Nature's Evil

Pursuing this idea, in 1614 William Cockayne, governor of the Eastland Company, convinced James I to grant him a monopoly on exporting dyed wool. By the same act, the export of undyed woollen goods was banned. Failing to employ Flemish refugees with the necessary expertise, Cockayne was unable to succeed in production. His real interests were different; the Eastland Company, a counterpart of the Muscovy Company which traded with the Russian north, traded with the Baltic states, from Prussia to Poland. With the decline of the Hanseatic League, the English competition with the Dutch in the northern seas led them further east. The Cockayne project led to the reorientation of the English wool trade from the Low Countries to the north-east of Europe. As a result, the export of wool collapsed, the London merchants were ruined, and revolts started in the countryside. 19 Chronologically, the Eastland Company’s failed project of dyeing wool and establishing a wool monopoly developed simultaneously with the Muscovy Company’s project of colonising the Russian north and establishing a hemp monopoly. But, in 1617, James I reversed his course and cancelled both projects. He permitted the export of undyed wool again and allowed his ambassador to Moscow, John Meyrick, to set up a peace deal that made English intervention impossible. Nevertheless, Cockayne was promoted to be lord mayor of London, and Meyrick went back to Moscow to sign yet another treaty. At this point, wool prices were falling, although the cottage industry continued against the odds. The aristocracy had long been investing in land, and any profit was better than nothing. Parliament, which was made up largely of landed gentry who owned sheep, refused to allow James to raise new taxes; eventually this course led to the Glorious Revolution, which only strengthened the dominance of the wool merchants over the sheep owners.

In 1651, Thomas Hobbes published his Leviathan . On the famous frontispiece of this book, we see depicted the composite body of the sovereign, which consists of swarms of his tiny subjects, sprouting from his skin like sheep’s wool. 20 Born and educated in Malmesbury, an important centre of the wool industry whose fortunes declined during his lifetime, Hobbes was aware of the crucial relations between the humble sheep and the terrifying Leviathan. 21 Probably the most discussed image in the history of philosophy, the composite body of the state on Hobbes’s frontispiece confronts the city and the country, which are both depicted with conventional line engraving. The city is empty; two doctors wearing masks and two guardsmen patrol it, as if it is on lockdown. 22 The creator of this powerful picture is unknown; some scholars suggest the artist was Wenzel Hollar from Bohemia, who settled in London as a war refugee. While still in Prague he had studied with Arcimboldo, the master of composite portraits, which explains his unusual style. The dominant theory, however, is that the engraver was the French artist Abraham Bosse. *

In these sophisticated debates, scholars have ignored the visible resemblance of the sovereign’s body to sheep’s wool. However, I believe that this simple reading has its merits. First, it explains the fact that only the body of the sovereign is composite: the state consists of the sheep-like, sheepish people and the king who is their head and shepherd. Second, it explains why the city is depicted as empty: the wool economy depended on pastures and cottages, and there was no role for the city in this ‘body politic’. Paradoxically, it was the towns, with their excessive ‘consumption’, that became a burden for the mercantilist state. Third, it resonates with the concerns and statements of Hobbes’s contemporaries. In 1696, Charles Davenant, a customs official and the eldest son of William Davenant, a poet who corresponded with Hobbes, wrote: ‘As bread is called the staff of life, so the woollen manufacture is truly the principal nourishment of our body politic.’ 23 This was not about interpreting the frontispiece of Leviathan . Calling for a ban on raw wool exports, Davenant proposed to force the large population of English almshouses (counted as more than a million) to work on woollen goods for export, which would entail a new mass-scale organisation of proto-industrial labour. Fourth, this reading of the frontispiece reveals a direct line of continuity from More’s Utopia , to Hobbes’s Leviathan , to Davenant’s version of mercantilism, to Bentham’s Panopticon .