The World of the Favourite. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

University of Minnesota, Emeritus

J. H. Elliott and L. W. B. Brockliss, eds. The World of the Favourite. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999. xvi + 74 pls. + 320 PP. $45. ISBN: 0-300-07644-4.

Paul E. J. Hammer. The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585-1597.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xviii + 8 pls. + P16 pp. $69.95. SBN: 0-521-43485-8.

The World of the Favourite is a collection of essays read at an international colloquium held several years ago -- the date is not given -- at Magdalen College, Oxford. Organized by the volume's editors, the conference honored the work of John Elliott, now Regius Professor Emeritus of Modern History at Oxford, and sprang partly from his respected studies of two prominent royal favorites, Count Olivares in Spain and Cardinal Richelieu in France. It was also inspired by an article published by the French historian Jean Berenger in 1974, in which he suggested that the role of favorites as powerful first ministers was a general European phenomenon of the seventeenth century, clearly evident in England, France, and Spain, but also visible in such areas as Austria, Poland, Germany, and Denmark. The age of such omnicompetent ministers was relatively short; they disappeared from the scene after 1660.

Although most of the chapters in the volume deal with a single country or a single favorite, they are organized around general topics in an attempt to tie the subjects together. The several parts of the book discuss the emergence of the minister-favorite, the role of favorites in office, representations of favorites on the stage and in paintings and literature, and the twilight of the favorite. Elliott provides introductory remarks and Brockliss a conclusion. The eighteen authors are distinguished historians from England and the Continent, together with five faculty members at American universities (James M. Boyden, Jonathan Brown, Antonio Feros, Linda Levy Peck, and Orest Ranum) and one Australian (Paul Hammer, a senior lecturer in History at the University of New England).

The individual essays are of high quality and their juxtaposition forces the reader to consider connections and comparisons that were not previously apparent. Several comments, however, are appropriate. Many of the chapters seem too short to deal effectively with the subjects at hand; fewer and longer might have been better. Not all of them relate directly to the general issues being addressed. One cannot help feeling that the organizers of the conference might have laid out the questions more clearly, so that individual contributions could be tied together and synthesized more easily. There remains a nagging concern that not all the individuals discussed should really be regarded as both favorites and ministers. To take the case of England, is it really right to treat Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, as a favorite, or Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, as a minister? Some readers will probably continue to accept the old dichotomy which viewed Essex as a favorite, never a real minister, and Salisbury as a c hief councillor who was not a personal favorite of the monarch. Rather than lumping such men together, it might have been more profitable to place them in categories and study the differences between favorites and ministers. In particular, it might have been interesting to examine those whose attractions were physical or based on personality (Carr and Buckingham are good later examples) in opposition to those (some, like Salisbury, even mildly deformed, and others, like Laud, devoid of personal charm) whose rise was based on intellectual abilities. The work of Paul Johnson, whose biography of Elizabeth I viewed her as an intellectual and who also published a volume of essays called Intellectuals (1988), suggests the validity of such a classification. It is interesting that the real favorites were almost universally hated, their wealth and power widely resented. One wonders if the same is actually true of such intellectuals as Salisbury.

The volume includes a large number of black-and-white illustrations depicting the favorites -- an important aspect of the book, since several of the essays, especially that by Jonathan Brown, consider portraiture as an avenue of self-aggrandizement by favorites. The paintings from England and France are generally well known, but most of those representing favorites from other countries will be new to readers.

One of the chapters in this book is a brief account of Elizabeth I and her favorites, 1581-1592, by Paul Hammer. Hammer deals more fully with one aspect of this topic in his monograph on the Second Earl of Essex. The study is a revision of a dissertation written, like so many pieces of Tudor scholarship, under the supervision of the late Sir Geoffrey Elton. Meticulously documented and tightly argued, it is divided into two sections, the first of which deals chronologically with Essex's youth while the longer second portion is arranged topically and considers such matters as Essex's role in intelligence gathering, his followers (a "glittering circle of noble friends" [288]), and his growing rivalry with the Cecils.

Throughout the study Hammer challenges the usual view of Essex as a glamorous romantic youth with little military or political skill. The revision goes so far as to characterize him as an intellectual. While it is true that Essex's connections with both Cambridge and Oxford were more significant than has generally been appreciated and that his writings display more literary ability than we have realized, one may still query whether these qualifications counted for much with the Queen. Hammer is particularly interesting when he discusses Essex's efforts to "reinvent himself" (317) by recasting his role from that of the young romantic court favorite to that of the sober mature soldier, councillor, and politician. He sees Elizabethan politics as becoming polarized in 1597, when the Essex and Cecil factions not only supported their leader but clearly came to oppose a rival and his followers. During the last months of 1597, and not earlier, these tensions escalated into what Hammer calls a "factional struggle par excellence" (356).

Disappointingly, Hammer stops at this point and does not consider Essex's last years -- his abandonment of his Irish command, filling out with the Queen, house arrest, rebellion, condemnation for treason, and final tragic execution. He is at work on a study of this period; until it appears one still needs to turn to Lacey Baldwin Smith's fascinating account of Treason in Tudor England (1986), the last three chapters of which deal with Essex as a case study. Smith, always gifted at psychological analysis, viewed Essex as the victim of paranoia and described the schemes of his enemies at court in fine detail. Hammer relies more on political documents than on personality and psychology -- generally a desirable approach, but one that may be deficient in this instance -- and, although he has extensive footnotes and a full bibliography, he never cites Smith, whose work he either did not know or chose to ignore.

Such reservations aside, both volumes add substantially to our understanding of early modern European politics, Elliott and Brockliss by illuminating a pervasive but short-lived aspect of the period and Hammer by offering a detailed new interpretation of the late Elizabethan court.