The Evil May Day riot of 1517 and the popular politics of anti-immigrant hostility in early modern London

Waddell, Brodie

doi:10.1093/hisres/htab024

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…51 The construction of false composites is quite common in stereotyping: it can be found also in representations of the immigrant, for example. 52 What we have noted with regard to Scotophobia might be thought of as the 'everything bar the kitchen sink' approach: while condemning the Scots, one might as well invoke all the negative stereotypes one could think of. Yet discrete stereotypes could also be conflated more tactically, for instance by polemicists deliberately seeking to make it seem as if the undesirable traits associated with a particular subgroup applied to a broader group of people who were being targeted for attack.…”

Section: Multivocal Representations and False Compositesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Religious and national stereotyping and prejudice in seventeenth-century England

Harris¹

2022

Stereotypes and Stereotyping in Early Modern England

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King James VI of Scotland was known to have had a stormy relationship with the Scottish Presbyterian clergy. Sometime before moving south to become king of England in 1603, so it was said, he happened to hear a sermon by a Presbyterian minister who began railing from the pulpit against king, church and state. Taken aback, James commanded the preacher 'either to speak sence, or come down'. Unfazed, the preacher 'saucily' replied: 'I say Man, I'le nowther speak sence, nor come downe'. 1 This anecdote appears in a manuscript commonplace book held in the collections of the British Library. Little is known about the provenance of the book, except that it dates from the later seventeenth century, but the collector was seemingly writing down things he had heard or read -'Apothegms ancient and modern' he styled them -so we can presume that this tale of King James's encounter with the Presbyterian cleric was in more general circulation. Some nineteenth-and early twentieth-century historical works related the story as if true (without citing any sources), though they disagreed over whether the sermon had been delivered in Edinburgh or St Andrews and whether the king in question was James VI and I (r. 1567-1625) or James VII and II (r. 1685-88). One confidently named the preacher as the Edinburgh minister Robert Bruce (1554-1631). 2 What we can say for certain is that our commonplacer was in the business of collecting things he found amusing. On the page immediately preceding the anecdote about King James he wrote of 'a certain Man that was exceeding fat, and corpulent, yet alwayes rode upon a very leane Horse'; when people 'ask'd him the reason thereof', he explained this was because 'he fed himself, but trusted others to feed his horse'. 3 Thus the story about King James and the preacher was clearly a joke, though a joke that might have been based on an event that had actually happened. It was at a certain level a joke at the expense of the Scots, as the mocking of the Scottish accent makes clear, 4 and it embodies a stereotype of the Scots, or rather of a particular type of Scottish clergyman. The stereotype reflects a prejudice, suggesting as it does that English people tended to prejudge people based on their accent.

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Section: Multivocal Representations and False Compositesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Religious and national stereotyping and prejudice in seventeenth-century England

Harris¹

2022

Stereotypes and Stereotyping in Early Modern England

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“…Such false composites, fuelled by prejudice, could be invoked in order to promote and justify riots. 7 In this context of political mobilisation, the 'falseness' of stereotypes was more than a false construction; rather, it was deployed creatively as a purposeful and meaningful move driven by political, economic and social interests.…”

Section: Engaging With Early Modern Case Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coda

Jovchelovitch¹,

Yamamoto²,

Lake³

2022

Stereotypes and Stereotyping in Early Modern England

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This volume brings together a series of pilot studies that collectively can be taken as a point of departure for exploring the striking pervasiveness of stereotypes in early modern England. Drawing on case studies of the period, it shows that stereotypes are more than cognitive shortcuts and distorted beliefs expressing the errors of people who are prejudiced, irrational and limited in their understanding. In these studies, historical actors are not passive agents waiting to be impressed by prejudices and preconceptions derived from popular culture or from dominant (yet often erroneous) ideologies. Rather, the opposite: the chapters collected here emphasise the contested and practical character of stereotyping as a key psychological and social practice in the making of history. Stereotypes, yesterday as today, are best understood in the context of argumentative social practices that underlie intergroup interactions, interests and representations of the world.From the path-breaking historical research of Patrick Collinson, Alexandra Walsham, Mark Knights and Peter Lake, among others, we already know that stereotypes were often mobilised in early modern polemical and political contexts, where negotiations of power and identity were central driving processes. 1 Thanks to this scholarship, we also know that stereotypes were not only depictions of the groups they were trying to represent but also, and importantly, rich descriptors of the people holding and using them. Yet such case studies have hitherto been undertaken in relative isolation. Perhaps it is due to this isolation and lack of comparison that stereotyping has been conceived mainly as a process inherently harmful to society and that appeals to reason would be sufficient to contain their escalation. Arguably, this has made it difficult to appreciate the striking persistence of stereotyping, indeed the near impossibility of removing stereotypes from social interactions.This coda gives us the opportunity to emphasise how the historical evidence presented here sheds light on stereotyping processes themselves. It also offers a chance to take further our conversation on the synergies between social psychology and history. 2 Social and cognitive psychologists

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“…Livings were maintained because of this interaction between immigrant communities and those regulating their trade. ‘Outsiders’ were also the subject of Waddell's article on London's Evil May Day Riot of 1517, in which thousands of Londoners marched through the city attacking the homes, shops, and bodies of those deemed alien. In a re‐examination of this event, Waddell argues that it did not rest simply on economic rivalry or general xenophobia.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of periodical literature for 2021

Mansell

2022

The Economic History Review

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The Evil May Day riot of 1517 and the popular politics of anti-immigrant hostility in early modern London

Cited by 4 publications

References 24 publications

Religious and national stereotyping and prejudice in seventeenth-century England

Religious and national stereotyping and prejudice in seventeenth-century England

Coda

Review of periodical literature for 2021

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