Herbert's Temple and the Liberty of the Subject

Esther Gilman Richey, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

"Of a new Prince, new bondage" notes one of George Herbert's Outlandish Proverbs, words hinting rather darkly at the Stuart abuse of royal prerogative during the early decades of the seventeenth century and the growing parliamentarian concern over the liberties of the subject. As a member of Parliament in 1624, Herbert was well aware of the threatened liberties of English subjects, and in taking up the rectorship of Bemerton, he did not, as many of his biographers have argued, turn away from politics. Yet, despite Kevin Sharpe's recognition that "in early modern England there was no retreat from political life," the distinction between public and private discourse has continued to haunt Herbert scholarship, so much so that recent studies of Herbert's subjectivity have only deepened this initial divide. In the most extensive and nuanced account of Herbert's subjectivity, Michael Shoenfeldt argues that "in turning to God," "Herbert does not just turn away from the social and political world but also turns the language of this world into the medium for his lyric worship of God."