20284 The nobility state relationship (6)

194 ' Antoni Mączak

stronger than ever befbre, concentrated everything that was important in the person of the monarch.¹

In Casdle, what may be called the territorial power-base had its origins in the Reconquista and the creation of the militaiy orders. Taken over by the monarchy, their vast and strategicaUy situated estates eventually changed in character and became the fbundadon of a new aristocratic regime. But the Castilian titled nobility wene about to lose their regional power-bases during the modem period.² Active as prindpaI courtiers, mili tary commanders, and yiceroys of overseas dominions, the grandees now drew their strength from their position at court.

In a longperspective, the prindpalities of the Empire may also be regarded as the finał form of aristocratic locai power-bases, which eventually became States in their tum erposed to dangers of breakup. But this often was a conseąuence of dynastie politics.

Probably the most eztraordinary (if eventuaUy unsuccessful) late creation of a territorial power-base was that by Albrecht Wallenstein. This last condottiere, born in a modest but noble family, rosę fast to become an outstanding commander in the Thirty Years War and the Emperor’s prinapal support. As most army commanders of that time, he was a military enterpriser’, finandally responsible for his operations.³ Unlike his counterparts born into princely families, Wallenstein, the most successful secular nouveau riche of his age, had to create his own power-base. The prinapality (Fiirstentu.nl) of Friedland peifectly fitted all his ends: created by the Emperor from lands confiscated to rebelhous Czech nobles, it was a power base strategicaUy located for military operations and built up as the materiał foun-darion ofWaUensteins prestige and political power.⁴

Differences between the Home Counties and morę distant parts of Tudor Eng-land may be interpreted in different terms. Let us take an important case. In the county of Durham, urban communities were smali and subordinate, overshad-owed by landed interests.⁵ Landed soaety was stratified chiefly according to the size ofproperty. No secular lord could rival the NeviUes, but at least four morę families stretched their interest over several counties of the north. A further half-dozen 'established and respected gentry stocks solidly entrenched in Durham sodety' were less known outside it and mostlikely to be found in the role of foUowers, par-ticularly of the NeviUes, the bishop of Durham, or of two of the prindpal county

The Nobility-State Relatimhip • 195

families influential through their connections with the court and the service ofthe Crown. The great families inherited the right to rule and command which went with lordship. Their 'traynes of horse and serants’ were a great attraction and many wished to identify with the world they represented. One way in which this could be achieved was by becoming a servant in the household of a great family, and particularly by entering the ranks of privileged semnts, whom the magnates used to manage their estates and collect their revenues. The lord-servant relation-ship was traditional and often close. The office was both ‘a source of profit and a ladder of social mobility for tenants to rise into the gentry'. If the heads of leading gentry families were rare amongthe Nevilles' officers, the gentry were numerous amongst the wider circle of‘ffiends’ in the earl of Westmorland^Js retinue. A great aristocratic interest like that of the Neyilles acted as an integratingfactor over wide areas of the life of the region, bringing together significant gentry groups within the ambit of a common loyalty. At the same time, the earls standingat court linked the concerns of the Durham society to those of the kingdom at large.

Incidentally, this sketch of the Durham region describes very eiactly the situa-tion that was to continue in Lithuania or the Ukrainę. But in England that social landscape had no chance of preservation. In the north, its Doomsday came with the failure of the 1569 rebellion but the struggle of the monarchy with it had begun decades earlier. Henry VII 'had been content to let sleeping dogs lie'¹⁸ but his suc-cessor set up a Council of the North and tried to destroy the greatest of magnate families, the Percies. Mary’s policy restored the northern magnates, and the Scot-tish peril of 1557 madę them a shield of the realm. Elizabeth had to begin almost from scratch but ultimately succeeded: the traditional loyalty to the lords of the gentry and yeomanry, buttressed by traditional faith, collapsed easily. Rank-and-file rebels were treated with great severity and the northern lords survived only as individuals: they lost their offices and to a large extent their estates. Shortly, even the loyal local lords lost their seats in the Council of the North.

As Lawrence Stone puts it, 'by the time ofthe accession ofjames I, the north was in the safe hands of carpetbaggers, bureaucrats, lawyers, and loyal local landown-ers of medium rank’.¹⁹ This did not mean, however, that the central administration dominated it completely.

'The crisis of the aristocracy’ was a complex phenomenon and few condusions drawn from one country can be attributed to another. In England, the magnates were losing their grip over their 'fiiends' because many esąuires, growing in wealth, were now able to obtain independent access to that fountain-head of offices and profltable positions, the royal court. Morę gentlemen than ever befbre (and for a long time to come) were getting a generał university education and/or

Stone (19.65), 250.

i

1

   Elias (19694); also (on the other courts): Ehalt (1980); Kruedener (1973).

2

   Vazquez de Prada (1978), 153,183, offers an overview of the nobility in Spain which

3

concentrates on the formal bonds and relationships between nobles. For a somewhat different view and in-depth analysis of a regional Castilian case: Gerbet (1979). See also Jago (1979)-

4

¹³ See Redlich (1964-5).    ⁴ Emstberger (1929); see also Janaćek (1978), ch. 4.

5

James (1974), 29. The foUowing section is based on this book.