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CHAPTER 10

77ie Nobility-State Relationship

Antoni Mączak

A monarchy where there is no nobility at all, is ever a pure and absolute tyranny as that of the Turks. For nobility attempers sovereignty, and draws the eyes of the people somewhat aside from the linę royaT, wrote Francis Bacon.¹ ‘No nobility no king’, or ‘No Bishop, no King, no nobility’: these popular epigrams recorded in Bacon s time were among many stressing the indivisibility of ruler and elites in the monarchy.² But if it is true that the nobility balanced the powers in the State, the problem is: What was the role of the State in the life of the noble, and what was the naturę of their relationship?³

The nobility: ‘Whafs in a name’? This English term is in some respects confus-ing when applied to the Continent. As J. P. Cooper had it, ‘though the word ‘‘noble” was usually reserved for the peerage in England,... in France, Poland and other countries it included those without titles who in England were called the gentry’.⁴ In this chapter the term ‘nobility’ will be used in this comprehensive sense. Its upper stratum will be called ‘the aristocracy’ (the peers and other titled nobles) or 'magnates' (great landowners even if untitled), while the rest will be called ‘the gentry'.

Change and diversification were the very essence of early modern social groups. This is one of the reasons why relationships between the State and the nobility were so specific to nearly every country. Our principal arguments in this respect are that: (i) the nobility was indispensable to the power structure of the early modern State; (2) the structure, and even the naturę, of each State depended heav-ily on the social and property-holding structure of the nobility (primarily on the

1

Bacon, Essays, ch. 4.    ² Hill (1961), 78.

2

³    I discuss the nobility-state relationship in a somewhat different way in 'Systems of Govemment and Networks of Influence: Nobility and State in Early Modem Christian

3

Europę', Melanges d'Ecole Franęaise d’Anatólie (forthcoming).

4

   Cooper (1971), 16.