The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness and Honour (Ideas in Context)

The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness and Honour (Ideas in Context)

Markku Peltonen

Language: English

Pages: 376

ISBN: 0521025206

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Arguments about the practice of the duel in early modern England were widespread. Markku Peltonen, the distinguished intellectual historian, examines the debate, and reveals how the moral and ideological status of duelling was considered within a much broader cultural context of courtesy, civility and politeness. Understanding the duel involves knowing crucial issues in the cultural and ideological history of Stuart England. Peltonen's wide-ranging study engages the attention of a significant audience of historians and cultural and literary scholars.

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Epistles of warre (London, ), pp. –, . T[uvil], Essayes, p. ; T[uvil], Vade mecum, p. . Hobbes to Charles Cavendish  August , in Thomas Hobbes, Correspondence, ed. Noel Malcolm ( vols., Oxford, ), , p. .  Whetstone, An heptameron, sigs. Iivv , Piv . For more examples see Cust .  The duel who bemoaned the general lapse from ‘sweete conuersation’ into ‘bitter wordes’, mentioning ‘the terrible brawels, that lately (on the shew of manhood) are sprong vp among.

That all forms of duel ‘for private malice’ were sternly prohibited. Yet, ‘there is a duellum allowed by law depending a suit for the triall of truth’. In addition to these trials by combat in the common law courts, there were also ‘martial’ combats, as Agard called them. They were combats determined and organised by the High Court of Chivalry, or ‘in the court of marshall and constable’. Whereas in common law courts a trial by combat could take place ‘uppon appeales of murder or robbery,.

Were recent imports from the Continent. To condemn everything foreign in general and everything Italian in particular was of course a well-known cultural topos. But just at the time when the theory of civil courtesy and duelling began to infiltrate into England a particular anti-Italianism erupted. This was partly provoked by political developments both in England and abroad, and was thus concerned with religious and political attitudes, but the Italian manners, courtesies and refinements also.

Had never led them to say ‘a word of combate; vnlesse it were for their countrey, or common-weale’. One could not find a single mention of the duel in ‘Plato, Plutarke, Seneca or Aristotle’. Of course, Cicero ‘sayes, hee that can repulse an iniury and will not, offends as much as if hee forsooke his friends, and kinsfolke’. But the duellists omitted that Cicero had talked ‘of no repulsing by fight. He bids vs pugna pro patria, Fight for our countrey,    Sylvester, The parliament, p. .

Compleat French-master, p. . Bellegarde, Reflexions upon ridicule p. . See also Jonathan Swift, ‘On good-manners and goodbreeding’, in The prose works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford, ), , pp. –, at p. ; Miller, Of politeness, p. . See also Anne Th´er`ese de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert, Advice of a mother to her son and daughter, transl. [anon.] (London, n.d. [?]), pp. –. Restoration of courtesy, civility and politeness  we come.

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