Just north of London on April 21, 1610, two men of the English-Welsh gentry, John Egerton and Edward Morgan, fought a duel that lead to the death of Egerton and a protracted legal battle which ultimately saw Morgan receiving clemency by James I. In what serves as an impressively written microhistory and case study of this single duel, Lloyd Bowen’s 2021 Anatomy of a Duel in Jacobean England analyzes what he calls “the most fully documented duel in early modern England,” (1). Despite the wealth of primary sources that center around the duel and its aftermath, he also writes that it is largely ignored by historians (195), which can perhaps be indicative of how understudied the field of duelling in early modern England has been.
Through the use of primarily court documents, Bowen is able to argue that the duel was almost certainly not a spontaneous event, but instead the result of a feud that stretched back years, beginning in 1606 during an inheritance dispute over the estate of Talacre. In a carefully written narrative fashion, Bowen interweaves the duel itself with the messy legal aftermath; the coroner’s inquest and the King’s Bench and Star Chamber hearings. He also ties the context of the families’ dispute to the duel in 1610. Bowen’s main aim is to challenge and dismiss the notion that violence had disappeared among the social elite by the seventeenth century. The book is part of a broader historiographic trend that eschews the Whiggish notions of violence declining in the early modern period due to an increase in civility and government control. Bowen additionally argues to a lesser degree that the culture of the northern Marches of Wales were more accepting of duels to a martial culture. As he states: “Indeed, an argument can be made that there was something of a provincial culture of duelling to be found here [in northern Wales] in this period,” (73). Widening the scope as well, Anatomy places the Highgate Duel in a European context that saw a general rise in elite violence influenced by French and Italian models.
Anatomy is constructed both thematically and chronologically. Bowen first introduces the two kin-groups: the Egertons of Cheshire and the Morgans of Flintshire, with their shared Mostyn family connections. He then reconstructs the Talacre inheritance quarral of 1606–08 (chapters 2–3), showing how each side raised legal actions and exchanged challenge letters. This section is full of colorful depictions of legal back-and-forths and highlight the legal scope of the book. An example can be found in Bowen’s description of a common strategy to flood the courts with litigations in order to “exhaust the money, patience, and resources of one’s opponent by delay, manipulation and a multiplicity of suits,” (42). Chapter 4 surveys duelling in Elizabethan and Jacobean Britain to provide context (noting, for example, that duels occurred throughout society). Chapters 5–7 zoom in on the Highgate encounter and its immediate aftermath. Finally, chapters 8–9 cover the King’s Bench trial and political intrigue, including the Morgans’ alliances at court. Chapter 8 sees Edward receive his conviction for murder and also his pardon from the king. The text is supplemented by very helpful appendices (a timeline of the conflict, jury lists).
The social class that these families belong to is something that Bowen thinks is worth examination. One might think that as members of the landed gentry, they would have an ample amount of secondary material written on them, which is not the case. In his introduction, Bowen identifies a gap in the historiography, in which both the older and newer trends in history have forgotten the “lesser gentry,” particularly those who lived further from London. As residents of Cheshire and Flintshire, the Egertons and Morgans have fallen into that gap forgotten by historians. Religion additionally plays a role, albeit not one as large as one may think. During the Talacre trial and in previous trials, the Protestant Egertons lobbied that the Catholic Morgans had failed to maintain peace in the region, despite the family patriarch Edward Morgan I being a JP. However, Bowen interestingly points out that religion had little to do with the duel itself, if anything. The Catholic Morgan family were able to ally themselves with a Protestant family at court in the Howards, meanwhile the Protestant Egertons “gained little traction with the reform-minded Lord Chancellor Ellesmere,” (196).
The critiques for the book are few and hard to find due to the limited scope and overall fluid structure. Starting small, a personal nitpick I had with the book was Bowen’s apparent refusal to use Oxford commas. Delving to a deeper level, however, there are some assumptions about the character of these men that are made which are perhaps too grandiose or general. This is true particularly when it concerns the victor of the duel, Edward Morgan. By all accounts he appears to be a violent and insecure individual. One only needs to read the challenge letter that he sent to John Egerton in 1608 (54). However, Bowen does seem quick to dismiss him as a one-sided villain, when he was likely a complex individual who we will never know the full character of. Bowen himself admits that one of the unfortunate downsides of chasing these sources is the inability to know all. He states that “On the other hand, these legal sources are slippery, ambiguous and often difficult to work with. In dealing with the civil courts, for example, the record is inherently adversarial and partisan and was, in some senses, designed to produce contradictory narratives,” (13). In the end, Edward Morgan removed himself from his inheritance as eldest son and instead became a coal entrepreneur, a sign that the duel and the trial had likely greatly changed him one way or the other.
Anatomy is a highly intelligent work that I would recommend to anyone interested in early modern English social history. Bowen’s meticullous use of court records and its vivid reconstruction of a single duel combine to illuminate larger themes of gentry honor, violence, and a broader European movement.