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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88390-0 - Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic Paul A. Rahe Frontmatter More information

Against Throne and Altar Modern republicanism – distinguished from its classical counterpart by its commercial character and jealous distrust of those in power, by its use of representative institutions, and by its employment of a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances – owes an immense debt to the republican experiment conducted in England between 1649, when Charles I was executed, and 1660, when Charles II was crowned. Though abortive, this experiment left a legacy in the political science articulated both by its champions, John Milton, Marchamont Nedham, and James Harrington, and by its sometime opponent and ultimate supporter, Thomas Hobbes. This volume examines these four thinkers, situates them with regard to the novel species of republicanism first championed in the early 1500s by Niccolo` Machiavelli, and examines the debt that he and they owed the Epicurean tradition in philosophy and the political science crafted by the Arab philosophers Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averro¨es. Paul A. Rahe holds a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. in Litterae Humaniores from the University of Oxford, and a Ph.D in ancient history from Yale University. Professor Rahe’s first book, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution, was an alternative selection of the History Book Club, was reissued in a three-volume paperback edition in 1994, and remains in print. He co-edited Montesquieu’s Political Science: Essays on the Spirit of Laws and edited Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy, and he has published a host of articles in journals and chapters in edited books. Currently, Professor Rahe is a professor of history and political science at Hillsdale College.

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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88390-0 - Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic Paul A. Rahe Frontmatter More information

Against Throne and Altar Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic

PAUL A. RAHE Hillsdale College

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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88390-0 - Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic Paul A. Rahe Frontmatter More information

cambridge university press ˜ Paulo, Delhi Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521883900  C Paul A. Rahe 2008

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2008 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Rahe, Paul Anthony. Against throne and altar : Machiavelli and political theory under the English Republic / Paul A. Rahe. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-521-88390-0 (hardback) ` 1469–1527 – Influence. 2. Republicanism – Great Britain – History – 1. Machiavelli, Niccolo, 17th century. 3. Great Britain – Politics and government – 1649–1660. 4. Great Britain – History – Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649–1660. I. Title. jc143.m4r35 2008 320.092 241–dc22 2007031033 isbn 978-0-521-88390-0 hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88390-0 - Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic Paul A. Rahe Frontmatter More information

Antonia Marie Rahe

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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88390-0 - Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic Paul A. Rahe Frontmatter More information

Contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations and Brief Titles

page ix xi

Introduction Prologue: Machiavelli in the English Revolution

1 4

part i: machiavelli’s new republicanism 1 Machiavelli’s Populist Turn 2 The Ravages of an Ambitious Idleness

22 56

part ii: revolutionary aristotelianism 3 The Classical Republicanism of John Milton 4 The Liberation of Captive Minds

104 139

part iii: machiavellian republicanism anglicized 5 Marchamont Nedham and the Regicide Republic

179

6 Servant of the Rump 7 The Good Old Cause

197 219

8 9 10 11

part iv: thomas hobbes and the new republicanism Thomas Hobbes’s Republican Youth The Making of a Modern Monarchist The Very Model of a Modern Moralist The Hobbesian Republicanism of James Harrington Epilogue

Index

249 273 291 321 347 357

vii

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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88390-0 - Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic Paul A. Rahe Frontmatter More information

Acknowledgments

While working on this book, I piled up many debts. Over the years, I have learned a great deal from exchanges with James W. Muller, David Wootton, Blair Worden, Jonathan Scott, James Hankins, Charles Butterworth, Ralph Lerner, Harvey C. Mansfield, Cary J. Nederman, Antony Black, and William Connell. On two occasions, Lars Engle, chairman of the Department of English at the University of Tulsa, and I co-taught a seminar titled “The English Revolution: Politics and Literature,” and in the course of our discussions in and out of class he taught me much. Lori Curtis, who was for some years director of Special Collections at McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa, was assiduous in locating and securing pertinent materials, and Marc Carlson, Ann Blakely, Tamara Stansfield, and the staff at the interlibrary loan office at that library performed miracles. Charles Burnett at the Warburg Institute kindly responded to my inquiries regarding the reception of Averroism in the Christian West; Antony Black allowed me to see the pertinent chapters of his forthcoming book comparing political thought in Islam with that in the West; and, shortly before the publication of his fine book on John Milton, Andrew Marvell, and Marchamont Nedham, Blair Worden generously shared with me the page proofs, enabling me to add citations and make small adjustments in the copyedited manuscript of this work. Eldon Eisenach, who was my colleague many years ago at Cornell University and later at the University of Tulsa, read and commented on an early draft; Erik Midelfort read and commented on the first chapter; Charles Butterworth read and commented on the second and fourth chapters; Nicholas von Maltzahn, Martine Watson Brownley, Colleen Sheehan, Lars Engle, and Paulina Kewes read and commented on an early version of the third chapter; Paul Cantor read and commented on the third and fourth chapters; Timothy Fuller read and commented on the eighth through tenth chapters; and John Headley read and commented on the book in its entirety. My wife, Laura, more than once went over every word. While on sabbatical in 2005–2006, I received generous support from the Research Office at the University of Tulsa and from Thomas Benediktson, dean of Henry Kendall College of Arts and Sciences at that institution. I also had the privilege of spending Michaelmas term in 2005 and Hilary term in 2006 in congenial company at All Souls College, Oxford – where, as a Visiting Fellow, I took ample advantage of library facilities unequalled anywhere else in the world and profited from conversations with Jeremy Butterfield, who suggested the title of this volume; with Noel Malcolm and Sir Keith Thomas, ix

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x

Acknowledgments

who were generous in sharing their encyclopedic knowledge of this period; and with Fergus Millar, John Robertson, Peter Ghosh, Ian Maclean, Eleanor Dickey, Robert Maltby, Patrick Finglass, Andrei Rossius, James Adams, Myles Burnyeat, Gerald Cohen, Wolfgang de Melo, Simon Green, Alison Brown, and Magnus Ryan, who went very far out of his way to be helpful to an itinerant scholar. I owe a particular debt to the generations of librarians responsible for the collection and safekeeping of the books lodged in the Bodleian Library, the Codrington Library, the Taylorian Institution, and the library at Balliol College. This book was finished late in March 2006 during my last week in residence at All Souls. An earlier version of the prologue was published in Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy, ed. Paul A. Rahe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and material drawn from it is reprinted with permission. Earlier versions of Chapters 1 and 3 appeared as Paul A. Rahe, “In the Shadow of Lucretius: The Epicurean Foundations of Machiavelli’s Political Thought,” History of Political Thought 28:1 (Spring 2007): 30–55, and “The Classical Republicanism of John Milton,” History of Political Thought 25:2 (Summer 2004): 243–75, and material drawn from them is reprinted here with permission. Some of the material found in the preface to Part Three and in Chapters 5 through 7 was published in Paul A. Rahe, “An Inky Wretch: The Outrageous Genius of Marchamont Nedham,” The National Interest 70 (Winter 2002–2003): 55– 64, and in Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy, ed. Paul A. Rahe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and is reprinted here in revised form with the permission of the editor of The National Interest and of Cambridge University Press. Chapter 11 is adapted from material published in Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution C 1992 by the University of North Carolina Press, by Paul A. Rahe, Copyright  and republished in Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy, ed. Paul A. Rahe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and is used here by permission of the two publishers.

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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88390-0 - Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic Paul A. Rahe Frontmatter More information

Abbreviations and Brief Titles

In the notes, I have adopted the standard abbreviations for classical texts and inscriptions and for books of the Bible provided in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, third edition revised, ed. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), and in The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 15.50–3. Where possible, the ancient texts and medieval and modern works of similar stature are cited by the divisions and subdivisions employed by the author or introduced by subsequent editors (that is, by book, part, chapter, section number, paragraph, act, scene, line, Stephanus page, or by page and line number). In some cases, where further specification is needed to help the reader to locate a particular passage, I have included as the last element in a particular citation the page or pages of the pertinent volume of the edition used. For modern works frequently cited, the following abbreviations and short titles have been employed: ABL John Aubrey, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (London: Secker & Warburg, 1949). CDPR The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660, third edition, ed. Samuel Rawson Gardiner (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1906). CTH The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Noel Malcolm (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1994). Hobbes, Behemoth Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth, or The Long Parliament, ¨ second edition, ed. Ferdinand Tonnies (New York: Cass, 1969). , De cive Thomas Hobbes, De Cive: The Latin Version, ed. Howard Warrender (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1983). , Elements of Law Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural ¨ and Politic, second edition, ed. Ferdinand Tonnies (London: Cass, 1969). , EW Thomas Hobbes, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed. Sir William Molesworth (London: J. Bohn, 1839–1845). , Leviathan Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1971), to which I have added, where appropriate, the paragraph numbers supplied in Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1688 [1651], ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994). xi

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xii

Abbreviations and Brief Titles

, LW Thomæ Hobbes Malmesburiensis opera philosophica quae Latine scripsit omnia in unum corpus, ed. William Molesworth (London: J. Bohn, 1839–1845). , Philosophicall Rudiments Thomas Hobbes, Philosophicall Rudiments Concerning Government and Society, in Hobbes, De Cive: The English Version, ed. Howard Warrender (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1983). JHO James Harrington’s Oceana, ed. S. B. Liljegren (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1924). Machiavelli, AG Niccolo` Machiavelli, Dell’arte della guerra, in Machiavelli, Opere, 301–89, to which, where appropriate, I have added the sentence numbers supplied in Niccolo` Machiavelli, Art of War, ed. and tr. Christopher Lynch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). , Discorsi Niccolo` Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, in Machiavelli, Opere, 75–254, to which, where appropriate, I have added the paragraph numbers supplied in Niccolo` Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, ed. and tr. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). , Opere Niccolo` Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, ed. Mario Martelli (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1971). Marsilius of Padua, Defensor pacis Marsilius of Padua, The Defensor Pacis of Marsilius of Padua, ed. C. W. Previt´e-Orton (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1928). Milton, CPW Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953–1982). , CW The Works of John Milton, ed. Frank Allen Patterson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931–1938). MP Mercurius Politicus Nedham, CCES Marchamont Nedham, The Case of the Commonwealth of England, Stated (1650), ed. Philip A. Knachel (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1969). , EFS [Marchamont Nedham], The Excellencie of a Free State (1656), ed. Richard Baron (London: A. Millar and T. Cadell, 1767). , True State [Marchamont Nedham], A True State of the Case of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: Tho. Newcomb, 1654). OFB The Oxford Francis Bacon, ed. Graham Rees and Lisa Jardine (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1996–). PWoJH The Political Works of James Harrington, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977). WoFB The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath (London: Longman, 1857–1874). WoJH James Harrington, Works: The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington, ed. John Toland (London: T. Becket, T. Cadell, and T. Evans, 1771). WrSOC The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. Wilbur Cortez Abbott (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937–1947).

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