In 1531 at the height of Henry VIII’s Great Matter, Thomas Elyot, who was a humanist and scholar wrote a small political science book disguised as a treatise on education, extolling the virtues of wise counsellors who would speak truth to power. In this episode, we look at Elyot, and The Governor, and talk political science.
Suggested link:
The Book Named the Governour by Thomas Elyot
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave us a rating on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
Episode transcript:
Hello, and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity.
This is Episode 141. And it’s all about Thomas Elyot, and specifically his book, The Governour, and its impact on court and on 16th century politics. So you can get show notes for this episode at Englandcast.com/Elyot.
So normally, this is the part of the show where I would plug Tudorcon or my shop or something like that. But we’re living in weird times right now friends. For a lot of us, there’s maybe the want the desire to escape. So I would just remind you two things. First, you can get an archive of all of my shows at Englandcast.com/archive. There’s, gosh, over 140 episodes now. Of course, you can also get them all on your podcatcher of choice.
But I also want to recommend another Agora podcast, which is When Diplomacy Fails, which is a really great show that Zack has put together. And it’s a podcast about times in history when diplomacy has failed. And he’s not particularly interested in looking at what one general did or another general did or anything like that. He delves into the human agency, the story populated by sometimes ingenious, sometimes fatally flawed human beings, who believed or had been led to believe that the time was right for war. And so it’s a really fascinating podcast that looks at diplomacy, and when it failed, hence the name.
So I would just remind you, if you’re looking for a bit of listening escapism, if you’re at home right now and you’re quarantined, or maybe you’re on lockdown like I am in Spain at the moment, you can check out any of the Agora Podcast shows or any of the Agora Podcast Network shows. So yes, I will be back to remind you about Tudorcon and all of that other stuff once we get through this madness, but let’s get through this madness first.
Okay, so let’s talk about Thomas Elyot. He is a name that you come across fairly often when you read about the literature of the Tudor period. He even appears on the periphery of other subjects. For example, if you are an observant listener, you will recognize him because I talked about his book The Castell of Helth before when we talked about Tudor medicine. He was prolific throughout the 1530’s. But his career started with a treatise on what on the surface seems like education, but is really a meditation on the power of a monarch, a justification for monarchial systems of government, and the importance of wise counsellors.
When I was in high school studying European history, I remember the first primary source in my class was Machiavelli’s The prince, that has come down to us as the gold standard in books on governance and advice to kings, and the politics of the ends justifying the means, and early political humanism, right? But England had its own literary counsellor in the form of Thomas Elyot, and his book, which was called The boke named the Governour, actually outsold Thomas More’s Utopia at the time, it was a bestseller. It was dedicated to Henry VIII, and this treatise was on the best form of education for royals and nobles.
Let’s talk about Thomas Elyot first. This next bit comes to us from a website created by the town where he died, Carlton in Cambridgeshire. Historians believe that he was born around 1489/1490 but they’ve not yet found a record of his birth. He was the first son of Sir Richard Elyot of Wiltshire in London and his first wife, Alice De la Mare, who was the daughter of Thomas De la Mare from Berkshire. Alice was the widow of another Sir Thomas. She already had several children.
And both Cambridge and Oxford universities claimed to have Elyot as an alumnus. By his own account, Thomas Elyot was continually trained in some daily affairs of the public weal almost from childhood. His father was a prominent lawyer of west country stock. He was appointed the justice for the western circuit in 1506 and employed his son as a clerk on the circuit from around 1510. Meanwhile, the humanistic studies which Elyot turned to such good use in later years were not neglected. He says himself that he was educated in his father’s house and not instructed by another teacher from his 12 year, but led by himself into liberal studies, and both sorts of philosophy. He also studied medicine. He studied the works of Galen and Hippocrates. And by 1531, he published his first successful work, the book The Governor, which is what this episode is about.
On the surface, it might seem silly to have an episode, a whole episode about one small book, but the questions that it raises and the themes that it discusses are pertinent to us today, perhaps more than ever. Now, I had originally meant to release this episode, towards the end of January, and it was right around the same time as the impeachment trial finished up in the US and England separated from the EU with Brexit. And it seems like the questions that this seemingly innocuous little book deals with are worth bringing up and debating with each other again. Now, I’m going to add, that’s not a political commentary. I mean, I suppose it is, but it’s not furthering one side over another. Every once in a while someone will send me an email or a message on Facebook telling me how angry they are that I go there politically. And depending on how you listen to this episode, you might think I’ve done it again, the point that I’m making isn’t on of one side or the other, but rather to point out the similarities between us and the Tudors.
I always say that the 21st century is basically like the 16th century only with cell phones and technology. So many of the issues that we deal with today are the same issues that the Tudors dealt with. It’s like déjà vu. We debate the limits of the executive branch in our democracy, they debated the role of good counsellors what we might call the Cabinet. In a world where there was no check on the executive, there sort of same same but different. And I think in reading their discussions and understanding their own concerns and fears that can inform our discussions today, which, and I might be naive in thinking this, can be respectful in seeking to understand and to listen, rather than simply spewing vitriol. And that is the end of that note.
So if you couldn’t have guessed by now, there is a lot more to this book than simply a treatise on education. Elyot was a clever man who managed to fit a complete commentary on the events of 1531, which was the height of course, of Henry’s Great Matter. The same year, he put aside Catherine of Aragon for good and installed Anne Boleyn with her own royal apartments. And he did all that through this book that appeared to be simply a book about whether or not to practice archery daily. The answer is yes. He writes:
“And verily I suppose that before crosse bowes and hand gunnes were brought into this realme, by the sleighte of our enemies, to thentent to destroye the noble defence of archery, continuell use of shotynge in the longe bowe made the feate so perfecte and exacte amonge englisshe men.”
Greg Walker writes in Writing Under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation, that the idea of The Governor is really a text for and about the schoolroom, has led us advocates not only to miss the books’ crucial political dimension, but also to undervalue its intellectual and aesthetic qualities. The Governor is a justification of monarchy and divine right hidden in a treatise on education. This kind of writing treatises on education with subtly hidden agendas was popular, not only the prince, but also the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives, wrote a treatise on education for women, specifically on Princess Mary.
There’s also Erasmus, who in his The Education of a Christian Prince, made the point for Charles V 15 years earlier, that “In a monarchy, a leader is not chosen.” He says, “Born to office and not elected”, which was the custom among some barbarian people, according to Aristotle, and as such, he must be educated to become a great prince through his counsellors and teachers. The most important figure in government according to Erasmus, wasn’t the monarch himself but the counsellor who taught the monarch and who guided the king. Elyot made the same point.
“The end of all doctrine and study is good counsel, whereunto, as unto the principal point, which Geometricians do call the centre (which by some authors be imagined in the form of a circle), all doctrines do send their effects like unto equal lines.”
Thus the work of the counsellor was actually the most important work in the kingdom. And it was important for the counsellor himself to be educated to be free from hatred, vice, jealousy. Kings did not have to be perfect. They just needed to listen to their good counsels. And if a king stopped listening to counsel, he would risk becoming a tyrant and counsellors themselves. He writes, “I call him a good counsellor, which (as Caesar saith), in the conspiracy of Cataline, whilst he consulteth in doubtful matters, is void of all hate, friendship, displeasure, or pity.
The role of the counsellor was to provide honest debate and to give wise counsel, and it was the one duty of the monarch, in a world where his word was final, to actually pay attention and listen to the counsellor, and to be open-minded when the counsellor spoke their concerns or provided criticism.
How all of this related to Henry VIII is that Henry himself was brought up with these ideals when he was a young student learning how to be a king. When he was crowned in 1509, he gave every intention of wanting to follow these ideals. He accepted counsel from men based on their merits rather than their nobility, most famously in the case of Cardinal Wolsey. “If you could see how all the world here is rejoicing in the possession of so great a prince, how his life is all their desire, you could not contain your tears for joy,” wrote Lord Mountjoy to Erasmus in 1509.
Men like Elyot watched as Henry slowly became more tyrannical over the next two decades promoting favorites and refusing to listen to his trusted counsellors towards the end of the 1520’s. Elyot and the people like him were faced with a dilemma- loyalty to the crown as an institution versus loyalty to the one person who held the position of monarch. And out of these concerns and questions, we get Elyot’s book The Governor with its discussion of contemporary English politics. Elyot does this subtly referring back to classical antiquity to show how successful rulers like Augustus and Alexander would fill the halls with eloquent speakers, lawyers, and philosophers.
“They shall also consider that by their pre-eminence, they sit as it were on a pillar on the top of a mountain, where all the people do behold them, not only in their open affairs, but also in their secret pastimes, privy dalliance, or other unprofitable or wanton conditions, which soon be discovered by the conversation of their most familiar servants, who do always embrace that study, wherein their master delighteth. As the Judge of the people is, so be his ministers: and such as be the governors of the city, such be the people.”
The role of these counsellors starts from the time a prince is born.
“In the nursery, one should find such companions and playfellows which shall not do in his presence any reproachable act, or speak any unclean word or oath, neither to advance him with flattery, (remembering his nobility), or like any other thing wherein he might glory unless it be to persuade him to virtue or to withdraw him from vice in the remembering to him the danger of his evil example.”
So you can see here Elyot is making the case for wise counsel that will speak truth to power, rather than the people who will simply go along because they want to be empowered themselves. He goes on to give examples from antiquity, of times when freedom of speech had been curtailed, and the monarch could refuse to listen to the counsellors and advisors, culminating in the assassination of Julius Caesar.
“O, what damage hath ensued to princes and their realms where liberty of speech hath been restrained? What availed fortune incomparable to the great King Alexander, his singular doctrine in philosophy, taught him by Aristotle, in delivering him from the death in his young and flourishing age? where if he had retained the same affability, that was in him at the beginning of his conquest, and had not put to silence his counsellors which before used to speak to him frankly, he might have escaped all violent death: and by similitude have enjoyed the whole monarchy of all the world. For after that he waxed to be terrible in manners, and prohibited his friends, and discreet servants, to use their accustomed liberty in speech, he fell into a hateful grudge among his own people.”
The note here is that during the Tudor period, the general assumption was that Alexander The Great had been murdered through poison, a theory that still persists to this day; to help explain the agonizing death that he experienced. Elyot goes on to Julius Caesar.
“But I had almost forgotten Julius Caesar who, being not able to sustain the burden of fortune, and envying his own felicity, abandoned his natural disposition, and as it were, being drunk with overmuch wealth, sought new ways, how to be advanced above the estate of mortal princes, wherefore little and little he withdrew from many his accustomed gentleness, becoming more sturdy in language, and strange in countenance, than ever before had been his usage. And to declare more plainly his intent, he made an edict or decree, that no man should praise to come to him uncalled, and that they should have good await, that spake not in such familiar fashion to him as they before had been accustomed: whereby he so did alienate from him the hearts of his most wise and assured adherents, that from that time forward, his life was to them tedious: and abhorring him as a monster or the common enemy, being knit in a confederacy, slew him sitting in the Senate.”
You see here that Elyot was making the case for wise counsel and listening to wise counsel. Cardinal Wolsey died at the end of November 1530. The Governor was published in 1531 during the height, like I said, of the “Great Matter”. This was a period when the politics of Henry’s court were messy. With the various factions representing Anne including reformers and Protestants like Cromwell, and the Boleyn family were vying with older and more established counsellors rapidly representing the queen, the pope, tradition, like Thomas More, who had just been appointed Chancellor, and many religious leaders, including Bishop Fisher, who had been Margaret Beaufort’s Chaplain.
Elyot is worried about this state of affairs, arguing that there need to be fewer people who are yes-men looking to use the king for their own rise, and more people who are willing to speak openly and honestly, secure in the knowledge that the king will, if not listen to them, at least not punish them for their views.
It’s important to note that Elyot makes no mention of other forms of government besides monarchy. He does not go into any sort of detail on the ways that parliament, for example, could curtail a monarch. He believes clearly in royal supremacy, which would have pleased Henry, again, to whom this book was dedicated. But there are also no discussions of royal supremacy over the church or anything disparaging on the role of Rome in deciding English affairs. Elyot clearly wasn’t trying to appeal to Henry’s agenda in full, but rather to point out the importance of a monarch guided by wise and learned counsellors, who is constantly looking out for the good of the commonweal, rather than simply his own.
And in turn, it was a treatise on the education of those men who would someday advise the monarch, but they’d be there for the right reasons, basically, and not simply seeking to advance their own power without challenging the monarch, but instead to give criticism and hold the monarch accountable at a time when there were no other branches of government to do so.
So does that make you want to read The Governor? You can read it online for free. I have links to the show notes at Englandcast.com/Elyot. That’s it for this week. It’s a bit of Political Science from the Tudor period to get you thinking. And please don’t send me hate mail about politics, right? If you’re thinking about it, just don’t. You will simply approve my thesis about the importance of respectful conversations seeking to understand. And it will immediately get deleted, thus wasting both our energies. The book recommendation for this episode is, of course, Thomas Elyot’s book, The Governor. Like I said, it’s free to read online and the show notes are at Englandcast.com/EIyot.
Remember to check out all the other podcasts in the Agora Podcast Network. Tudorcon is at this point still scheduled to happen in October. Yeah, that’s what I can say about that. I will have more information on tickets and all that kind of stuff here as we see how this strange situation we’re in plays out. But for now, go listen to some more podcasts. Check out all the Agora shows – When Diplomacy Fails, and the Englandcast archive. And yeah, let me know what you’re watching, what you’re reading, what you’re doing during your quarantine period.
You can get in touch with me through Twitter @Teysko. You can text the listener support line at 8016TEYSKO or you can email me or message me through Facebook at facebook.com/Englandcast. So be well, take care of each other. Check on your vulnerable neighbors, and friends, and parents, and grandparents, and take care of yourselves, and take care of one another. And I will be back again in about two weeks. Maybe a little less, I have another episode written. And thank you so much for listening. Talk to you soon, bye!
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave us a rating on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]