Convivencia and Medieval Spain:

Essays in Honor of Thomas F. Glick

Mark T Abate
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 EDITED BY MARK T. ABATE

CONVIVENCIA
AND MEDIEVAL SPAIN
Essays in Honor of Thomas F. Glick
 Mediterranean Perspectives

Series Editors
Brian Catlos
University of Colorado-Boulder
Boulder, CO, USA

Sharon Kinoshita
University of California Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA, USA
As a region whose history of connectivity can be documented over at least
two and a half millennia, the Mediterranean has in recent years become
the focus of innovative scholarship in a number of disciplines. In shifting
focus away from histories of the origins and developments of phenomena
predefined by national or religious borders, Mediterranean Studies opens
vistas onto histories of contact, circulation and exchange in all their complexity
while encouraging the reconceptualization of inter- and intra-­disciplinary
scholarship, making it one of the most exciting and dynamic fields in the
humanities. Mediterranean Perspectives interprets the Mediterranean in the
widest sense: the sea and the lands around it, as well as the European, Asian
and African hinterlands connected to it by networks of culture, trade, politics,
and religion. This series publishes monographs and edited collections that
explore these new fields, from the span of Late Antiquity through Early
Modernity to the contemporary.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15161
 Mark T. Abate
Editor

Convivencia and
Medieval Spain
Essays in Honor of Thomas F. Glick
Editor
Mark T. Abate
Westfield State University
Westfield, MA, USA

Mediterranean Perspectives
ISBN 978-3-319-96480-5    ISBN 978-3-319-96481-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96481-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958718

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

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Fig. 1 Thomas F. Glick: Honorary Judge of the Tribunal of Waters, in Judicial
Robes, Plaza de la Virgen, Valencia. Courtesy of Francesc Vera Casas

v
 Foreword: Thomas F. Glick and
Convivencia

When Mark Abate approached me some time ago with his proposal to put
together a volume in honor of Thomas Glick, I told him I would be
delighted to collaborate. Tom has long been a mentor, colleague, and (I
hope I am not presuming to say) a friend. My intention was at first to
contribute a research article, of the excellent sort that the many scholars
who have generously written chapters for this volume have produced—
something that would reflect in some way the tremendous contribution
Tom has made to the historiography of medieval Iberia and the incalcu-
lable impact he has had on my own development as a scholar. But it
occurred to me, on reflection, that virtually everything I have written
already bears the imprint of Thomas Glick’s thought and serves as a testa-
ment to his influence on my work, and given our already quite long and
distinguished list of contributors, I might instead offer something of a
more brief and personal reflection. Caveat lector.
The name Thomas Glick is associated by many with convivencia and the
history of the interaction of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in al-Andalus
and the Christian Spains of the Middle Ages. The term was coined, of
course, early in the twentieth century by the Spanish medievalist Ramón
Menéndez Pidal and subsequently developed as a paradigm for describing
the cultural/literary history of Spain by Américo Castro, who found ref-
uge in the US following Franco’s fascist coup d’état in his homeland.1 His
España en su historia. Cristianos, moros y judíos, which presented Spanish

1
After teaching at several US universities, Castro ended his career at the University of
California (UC) San Diego, donating many of his books to the UC library system. I recall

vii
viii FOREWORD: THOMAS F. GLICK AND CONVIVENCIA

culture as an emerging product of the engagement of “the three cultures,”

was first published in 1948 and almost immediately (eight years being
“immediately” in the world of academic publishing) generated a fervent
riposte in the form of España: un enigma histórico, a nationalist historical
manifesto penned by his fellow exiliado, Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz.2 And
so, the battle lines were drawn in the “convivencia wars”—with the
Platonic, essentialized “Eternal Spaniard” of Sánchez-Albornoz champi-
oned by many nationalist Spanish historians of the Franco era, who found
it could be made to fit their muscular, operatic, and Castilian-­centric,
hyper-Catholic view of their nation’s past, and Castro’s banner being
taken up particularly among a newer generation of North American schol-
ars, who saw it reflecting the cosmopolitan, lefty, agnostic, ethno-­religious
diversity of the world they saw themselves as living in or aspired to create.3
No need to name names.
The death of the Spanish dictator in 1975 and the rapid disintegration
of the authoritarian regime and democratization of Spain set the stage for
a renaissance of Spanish medieval historiography—one in which the various
nations and peoples who make up the modern state were able to give voice
to their own roles in history and in which the ideological grip of the Church
and State was loosened. The effect was particularly noticeable in regions
like Catalonia and Valencia—the main non-Castilian-speaking peninsular
components of what had been the Crown of Aragón—late medieval
Castile’s great rival.4 The histories of these regions, long subsumed in the
triumphalist, Providential grand narrative of Castile-cum-­ España, were
now rehabilitated and recounted on their own terms and in their own lan-
guages; and here, as well as across the peninsula, Jews and Muslims, who
previously had been treated as foils, bit-players, or low characters in the
great drama of Spanish nation-building were now studied for their own

my delight and sense of history, when as a faculty member at UC Santa Cruz, I first came
upon books in our library that bore Castro’s ex libris.
2
See Américo Castro, España en su historia. Cristianos, Moros y Judíos (Buenos Aires:
Losada, 1948), and Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, España: Un enigma histórico (Buenos Aires:
Editorial Sudamericana, 1956).
3
The metaphor is borrowed from Ryan Szpiech’s “The Convivencia Wars: Decoding
Historiography’s Polemic With Philology,” in A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic
Role in Medieval Literary History, edited by Suzanne Conklin Akbari, and Karla Mallette,
135–161 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013).
4
To be sure, Aragónese was spoken in Aragón, but Aragón has been for centuries anchored
in the Castilian linguistic and cultural ambit.
 FOREWORD: THOMAS F. GLICK AND CONVIVENCIA ix

sake and with a fresh, scientific indifference. This is not to say that the
nationalist Castile-centric Christian-dominated counter-narrative disap-
peared, either in Spain or abroad. This was due in part to mere inertia,
both institutional and intellectual, which favors the perpetuation of estab-
lished narratives even once they have been shown to be obsolete. But his-
torians of this persuasion also benefitted from the ideological glasnost of
the Transition, and those who see larger cultural, ethnic, and religious enti-
ties as fundamentally irreconcilable or oppositional brought greater nuance
and complexity to their interpretations of the history of the Peninsula.
Meanwhile, over the course of the last decades of the twentieth century,
as the convivencia wars raged, both sides entrenched in what became a
drawn out and ultimately inconclusive static intellectual war, occasionally
sniping at each other, but neither capable of scoring what might be
described as a signal victory. To stick one’s head up above the parapet was
an invitation to be shot at. For its part, at least in the Anglo-American
scholarly world, convivencia became something of a banner for a certain
political and social orientation: one which saw an inherent value in ethno-­
religious diversity and a critique of the status of traditionally hegemonic
groups. Its critics would accuse it of being a posture, of being aspirational,
and of being divorced from the reality of the past—the same criticisms lev-
eled by its advocates at those who subscribe to a “clash of civilizations”
view of history and the present. Worse, it became nostalgic, coming to
epitomize for some an imaginary innocent time of harmonious inter-­
communal coexistence or a vanished “golden age of enlightenment.”5
This has only provided further ammunition for critics, some of whom in
their reactionary indignation have revealed their own positions to be no
less polemical, ideologically-driven, and detached from historical reality
than those they set out to attack.6

5
The work of non-academic or non-specialist authors—see, for example, Chris Lowney, A
Vanished World: Medieval Spain’s Golden Age of Enlightenment (New York: Free Press,
2005); David Levering Lewis, God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2008), respectively—but scholars of medieval Spain are hardly
immune from such nostalgizing.
6
The Cervantes specialist Fernandez-Morera’s monograph is only the most crude and
misconceived recent entry into this genre. See Dario Fernandez-Morera, The Myth of the
Andalusian Paradise Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain.
(Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2014). For a somewhat more
restrained but equally polemical work, see Sylvain Gouguenheim, Aristote au Mont-Saint-
Michel: les racines grecques de l’Europe chrétienne (Paris: Seuil, 2008).
x FOREWORD: THOMAS F. GLICK AND CONVIVENCIA

In Spain, itself (“the land of the three religions”) convivencia was sani-
tized, commoditized, and commercialized—promoted alongside sangria,
paella, and (until recently) toros, as a pillar of Spanish cultural identity and
an obligatory experience for visiting tourists, who may have only the vagu-
est notion of who the Moors were or what happened here before Columbus
discovered America. In effect, like its opponents, the proponents of con-
vivencia began to essentialize and romanticize their medieval Spain, until
by the turn of the twenty-first century even scholars who sympathized with
the historical perspective in which the notion of convivencia is anchored
began to question its utility as a term and as a concept—one that, for all its
attractiveness, has no clear meaning and offers no explanatory dimension.7
It became, in effect, a near synonym for “tolerance”—a troublesome,
anachronistic concept which thankfully has also fallen out of fashion for
describing pre-modern communal relations. Like the term Reconquest or
Reconquista today, convivencia is encountered increasingly bracketed by
scare quotes, as the recent generation of historians debate as to how we
can move on from a term that, whatever, its original significance or sense,
has become too burdened with historiographical baggage to be useful.8
Others simply avoid it altogether. And, in the meanwhile, the struggle to
bring nuance and complexity to the history of ethno-­religious relations in
medieval Spain and to counteract the noxious ­politically driven distortion

7
In fact, both Castro and Sánchez Albornóz essentialized Spain. See my comments in
Catlos, “Christian-Muslim-Jewish Relations, Medieval ‘Spain,’ and the Mediterranean: An
Historiographical Op-Ed,” in In and of the Mediterranean: Medieval and Early Modern
Iberian Studies, edited by Hamilton, Michelle, and Nuria. Silleras-Fernandez, 1–16
(Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2014).
8
Recent critiques of the term can be found in Eduardo Manzano Moreno, “Qurtuba:
Some Critical Considerations of the Caliphate of Cordoba and the Myth of Convivencia,”
Reflections on Qurtuba in the 21st century, 111–132 (Madrid: Casa Árabe, 2013); Alex
A. Novikoff, “Between Tolerance and Intolerance in Medieval Spain: An Historiographic
Enigma,” Medieval Encounters 11 (2005): 7–7; Maya Soifer, “Beyond Convivencia: Critical
Reflections on the Historiography of Interfaith Relations in Christian Spain,” Journal of
Medieval Iberian Studies 1 (2009): 19–35; Kenneth Baxter Wolf, “Convivencia in Medieval
Spain: A Brief History of an Idea,” Religion Compass 3 (2008): 72–85. The author has pro-
posed a new model for understanding ethno-religious relations in pre-modern Iberia and the
Mediterranean: conveniencia, or “The Principle of Convenience,” first in Catlos, “Cristians,
Musulmans i Jueus a la Corona d’Aragó medieval: un cas de ‘conveniéncia.’” L’Avenç 236
(2001): 8–16, and most recently in idem, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christedom, ca.
1050–1614 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 508–535.
 FOREWORD: THOMAS F. GLICK AND CONVIVENCIA xi

of its history continues, particularly in Spain itself, where the discourse

regarding the Middle Ages has very direct and profound implications for
one’s idea of the modern Spanish state today.9
Where does Thomas Glick fit into all this? Certainly not as an apparat-
chik of some historiographical orthodoxy, or as a purveyor of nostalgia,
however well intentioned. Glick is a pivotal figure in the twentieth-century
historiography of medieval Spain, whose work embodies the best aspects
of the scholarly turn that led to the popularization of convivencia, but
avoids the hazards that others fell victim to. Developing his historical
vision on the very cusp of the post-Franco Transition, Glick trained not
only in the languages and traditions of the historiography of the Christian
Spains but also in those of the Muslims and Jews of al-Andalus. His studies
in Barcelona and Valencia placed him in two regions that were naturally
poised to challenge the dominant meta-narratives of medieval Spain.
Three seminal, early career articles signaled him as an innovative thinker
who would not be boxed in by established categories or conventions,
whether historiographical or disciplinary, and pointed toward a novel
approach to understanding Christian-Muslim-Jewish relations.10 In 1970
and 1979 two major books demonstrated his capacity not only for fine-
grained technical research but for far-reaching and broad syntheses:
Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia and Islamic and Christian
Spain in the Early Middle Ages.11
Through these and his later publications, he presented a complex pic-
ture of the pre-Modern Iberian Peninsula in which members of the three
major confessional groups interacted in both collaboration and conflict,
both as communities and as individuals, exercising a profound influence
on each other and their respective cultures, often in spite of themselves. As
he rightly points out, acculturation and conflict are not mutually exclusive;

9
See, for example, the recent work of Alejandro García Sanjuán, particularly, La conquista
islámica de la Península Ibérica y la tergiversación del pasado del catastrofismo al negacionismo
(Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2013).
10
Thomas F. Glick and Oriol Pi-Sunyer, “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in
Spanish History.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 11 (1969): 136–154; Thomas
F. Glick, “Muḥtasib and Mustasaf: A Case-Study of Institutional Diffusion.” Viator 2 (1971):
59–81; and idem, “The Ethnic Systems of Premodern Spain.” Comparative Studies in
Sociology 1 (1978): 151–171.
11
Glick, Thomas F. Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valenica (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1970); idem, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages
(Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979).
xii FOREWORD: THOMAS F. GLICK AND CONVIVENCIA

in fact they seem to serve as catalysts. His medieval Spain is a rich and
complex world shaped by causes as diverse as climate, geography, lan-
guage, politics, scholarship, and religion—a world out of which his con-
vivencia emerges naturally and organically as a consequence of the nature
of very human interactions. In other words, in terms of convivencia, Glick
deserves much of the credit for the good that has come of it and none of
the blame for the bad. His work has moved us to reconsider what we think
of medieval Spain and of the Middle Ages in general. And so it is that
Glick has come to influence, both directly and indirectly, a whole genera-
tion of academics who followed—scholars working in a range of historical
disciplines, particularly in North America and in Spain, where his work has
been published in Castilian and Catalan, and where he has continued to
collaborate and works to integrate innovations in Spanish scholarship into
the Anglo-American tradition.12 If time is the test of great scholarship, his
certainly passes—the most recent revision of Islamic and Christian Spain
was published as late as 2005—26 years after the first edition.13
I would certainly count myself as one of those scholars who has devel-
oped a Glickian historiographical orientation, both through reading his
work as a student and scholar, and by the role Tom has taken as a mentor
and reader of my work. I had the great fortune to have him as the external
reader of my doctoral dissertation in 2000 and then as the director of a
two-year post-doc I held (officially) at Boston University (but actually, at
the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) in Barcelona).14
In my experience Tom was an ideal supervisor—offering frank and direct
criticism and advice when it was called for and never one to push younger
scholars to duplicate his own work or conclusions. His good humor and
generosity is always evident, as is his circumspection and courtesy, even
when it comes to scholars with whom he does not agree.
If I could end with a further personal observation it would be a mem-
ory of some years past, when I happened to bump into Tom while I was in

12
See, for example, Thomas F. Glick, From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle. Social and
Cultural Change in Medieval Spain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).
13
It should be noted, Glick generously made the original text available for free online via
the LIBRO website, operated in conjunction with the American Academy of Research
Historians of Medieval Spain (see http://libro.uca.edu/ics/emspain.htm).
14
The dissertation was “The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of the
Ebro Valley, ss. XI–XIII.” At the Instiució Milà i Fontanals in Barcelona, I had the great
privilege of working for many years under the guidance of Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, now
sadly missed.
 FOREWORD: THOMAS F. GLICK AND CONVIVENCIA xiii

Valencia on a trip to the archives. It so happened, he said, that he was

being given a doctorate honoris causa from the Universitat that afternoon,
and I’d be most welcome to attend the event. It was only over the course
of the ceremony, in which a long series of his friends and colleagues from
Valencia recounted their experiences that I learned that Glick is not only a
leading historian of medieval Spain but also a prodigious historian of nine-
teenth- and twentieth-century science (focusing on the reception of
Darwin in the Hispanic world) and someone who has committed consid-
erable time and energy to the cause of preserving the vestiges of the rural
landscape of medieval Valencia—a unique patrimony long under threat
from the unbridled and unscrupulous real estate speculation. I was embar-
rassed not to have known this already, but in retrospect it was hardly sur-
prising; Glick is not one to go out of the way to tout his own
accomplishments, and this is one of the many characteristics that has made
him a model for so many scholars, as can be seen from the lengthy and
impressive roster of the present volume.

–– El Burgo de Osma, Soria

Boulder, CO, USA Brian Catlos

 Contents

1 “Ever Since Castro: Thomas F. Glick, Medieval Spain,

and Convivencia”   1
Mark T. Abate

Part I Irrigation  63

2 Water Management and Irrigation in Medieval

Mediterranean Societies: An Overview  65
Helena Kirchner

3 Irrigation and Political Power in the Medieval Kingdom of

Valencia  99
Enric Guinot Rodríguez

Part II Contacts 129

4 Notes on the Methodology of Studying the History of the

Dhimmis 131
Torki Fahad A. Al-Saud

5 Convivencia as Persecution in Ninth-Century Córdoba 145

Kenneth Baxter Wolf

xv
xvi Contents

6 Ramon de Penyafort’s Responses to Questions Concerning

Relations Between Christians and Saracens: Critical Edition
and Translation 159
John Tolan

7 Al-Tābisı̄ and His Descendants: The Failed Integration of

a Military Andalusi Family into the Christian Society of
the Kingdom of Valencia (1238–1283) 193
Josep Torró

8 The Mustassaf of Castelló de la Plana 229

Doug Kierdorf

Part III Perceptions 251

9 The Battle of Zallaqa Between Mythos to Logos 253

William Granara

10 Narratives of Muslim Violence in Christian Courts in the

Late Medieval Kingdom of Valencia 277
Mark D. Meyerson

11 Were Women Part of Convivencia? 297

Jessica Coope

12 Spain, Islam, and Thirteenth-Century Dominican

Memory 311
Thomas E. Burman and Lydia M. Walker

13 “Although He Sinned”: Spanish Conversos Between Law,

Theology, and Jewish Popular Perception 341
Jonathan Ray
 Contents  xvii

Part IV Science 369

14 The Astronomical Background of Abraham Bar Ḥ iyya’s

Astrological History 371
Julio Samsó

15 A Muslim’s Book and Its Christian and Jewish Readers:

The Way al-Farabi’s Enumeration of the Sciences Came to
Influence Western European Scholars 393
Michael C. Weber

16 Reading Averroes 409
Michael McVaugh

Part V Epilogue 423

17 Boston Through Arab Eyes: A Brief Memoir of Studying

Under Ustaaz Thomas F. Glick 425
Abdalghafour Ismail al-Rozi

Index435
 Notes on Contributors

Mark T. Abate is Professor of History at Westfield State University in

Massachusetts, USA. His research focuses on thirteenth-century intellec-
tual history and the work of Roger Bacon in particular. He is working on
a critical edition of the Epistola de secretis operibus artis et naturae et de
nullitate magiae attributed to Roger Bacon.
Abdalghafour Ismail al-Rozi is Professor of History at King Saud
University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His research focuses on the history of
coffee and the coffee trade. He has two forthcoming works being pub-
lished by Tarah International—Andalucian curves: l’archéologie du savoir
and The Epic of Coffee: Stories of the (Bun) Coffee Trade.
Torki Fahad A. Al-Saud is Professor of Islamic History at King Saud
University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His research focuses on the Mamluks,
Ayyubids, Dhimma, and historiography. His publications include Nash’at
dawlat al-Mamālı̄k, 648 H/1250 M-658 H/1260 M: iʻādat qirā’ah lil-­maṣad ̄ ir
(2017); Dirāsāt tārı̄khı̄yah: al-Yahūd f ı̄ al-tārı̄kh al-Islāmı̄ (2014); and edi-
tions of the Radd ʻalá ahl al-dhimmah wa-man tabaʻahum by Ghāzı̄ ibn
Aḥmad Ibn al-Wāsiṭı̄ and the anonymous Tadhkirat al-mulūk ilá aḥsan al-sulūk.
Thomas E. Burman After 25 at the University of Tennessee, Burman is
now Conway Director of the Medieval Institute and Professor of History at
the University of Notre Dame, USA. He is the author of Religious Polemic
and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs, c. 1050–1200 (1994), Reading
the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560 (2007), and is at work on
Ramon Martí and the Trinity: Islam, Judaism, and the Scholastic Project.

xix
xx NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Brian A. Catlos is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of

Colorado Boulder, research associate in Humanities at the University of
California (UC) Santa Cruz, USA, and co-directs The Mediterranean
Seminar (www.mediterraneanseminar.org), a major initiative and a forum
for international and interdisciplinary collaboration in the emerging field of
Mediterranean Studies. His work centers on Muslim-Christian-­Jewish rela-
tions and the history of the pre-­Modern Mediterranean. His books include
The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and
Aragon, 1050–1300 (2004), Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors: Faith,
Power, and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad (2014), and Muslims
of Medieval Latin Christendom, ca. 1050–1615 (2014).
Jessica Coope is Associate Professor of History at the University of
Nebraska, Lincoln, USA. Her main research field is the history of Islamic
Spain, with an emphasis on relations among Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
Her books include The Martyrs of Córdoba: Community and Family
Conflict in an Age of Mass Conversion (1995) and The Most Noble of People:
Religious, Ethnic, and Gender Identity in Muslim Spain (2017). Her proj-
ects include a study of how women were depicted in medieval Spanish
religious polemic.
William Granara is Gordon Gray Professor of Arabic and Comparative
Literature at Harvard University, USA. His areas of teaching and research
deal with the medieval and modern Arab Mediterranean, and he has writ-
ten numerous articles on Muslim Sicily and modern Arabic fiction from
Egypt and North Africa. He is currently the Director of the Center for
Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard and the founding director of Harvard
Summer School’s Program on Arab-European Encounters in the Colonial
and Postcolonial Mediterranean. He has translated and written three
Arabic novels into English, and his Narrating Muslim Sicily: War and
Peace in the Medieval Mediterranean World will be released in March 2019.
Enric Guinot Rodríguez is Professor of History in the Department of
Medieval History at the Universitat de València, Spain. His current
research focuses on the processes of colonization in the medieval Crown
of Aragón and its effects on rural landscapes and irrigation systems. He is
the author of Los valencianos de tiempos de Jaime I (2011) and numerous
articles on irrigation and feudalism in Valencia and Catalonia.
Doug Kierdorf is Lecturer in History at Bentley University, USA. His
research focuses on urban life and government in the late fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries in Castellón de la Plana, a town in the post-Conquest
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxi

Kingdom of Valencia. He studies the economy and social structure of the

period and the establishment of a municipal identity and interurban and
economic relationships between towns of the Kingdom, the Crown, and
the metropolis of Valencia.
Helena Kirchner is Associate Professor of History at the Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Her areas of specialization are medieval
rural history and archeology and the archeology of al-Andalus. She is the
Director of the Agrarian Medieval Archaeology Research Group (ARAEM)
and the co–Principal Investigator of “Productions and Agrarian Spaces in
Late Medieval Iberian Societies: Historical Archaeological Approaches
(12th–16th Centuries)” research project, financed by the Spanish Ministry
of Economy and Competitiveness, and the Principal Investigator of
“Al-Andalus Cities and the Effect of Feudal Conquest in Their Urban and
Agrarian Landscape (Cases of Tortosa and Balaguer),” financed by the
Catalonia Government.
Michael McVaugh is William Smith Wells Professor of History (Emeritus)
at the University of North Carolina, USA. He has written widely on the
history of medicine in Catalunya and Languedoc (Montpellier) in the thir-
teenth and fourteenth centuries.
Mark D. Meyerson is Professor of History and Medieval Studies at the
University of Toronto, USA. Among his publications are The Muslims of
Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexistence and
Crusade (1991) and A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain
(2004). He is completing Of Bloodshed and Baptism: Violence, Religion,
and the Transformation of Spain, 1300–1614.
Jonathan Ray is the Samuel Eig Associate Professor of Jewish Studies in
the Theology Department at Georgetown University, USA. He is the
author of The Sephardic Frontier: The “Reconquista” and the Jewish
Community in Medieval Iberia (2006) and After Expulsion: 1492 and the
Making of Sephardic Jewry (2013), as well as several articles on Jewish his-
tory and culture in the medieval and early modern world.
Julio Samsó is Professor Emeritus of Arabic Studies at Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. His research has always concentrated on
the history of medieval astronomy and astrology, particularly in the Iberian
Peninsula (al-Andalus and the Northern Christian kingdoms) and in the
Maghrib.
xxii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

John Tolan is Professor of History at the Université de Nantes, France,

co-director of the Institut du Pluralisme Religieux et de l’Athéisme
(IPRA), and member of the Academia Europaea. He is the author of
numerous articles and books in medieval history and cultural studies,
including Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers (1993), Saracens:
Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (2002), Sons of Ishmael:
Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (2008), Saint Francis
and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter
(2009), and Faces of Muhammad: A History of Western Perceptions of the
Prophet of Islam (2018).
Josep Torró is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the Universitat
de València, Spain. His areas of specialization are conquest and settler
colonization in the medieval Mediterranean, Muslim peasants under
Latin Christian rule, and medieval coinage in the Crown of Aragón.
He is the main researcher for the Landscapes of Conquest Medieval
History Research Group (http://landscapesofconquest.org/).
Lydia M. Walker is a Humanities Center Fellow at the University of
Tennessee-Knoxville, USA, where she recently completed her Ph.D. Her
thesis, “Ad sanctos ultimi temporis: Lay Spirituality, Crusading, and
Reform in the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry,” examines Latin Christian
polemics and what they reveal about the formation of gender and religious
identity in the context of thirteenth-century crusading movements. Her
interests include religious identity, gender and crusade, and preaching in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Michael C. Weber After a career of teaching at Salem State University
and Gettysburg College, USA, Weber retired in 2015 and lives in Virginia.
His research focuses on the translation and transmission of Arabic science
and philosophy to Latin Europe with a focus on the dissemination of
al-Farabi.
Kenneth Baxter Wolf is the John Sutton Miner Professor of History and
Professor of Classics at Pomona College, USA, specializing in medieval
Mediterranean history. He is the author of a number of books on
Christian-Muslim interaction and Christian sanctity.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
of that tattered mediaeval privilege which allowed sons of noblemen to
receive the degree without sitting for examination; and that persistent
ill-health alone led him to resort unwillingly to this miserable expedient.
We are here reminded of Wordsworth’s reference to the sense of
social equality to be found at Cambridge, even at a time when titled
arrogance and old-world subservience ramped and cringed unchecked
and unrelieved in most parts of the land. The lines are worthy of
quotation because they show that the spirit prevalent at Cambridge, at
least at St. John’s College, prepared the poet to sympathize with the
French democracy. He speaks of Cambridge as

A Republic, where all stood thus far

Upon equal ground, that we were brothers all
In honour, as in one community,
Scholars and gentlemen; where, furthermore,
Distinction open lay to all that came,
And wealth and titles were in less esteem
Than talents, worth, and prosperous industry.

We do not know whether Pitt’s feelings at this time were akin to

those of Wordsworth, who entered St. John’s in 1787. Pitt’s
surroundings were not such as to favour the infiltration of new ideas. In
his first two years he mixed scarcely at all with undergraduates, and
even after 1776 his circle seems to have been limited, doubtless owing
to his intense shyness, ill-health, and constant association with Dr.
Pretyman. On 4th November 1776 he writes home that he had been
spending a few days at the house of Lord Granby (the future Duke of
Rutland), and had returned to the “sober hours and studies” of college;
but he rarely refers to pastimes and relaxations.
His letters also contain few references to study; but one of these is
worthy of notice. On 10th November 1776 he asked permission to
attend a month’s course of lectures on Civil Law for the fee of five
guineas; and later on he stated that they were “instructive and
amusing,” besides requiring little extra work. In that term he took his
degree in the manner aforesaid. Early in 1777 he moved to other
rooms which were small but perfectly sheltered from wind and weather.
About that time, too, he launched out more freely into social life, so we
may judge from the not infrequent requests for increased supplies. On
30th June 1777 he writes that he has exceeded his allowance by £60,
the first sign of that heedlessness in money matters which was to
hamper him through life.

* * * * *
The chief feature of interest in these early letters is the frequent
references to the politics of the time, which show that he kept the
service of his country steadily in view. Thus, on 23rd March 1775
during vacation time at Hayes, he writes to his brother, begging him, if
he leaves his pillow before noon, to find out the fate of Mr. Burke’s
motion on behalf of conciliation with America. He signs the letters on
behalf of “the Society at Hayes,” possibly a reference to a family
65
debating club. It is noteworthy that the struggle of the American
colonists with George III was the first political event to arouse his
interest, which must have been heightened by the fervid speeches of
Chatham on the subject. A little later a side eddy must have set in, for
his elder brother, Lord Pitt, on receiving his commission in 1774, joined
his regiment, which was quartered successively at Quebec and
Montreal. On 31st May 1775 William writes from Cambridge that the
papers are full of the bad news from Boston, doubtless the fight at
Lexington. Ten days later he requests Lady Chatham to send, along
with the “Ethics,” Davenant on “Peace, War, and Alliance,” as it is not
in any library in Cambridge. Clearly, then, the youth was alive to the
legal and international questions then at stake.
Probably these wider interests carried him more into society. His
friendship with Lord Granby, then an undergraduate, is more than once
referred to; and thus was formed that connection which furthered Pitt’s
career, and led to the sending of Lord Granby (after succeeding to the
Dukedom of Rutland) to the Viceregal Lodge at Dublin. The Duke, it
66
may be mentioned, bequeathed to Pitt the sum of £3,000.
Friendships formed at the University counted for much in times when
court and governmental influence made or marred a man’s career. We
may therefore note that as Pitt’s health improved during the last years
at Cambridge, he also became friendly with the following: Lord
Westmorland, Lord Euston, Lowther (Lord Lonsdale), Pratt (Lord
Camden), Pepper Arden, Eliot, Bankes, Long, and St. John.
The name of him who was perhaps Pitt’s dearest friend is here
conspicuous by its absence. Wilberforce saw little of Pitt at Cambridge,
partly, perhaps, because he did not enter at St. John’s College until
1776 and then became associated with a dissolute set; but he made
Pitt’s acquaintance towards the end of their time there, and the youths
were mutually attracted by their brilliant conversational gifts and
intellectual powers, which were to be sharpened by delightful
intercourse at London and Wimbledon. In a passage penned in 1821,
Wilberforce contrasts the comparative ill fortune of Pitt with the good
fortune of his rival, Charles James Fox, who at Oxford made the
acquaintance of a number of brilliant young men, Sheridan, Windham,
Erskine, Hare, General Fitzpatrick, and Lord John Townshend. Nearly
all of these, it is true, won distinction in public life; but it is scarcely fair
to say that Pitt’s Cambridge friends (to whose number Wilberforce
adds Lords Abercorn and Spencer) were deficient in parts. Their gifts,
if less brilliant, were more solid than those of Fox and Sheridan. Lords
Camden and Westmorland were to prove themselves able
administrators, and the future Duke of Rutland, though showy and
dissolute, displayed much ability as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Bankes
“the precise” (as the Rolliad terms him) was a hard-hitter in debate;
while the gentler qualities of Eliot endeared him both to Pitt and to his
sister Harriet, whom he married in 1785.
Viewing the question more widely, we may surmise that Pitt’s
career at Cambridge would have been more fruitful had he gone up
somewhat later and mixed more with undergraduates, especially with
good talkers. In that case we can imagine that the Grenville stiffness in
him would almost have vanished. A bon vivant like Fox or North he
could never have been; but the austerity of his life at Cambridge, save
in its closing months, did not tend to cure him of the awkward shyness
67
which Wilberforce noted as so prominent a trait in his character; and
thus he went forth into the life of Westminster weighted with that
serious defect, an incapacity for making a wide circle of friends or
winning over enemies. In a sense it may be said that Pitt took political
life too seriously. He prepared for it from boyhood so strenuously as
partly to stunt his social faculties, and thereby handicap himself for life.
For in that age the political arena was the close preserve of the nobles,
gentry, and nabobs, with whom a statesman could scarcely succeed
unless he had the manners of the clubs and the instincts of a
sportsman. A compromise between Lord Chatham and Tony Lumpkin
would have made the ideal leader. As it was, there entered on the
scene a compromise between Chatham and Aristides.
Pitt’s chief relaxation from the “sober studies” at Pembroke Hall
was found in visits to the great debates at Westminster. The first of
these visits belongs to the month of January 1775, when his father was
pleading passionately for conciliation with America. Benjamin Franklin,
the champion of the colonists, was present; and the orator clearly
aimed at persuading our kinsmen beyond the seas that they had the
sympathy of very many British hearts. Those two orations echoed far
and wide amid the dales of New England and the rocks of the
Alleghanies. What, then, must have been the effect of the living voice
and of that superb presence, which trebled the power of every word,
on a sensitive youth whose being ever thrilled responsive to that of his
father? Language failed him to express his feelings. “Nothing
prevented his speech,” so he wrote to his mother, “from being the most
forcible that can be imagined, and [the] Administration fully felt it. The
manner and matter both were striking; far beyond what I can express.
It was everything which was superior; ... his first speech lasted above
an hour and the second half an hour—surely the two finest speeches
68
that ever were made, unless by himself.” He heard also Chatham’s
great effort of 30th May 1777, and describes it as marked by “a flow of
eloquence and beauty of expression, animated and striking beyond
expression.”
For Pitt, indeed, the chief delights of the vacations centred in St.
Stephens. Never has there been a more eager listener to the debates;
and here his method of studying the orators of Greece and Rome
enabled him quickly to marshal the arguments of a speaker, assess
them at their real worth, and fashion a retort. During one of his visits to
the House of Lords he was introduced to Charles James Fox, already
famous as the readiest debater in the Lower House. The Whig leader
afterwards described the rapt attention with which the youth at his side
listened to the speeches of the peers, and frequently turned to him with
the remark: “But surely, Mr. Fox, that might be met thus,” or “Yes; but
he lays himself open to this retort.” Little can Fox have imagined that
these gifts, when whetted by maturity, were frequently to dash the
69
hopes of the Whigs.
The nice balancing of arguments, and the study of words, together
with the art of voice production, may make a clever and persuasive
speaker; but a great orator is he to whom such things are but trifling
adornments, needful, indeed, for a complete equipment, but lost
amidst the grander endowments of Nature, imagination and learning.
Pitt excelled in the greater gifts no less than in the smaller graces. He
had the advantage of a distinguished presence, a kindling eye, a
sonorous voice; and to these excellences were added those of the
mind, which outshone all adventitious aids. And these intellectual
powers, which give weight to attack and cover a retreat, were
cultivated with a wholeheartedness and persistence unparalleled in our
annals. The pompous greetings of the Earl of Chatham to “the civilians
and law of nations tribe” at Pembroke Hall show the thoroughness of
his son’s application to law. It also seems probable that during the
latter part of his stay at Cambridge he widened his outlook on public
affairs by a study of Adam Smith’s great work, “The Wealth of Nations,”
which appeared in 1776. He afterwards avowed himself a disciple of
Adam Smith; and it is questionable whether he would have had time
after leaving Cambridge thoroughly to master that work.
Books which bore upon the rise and fall of States seem to have
engaged his attention, as was also the case with the young Napoleon
—witness his copious notes on changes of dynasty and revolutions. In
truth, those questions were then “in the air.” In 1748 Montesquieu had
published his “Spirit of Laws”; Rousseau had brought out in 1762 his
“Social Contract,” which Quinet has described as the seed of the
French Revolution. Whether Pitt perused these works is doubtful; but it
is clear that in his reading he had an eye for the causes that make or
mar the fortunes of nations. Witness the remark in his letter of 19th
March 1778, that nowhere in history could he find “any instance of a
70
Nation so miserably sacrificed as this has been.” He shared the
general conviction that none but Chatham could steer the ship of State
into safe waters; and deep must have been his concern when the King
refused to hear of Chatham forming a new Ministry for the purpose of
conciliation. No consideration, not even the loss of his Crown (so he
71
wrote to Lord North) would induce him to “stoop to the Opposition.”
Such conduct bordered on the insane now that France had made
common cause with the United States; but there was no means of
forcing the King’s hand. The majority in Parliament supported his
Minister, Lord North; and little could be expected from the Earl of
Chatham in view of his growing infirmities of mind and body. His
haughty and exacting ways no less than his inconsistencies of aim had
scattered his following; and it was but a shadow of a name that
appeared in the House of Lords on 7th April 1778. Encased in flannel,
looking deadly pale, but with something of the old gleam in his eyes,
he entered, staying his tottering frame on his sons, William and James.
He spoke twice, urging the House not to debase the monarchy by
conceding full independence to America, still less by giving way before
France. “Shall this great kingdom now fall prostrate before the House
of Bourbon? If we must fall, let us fall like men.” Much of the speech
was inconsistent with his former opinions; but the peers recked not of
inconsistency; they listened with bated breath to words which recalled
the glorious days of 1759—words which were to be prophetic both for
himself and for his son. A second oratorical effort was too much for his
overwrought frame. He pressed his hand to his heart and fell. The
peers hard by caught him in their arms; his sons hurried up and helped
to bear him to a house in Downing Street. Thence he was removed to
Hayes, and there on 11th May 1778, in the midst of his family, he
passed away.
For the greatest statesman and orator of his age there could be but
one place of sepulture. The House of Commons unanimously voted an
address for a public funeral and a monument in Westminster; and
probably of all Englishmen there was only one who regretted the
decision. George III had revealed the pettiness of his nature when, in a
letter to Lord North, he referred to Chatham’s breakdown in the House
of Lords as his “political exit.” He now stated that, unless the inscription
on the monument dwelt only on Chatham’s influence in “rouzing the
nation at the beginning of the last war,” the compliment paid to the
deceased statesman would be “rather an offensive measure” to him
72
personally. “The Court do everything with an ill grace,” is William’s
 73
description of the preparations for the funeral. No one represented
the King at the funeral on 9th June, a fact which gave to the ceremony
the appearance of a great popular demonstration. It was the last of
Chatham’s triumphs.
Owing to the absence of the eldest son with his regiment, William
was the chief mourner. Few of the beholders had any knowledge of his
manifold gifts; and the crowds which gazed at the stately procession,
as at the burial of England’s glories and hopes, could not surmise that
the slim figure following the hearse was destined to retrieve the
disasters of the present and to link once more the name of Pitt with a
great work of national revival.
 CHAPTER III
POLITICAL APPRENTICESHIP

I cannot approve of the requisition, in the studies of future

statesmen, of so much theoretical knowledge, by which young
people are often ruined before their time, both in mind and body.
When they enter into practical life, they possess indeed an
immense stock of philosophical and learned material; but in the
narrow circle of their calling this cannot be practically applied, and
will therefore be forgotten as useless. On the other hand what they
most needed they have lost: they are deficient in the necessary
mental and bodily energy, which is quite indispensable when one
would enter efficiently into practical life.—Goethe.

T HE lives of English statesmen have very rarely, if ever, been

enervated by that excessive zeal for education which the great
German thinker discerned as a possible danger for his fellow
countrymen. Certainly to those who had drunk deep of the learning of
Leipzig, Heidelberg, or Göttingen, the transference to a Staats-
secretariat at Weimar, Cassel, or even at Berlin, must have been a life
of sheer drudgery. Doubtless, the doctrinaire policy of many a
Continental State sprang from the persistent attempts of some
Pegasus in harness to rise again to the serene heights of his youthful
contemplations. In England our youths did not meditate on the science
of politics. Both Oxford and Cambridge displayed a maternal care lest
the brains of the rising generation should overtax the bodies; and
never was the unsullied spring of Helicon ruffled by draughts taken
under compulsion. Gibbon’s experience at Magdalen College in 1752–
3, of the genial indifference of his first tutor, and the unblushing neglect
of his successor, seems to have been quite normal; and it is clear that
the curriculum of that wealthy corporation had not the remotest
connection with any known form of activity outside its walls.
 Pitt’s residence at Cambridge was more fruitful for the future. The
dons of Pembroke Hall seem to have taken their duties less lightly than
was the rule elsewhere; and Pitt’s lifelong gratitude to Dr. Pretyman
may have been partly due to the unusual advancement in learning
achieved under his watchful care. But even so, the regular studies had
no bearing on the life of a statesman other than that which comes from
an intelligent reading of the philosophers and historians of Greece and
Rome. Pitt’s choice of lectures on Civil Law was his own. And, after
taking his degree in the autumn of 1776, he seems largely to have
followed the bent of his mind, which, as we have seen, led him to study
the crises in national affairs, and the causes of welfare or decay. It is
significant that the young Napoleon Bonaparte approached historical
study in the same practical way.
Above all, Pitt haunted the precincts of Westminster, and there
learnt to view politics, not as a science, but a strife. For him, therefore,
there was little risk of being hampered by an ill-digested mass of
theoretical learning as he faced the ever shifting problems of the
Commonwealth; still less of undergoing the transition from the breezy
uplands of philosophy to the political mill of some petty principality. It is
the happy lot of Britain’s sons to come to ever widening spheres of
activity; and their minds, never “sicklied o’er” at the outset, should
possess the alertness and vigour which Goethe rightly praised as a
better equipment than the best elaborated theories and the richest
store of precedents. This natural course of development ought to
produce not doctrinaires, but statesmen.

* * * * *
The chief misfortunes of Pitt’s early life were his appalling
precocity, which the Earl of Chatham in no wise checked, and the
sense of responsibility thrust upon him all too soon by the terrible
bereavement described above. As the eldest son was then abroad with
his regiment, William was at once involved in a network of cares. The
finances of the family were in an embarrassed state. Chatham’s habits
had been so lavish, and his conduct in official life so honourably
scrupulous, that the estate was encumbered with debts. Parliament
voted the sum of £20,000 towards their payment; but, if we may judge
from one of the later letters of Lady Chatham, embarrassments at
 74
times continued to beset her. William also inherited property which
was to yield little more than an annual income of £250—a sum
inadequate to meet the demands of an ambitious youth in an age
when money no less than family standing served as the passport to a
public career.
Nevertheless, the lack of resources seems to have stimulated
energies that were ever braced by difficulty. About five months after the
funeral of his father, we find him expressing to Lady Chatham his
resolve to take rooms at Lincoln’s Inn. In his view practice at the Bar
was invaluable as a training for that wider and grander service to which
he had early vowed himself.
In one important particular Pitt’s conduct showed singular
foresight. He did not, as might have been expected in days when
travelling was slow and expensive, give up his rooms at Pembroke
Hall, but for nearly two years he continued usually to reside there,
even while keeping his terms at Lincoln’s Inn. Extravagant though this
arrangement seemed to be, it was based on prudential motives. In the
miserable condition in which public affairs then were, he judged that a
dissolution of Parliament could not be long deferred; and the chance of
winning a seat at his University seemed to him, though still in his
teens, greater than at an ordinary constituency, where the deep
75
pockets of grandees or nabobs must mar his prospect.
About Cambridge, then, his hopes fondly clustered, seeing that it
was “a seat of all others the most desirable, as being free from
expense, perfectly independent, and I think in every respect extremely
76
honourable.” The words have the ring of manly determination which
marks all his public utterances.
The following letter of his to Mr. John (afterwards Lord)
Townshend, then one of the members for the University, marks the first
official announcement of his intentions:

Pembroke Hall, July 15 1779.

Dear Townshend,
 The very earnest and sincere wishes I expressed for your
success in the late contest for the University of Cambridge, might
perhaps lead you to imagine that I should take a similar part on
every future occasion. I was therefore very sorry that it was not in
my power to explain to you my situation when I had the pleasure
of seeing you here. But, having since finally determined to offer
myself a candidate for the University at the General Election, I am
desirous of giving you immediate notice of a circumstance of
which I imagine you will be glad to be apprised as soon as
possible.
77
W. Pitt.

At the same time he informed his uncle, Earl Temple, of his

resolve, and received the following reply. The italicizing of the Christian
name speaks for itself:

Stowe, July 18 1779.

I cannot, my dear William, but interest myself most warmly in
whatever relates to your honour or interest; I therefore learn with
singular pleasure the hopes you conceive that the good old lady,
the alma mater of Cambridge, may be inclined to treat you as her
most favourite son. Such a testimony at your age from a learned
body cannot but be very flattering. As to your prospect of success,
I cannot form any opinion, being totally unacquainted with every
circumstance but that of your merit. You must therefore be [sic] at
present to receive from me nothing but sincere assurances of my
best good wishes and readiness to serve you as may be in my
power. How far it may be advisable for you before you have more
ripened in your profession to launch out into the great ocean of
politicks and expose yourself to the sweet music of those lovely
syrens, which have already seduced your cousin Thomas from the
destined and determined object of his life, is a matter of great
doubt, and the reflection that it is so may prove some consolation
to you should you not succeed. The memory of your father and the
great character you have attained speak forcibly in your favour, but
a dead minister, the most respectable that ever existed, weighs
 very light in the scale against any living one, at least if I may guess
at your university by her good sister. All therefore I can say further
is to recommend to you very thoroughly to examine the foundation
of your hopes before you engage, not suffering your conduct to be
warped by your wishes; because, if from the event this measure
shall appear to be lightly taken up, such an outset in life will
diminish much of those high expectations which you have so
deservedly raised. Your young old friend and namesake salutes
you very kindly and gratefully, Hester and Catherine very
affectionately, without forgetting that antient spinster Mrs.
Stapleton. We shall be happy to receive you here, candidate or no
78
candidate....
Temple.

Despite this response, Pitt resolved to persevere, and that too,

though the political horizon had darkened owing to the declaration of
war by Spain. At first he avowed his deep concern at this event; but
the note of hopefulness, which is never long absent from his letters,
soon begins to reassert itself in the expression of a belief that this new
danger may “be productive of some good effects at home, and that
there may still be spirit and resources in the country sufficient to
preserve at least the remnant of a great empire.” This forecast was
justified. The struggle became one for national existence, waged
against our hereditary rivals, the monarchs of the House of Bourbon;
and the searchings of heart of England’s sons, at warring against their
own kith and kin, were in large measure stilled. The thrilling incidents
that accompanied the three years’ siege of Gibraltar by the Spaniards,
our successes in India, and the naval triumphs of the closing years of
the war showed the hardening of the nation’s fibre under the strain of
adversity and danger.
After residing at Burton Pynsent for some weeks in the autumn in
order to reassure Lady Chatham while the invasion-scare was at its
height, Pitt returned to Cambridge at the close of the year, and settled
down at Lincoln’s Inn in the early weeks of 1780. Thanks to the
kindness of his uncle, Earl Temple, he had been able to procure a
lease of rooms on the north side of the attic of staircase number 4 of
Stone Buildings (those nearest to Holborn). The sum of £1,100, which
in November 1778 he had pronounced “frightful,” had been advanced
on the property which Pitt was to inherit when he came of age.
Concerning Pitt’s life at Lincoln’s Inn we know next to nothing. The
lack of official records of the Inns of Court, except unilluminating
entries of dates, thwarts all efforts at reconstructing the early life of
many famous men; and the denseness of the gloom which surrounds
our institutions, academic and legal, is apt to provoke the investigator
to unpatriotic reflections. Is there any French statesman of modern
times about whose early career the records of the institutions with
which he was associated are so scanty and uninteresting as are those
of Cambridge and Lincoln’s Inn concerning the life of the brilliant son of
Chatham?
As it is, the investigator at Lincoln’s Inn can discover little more
than that Pitt was called to the Bar on 12th June 1780, and that on the
next day a lease was taken out for his rooms for three “lives,” namely,
John, Earl of Chatham, aged 23, William Pitt, aged 21, and James
79
Charles Pitt, aged 18. The rent was £9 9s. 10d. per annum.
The great preoccupation of Pitt, apart from the ever-pressing topic
of national danger, was the movement for Economic Reform.
Originating at York in December 1779, it gathered volume until the
petitioners in that county alone numbered more than 8,000
freeholders. East Anglia responded to the call of Yorkshire; and Pitt
hoped to see London rally to the cause of purity and political freedom.
If ever there was a chance of sweeping away the network of sinecures
whereby the King kept his hold on the House of Commons, it was now,
when the growth of debt and taxation rendered economy in non-
essentials the most urgent of public duties.
In February 1780 Burke introduced his proposals for Economic
Reform in a speech of great ability. He sought, firstly, to abolish the
special jurisdictions in Wales and Cheshire and in the Duchies of
Lancaster and Cornwall, which formed petty and extravagant and
corrupt governments. The great orator, like a forensic retiarius, sought
to enfold his great enemy, Corruption, within the cloak of humour which
he thus deftly threw in front. Affecting the desire to free the royal
prerogative from irritating and absurd local restrictions, he proceeded
thus: “Cross a brook, and you lose the King of England, but you have
some comfort in coming again under His Majesty, though shorn of his
beams, and no more than Prince of Wales. Go to the north and you
find him dwindled to a Duke of Lancaster. Turn to the west of that
north, and he hops upon you in the humble character of the Earl of
Chester.” Equally difficult and important was Burke’s attempt to reduce
the Civil List and lessen the number of sinecures attached to the King’s
household. He sought to abolish the offices of Master of the
Household, Treasurer, Comptroller, Cofferer, Treasurer of the
Chamber, the whole Board of Green-Cloth, the Wardrobe and Jewel
Offices, the Board of Works, and the Keepers of stag-hounds, buck-
hounds, fox-hounds, and harriers, and other well-paid sinecures. With
playful irony he described the clatter of white-sticks and yellow-sticks
about the head of a reformer who would touch those offices, or sought
to exclude the King’s turnspit from Parliament. As regarded the Civil
List, he proposed to fix its amount immutably, to transfer to the general
fund accounts which had ceased properly to belong to the King’s
private purse, and to regulate the whole on business-like principles. He
also urged the suppression of useless offices in the general
administration, especially the newly created Secretaryship for the
Colonies and the Board of Trade, the latter of which then formed a
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desirable sinecure for eight members of Parliament. Most important
of all, perhaps, was the proposal, brought in by Sir Philip Clerk, to
exclude from Parliament contractors—a class which had been proved
to have battened on the funds, and to have urged the continuance of
the war.
Had Burke’s proposals stood in need of further vindication, it would
have been supplied by the mysterious fate which befell them.
Members of Parliament with scarcely an exception loudly commended
the measure, and the eloquence and power with which Burke
introduced it to the House. About the same time Lord Shelburne
brought forward in the Upper House damning proofs of the greed of
contractors and of the gross carelessness with which accounts were
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kept at the Admiralty and War Office. The defence of ministers was
strong only in personalities. Argument there was none; and it seemed
that the whole festering sudd of corruption must be swept away by the
flood of popular indignation.
 From three of Pitt’s letters, those of 9th and 26th February and
14th March 1780, we can imagine the high hopes of the young
reformer as he listened to the scathing attack on Ministers by Lord
Shelburne, and the comprehensive indictment framed by Burke. In the
second letter he notes with joy the drop of the ministerial majority to
two; and in the small hours of 14th March he was privileged to witness
the stormy scene which occurred when Burke by a majority of eight
carried his motion for abolishing the Board of Trade. And yet the sudd
did not move. Despite the success of reformers in the House, and the
growing excitement among their associations in the country, the
clogging influences of the past prevailed. Members who praised Burke
for his lofty and statesmanlike aims, voted in committee against the
details of his scheme. Little by little it disappeared; and, in face of the
greed, cowardice, or apathy of Parliament, Burke soon declared his
indifference as to the fate of the few remaining clauses of his measure.
The bill for the exclusion of contractors from Parliament passed the
Commons, but was thrown out by the Lords.
Another surprise was in store for the House and the country. On
6th April Mr. Dunning brought forward a motion that “the influence of
the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be lessened.”
The motion was made suddenly and on the day when numerous
petitions were laid on the table, signed by thousands of persons, on
behalf of shorter parliaments and a larger addition to the
representatives of counties who, as a rule, showed some
independence. The proposal produced a great sensation. Ministers
seemed to be “stunned.” Pitt’s relative, Thomas Pitt of Boccanoc, ably
supported this daring motion. The Speaker himself left the chair and
spoke in support of it, and the resolution, after a trifling change of form,
was passed by a majority of eighteen. But again the forces of
obscurantism triumphed. Apparently Dunning owed his success solely
to the fear of the imminence of a general election, and as that fear
lessened, so also did the numbers of the popular party in the House.
North slowly but surely regained his hold on the waverers, and
succeeded in defeating a motion begging the King not to dissolve or
prorogue Parliament until steps had been taken to diminish the
influence of the Crown at elections (24th April).
 For the present Pitt stifled his disappointment at this fiasco by
attendance at the opera and masquerades, so we may judge from his
letters; but he probably hardened his resolve to effect the Reform of
Parliament itself, which, as was now clear to all but Burke, must
precede any attempt to cleanse the Augean stables of the Court and
the Administration. That gifted thinker but somewhat erratic politician,
whose character will concern us later, had gone so far as to defend the
state of the representation and to urge reformers to concentrate their
efforts on the task of freeing Parliament from the corrupt influences
that were warping its character. To this belief he still clung, in spite of
the recent damning proof that a Parliament of place-hunters and
borough-mongers had refused to root out the canker of corruption,
even at a time of great national danger. Pitt, for his part, looked for
safety to that course of action which Chatham had so often taken; he
turned away from Parliament and fixed his hopes in the nation. Even
the oratory of Burke failed to satisfy him. He found in his great speech
of 11th February not only “real beauties,” but “ridiculous affectations.”
He added, however, in his letter of 14th March: “I have heard two less
studied harangues from him since in reply that please me much more
than this does now that it is upon paper.” This criticism, coming from
the son of Chatham, is a little surprising; but it may be considered
symptomatic. As will appear later, there was something in Burke’s
temperament which jarred on the young statesman.
While disagreeing with Burke and the more academic wing of the
reformers, Pitt did not consort with the men on the extreme left who
now raised a great clamour through the country. He seems to have
had no dealings at this time with the Reform or “Œconomic”
Associations; and events now occurred which helped for a time to
distract his attention from politics. While he was expecting to be called
to the Bar, London fell a prey to the Lord George Gordon rioters (2nd
to 9th June).
What must have been the disgust of the young patrician as he
gazed at the scenes of rapine and drunkenness which went on under
the name of Protestantism! The pretence of bigotry was soon flung
aside, and then, when the thin crust of civilization was removed, men
saw appalled the depths of villany that usually are hidden. For days the
passions of the mob raged unchecked by timorous magistrates and
ministers. The King alone was undismayed, and finally insisted on the
use of vigorous measures. Thanks to his staunchness, the wheels of
government began to move once more. Then the orgy quickly died
down; but it left men with a dread of the newly-revealed Caliban, and a
heightened respect for the one man whose firmness had ensured the
vindication of law and order. How much the popular cause then
suffered can never be known. When, in the course of the French
Revolution, the Parisian mob carried the King and Queen from
Versailles to Paris and completed its triumph at the harvest time of
1792, Englishmen viewed those events in the lurid light thrown by the
flames of the Lord George Gordon riots; and it is probable that Pitt
himself was no stranger to this feeling.
The cause of Parliamentary Reform in England also suffered
untold harm. Why talk about manhood suffrage, vote by ballot and
annual Parliaments, as the Westminster Committee had talked, when
all around were proofs of the savagery of the many-headed monster?
The Duke of Richmond, who then, along with Fox, advocated a
programme of reform which was to furnish the Chartists with their “six
points,” confessed in a letter to Shelburne that the riots “will tend to
discredit any attempts of the people to do themselves justice on any
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future occasion when the cause may warrant it”; and though Charles
James Fox retained his faith in the cause, yet he and all other
democrats thenceforth found it a hopeless task to roll the stone up to
the point to which the enthusiasm of the people carried it in the spring
of 1780. After midsummer of that year the various committees and
associations preached to deaf ears. The King had won.
To return to Pitt’s fortunes, we may note that Lincoln’s Inn had
been in no immediate danger from the rioters, though surrounded with
flames on all sides. In order to be ready for the worst, the benchers
took arms and formed a corps, in which Pitt had his first experience of
volunteering. The records of the Inn, however, show that it was also
defended by 800 men of the Northumberland Militia, the sum of £364
12s. 0d. being paid for provisions to them for the ten days during which
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they were in garrison.
The desire of the resident members of the Inn worthily to entertain
the officers of that corps led to the appointment of a committee for that
purpose, which included Pitt, Pepper Arden (afterwards Lord Alvanley),
Mitford (afterwards Lord Redesdale), Bland Burges, and three others.
The last named, in his reminiscences, tells how, when his turn came,
he invited Gibbon and Lord Carmarthen to meet four officers and other
company at dinner. The historian, as is well known, was a most
entertaining talker, flitting easily from one topic to another, and lighting
up all with sallies of wit which the listeners were expected to receive
with deferential applause and unquestioning mirth. Judge then of his
astonishment, when, after one of his best foreign anecdotes, which
touched on “the fashionable levities of political doctrine then
prevalent,” a deep but clear voice was heard from the far end of the
table calmly but civilly impugning the correctness of the story and the
propriety of its political connexion. The applause ceased at once, and
Gibbon turned his gaze petulantly on the slim youth who had dared to
challenge his unquestioned supremacy, and sat there quietly eating
grapes. As the interruption had been hailed with too much approval to
be ignored or dismissed with a frown, he endeavoured to crush the
youth by heavy artillery. A spirited fire came in return, and a sharp duel
of wits began, which the company followed with the keenest interest.
Finally the skill and vigour of the attack drove the historian from one
position after another and left him defenceless; whereupon he left the
room in high dudgeon. In vain did Bland Burges seek in the anteroom
to calm his feelings and persuade him to return. “By no means,” replied
Gibbon; “that young gentleman is, I have no doubt, extremely
ingenious and agreeable, but I must acknowledge that his style of
conversation is not exactly what I am accustomed to, so you must
positively excuse me.” Meanwhile Pitt continued to hold forth on the
topic in dispute, “which he discussed with such ability, strength of
argument, and eloquence, that his hearers were filled with profound
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admiration.”
Such was the first recorded triumph of Pitt. Would that we knew
more than the bare outlines of the discussion! But an unkind fate has
vouchsafed here, as at so many points, enough of information to whet
the appetite for more, enough to give us the merest glimpse of those
surprising powers which easily discomfited Gibbon at his prime.
We know little about the extent of Pitt’s legal attainments or his skill
as a pleader. His practice was to last but a short time. Three days after
the end of the riots he was called to the Bar and afterwards went on
the Western Circuit, of which he was a member. As to the impression
aroused by his pleading, I have found very few particulars except the
statement in an almost contemporary biography that his first case,
which must have been in London, was one concerning an East India
trade dispute, and that he attracted the notice of Lord Mansfield on the
Bench. He is said to have acted as junior counsel in several cases at
Dorchester and Exeter, and to have commanded attention by the force
of his reasoning rather than attracted it by playing upon the emotions.
His style, in short, was clear and argumentative rather than “attractive
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and passionate.” From Exeter he was recalled in haste by news
which was of far higher interest to him than the quarrels of Wessex
squires and traders. The King had dissolved Parliament and had fixed
31st October for the date of assembly of its successor.
This action was what might have been expected from the most
astute of electioneering agents. Disgust at the excesses of the Gordon
rioters was still the dominant motive in the political world, and at such a
time men looked askance at Reform. Further, in order to ensure the
success of what he termed “my cause,” George III condescended to
the arts of the canvasser, entering the shop of a draper at Windsor,
and saying in his quick peremptory way—“The queen wants a gown,
wants a gown. No Keppel. No Keppel.” Windsor rejected Keppel;
Burke failed to keep his seat at Bristol; and Pitt made no impression
whatever on the Toryism of the University of Cambridge. In any case
his election was highly improbable. Dons and country clergymen are
not wont to favour the claims of a young and unknown candidate; but
the trend of thought at that time made his defeat certain.
He bore it with his usual serenity. “Mansfield and Townshend have
run away with the prize,” so he wrote on 16th September, “but my
struggle has not been dishonourable.” He now once more betook
himself to legal affairs at Lincoln’s Inn, but his thoughts still centred in
Westminster. Despite the stagnation which marked our public life after
the victory of the King and Lord North at the general election, the fate
of the commonwealth drew Pitt to St. Stephen’s for the earlier half of
every day. His regular attendance at the House was perhaps
instrumental in furthering his dearest hopes. The Duke of Rutland had
been on cordial terms with Pitt at Cambridge; and he now mentioned
the talents of his friend to Sir James Lowther. That magnate of
Cumberland, who could secure the return of eleven candidates,
welcomed the suggestion that Pitt should enter Parliament for one of
his seats, and, with a generosity none too common among owners of
“pocket boroughs,” offered him a seat at Appleby unconditionally, save
that he (Pitt) was to resign his seat if his political views should in the
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future become opposed to those of his patron.
To this condition even the proud son of Chatham could not demur;
and, though the connection with what was practically a pocket borough
could not be quite palatable to a reformer, yet he doubtless
remembered that his father first entered Parliament as member for Old
Sarum.
While we smile at the vagaries of the old system, which enabled
“the great commoner” to begin his public career as representative of
an untenanted mound, and his son as member for a town which he did
not even visit, let us remember that occasionally it opened a door
easily for a man of genius. Gladstone, in his Tory years, eulogized the
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system on these grounds; and it is certainly remarkable that, besides
the two Pitts, many other famous men used these stepping-stones.
Burke, through most of his public life, was member for a pocket
borough, Wendover or Malton; and Canning entered Parliament as
member for a scarcely discoverable village, Newtown, in the Isle of
Wight. Fox and Peel also entered Parliament by similar means.
However quaintly the old order of things misrepresented the British
people, it did now and then help to bring brilliant men to the front with a
speed that is no longer possible. But it is noteworthy that young men of
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spirit took care to be soon quit of pocket boroughs.
Appleby having duly registered the decree of Sir James Lowther at
the close of 1780, Pitt took his seat in the House of Commons on 23rd
January 1781. From that time to the very same day in the year 1806
when he breathed his last, he was to expend his life in strenuous
efforts throughout a quarter of a century which comprised such events
as the close of the American War, the new grouping of the Powers of
Europe, the French Revolution, and the rise of Napoleon.