Gentry Honor and Royalism in Early Stuart England

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Abstract
You have the satisfaction in your conscience that you are in the right; that the King ought not to grant what is required of him …. but for my part, I do not like the quarrel and do heartily wish that the King would yield and consent to what they desire; so that my conscience is only concerned in honour and gratitude to follow my master.In this way Sir Edmund Verney, the patriarch of an old Buckinghamshire gentry family, explained his decision to side with the King in the Civil War, a choice which cost him his life at the battle of Edgehill. In 1642, many English gentlemen were confronted with a similar choice. It is significant that Verney attributed his choice of King over Parliament to “honour and gratitude.” In Sir Edmund's explanation we may find the basis on which many English gentlemen supported the King in 1642.The political behavior of the Royalist gentlemen in the 1640s is part of a problem which has long plagued historians of the English Civil War. The economic interpretations proposed by both R. H. Tawney and H. Trevor-Roper stimulated much interest because they seemed to provide what had long been sought — a theory that could consistently account for the political choices of upper class gentlemen in the 1640s. When tested, however, neither theory proved satisfactory. Careful studies of key institutional bodies like the Civil Service and the Long Parliament revealed no significant social or economic differences between Royalists and Parliamentarians.

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