The Professional Patriarch: Martial Masculinities in English Popular Print, c.1650-1700

Almost all aspects of life were capable of being tagged with a martial theme in seventeenth-century England. As a result, the figure of the military man appeared in a wide variety of popular literary genres, which scholars of identity have previously identified as playing an important role in the process of identity formation. Since war has been constructed as a masculine domain, the values of the soldier are typically expressed in distinctly masculine terms, and a large part of martial identity can be understood as masculine identity. In this paper, I explore stereotypes of martial manhood, their creation and perpetuation, as processes of identity formation as represented in broadsides and pamphlets in seventeenth-century England.

The popular literature of the early modern period often told stories of manly heroes whose courage, strength and virtue in the face of violence served as a vindication of their masculinity. At the same time, however, broadsides and pamphlets were written for and about common men, painting soldierliness as a profession and blending chivalric ideals with narratives of practical career advancement to perpetuate an achievable form of martial virtue that increasingly detached itself from concepts of nobility. The use of love songs to promote the military as an attractive profession also linked martial virtue with domestic responsibility and success, speaking to a man’s normative social role as patriarch, partner and head of the family. By emphasising that men could honourably fight for their sovereign while demanding pay and earning a livelihood through their martial labour, these texts painted the military as an honourable, as well as reasonable, career choice, and reinforced a vision of martial masculinity defined by labour, domesticity and social ambition. Ultimately, this created the figure of a soldier who was romantic in spirit, but professional in nature.