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Patronage and corruption, parliament and liberty in seventeenth-century England

Linda Levy Peck brings together two major themes, patronage and corruption, in an ambitious and wide-ranging book which draws on extensive printed and manuscript sources and makes good use of the Bankes papers in the Bodleian. The language of patronage is explored, with its Senecan origins and its renaissance notions of the liberal dispensation of bounty. Ideas of the 'contract' between patron and client were linked to the vocabulary of good works and saintly intercession, which continued in use despite the Reformation. Buckingham could be described by Bacon as a 'good angel', while in a court sermon the Calvinist divine Prideaux celebrated Christ as ' the greatest Master of Requests' (pp. 50, 82). The importance of access to the monarch is analysed, with reference to the signet books. Peck graphically shows how confused the process of royal patronage was, at least before the rise of Buckingham, and avoids the naive error of equating the administrative procurement of a grant with the real power of patronage behind it. Turning to patronage networks at court, she argues persuasively that the importance of faction has been overrated and the coherence and permanence of factional groupings exaggerated. Court politics were infinitely fluid. There was a constant search for favour and reward, with clients often assuring patrons of their singular loyalty while pursuing other powerful figures with equal or greater avidity. Factions certainly emerged in tense and conflictive periods when the balance of power was shifting, as in 1603, 1612 and 1624, but at other times they prove illusory when scrutinized in detail. A revealing case study traces the search of Francis Blundell and his two brothers, George and John, for a patron. After the death of Sir Ralph Winwood, whom he had served as secretary and who had furthered the careers of both his brothers, Francis successfully addressed himself to Buckingham. His career prospered. The duke valued Blundell's particular expertise in Irish affairs and was instrumental in obtaining for him one of the first Irish baronetcies. But George Blundell and his son transferred their service to Buckingham with less happy results, for both died fighting at Rhe\ The experience of the Blundells, a family of lower social status than the aristocratic kin usually profiled in patronage studies, vividly exemplifies both the advantages and the dangers of the patron-client relationship.