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About six hundred years ago, a handful of individuals made a revolution in statecraft, with the creation of the institution of the sovereign nation-state. King Louis XI (r. 1464-85) established the first such nation-state in France. The second was established in England under Henry VII (Tudor), who reigned from 1485 to 1509.
These governments were monarchies, not republics. Most Americans think of a republic simply as the political form of self-government, with representatives selected through elections. But the establishment of self-government has always been a paradox. Are the people able to govern themselves? Good government is not simply the creation of good institutions: As Benjamin Franklin is reported to have warned his fellow-citizens after the Constitutional convention, they had a republic, only if they ``could keep it.''
The plays of William Shakespeare were a continuation of the process set in motion by Henry VII and the circle of Renaissance humanists Erasmus of Rotterdam and his friend Thomas More, to create a true republic in England, through the education of the population in the principles of statecraft required for self-government. The effort was not realized in England, however, nor in Europe, but ultimately, in the founding of the United States of America.
Prior to the establishment of the English nation-state under Henry VII, 95 percent of the population lived in conditions little better than cattle. Serfs worked the land using agricultural techniques that were little changed from generation to generation, and which had actually deteriorated over the preceeding two centuries. At the time of Henry's accession in 1485, the population of England was approximately 2.25 million people, fewer than it had been two centuries earlier; the average life expectancy was little more than thirty years.
In the Fifteenth century, prior to the reign of Henry VII, England was dominated by a feudality of approximately sixty powerful families, headed by hereditary barons. These lords often controlled substantial territory, where they exerted more power than the king's own bureaucracy or civil service.
Below this nobility were the gentry of England, some 6,000-9,000 gentlemen, esquires, and knights, who were given land, money, and position in exchange for service, especially military service. The Duke of Buckingham, for example, had no fewer than 2,000 such retainers in 1454. The English kings, captive of this feudal structure, possessed little military power independent of the feudal lords, who used their private armies for private warfare and revolt for their own ends.
The Plantagenet dynasty, founded by Henry II of the French House of Anjou, seized the English throne in 1154 and ruled England until the accession of Henry Tudor in 1485. The centuries of Plantagenet rule were a period defined by early attempts in Europe to create the nation-state, against opposition by Venice and its Plantagenet allies.
Through its domination of trade and banking, Venice exercised a stranglehold over the economy of Europe. Attempts by rulers such as Frederick II Hohenstaufen in Sicily and King Alfonso X (the Wise) in Spain to establish nations, were viewed as a threat to Venetian power. The Venetians encouraged warfare to block these efforts, repeatedly deploying the military power of the Plantagenets to achieve their ends.
During the Thirteenth century, the usurious practices of the Venetian financiers caused severe economic contraction, setting off financial disintegration by the 1340's. The social collapse and Black Death which followed killed off more than a third of the European population.
In 1337, the Plantagenet King Edward II launched a war against France that would last for more than a hundred years. Rampaging English armies carried out vicious pillaging, severely depopulating the country. It was almost a century later, in 1429, that the French peasant girl Joan of Arc presented herself to lead the French armies. Under her leadership, the French were able to retake Rheims and crown the French Dauphin as king. Although the French would later adopt an appeasement policy and end the offensive, Joan's intervention was a crucial inspiration to the founding of the French nation under Louis XI.
The English position in France continued to deteriorate. In 1449-50, a French offensive, using superior cannon--the result of French advances in metallurgy--succeeded in blasting the English out of sixty castles. In a period of one year, English control of France completely collapsed.
After England had suffered this ignominious defeat, the allied noble families turned on each other in fratricidal civil war--the ``War of Roses.'' The English crown was contested over by the opposing Houses of Lancaster and York.
The ensuing period of violence did great damage to England. As Shakespeare describes is it in his {Tragedy of King Richard III,} every atrocity became the justification for another, leading to a vicious cycle of revenge and bloodletting. However, this also greatly weakened the feudal nobility, reducing the number of fedual lords by almost half, and making it possible for Henry VII to later consolidate the power of the central government.
Shakespeare's Platonic Dialogues
Following the murder of Christopher Marlowe in 1593, William Shakespeare became the leading playwpright of England. He launched his career in 1592 with a trilogy of plays on Henry VI which became immensely popular.
During his career, Shakespeare wrote plays covering the history of England from King John (1199-1216) to King Henry VIII (1509-1547). These plays centered on a series of great crises, resulting from the question of the legitimacy of the rulers and the kingly succession. These were pressing issues at the time, as the nation's political leadership pondered who would succeed Queen Elizabeth I.
Shakespeare demonstrated how these crises resulted from the failure of the flawed axioms governing the behavior of both England's rulers and its population. He used the history plays to develop for the audience the recognition that there exists a higher law, than the written law of the land--a higher law, to which the rule of feudal factions must give way. Shakespeare repeatedly showed that the refusal of nations and rulers to act according to this higher law, brought inescapable consequences for even the most powerful.
Shakespeare portrayed the Plantagenet dynasty as laboring under a curse of illegitimacy, which passed from generation to generation. The fundamental axiom of the Plantagenet reign--rule by a nobility that rejects responsibility for the common good--placed every successive regime in the inevitably downward trajectory.
But Shakespeare was confronted with another set of axioms to overthrow--those of the population, whom he sought to uplift. How does one generate in the mind of the audience, its identity as citizens of a republic? Each member of society must be shaped by a new axiom, the higher (natural) law that must form the direction of government. Then, government is no longer rule by force, but instead, a dialogue between the governing and the governed, over how the nation can best follow the precepts of natural law to promote the General Welfare. Self-government flows from this principle.
Shakespeare's plays gave the audience the chance to look over the shoulders of previous rulers, and witness how their failures led to tragic consequences, not merely for themselves, but for the kingdom as a whole. Through this process, where the audience was engaged in a dialogue with the history of its own nation, a population that had virtually no concept of self-government, was brought to create within its own minds the qualities necessary for self-government.
In his essay, ``A Philosophy for Victory: Can We Change the Universe?,'' Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., addresses the question of how the playwright accomplishes this. The Classical stage does not present a literal portrayal of all the events that have occurred. So, the Chorus in the Prologue to Shakespeare's {Henry V,} informs us that we must imagine the clashing of armies, where we see only a handful of men. The goal of the playwright must be to create a truthful representation of {the idea underlying the events.} LaRouche states that, ``the composer must ... create on stage the idea which may not correspond exactly, in every detail introduced, to the actual history, but corresponds, with historical truthfulness, to the essence of the historical reality referenced.''
By generating such ``Platonic ideas'' in the minds of his audience, Shakespeare engaged them in the intellectual exercise necessary to qualify them as citizens. It is the ability of the citizenry to replicate this process of generating ideas, which makes republican government function, since competent statecraft requires a voluntarist approach to changing the axioms governing policy-making. The development of the concept of free will, or the ability of an individual to intervene to effect an advance in civilization, arises from developing in the individual the ability to generate just such ideas within his own mind.
The republican circles around Henry VII's contemporaries, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Thomas More, undertook as their ultimate goal the transformation of the population into a republican citizenry. And Shakespeare's plays were one of the most powerful tools in accomplishing this mass education of the population.
Little is known about Henry Tudor's education, either in England or in France. However, one of his tutors, Andreas Scotus, an Oxford teacher, is reported to have said of him, ``Never have I seen a boy of such quickness, so capable of learning, at that age.''
Henry cannot have missed the dramatic changes taking place around him in France. While England was being destroyed by infighting among the feudal lords, France's dramatic development under Louis XI, where the conscious promotion of industry, science, and technology enabled the nation to double its output in twenty-two years, demonstrated the successful nature of the new institution, the nation-state.
Henry's father died before he was born, and, for much of his life, he was under the care of his uncle, Jasper Tudor, who had been an honored guest at the court of Louis XI. Jasper Tudor first fled England in 1461, travelling to Louis XI's court, where Louis made him a member of his household. Jasper returned to England to aid in the restoration of Henry VI in 1470; when Henry VI was deposed again in 1471, he again fled England, this time taking his nephew Henry with him.
Several contemporary commentaries were written about Henry Tudor's character. Polydore Virgil, an Italian who settled in England and wrote a history of the period, said of him: ``His spirit was distinguished, wise and prudent; his mind was brave and resolute and never, even at moments of greatest danger, deserted him. He had a most pertinacious memory. Withal he was not devoid of scholarship.|... He was gracious and kind and was as attentive to his visitors as he was easy of access. His hospitality was splendidly generous; he was fond of having foreigners at his court and freely conferred favors on them.|... He was most fortunate in war, although he was constitutionally more inclined to peace than to war. He cherished justice above all things; as a result he vigorously punished violence, manslaughter and every other kind of wickedness whatsoever.'' The Milanese ambassador praised Henry's inherent cautiousness, his tendency to deal openly and fairly with others, and his willingness to consider all sides of important questions.
Henry VII's Reign |
