ABSTRACT
Having dealt with structural similarity of the three modes of status bidding (honour, grace and wit), this chapter looks at how they interact in the early modern period, at their historical similarities and mutual displacements. In any case, at the opposite pole to the ability of the genteel and noble stood not simpleness but “idleness” or neglect of “the honour of their houses,” and thus of the abilities inscribed in their own social rank – going into business, for example, or marrying a tradesman’s daughter. Command of the public sphere takes place in the name of the appropriate mode, banishing autonomous honour, personal grace and private intelligence to the margins or worse. There was, as Mervyn James has described, a “composite Tudor court culture which aspired to be honourable, religious and wise,” and the erection of wit coincides exactly with failure to paper over the cracks between the first two.
