Investigations of a Dog

The World Turned Upside Down is a very well-known pamphlet which crops up in many books about the English/British Civil War(s)/Revolution (”or whatever we are to call the blasted thing” - John Morrill). In fact it occurs so often that it’s a bit of a cliche. Despite/because of that, I’m going to use it in my forthcoming seminar paper on animals, authority and property rights. Although the image is very familiar, I didn’t know very much about the pamphlet until recently, and once I looked at it in detail it defied my expectations in some ways (this kind of relates to Rachel’s post about making the implicit explicit).

The first thing to note is that it was published in January 1647, long before the regicide and setting up of the republic. The text of the pamphlet is a poem which is mainly about religion and Ireland. Although related constitutional and social issues are hinted at, they aren’t the main focus of attention. However, the idea that hierarchies are all related and that disturbing one necessarily leads to the disturbance of others dominates the whole thing.

It wasn’t unusual for 17th century printers to use stock woodcuts to illustrate pamphlets, but in this case the text and picture are very closely related. The poem opens by explicitly referring to the picture:

THe Picture that is printed in the front
Is like the Kingdom, if you look upon’t:
For if you well do note it as it is,
It is a Transform’d Metamorphosis.
This monstrous Picture plainely doth declare
This Land (quite out of order) out of square:

Although the text is mostly about religion, the inverted church in the top left corner is the only direct representation of the inversion of ecclesiastical hierarchies. What’s more noticeable is that several animals are used to represent inversion of the “natural” order. Flying fish, a rat chasing a cat, and rabbit chasing a dog, and a horse driving a cart are all the opposite of what people would normally expect.

The Cony hunts the Dogge, the Rat the Cat,
The Horse doth whip the Cart, (I pray marke that)
The Wheelbarrow doth drive the man (oh base)
And Eeles and Gudgeons flie a mighty pace.

The Great Chain of Being is broken! Oh no! So far I haven’t found much evidence of people mentioning the chain of being by name in 17th century England, but this pamphlet is good evidence that the idea was around, even if most people didn’t think about it as deeply as the likes of Leibniz and Spinoza (the English elite don’t seem to have grasped the subtleties of gradation, preferring to see everyone and everything below themselves as being pretty much the same). In fact it’s artificial to separate ecclesiastical hierarchies from hierarchies of animals (or any other hierarchies). The idea was that all hierarchies had been made by god, and that upsetting any of them was going against god’s natural order. The homily of obedience, one of the sermons to be given in church on Sundays (originally attributed to Thomas Cranmer but continuously reprinted well into the 17th century) made this idea explicit: god had put everything from the weather and animals to kings and subjects in perfect order. Therefore nature, religion, and authority were all inextricably linked.

The World Turned Upside Down supports this ideology, but in a moderate conservative way which seems to have little sympathy for Arminianism or absolutism. If only things could go back to how they were before, but “before” is the reign of Elizabeth I, not the 1630s:

And if ’twere possible our fathers old
Should live againe, and tread upon this mould,
And see all things confused, overthrowne,
They would not know this Countrey for their own.
For England hath no likelihood or show
Of what it was but seventy years ago;
Religion, manners, life, and shapes of men,
Are much unlike the people that were then,

There is no obvious hostility to parliament. The poem professes loyalty to both king and parliament, and represents the role of parliament as putting things right. The most pressing thing which needs putting right is Ireland. More than a whole page is devoted to pouring scorn on the Irish rebels.

From Hells blacke Pit, begirt with Romish Armes,
Thousands of Locusts are in Troups and Swarmes,
More barbarous then the Heathens, worse then Iewes,
Nor Turkes or Tartars would such tortures use,
Sure that Religion can no waies bee good,
That so inhumanely delights in Blood:
Nor doth that Doctrine from the Scriptures spring,
For to rebell against God and the King.

So there’s a racial hierarchy here, and the Irish are at the bottom- even worse than the Jews! Demonstrating what Bruce Boehrer called “relative anthropocentrism” (that is,the belief that humans are better than animals, but some humans are more human than others), the Irish are said to be like locusts, and are explicitly denounced as inhuman. And they’ve broken the chain of being by rebelling against the king, which by breaking the “natural” order is also rebelling against god (this conveniently ignores the view that the English parliament had also rebelled against the king!). But it isn’t just the Irish who are like animals. The same also applies to separatist sects and lay preachers who have overthrown the “natural” order of the church:

The Felt-maker, and sawcie stable Groome
Will dare to pearch into the Preachers roome;
Each Ignorant, doe of the Spirit boast,
And prating fooles brag of the Holy Ghost,
When Ignoramus will his Teacher teach,
And Sow-gelders and Coblers dare to preach,

…

When men more bruitish then the Horse or Mule,
Who know not to obey, presume to rule,

Again, hierarchies are being inverted. The poem makes it clear that the Church of England, with the king at its head, is the true church and that it is equally under threat from sects and papists. The church needs hierarchy and ceremony, and these are not to be confused with popery (as they commonly were):

When as the Lords Prayer is almost neglected,
And all Church. Government is quite rejected,
When to avoid a Romish Papists name,
A man must be unmannerly, past shame,
When he that doth shew reverence, doth offend,
And he seemes best, that will not bow or bend,
When he that into Gods House doth not come,
As to a Stable, or a Tipling Roome,
Is counted for a Popish Favorite,

So far so Laudian, but a few lines later there’s some surprising sympathy towards church puritans:

When he that (of his waies) doth conscience make,
And in his heart doth world, flesh, feind forsake,
Loves God with all his soule; adores no pelfe,
And loves his Neighbour, as he loves himselfe;
This man is rare to finde, yet this rare man
Shall have the hatefull name of Puritan:

This seems to hint at Calvinist doctrine (although it’s a bit vague, and I’m not exactly an expert on theology!):

We seeke our Pardons from our heavenly hope,
And not by workes or favour from the Pope;

Overall this pamphlet seems to be a moderate conservative call for king and parliament, high church and low church, to unite against sects and papists and restore god’s natural order, returning to the Elizabethan consensus (whether that consensus was real or imagined). These lines sum up a conservative fear of change, and the comfort of order and ritual:

And from those duties I will never vary,
Till death, or order do command contrary.

1. Bruce Thomas Boehrer, Shakespeare among the animals (Palgrave: New York, 2002).
2. T. J, John Taylor, and Thomas Jordan, The world turn’d upside down (London: : Printed for John Smith., 1647., 1647).