Abstract
The hero of this essay is the extraordinary figure who first appeared as an illustration at the beginning of William Neade’s 1625 book of military theory and tactics, The Double-Armed Man.1 I shall return to him later, along with his rather less heroic mounted counterpart, leaving him for the moment as the accompanying caption describes, standing ‘coucht and charged for the horse with his Sword drawne’. Neade’s text is one example from a wide-ranging canon of early modern documents arguing the case for an enhanced awareness of the military requirements of the developing late-Tudor and early-Stuart state, and the frontispiece illustration is a perfect image of this canon’s relentless idealism. My particular concern is with the way in which this idealism is guaranteed for the reader by means of a not altogether untroubled marshalling of representations of medieval militarism and chivalry.
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Notes
William Neade, The Double-Armed Man (London, 1625).
M. J. D. Cockle, A Bibliography of Military Books up to 1642 (London, 1900).
Christine de Pisan, The Boke of the Fayt of Armes and of Chyvalreye (London, 1498)
Barnaby Rich, A Right Excelant and Pleasant Dialogue betweene Mercury and an English Souldier (London, 1574)
Allarme to England, foreshewing what Perilles are Procured when People Live Without Regarde to Martiall Lawe (London, 1578)
and Barnaby Rich, His Farewell to Militane Profession (London, 1581).
Henry J. Webb, ‘Classical Histories and Elizabethan Soldiers’, Notes and Queries, vol. 200 (November 1955) pp. 468–9.
The most productive period for this kind of writing was at the end of the nineteenth century, and some of the best examples are Sir Sibbald Scott, The British Army: Origin, Programme and Equipment (London, 1868)
Clifford Walton, History of the British Standing Army (London, 1894) and
C. M. Clode, The Military Forces of the Crown (London, 1894)
Examples of such ahistorical thinking are examined in my article ‘Images of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in F. A. Barker et al., Literature, Politics and Theory (London, Methuen, 1986).
Eric Sheppard, A Short History of the British Army to 1914 (London, 1926) pp. 7–8.
Robin Higham, A Guide to the Sources of British Military History (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972) p. 1.
Correlli Barnett, Britain and Her Army (London: Allen Lane, 1970) pp. 31–2.
John Hale, The Art of War and Renaissance England (Washington, DC: Folger 1961) p. 3.
See K. Wrightson, English Society, 1580–1680 (London: Hutchinson, 1982) pp. 150–1.
Buchanan Sharp, In Contempt of All Authority (Berkeley, Cal.: California University Press, 1980) pp. 3–4.
Sir Edward Cheyney, A History of England, 2 vols (London, 1926) vol. II, p. 28.
Smythe was in fact a leading military theorist of his time who ‘had discussed the legality of sending, pressed men for service overseas with Manwood, Lord Chief Baron’, according to his editor, John Hale. See his edition of Smythe’s Certain Discourses Military (New York, 1964) first published in 1590.
Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1974) p. 125.
See also Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967) pp. 199–270.
R. C. Smail, ‘The Art of War’, in Austin Lane Poole (ed.), Medieval England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958) pp. 128–67, esp. pp. 162–3.
The best example is Richard Bernard, The Bible-Battals or The Sacred Art Military (London, 1629).
See K. H. Göller (ed.), D. S. Brewer, The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Reassessment of the Poem (Bury St Edmunds: D. S. Brewer, 1981)
Juliet Vale, Edward III and Chivalry (Bury St Edmunds: Boydell Press, 1982)
and Richard W. Kaeuper, War, Justice and Public Order (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)
Thomas Trussell, The Soldier Pleading His Own Cause (London, 1619) sig. C8.
R. W. [Richard Ward?], The Anatomy of Warre (London, 1642) pp. 1, 5.
Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, trans. Leonard F. Dean (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1946) pp. 112–13.
See E. E. Reynolds, Thomas More and Erasmus (London: Longman, 1965) p. 125.
F. Seebohn, The Oxford Reformers (London, 1887) pp. 265–6.
Thomas More, Utopia, ed. Edward Surtz SJ (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964) p. 125.
For a comparison between Erasmus and More on Warfare see M. M. Philips, The Adages of Erasmus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965) pp. 114–16.
Thomas Digges, Four Paradoxes, or Politique Discourses concerning Militiarie Discipline (London, 1604) p. 109.
Barnaby Rich, Allarme to England, foreshewing what perilles are procured when people live without regarde to Martiall Lawe (London, 1578) sig. C.iii.
Glynne Wickham, The Medieval Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974) p. 155.
See Richard W. Kaeuper, War, Justice and Public Order (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
Geoffrey Gates, The Defence of Militane Profession (London, 1598) pp. 9–11.
Henry Curt (ed.), Niccolo Machiavelli: ‘The Arte of Warre’ and ‘The Prince’ … Englished by P. Whitehorne (London, 1905) p. 6.
François De La Noue, The Politiche and Militane Discourses (London, 1587) p. 124.
The best example is in James Achesome, The Military Garden, Or Instructions For All Young Soldiers (London, 1629).
Thomas Trussell, The Souldier Pleading His Own Cause (London, 1619) Introduction.
Humfrey Barwick, A Briefe Discourse, Concerning the force and effect of all manuell weapons of fire and the disability of the Long Bowe of Archery, in respect of other of greater force now in use (London, 1594)
R. S., A Briefe Treatise, To proove the necessitie and excellance of the use of archerie (London, 1696)
Thomas Styward, The Pathwaie to Martiall Discipline (London, 1581) title-page.
Annabel Patterson, Shakespeare and the Popular Voice (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989) for an excellent description of popular unrest in the period
and Catherine Belsey, ‘The Illusion of Empire: Elizabethan Expansionism and Shakespeare’s Second Tetralogy’, Literature and History, vol. 1, part 2 (second series) (1990) pp. 13–21, for an account of warfare in Shakespeare’s histories.
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Barker, S. (1992). The Double-Armed Man: Images of the Medieval in Early Modern Military Idealism. In: Simons, J. (eds) From Medieval to Medievalism. Insights. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22233-9_8
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