of Europe.
One of the leading intellectuals at the University of Paris, the Scottish theolo­
gian John Mair, engaged in some important discussions of the topics of monarchy
and law in his commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Lombard’s work,
written in the mid-­twelfth century, remained a standard theological textbook and
Mair was the leading commentator of the early-­sixteenth century. Today Mair is
best known as a conciliarist, a supporter of the power of Church Councils over
the Papacy, and in the next chapter those aspects of his thought will be discussed.
No less important, however, were Mair’s contributions to the debates of the early
sixteenth century about the relationship between a natural law which was univer­
sal and a human law which had to be adapted to the circumstances of the particu­
lar community. Mair believed there were three kinds of law, divine, natural, and
human; and of these it was human laws which proved especially complex and
interesting.
Human laws, for Mair, are precepts which are designed to promote the
­honourable advantage of the community. They cannot contravene divine or nat­
ural law, of course, but they are not straightforward derivations from either of
those laws. They require some assessment of the specific historical and geo­graph­
ic­al circumstances of the community—and a good ruler is one who is able to
apply the general principles of the law to the time and place in which he finds

33 J. H. Burns, The True Law of Kingship: Concepts of Monarchy in Early-­Modern Scotland (Oxford,
1996), ch. 2.
34 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

himself. For this reason the rule of the good man is, in Mair’s view, better than the
rule of law on its own. Kings of course require counsel and at times Mair seems to
suggest that the king is in fact morally bound to take the advice of his counsellors.
This is because, at root, Mair sees legitimate political power as based in the con­
sent of the people and existing for the sake of the community as a whole. That
consent, for Mair, is exercised through the institutions of the realm, such as the
estates or parliament—indeed, it is part of the definition of a realm, for Mair, that
it is a community with an institutional means through which it can give its con­
sent. These principles did not shake Mair’s commitment to hereditary monarchy,
at least under normal circumstances, but Mair’s monarch is ruler over a single
community and that community retains, where necessary, a power to act without
or even against the king.34
Mair’s vision of good government was one which many of his contemporaries
were keen to see enacted in practice. In Europe, the power of local institutions,
particularly their role in gathering taxes and maintaining justice, had to be
acknowledged by rulers even while those rulers sought to bend the terms of the
relationship to their own ends and to the ends of newly enlarged territories. From
the point of view of the local elites, the relationship was one in which their con­
sent was necessary for the functioning of government, and that consent was given
through representative institutions at both national and local level. These institu­
tions helped to provide local and regional elites with a corporate identity, an iden­
tity which was affirmed in some places at the accession of a new ruler through
coronation ceremonies or ‘joyous entries’ like the ones staged in the Low
Countries when Charles came of age in 1515. In Bruges, where the most elaborate
of these ceremonies was held, the town staged an impressive pageant designed to
encourage the young king to help it recover its prosperity. It was also an op­por­
tun­ity for the city to reaffirm its own internal cohesion and enhance its reputa­
tion; printed accounts of the Bruges entry were widely circulated in an attractive
edition complete with thirty-­three illustrations.35
The power of regional identities and loyalties was made plain to Charles when,
soon after his accession to the Castilian throne, he promoted Burgundians at the
expense of Castilians while also demanding financial support for his bid for the
imperial throne. The result was a major revolt from the Castilian towns in
1520–21, fuelled by anger that the king was not acting in line with the Castilians’
conceptions of justice and royal rule. Led by the city of Toledo, Castilian towns
refused to attend the Cortes called by Charles or to pay the subsidies he
demanded. Instead they called upon Charles to abandon his current policies,

34 See J. H. Burns, ‘“Politia Regalis et Optima”: The Political Ideas of John Mair’, History of Political
Thought 2 (1981), pp. 31–61.
35 W. Blockmans and E. Donckers, ‘Self-­Representation of Court and City in Flanders and Brabant
in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries’, in Showing Status: Representations of Social Positions in
the Late Middle Ages, edited by W. Blockmans and A. Janse (Turnhout, 1999), pp. 81–111.
 Empires and Cities 35

uphold their privileges and enact a series of reforms designed to improve the
accountability of the regime. The aim was not to dislodge Charles, but rather to
urge him to settle permanently in Castile and uphold their own interest. This
need not mean the abandonment of wider ambitions, for—the rebels explained—
‘he can govern the whole world from these kingdoms, as his forefathers did before
him’.36 But it did suggest that Charles’s imperial adventures should be directed
much more towards the advantage of Castile. Meanwhile, the towns prepared for
war, mustering a large army. Charles’s royalist forces defeated the rebels at the
battle of Villalar but he realized the need to make concessions if he were to main­
tain his authority in Castile. Charles was forced to adapt his ruling style and to
grant to local and municipal elites a greater stake in the government of Castile.
He also continued to call the Cortes, and was careful to obtain their consent for
his taxes.37
The revolt of the comuneros, as these events came to be known, suggest the
limits of European imperial expansion. It was a practical demonstration to
Charles that he ruled over territories with their own historical identities and insti­
tutions which could not easily be brought to serve the interests of a wider political
or imperial unity. Those local political units would come increasingly to insist on
their own autonomy—and this would be a major driving force in the develop­
ment of European political thought. When in the late 1540s Charles’s attention
turned to ensuring the succession of his son Philip, both father and son were
careful to portray Philip in ways that were sensitive to the different cultural land­
scapes within the Habsburg lands. In Italy Philip was surrounded by classical
imagery, while in the Low Countries Biblical themes and motifs were much more
prominent. Travelling through Germany, Philip emphasized his descent from the
Austrian Habsburgs (although in 1556 Charles’s younger brother Ferdinand
would take over as Holy Roman Emperor).38 As both branches of the Habsburg
dynasty would come increasingly to realize, their diverse lands could only be held
together with at least some recognition of local customs and the power of local
elites. Philip himself would have serious difficulty maintaining the allegiance of
his subjects in the Low Countries, especially when they suspected him of seeking
to subsume them into his imperial project.
Meanwhile French kings were also consolidating their authority and expand­
ing their lands, especially in Italy, and the political challenges involved were
shrewdly assessed by the Savoyard jurist and cleric Claude de Seyssel. In The
Monarchy of France, written c.1515 and published a year before his death in 1520,

36 Quoted in Karl Brandi, The Emperor Charles V: The Growth and Destiny of a Man and of a World-­
Empire, translated by C. V. Wedgwood (London, 1965), p. 144.
37 See A. Espinosa, The Empire of the Cities: Emperor Charles V, the Comunero Revolt, and the
Transformation of the Spanish System (Leiden, 2009).
38 See Sylvène Édouard, L’empire imaginaire de Philippe II: Pouvoir des images et discours du pouvoir
sous les Habsbourg d’Espagne au XVIe siècle (Paris, 2005), p. 69.
36 Reformation, Resistance, Reason of State

Seyssel offered to the new king Francis I an account of ‘how and by what means
the French monarchy can be preserved and increased’.39 He defended monarchy
as the best form of government but recognized that all kingdoms were vulnerable
to moments of ‘turmoil and confusion’ in the transition from one ruler to another,
and that the accession of a feeble or capricious prince could disrupt even the best
functioning state. In France the potential impact of these misfortunes was greatly
reduced, however, because there existed three ‘bridles by which the absolute
power of the king of France is regulated’ and which ensured that no individual
ruler could destabilize the kingdom. Those ‘bridles’ were religion, justice, and ‘la
police’, which he defined as ‘the many ordinances . . . which tend to the conserva­
tion of the realm in general and in detail’.40 These provided the legal and moral
context in which royal power was wielded and Seyssel, like many others trained
in Roman law, sought to emphasize the importance and normativity of the law
without compromising royal authority. The ruler’s task was to maintain the health
and harmony of the realm and its institutional structures, although those struc­
tures were in a sense independent of the person of the king.
Seyssel believed that merely preserving the French realm was not sufficient to
satisfy his ruler and in the fifth part of the work he discussed ‘the method of
Conquering states and holding on to them’. He insisted that before embarking on
such conquests a prince must ensure that their ‘grounds are just and can be main­
tained before God and the world’, and he noted that such conquests often turned
out to be difficult and expensive.41 When it came to ruling over conquered ter­ri­
tor­ies, he was well aware of the need for force, at least at the beginning, but good
order and justice were no less important. Seyssel recognized the challenge posed
to royal rule by the diversity of laws within it, and his advice was that the prince
should allow a conquered people to keep their own customs as far as possible, at
least in the short term and in matters ‘which touch the prince’s interest little if at
all’. Ultimately, however, ‘they should be drawn as far as possible to adopt the cus­
toms and laws of the prince so that they may forget their old ways and live in bet­
ter accord with the prince’s own subjects’.42 This, Seyssel claimed, was the policy
pursued by the Romans, and one which would help to integrate the conquered
people into the greater monarchy. Seyssel understood that to hold the land ef­fect­
ive­ly the prince may need to intervene in local politics, strengthening those loyal
to himself and weakening those opposed. Indeed, the prince may even need to
dissimulate and to employ spies, but Seyssel thought that this was licit, being the
practice of all good princes and rulers and ‘not contrary to divine law’.43 Seyssel’s
experience in Italy and his reading of history suggested that the good prince was
not, or not only, the one practising the most virtue or even the more modern

39 Claude de Seyssel, The Monarchy of France, ed. D. Kelley, transl. J. H. Hexter (London, 1981), p. 36.
40 Ibid., p. 56. 41 Ibid., pp. 143–4.
42 Ibid., p. 157. 43 Ibid., p. 161.
 Empires and Cities 37

quality of virtù; instead he advised the prince to learn how to intervene skilfully,
to balance and manipulate factions in the interests of stability and of maintaining
his own power.
Although Seyssel urged the expansion of French power, he remained con­
vinced that princely power was most secure where there was a tradition of local
political structures which ‘bridled’ that power. He was not interested in universal
empire, but in the greatness and glory of France, understood as a specific place
with its own history, customs, and institutions. As this suggests, renewed interest
in the language and imagery of Empire in Europe served to encourage sustained
attention to local and particular political units and to their own structures,
strengths, and weaknesses. From the 1510s, scholars and rulers discussed with
increasing intensity the need to reform those structures to make them both ef­fect­
ive and legitimate. We will see in the next chapter that the alignment of those two
criteria could prove controversial, especially in a Christian society where earthly
success was often sharply detached from divine rewards.

Empire, Law, and the Ottoman Sultan

While European rulers struggled to hold together their different lands, each with
their own identity, history, and sense of legitimacy, the Ottoman Sultans were
expanding rapidly—and appealing to some of the same imperial language to jus­
tify their progress. Historians have become increasingly interested in the inter­
connections between the Christian and Ottoman worlds, and it is clear that the
Ottomans drew, at times, on similar concepts of legitimacy and power. Partly this
was because they, like their European counterparts, found that one of the crucial
challenges facing them in the sixteenth century was the need to integrate new
territories into their sphere of rule. At the same time, their Islamic faith and their
own local traditions led them to articulate their legitimacy in ways which con­
trasted sharply with their Christian contemporaries. Moreover, the Ottomans
were remarkably successful in maintaining the intellectual and military initiative
over the lands they ruled. Their imperial project would not be subjected to the
kind of theoretical critique that characterized so much of sixteenth-­century
European political thinking.
In 1453, after Sultan Mehmed II had captured Constantinople, imperial lan­
guage began to be used by the Ottomans. But the real breakthrough came in 1517,
when Selim I defeated the Mamluks, until then the leading Sunni Muslims. The
Mamluks acted as Protectors of the two Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, and
they also controlled the caliphs in Egypt, the descendants of the Abbasid relatives
of the Prophet Mohammed who had once been the spiritual and political leaders
of the Islamic world. Selim thus took over from the Mamluks perhaps the key
office within the Islamic world, that of ‘the servant of the two Holy Shrines’ in
Another random document with
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happened to be friends, they laid their left breasts together twice,
and exclaimed, “We are lions;” “We are friends.” One then left the
ring, and another was brought forward. If the two did not recognise
one another as friends, the set-to immediately commenced. On
taking their stations, the two pugilists first stood at some distance,
parrying with the left hand open, and, whenever opportunity offered,
striking with the right. They generally aimed at the pit of the stomach,
and under the ribs. Whenever they closed, one seized the other’s
head under his arm, and beat it with his fist, at the same time striking
with his knee between his antagonist’s thighs. In this position, with
the head in chancery, they are said sometimes to attempt to gouge
or scoop out one of the eyes. When they break loose, they never fail
to give a swinging blow with the heel under the ribs, or sometimes
under the left ear. It is these blows which are so often fatal. The
combatants were repeatedly separated by my orders, as they were
beginning to lose their temper. When this spectacle was heard of,
girls left their pitchers at the wells, the market people threw down
their baskets, and all ran to see the fight. The whole square before
my house was crowded to excess. After six pairs had gone through
several rounds, I ordered them, to their great satisfaction, the
promised reward, and the multitude quietly dispersed.
Both Hat Salah and Benderachmani, another Fezzan merchant
residing here, had been with the late Mr. Hornemann at the time of
his death. They travelled with him from Mourzuk to Nyffee, where he
died of dysentery, after an illness of six days. He passed himself off
as an English merchant, professing the Mahometan faith, and had
sold two fine horses here. At my instance, Benderachmani sent a
courier to Nyffee, to endeavour to recover Mr. Hornemann’s
manuscripts, for which I offered him a reward of a hundred dollars;
but, on my return from Sackatoo, I found the messenger come back
with the information, that Jussuf Felatah, a learned man of the
country, with whom Mr. Hornemann lodged, had been burned in his
own house, together with all Mr. Hornemann’s papers, by the negro
rabble, from a superstitious dread of his holding intercourse with evil
spirits.
 All the date trees, of which there is a great number, as well as the
fig and pappaw trees, &c. together with the waste ground, and fields
of wheat, onions, &c. bordering on the morass, belong to the
governor. The date trees bear twice a year, before and after the
annual rains, which fall between the middle of May and the end of
August.
Cotton, after it is gathered from the shrub, is prepared by the
careful housewife, or a steady female slave, by laying a quantity of it
on a stone, or a piece of board, along which she twirls two slender
iron rods about a foot in length, and thus dexterously separates the
seeds from the cotton wool. The cotton is afterwards teazed or
opened out with a small bone, something like an instrument used by
us in the manufacture of hat felt. Women then spin it out of a basket
upon a slender spindle. The basket always contains a little pocket
mirror, used at least once every five minutes, for adjusting or
contemplating their charms. It is now sold in yarn, or made into cloth.
The common cloth of the country is, as formerly stated, only three or
four inches broad. The weaver’s loom is very simple, having a fly
and treadles like ours, but no beam; and the warp, fastened to a
stone, is drawn along the ground as wanted. The shuttle is passed
by the hand. When close at work, they are said to weave from twenty
to thirty fathoms of cloth a day. Kano is famed over all central Africa
for the dyeing of cloth; for which process there are numerous
establishments. Indigo is here prepared in rather a different manner
from that of India and America. When the plant is ripe, the fresh
green tops are cut off, and put into a wooden trough about a foot and
a half across, and one foot deep, in which, when pounded, they are
left to ferment. When dry, this indigo looks like earth mixed with
decayed grass, retains the shape of the trough, and three or four
lumps being tied together with Indian corn-stalks, it is carried in this
state to market. The apparatus for dyeing is a large pot of clay, about
nine feet deep, and three feet broad, sunk in the earth. The indigo is
thrown in, mixed with the ashes of the residuum of a former dyeing.
These are prepared from the lees of the dye-pot, kneaded up and
dried in the sun, after which they are burned. In the process of
dyeing cold water alone is used. The articles to be dyed remain in
the pot three or four days, and are frequently stirred up with a pole;
besides which, they are well wrung out every night, and hung up to
dry till morning, during which time the dye-pot is covered with a straw
mat. After the tobes, turkadees, &c. are dyed, they are sent to the
cloth-glazer, who places them between mats, laid over a large block
of wood, and two men, with wooden mallets in each hand, continue
to beat the cloth, sprinkling a little water from time to time upon the
mats, until it acquires a japan-like gloss. The block for beating the
tobes is part of the trunk of a large tree, and when brought to the
gates of the city, the proprietor musters three or four drummers, at
whose summons the mob never fails to assemble, and the block is
gratuitously rolled to the workshop. The price of dyeing a good tobe
of the darkest blue colour is 3000 cowries, or a dollar and a half; and
for glazing it, 700 cowries. The total price of a tobe is 5000 cowries,
and of a turkadee, from 2000 to 3000 cowries.
The women of this country, and of Bornou, dye their hair blue as
well as their hands, feet, legs, and eyebrows. They prefer the paint
called shunee, made in the following manner:—They have an old
tobe slit up, and dyed a second time. They make a pit in the ground,
moistening it with water, in which they put the old tobe, first
imbedded in sheep’s dung, and well drenched with water, and then
fill up the pit with wet earth. In winter the fire for domestic purposes
is made close to the spot, and the pit remains unopened for ten
days. In summer no fire is required; and after seven or eight days the
remnants of the old tobe, so decayed in texture as barely to hang
together, are taken out and dried in the sun for use. This paint sells
at 400 cowries the gubga, or fathom; for this measure of length
commonly gives name to the cloth itself. A little of the paint being
mixed with water in a shell, with a feather in one hand, and a
looking-glass in the other, the lady carefully embellishes her sable
charms. The arms and legs, when painted, look as if covered with
dark blue gloves and boots.
They show some ingenuity in the manufacture of leathern jars,
fashioning them upon a clay mould out of the raw hide, previously
well soaked in water: these jars serve to contain fat, melted butter,
honey, and bees’ wax.
 They are also acquainted with the art of tanning; in which they
make use of the milky juice of a plant called in Arabic brumbugh, and
in the Bornouese tongue kyo. It is an annual plant, and grows in dry
sandy situations to the height of five or six feet, with a stem about an
inch in diameter. It has broad thick leaves, and bears a small flower,
in colour and shape not unlike a pink. The fruit is green, and larger
than our garden turnip. It contains a fine white silky texture,
intermixed with seeds like those of the melon, and becomes ripe
some time before the rains commence, during which the plant itself
withers. The juice is collected in a horn or gourd, from incisions
made in the stem. It is poured over the inner surface of the skin to be
tanned, which is then put in some vessel or other; when, in the
course of a day or two, the smell becomes extremely offensive, and
the hair rubs off with great ease. They afterwards take the beans or
seeds of a species of mimosa, called in Arabic gurud. These, when
pounded in a wooden mortar, form a coarse black powder, which is
thrown into warm water, wherein the skin is steeped for one day;
being frequently well pressed and hard wrung, to make it imbibe the
liquor. It is then spread out in the sun, or hung up in the wind, and
when half dry, is again well rubbed between the hands, to render it
soft and pliant for use. To colour it red, they daub it over with a
composition, made of trona and the outer leaves of red Indian corn,
first beaten into a powder and mixed up with water.
The negroes here are excessively polite and ceremonious,
especially to those advanced in years. They salute one another, by
laying the hand on the breast, making a bow, and inquiring, “Kona
lafia? Ki ka kykee. Fo fo da rana?” “How do you do? I hope you are
well. How have you passed the heat of the day?” The last question
corresponds in their climate to the circumstantiality with which our
honest countryfolks inquire about a good night’s rest.
The unmarried girls, whether slaves or free, and likewise the
young unmarried men, wear a long apron of blue and white check,
with a notched edging of red woollen cloth. It is tied with two broad
bands, ornamented in the same way, and hanging down behind to
the very ancles. This is peculiar to Soudan, and forms the only
distinction in dress from the people of Bornou.
 Both men and women colour their teeth and lips with the flowers
of the goorjee tree, and of the tobacco plant. The former I only saw
once or twice; the latter is carried every day to market, beautifully
arranged in large baskets. The flowers of both these plants, rubbed
on the lips and teeth, give them a blood red appearance, which is
here thought a great beauty. This practice is comparatively rare in
Bornou.
Chewing the goora nut, already described, or snuff mixed with
trona, is a favourite habit. This use of snuff is not confined to men in
Haussa, as is the case in Bornou, where the indulgence is not
permitted to women. Snuff is very seldom taken up the nostrils,
according to our custom. Smoking tobacco is a universal practice,
both of negroes and Moors. Women, however, are debarred this
fashionable gratification.
The practitioners of the healing art in this country, as formerly in
Europe, officiate likewise as barbers, and are very dexterous in the
latter capacity, at least.
Blindness is a prevalent disease. Within the walls of the city, there
is a separate district or village for people afflicted with this infirmity,
who have certain allowances from the governor, but who also beg in
the streets and market-place. Their little town is extremely neat, and
the coozees well built. With the exception of the slaves, none but the
blind are permitted to live here, unless on rare occasions a one-eyed
man is received into their community. I was informed the lame had a
similar establishment; but I did not see it.
When a bride is first conducted to the house of the bridegroom,
she is attended by a great number of friends and slaves, bearing
presents of melted fat, honey, wheat, turkadees, and tobes, as her
dower. She whines all the way—“Wey kina! wey kina! wey Io.” “Oh!
my head! my head! oh! dear me.” Notwithstanding this lamentation,
the husband has commonly known his wife some time before
marriage. Preparatory to the ceremony of reading the “Fatha,” both
bridegroom and bride remain shut up for some days, and have their
hands and feet dyed, for three days successively, with henna. The
bride herself visits the bridegroom, and applies the henna plasters
with her own hand.
Every one is buried under the floor of his own house, without
monument or memorial; and among the commonalty the house
continues occupied as usual; but among the great there is more
refinement, and it is ever after abandoned. The corpse being
washed, the first chapter of the Koran is read over it, and the
interment takes place the same day. The bodies of slaves are
dragged out of town, and left a prey to vultures and wild beasts. In
Kano they do not even take the trouble to convey them beyond the
walls, but throw the corpse into the morass or nearest pool of water.
Feb. 22.—At seven in the morning I waited on the governor. He
informed me that the sultan had sent a messenger express, with
orders to have me conducted to his capital, and to supply me with
every thing necessary for my journey. He now begged me to state
what I stood in need of. I assured him that the King of England, my
master, had liberally provided for all my wants; but that I felt
profoundly grateful for the kind offers of the sultan, and had only to
crave from him the favour of being attended by one of his people as
a guide. He instantly called a fair-complexioned Felatah, and asked
me if I liked him. I accepted him with thanks, and took leave. I
afterwards went by invitation to visit the governor of Hadyja, who
was here on his return from Sackatoo, and lived in the house of the
wan-bey. I found this governor of Hadyja a black man, about fifty
years of age, sitting among his own people at the upper end of the
room, which is usually a little raised, and is reserved in this country
for the master of the house or visitors of high rank. He was well
acquainted with my travelling name; for the moment I entered, he
said laughing, “How do you do, Abdullah? Will you come and see me
at Hadyja on your return?” I answered, “God willing,” with due
Moslem solemnity. “You are a Christian, Abdullah?”—“Yes.” “And
what are you come to see?”—“The country.” “What do you think of
it?”—“It is a fine country, but very sickly.” At this he smiled, and again
asked, “Would you Christians allow us to come and see your
country?” I said, “Certainly.”—“Would you force us to become
Christians?” “By no means; we never meddle with a man’s
religion.”—“What!” says he, “and do you ever pray?”—“Sometimes;
our religion commands us to pray always; but we pray in secret, and
not in public, except on Sundays.” One of his people abruptly asked
what a Christian was? “Why a Kafir,” rejoined the governor. “Where
is your Jew servant?” again asked the governor; “you ought to let me
see him.” “Excuse me, he is averse to it; and I never allow my
servants to be molested for religious opinions.” “Well, Abdullah, thou
art a man of understanding, and must come and see me at Hadyja.” I
then retired, and the Arabs afterwards told me he was a perfect
savage, and sometimes put a merchant to death for the sake of his
goods; but this account, if true, is less to be wondered at, from the
notorious villany of some of them. In the afternoon I went to Hadje
Hat Salah’s, and made an arrangement with him to act as my agent,
both in recovering the money due by Hadje Ali Boo Khaloom, and in
answering any drafts upon him. In the event of my death, I also
agreed with him to have my Jew servant Jacob, who was to remain
here with my books and papers, sent with them to the sheikh of
Bornou, and so to the English consul at Tripoli. I left Jacob here,
partly on account of his irritable temper, which, presuming on my
countenance and support, was apt to lead him into altercations and
squabbles, as well as to take care of my effects. I made this
arrangement at Hat Salah’s particular recommendation, who strongly
impressed upon me the dangers of the journey I had undertaken.
According to a custom which the late Dr. Oudney had always
followed at every principal town where we made a short stay, I had
two bullocks slaughtered and given to the poor.
 SECTION III.
FROM KANO TO SACKATOO, AND RESIDENCE THERE.

Feb. 23.—At day-break all the Arab merchants of my

acquaintance waited upon me to wish me a prosperous journey.
Hadje Hat Salah and Hadje Ben Hamed accompanied me four miles
beyond the gate Kooffe. Before they left me I had a return of fever,
and lay down under the shade of a tree to wait for Mohammed Jollie,
as my conductor was named. My two camels being evidently
overladen, and my servant Abraham unable to walk from sickness, I
requested Hat Salah to buy another camel and send it after me.
At one in the afternoon, Mohammed Jollie, with two loaded
camels and a handsome led horse of Tuarick breed, sent as the
weekly present or tribute from Kano to the sultan, joined me. He also
brought with him a beautiful Felatah girl for his travelling chere amie,
who was placed astride on a light dromedary, according to the
custom of the country. My fever having abated, we proceeded on our
journey, and by sunset reached the village of Yaromba; where I was
provided with a house for myself and another for my servants, and
with food and provender in abundance. The country had much the
same appearance as on the other side of Kano, but was not quite so
well cultivated.
Feb. 24.—We traversed a woody country, and crossed the dry
beds of several small streams, the course of each being to the
eastward. In the afternoon we passed a walled town called Toffa,
when the country became still more thickly wooded. There were
many villages in ruins which had been destroyed by the rebel
Duntungua, and the inhabitants sold as slaves. A little after mid-day,
we halted at the town of Roma or Soup; where we found the
inhabitants very civil, and were furnished with houses and
provisions. I was here joined by a she-camel, which Hat Salah had
sent by a native of Kano, of the name of Nouzama, whom I also
engaged as a servant.
 Feb. 25.—The country very woody, the road zigzag, and crossed
sometimes by dikes, or ridges of white quartz, running north and
south, sometimes by ravines and the dry channels of rivers. We saw
many Felatah villages, and numerous herds of horned cattle, and
flocks of sheep and goats. The cattle are remarkably fine, and of a
white or whitish grey colour; the horns are not disproportionately
large in size, in which circumstance they differ from the cattle of
Bornou: they have also a hump on the shoulders. The bull is very
fierce, and, as in England, the king of the herd; while in Bornou he is
tamer, and generally weaker than the cow. The shepherd with his
crook usually goes before the flock, and leads them to fresh pasture,
by merely calling with a loud but slow voice, “Hot, hot;” while the
sheep keep nibbling as they follow. I was well supplied with milk, but
only got it fresh from the cow when they understood I was a stranger
going to visit the sultan; for, as I have already mentioned, they hold it
unlucky to drink or sell milk before it has been churned.
We stopped at the town of Gadania or Kadania, which is
surrounded by a wall and dry ditch. The governor was out warring
with Duntungua, who had committed dreadful havoc in this
neighbourhood. I was accommodated with an excellent house; so
were also El Wordee and a shreef named Hassan, a native of Houn
in the regency of Tripoli, who had joined my party, and was going a
begging to the sultan. This is a very common custom with the
shreefs, who sometimes realize a little fortune by visiting all the
governors and sultans within their reach. Hassan was blind, but a
great rogue, and gifted with a ready wit. He frequently amused us on
the road with stories of his younger days, when he had his eyesight.
I had another attack of fever to-day, and could not walk three paces
without assistance.
Feb. 26.—I was detained to-day on account of the disappearance
of El Wordee and Shreef Hassan’s camels: we did not know whether
they had been stolen, or had only strayed during the night. I availed
myself of this opportunity of taking a large dose of calomel, and
administered another to my servant.
Feb. 27.—The camels were still missing; and had it been
otherwise, I could not have continued my journey, for I found myself
excessively weak. In the evening El Wordee offered a reward of two
dollars to a Tuarick to bring back the camels, to which I added two
dollars more. Kadania is very thinly peopled, the inhabitants, as in
most other captured towns, having been sold by the Felatahs. The
houses are scattered up and down; but there is a good daily market,
supplied by the people of the adjoining country. The soil around is a
strong red clay. The trees were higher here than in Bornou; and the
fields of Indian corn, gussub, cotton, and indigo, were neatly
enclosed with fences, and kept free of weeds.
Feb. 18.—No news of the lost camels. I determined to proceed,
and had my camels loaded with the baggage of El Wordee and the
shreef; the former remaining behind, to await the return of the
Tuarick. The country was still thickly wooded, with a few cultivated
patches of land. The soil was a red and white clay, mixed with
gravel, and traversed by ridges of schistus. We crossed the dry beds
of several rainy-season streams, whose banks were lined with rocks,
and covered with majestic trees. In the little glens and nooks, there
were small plots of onions and tobacco; which the inhabitants water
from holes dug in the dry channel of the river, by means of a bucket
and long bar or lever. At noon we halted at the walled town of
Faniroce or “White Water,” the walls of which are extensive, but the
houses few and mean. I was shown into one of the best of them; but
my servants had much ado to render it habitable. Soon after El
Wordee arrived, but without the camels. In the evening I was visited
by the governor, a very good-natured fellow, who, when he saw that I
was ill, went and brought some fine trona, of which he recommended
me to take a little every evening. On inquiring about the course of the
streams whose dry channels I had passed, he informed me that all
between this place and Kano run eastward; but that to-morrow I
should cross the first that runs to the west, and divides the provinces
of Kano and Kashna. At eight in the evening, the Tuarick brought
back the camels of El Wordee and the shreef.
Feb. 29.—The governor and some of his friends accompanied us
a short distance out of the town. The country was still very woody,
and the road extremely crooked. At eleven in the forenoon we
crossed the bed of the stream that separates Kano from Kashna, the
channel being here about twenty feet broad, and perfectly dry; and at
noon we halted at the town of Duncamee. The stream near this town
assumes the same name, and, after passing Zirmie, the capital of
Zamfra, it bends northward, and traverses the province of Goobeer;
then, turning again to the west, it washes the city of Sackatoo, and,
at the distance of four days’ journey, is said to enter the Quarra at
Kubby.
March 1.—At six in the morning we left Duncamee, and travelled
through a thickly wooded country; and at noon we passed a walled
town, of considerable size, called Geoza, after which we came to
ridges of granite, running in a north-easterly direction. At three in the
afternoon we halted at the town of Ratah, whose site is very
remarkable. It is built amidst large blocks of granite, which rise out of
the earth like towers, and form its only defence on the northern side,
some of the houses being perched like bird-cages on the top of the
rocks. The south side is enclosed by a wall about twenty feet high,
but in bad repair. The inhabitants are numerous, and the women are
the tallest and fattest I ever saw.
March 2.—We rode through a beautiful and well cultivated
country, rendered extremely romantic by ledges of rocks, and clumps
of large shady trees. We passed a number of villages, the
inhabitants of which are mostly Felatahs, who, when they knew I was
going to visit the sultan, presented me with new milk. At noon we
halted at the town of Bershee, which is situate amongst large blocks
of granite, and is the first town with suburbs I had seen in Haussa,
although, from the ruinous state of the walls, this was no very
important distinction. The governor of Ongooroo was here, on his
way from Sackatoo to his province; but, through the care of my
guide, Mohammed Jollie, this circumstance did not prevent me from
obtaining the best house in the town, and abundance of provisions
for myself and servants.
March 3.—The weather clear and fine: we rode to-day through
little valleys, delightfully green, lying between high ridges of granite;
and, to add to the beauty of the scenery, there were many clear
springs issuing out of the rocks, where young women were
employed drawing water. I asked several times for a gourd of water,
by way of excuse to enter into conversation with them. Bending
gracefully on one knee, and displaying at the same time teeth of
pearly whiteness, and eyes of the blackest lustre, they presented it
to me on horseback, and appeared highly delighted when I thanked
them for their civility: remarking to one another, “Did you hear the
white man thank me?” After leaving this beautiful spot, the land rose
gently into hill and dale, and we had to cross the dry bed of the same
rainy-season stream no less than four times in the course of three
hours. The country also became more wooded, and worse
cultivated; and the soil in most places was of a strong red and blue
clay. There were numerous herds of cattle. At two in the afternoon
we halted at the village of Kagaria, situate on the brow of a sloping
hill, and inhabited by Felatahs. Here, for the first time, I found some
difficulty in procuring lodgings. The chief of the village, an old
venerable-looking Felatah, told my guide, that when they went to
Kano, the governor turned up his nose at them, and, if ever he came
there, they were determined not to receive him. Then, addressing
me, he said, “You are a stranger, from a far distant country; you and
your servants shall have a house, but none of the others.” I was
accordingly conducted to a very excellent house, but took my fellow
travellers with me; and, in due time, provisions were sent, with the
usual attention.
March 4.—At six in the morning left Kagaria, but not without giving
the old Felatah a present of a turkadee, of which he was very proud.
Our road lay through a beautiful country, highly cultivated. At nine
o’clock we passed through many villages, romantically situate
amongst ridges of granite. From the fertility and beauty of the
country, it appeared like an ornamental park in England, shaded with
luxuriant trees. We now entered a forest, where the road became
both difficult and dreary. Here our guide enjoined my servants not to
stray from the caravan, as the woods were infested with banditti,
who murdered every one they seized too old for the slave market.
The soil was composed of clay and gravel: in the hollows I frequently
saw rocks of granite, and mica slate. The trees upon the high
grounds were low and stunted, amongst which I remarked several
wild mangoes. We halted at the Felatah village of Bobaginn, where
the country is again open. The inhabitants were kind and attentive in
procuring me a house and provisions.
Mar. 5.—The country was now highly cultivated. The road was
crowded with passengers and loaded bullocks, going to the market
of Zirmie; which town we passed a little to the southward, about
noon, when the country became more woody. At two in the afternoon
we entered an opening in a range of low hills; this proved to be the
dry bed of the river we had crossed at Duncamee, which is here
joined by another watercourse from the southward. The land rises
into hills on each side, and, as our road lay at some distance to the
west, we had a beautiful view along the red sandy bed of the river,
which formed a striking contrast with the green hills on each side.
The banks were planted with onions, melons, cotton, indigo, and
some wheat; and watered, by means of a basket and lever, out of
holes dug about two feet deep in the bed of the river, in which water
is always found in abundance. On the eastern bank there is a town
called Kutri, apparently large and populous, with a number of dye-
pots in its outskirts. At four in the afternoon we crossed the bed of
another small river, coming from the south-west, and falling into the
forementioned river, a mile and a half to the east of a town, on its
northern bank, called Quari, or Quoli, where we halted. I waited on
the governor, who was an aged Felatah: after the usual
compliments, he anxiously inquired for Dr. Oudney, and was much
disappointed when I informed him of his death. He complained of
being grievously afflicted with rheumatic pains; and said he had
already outlived most of the people of this country, having attained
the age of seventy-two years. We remained with him until houses
were prepared for us; and he told me that the river, which flows to
the eastward (mentioned before as dividing the provinces of Kano
and Kashna), after the junction of some other streams, takes the
name of Quarrama.
March 6 and 7.—The weather clear and warm. This morning I
exchanged a turkadee, worth about two dollars and a quarter, for a
sheep, and gave a feast to El Wordee and the shreef, along with all
our servants. About a hundred Tuaricks came to see me, having
learned I had visited Ghraat, and was acquainted with their
countrymen. The women and children of the town every where
peeped at me through the matting of their houses, with eager
curiosity: although some of the Tuaricks were nearly as white as
myself. The Tuaricks here have a beautiful breed of horses, full of
fire; but they do not stand so high as the barbs of Tripoli. In the
evening I despatched a courier with a letter to Sultan Bello, as I had
been recommended by the governor of Kano to remain here until a
guard was sent from Sackatoo to conduct me through the provinces
of Goober and Zamfra, which were in a state of insurrection. I found
by observation the town of Quarro to be in lat. 13° 7′ 14″ north.
I was unluckily taken for a fighi, or teacher, and was pestered, at
all hours of the day, to write out prayers by the people. My servants
hit upon a scheme to get rid of their importunities, by acquainting
them if I did such things, they must be paid the perquisites usually
given to the servants of other fighis. To-day my washerwoman
positively insisted on being paid with a charm, in writing, that would
entice people to buy earthen-ware of her; and no persuasions of
mine could either induce her to accept of money for her service, or
make her believe that the request was beyond human power. In the
cool of the afternoon, I was visited by three of the governor’s wives,
who, after examining my skin with much attention, remarked,
compassionately, it was a thousand pities I was not black, for I had
then been tolerably good-looking. I asked one of them, a buxom
young girl of fifteen, if she would accept of me for a husband,
provided I could obtain the permission of her master the governor.
She immediately began to whimper; and on urging her to explain the
cause, she frankly avowed she did not know how to dispose of my
white legs. I gave each of them a snuff-box, with a string of white
beads in addition, to the coy maiden. They were attended by an old
woman, and two little female slaves, and during their stay made very
merry, but I fear their gaiety soon fled on returning to the close
custody of their old gaoler.
Mar. 8 and 9.—Thermometer in the shade 91°. To-day I was
visited by several females, who evinced much discernment in their
curious manipulation of my person. One of them, from Zirmee, the
capital of Zamfra, was with difficulty prevailed on to leave me.
 Mar. 10.—We had a shower of rain during the night. Two
messengers arrived from Sackatoo, going their rounds with orders
for all Felatahs to repair to the capital, as the sultan was going on an
expedition, but where they did not know.—Both myself and servants
have had a return of the same fever we had at Koka. This was
almost always the case whenever we remained two or three days
together in any town. In vain I tried every thing in my power to induce
my guide to proceed without waiting for the escort; but El Wordee
and the shreef, who were the most pusillanimous rascals I ever met
with, effectually dissuaded him from it.
I was much amused with a conversation I overheard between the
blind shreef and his servant, respecting myself and my intended
journey. “That Abdullah,” says the servant, “is a very bad man; he
has no more sense than an ass, and is now going to lead us all to
the devil, if we will accompany him: I hope, master, you are not such
a fool.” “Yes!” ejaculates the shreef, “it was a black day when I joined
that Kafir, but if I don’t go with him I shall never see the sultan, and
when I return to Kano without any thing, the people will laugh at me
for my pains.” Says the servant, “Why do you not talk to him about
the dangers of the road?” “Damn his father!” replies the shreef, “I
have talked to him, but these infidels have no prudence.” I now
called out,—“A thousand thanks to you, my lord shreef.” “May the
blessing of God be upon you!” he exclaimed. “Oh! Rais Abdullah,
you are a beautiful man; I will go with you wherever you go. I was
only speaking in jest to this dog.” “My lord shreef, I was aware of it
from the first; it is of no importance, but if the escort does not arrive
to-morrow, I may merely mention to you I shall certainly proceed,
without further delay, to Kashna.” This I said by way of alarming the
shreef, who liked his present quarters too well, from the number of
pious females who sought edification from the lips of a true
descendant of the Prophet: besides the chance such visits afforded
of transmitting to their offspring the honour of so holy a descent.
March 11.—Small-pox is at present very prevalent. The patient is
treated in the following manner:—When the disease makes its
appearance, they anoint the whole body with honey, and the patient
lies down on the floor, previously strewed with warm sand, some of
which is also sprinkled upon him. If the patient is very ill, he is bathed
in cold water early every morning, and is afterwards anointed with
honey, and replaced on the warm sand. This is their only mode of
treatment; but numbers died every day of this loathsome disease,
which had now been raging for the last six months.
I had my baggage packed up for my journey to Kashna; to the
great terror of El Wordee, the shreef, and all my servants, who
earnestly begged me to remain only one day longer.—A party of
horse and foot arrived from Zirmee last night. It was the retinue of a
Felatah captain, who was bringing back a young wife from her
father’s, where she had made her escape. The fair fugitive bestrode
a very handsome palfrey, amid a group of female attendants on foot.
I was introduced to her this morning, when she politely joined her
husband in requesting me to delay my journey another day, in which
case they kindly proposed we should travel together. Of course it
was impossible to refuse so agreeable an invitation, to which I
seemed to yield with all possible courtesy; indeed I had no serious
intention of setting out that day. The figure of the lady was small, but
finely formed, and her complexion of a clear copper colour; while,
unlike most beautiful women, she was mild and unobtrusive in her
manners. Her husband, too, whom she had deserted, was one of the
finest-looking men I ever saw, and had also the reputation of being
one of the bravest of his nation.
A hump-backed lad, in the service of the gadado, or vizier, of
Bello, who, on his way from Sackatoo, had his hand dreadfully
wounded by the people of Goober, was in the habit of coming every
evening to my servants to have the wound dressed. Last night he
told me he had formerly been on an expedition under Abderachman,
a Felatah chief. They started from the town of Labojee in Nyffee, and
crossing the Quarra, travelled south fourteen days along the banks
of the river, until they were within four days’ journey of the sea,
where, according to his literal expression, “the river was one, and the
sea was one but at what precise point the river actually entered the
sea he had no distinct notion.
March 12.—The weather clear and warm. The Felatah chief again
waited upon me to-day, and handsomely offered to conduct me
himself to Sackatoo, if my escort did not arrive in time. The town of
Quarra is surrounded by a clay wall about twenty feet high, and may
contain from 5000 to 6000 inhabitants, who are principally Felatahs.
It lies in a valley environed by low hills, the river Quarrama flowing a
little to the south of the town, and two or three miles lower down
joining the river before-mentioned that passes Kutri. During the dry
season, a number of Tuaricks, who come with salt from Bilma, lodge
in huts outside the walls.
March 13.—At half-past six o’clock I commenced my journey, in
company with the Felatah chief. El Wordee and the shreef were
evidently in much trepidation, as they did not consider our present
party sufficiently strong in case of attack. Our road lay through a
level country, clear of wood, with large fields of indigo, cotton, and
grain. At nine in the morning, we were agreeably surprised by
meeting the escort I expected. It consisted of 150 horsemen, with
drums and trumpets. Their leader, with his attendants, advanced to
me at full gallop, and bade me welcome to the country in the name
of his master, the sultan; who, he said, was rejoiced to hear I was so
near, and had sent him to conduct me to his capital. Nothing could
now equal the joy of El Wordee and the shreef, who had both been
cursing my temerity the whole morning. During the time we halted
with the escort, a party of boxers from a neighbouring village passed
us, on their way to challenge “the fancy” of Quarra. They were fine
looking men, carrying muffles for the hands over their shoulders, and
were attended by drummers and a large posse of women. They
offered to exhibit before me, but I declined, and we proceeded to a
village called Burdarawa, where the commander of the escort
begged me to halt for one day, as both his men and horses were
much fatigued by their journey from Sackatoo. I was provided with
the best house in the village, and supplied with every thing the place
afforded. El Wordee, the shreef, and my people, fared equally well.
There is a ridge of low hills to the north-east.
March. 14.—At six in the morning left Burderawa, and traversing a
thickly wooded country we arrived at the bed of the river Fulche,
which in many places was quite dry. The channel was only thirty or
forty yards wide where we crossed. We halted on the opposite bank,
and sent the camels out to graze. The servants here filled our water-
skins. This river joins the river of Zirmee, half a day’s journey to the
north. Several people were very busy fishing in the pools left by the
river; while assistants, floating on a stick buoyed up at each end with
gourds, were splashing in the water with spears to drive fish into the
nets. I treated the chief of the escort and his friends with tea, of
which they had heard many exaggerated reports from people that
had been at Kano.
At two in the afternoon we left the banks of the river Fulche, at the
quickest pace it was possible to make the camels travel. We were
previously joined by an immense number of people, some bearing
burdens on their heads, others with loaded asses and bullocks. Our
road, for two or three miles, lay through an open country; we then
entered a thick wood, by a narrow winding path, where the shreef,
and others who rode on camels, suffered severely from the
overhanging branches. Bullocks, asses, and camels; men, women,
and children, were now all struggling to be foremost; every person
exclaiming, “Wo to the wretch who falls behind; he is sure to meet an
unhappy end at the hands of the Gooberites.” Had it not been for the
care of my escort, I must have run great risk of being thrown down,
and trampled to death, by the bullocks which frequently rushed
furiously past me on the narrow path. The horsemen, however, rode
on each side of me, to protect my person. We were now on the
confines of the provinces of Goober and Zamfra; and a place better
adapted for land pirates, as the Arabs name robbers, is scarcely to
be conceived. Till sunset we continued to thread a thick wood, the
road being overrun with long grass, and apparently covered with
water during the rainy season. The soil now became more gravelly,
the trees stunted, and the country altogether more open. The
pebbles were of clay ironstone, which in some places was seen in
large masses. There were numerous tracks of elephants, and other
wild animals. From the great care the escort took of me, I was often
almost suffocated with dust in riding over dry clay grounds, for I had
horsemen continually on each side of me; while from time to time a
reconnoitring party would pass at full speed, then halt, and say
prayers, and so skirr past me again and again. During the day a
drum was beat every ten minutes, in the rear of our line of march,
and at night this was repeated every two or three minutes, and also
answered by the trumpets in front.
At half-past two in the morning we stopped at the lake Gondamee,
to water our horses and beasts of burden, and to give the foot
passengers and slaves time to fill their gourds and water-skins. The
place is reckoned the most dangerous in the whole road, as it is only
one day’s journey to the north of Kalawawa, the capital of the
province of Goober, which has been for some time in a state of open
rebellion.
The appearance of the country was much the same as before. At
four in the morning we came to a large lawn in the woods, where we
again halted for an hour. I felt quite refreshed by this short rest. The
country to the westward of the lake of Gondamee rises into ridges,
running north-north-east, with loose gravelly stones and clay on the
surface. We continued to travel with the utmost speed, but the
people soon began to fag; and the lady of the Felatah chief, who
rode not far distant from me, began to complain of fatigue. At noon
we halted at the side of a hollow, said to be the haunt of lions, where
water is generally found, but this year it was dry. Tracks of elephants
were every where visible, but I perceived no marks of lions. We
stopped here only half an hour, and set off again, through a country
rising into low hills, composed of red clay and loose stones, the
descent of some of which proved both difficult and dangerous to the
loaded camels. At eight in the evening we halted at the wells of
Kamoon, all extremely fatigued. I ordered a little kouskousoo for
supper, but fell asleep before it was ready. When I awoke at
midnight, I found it by my side; never in my whole life did I make a
more delicious repast.
March 16.—At day-break I discovered our camels had strayed in
quest of food, nor could I be angry with their keepers, feeling so tired
myself from our rapid journey. Indeed my ankles were considerably
swelled and inflamed. Here again I experienced the civility of the
escort, as all the horsemen were immediately despatched after the
camels, with which they returned about eight o’clock. I gave the man
who found them a Spanish dollar, and to the commander of the
escort, and his two principal officers, I made each a present of a
cotton kaftan, or loose gown, a knife, looking-glass, snuff-box, razor,
and some spices.
I now left the wells of Kamoon, followed by my escort and a
numerous retinue, amid a loud flourish of horns and trumpets. Of
course this extraordinary respect was paid to me as the servant of
the king of England, as I was styled in the sheikh of Bornou’s letter.
To impress them further with my official importance, I arrayed myself
in my lieutenant’s coat, trimmed with gold lace, white trowsers, and
silk stockings, and, to complete my finery, I wore Turkish slippers
and a turban. Although my limbs pained me extremely, in
consequence of our recent forced march, I constrained myself to
assume the utmost serenity of countenance, in order to meet with
befitting dignity the honours they lavished on me, the humble
representative of my country.
Near Kamoon the country is hilly, but seemed to yield much grain.
The soil is red clay, mixed with gravel, the stones of which looked as
if covered with iron rust. We passed some beautiful springs on the
sloping declivities of the hills, which in general are low, and run in
broken ridges in a north-east direction. The valleys between the hills
became wider as we approached Sackatoo, which capital we at
length saw from the top of the second hill after we left Kamoon. A
messenger from the sultan met us here, to bid me welcome, and to
acquaint us that his master was at a neighbouring town, on his return
from a ghrazie, or expedition, but intended to be in Sackatoo in the
evening. Crowds of people were thronging to market with wood,
straw, onions, indigo, &c. At noon we arrived at Sackatoo, where a
great multitude of people was assembled to look at me, and I
entered the city amid the hearty welcomes of young and old. I was
conducted to the house of the gadado, or vizier, where apartments
were provided for me and my servants. After being supplied with
plenty of milk, I was left to repose myself. The gadado, an elderly
man named Simnou Bona Lima, arrived near midnight, and came
instantly to see me. He was excessively polite, but would on no
account drink tea with me, as he said I was a stranger in their land,
and had not yet eaten of his bread. He told me the sultan wished to
see me in the morning, and repeatedly assured me of experiencing