Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England: Tales of Discord and Dissension.

David Cressy, Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England: Tales of Disco rd and Dissension

David Cressy, Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England: Tales of Disco rd and Dissension

Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. xi + 351 pp. $35. ISBN: 0-19-820781-6.

David Cressy's latest work is a fascinating collection of fifteen previously unpublished essays examining "the ways in which early modern society coped with cultural difficulties and dealt with bewildering phenomena" (1). Having studied the normal rituals of the life-cycle in Birth, Marriage, and Death, Cressy now turns to abnormal phenomena and Failed rituals of life as a means to understanding the realities of life in Tudor and Stuart England. The topics he covers range from bestiality and monstrous births to the more prosaic matter of destroying church furniture and burning picture frames which had once contained portraits of William Prynne.

Each story tells of local stresses and strains, yet Cressy shows how each incident transcended local issues and became a matter of national concern. The larger significance of what first appears to be a local conflict is shown in Cressy's account of "Mercy Gould and the Vicar of Cuckfield." On the surface, the pregnancy of an unmarried servant and the subsequent stillbirth or abortion of her unfortunate child was commonplace and hardly material for concern at the highest levels. In practice, however, this tale reveals a deep conflict between the two leading families which involved the Bishop of Winchester and prominent courtiers.

Did Agnes Bowker and her accusers really believe that she had given birth to a cat in 1569, and why was the matter brought to Cecil's attention? Cressy concludes that although the story reveals credulity and victimization, the remarkable feature of the case is that Agnes's accuser did not raise the specter of witchcraft or attempt to show it as a portent of divine displeasure on the Elizabethan religious settlement. Instead her story was used to attack popish credulity and ignorance. Cressy concludes that Agnes's "child" and other monstrous births may have provided vulgar entertainment, but sensible authorities kept them from becoming politically dangerous.

Several of Cressy's stories cast light on current historiographical controversies: was the personal rule of Charles I a period of consensus and calm? Was cross-dressing a wide-spread phenomenon which disturbed the fabric of society? Cressy's account of "The Battle of the Altars" tells a story of intense conflict, heightened by the Laudian church's use of excommunication. And his account of Laud's attack on Prynne in Star Chamber and High Commission provides additional evidence that the revisionists' view of the 1630s will have to be reconsidered.

Similarly the tale of Thomas Salmon who put on women's clothing so that he could take part in some post-natal merriment provides scant support for the transvestite theories which have recently "fascinated" literary scholars [97]. Cressy has found very few cases of cross-dressing in historical records, and those he has discovered turn out to be mostly high-spirited pranks rather than rebellion against a patriarchal social order.

If most of Cressy's stories do not have the same historiographical impact as these two, they all give a deeper understanding of the lives of ordinary people. Elizabeth Brand, for example, whose husband beat her and squandered the family's meager resources, was not as helpless before the law as one might expect. And when the parson of Holton, Oxfordshire, refused to bury a "Mrs. Horseman" because she died excommunicate, her neighbors buried her under the communion table as a way of reinforcing their sense of Christian charity and right conduct while tacitly reprimanding a church which was becoming more quick to take offense and increasingly prone to abuse its power of excommunication. The actions of Mrs. Horseman's neighbors underscores a theme running through many of the essays: the basic good sense of ordinary people when confronted with strange events. They did not panic as they might well have done when faced with these travesties, but sensibly went about getting to the bottom of things. They may have val ued uniformity and obedience, but were prepared to tolerate a bit of strange behavior to keep harmony in their communities. Cressy's most entertaining and informative book shows that Charles and Laud would have done well to have followed their example.