Feature: The Feminine Monarchie by the Rev Charles Butler

This is The Feminine Monarchie by the Rev Charles Butler, who spent 47 years as the rector of Wootton St Lawrence, a small parish to the west of Basingstoke (recently augmented by Ramsdell).

He is commemorated in a stained-glass window installed in 1952.

Unlike other contemporary books on the subject, it was “written out of experience”. Later commentators have recognized that it was “evidence-based, analytic and rational”. For almost a decade Butler kept bees in some 40 skeps made of straw alongside his parsonage house.

He profited not only from honey, but also wax and ‘cereclothe’, a winding sheet smeared with wax.

At the birth of a daughter, Elizabeth – his ‘honey girl’– he set aside hives to provide for a dowry, eventually generating £400, an enormous sum of money. She married local clergyman Richard White, brother of the great-grandfather of Selborne naturalist Gilbert White.

Butler’s main contribution was to confirm that the ‘king bee’ identified by many writers as the driving force in the hive was in fact a queen. He was not the first to do this – that credit goes to a Spaniard in 1586 – but he promulgated the fact. There was much else, according to Janelle Quitman, who comes from several generations of well-known beekeepers and is Honorary Secretary of the Hampshire Beekeepers’ Association (founded in 1882).

He deduced that bees generate wax rather than collect it, that workers are female (but wrongly concluded that they laid eggs), that drones are male and have no sting, that each hive has its own scent, which helps guard bees keep out robber bees, that the tone of the bees changes when they are about to swarm, and the queen chooses the size of cells, to accommodate, for example, the larger drones.

In 1975 The Feminine Monarchie was republished in facsimile by Northern Bee Books. It needs a bit of effort to read, but the rewards are enormous.

Interestingly, at a time when ‘the book’ was a recent invention, Butler explains how it can be navigated, using the contents list, marginal notes and index– rather like modern instructions for a novel website.

His mellifluous prose is a joy. He writes that “the work of the little Bee is so great and wonderfull, so comely for order and beauty, so excellent for Art and wisdom, & so full of pleasure and profit; that the contemplation thereof may well beseeme an ingenious nature.”

A fascinating feature of the book is that later editions include a musical score based on the sounds of bees swarming, a so-called bees’ madrigal. Butler, who had served as a chorister at Magdalen College, Oxford, was obviously musically trained and went on to write The Principles of Music (1636).

It is an important work on early music and the subject of a scholarly thesis (John Shute, http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9516/).

The most accessible version of The Feminine Monarchie is one in modern English edited by Canon John Owen, vicar of Steep with Froxfield and Privett, His interest was sparked when he preached on behalf of beekeepers at a service at Wootton St Lawrence. Based on the edition of 1623, it is devoid of Latin, has ‘shortened sentences’ and a glossary of obsolete words, such as: kiver, litche, metheglin, schadon and spleetes (see below for details of a special offer for readers).

To say the least, Butler was a man of many parts! As well as his classic books on bees and music, he wrote a bestselling school textbook on the logic of a Protestant French philosopher, Petrus Ramus. He also penned a learned book on the canon law of marriage between cousins (as one of his daughters did) and a text on English grammar, albeit using a special font for a phonetic way of spelling he invented – of course, it never caught on.

In his youth his intelligence had been spotted by a member of the well-to-do Pygot family of High Wycombe. He went to the local grammar school and then on to Magdalen College, Oxford, as a boy chorister, later graduating and taking holy orders.

In 1593 he was curate at Nately Scures, then two years later took up the mastership of the Holy Ghost School, Basingstoke.

He was in good company: a friend, Ambrose Webbe, was given the living St Michael’s in the town by Magdalen College.

In 1600 Butler himself was presented to the living of Wootton St Lawrence, a tiny village (it still is) with a small income. Here he turned his hand to making money from bees, as well as writing books. At a time when sugar from the Caribbean had hardly started to appear on English tables, honey was a valuable source of sweetness, and was also used for mead and medicine.

The political climate that Butler faced gave the title of The Feminine Monarchie an edge that would not have been overlooked. It appeared a few years after the death of ‘the virgin queen’ and continued in print during the Civil War and interregnum.

Butler was probably a monarchist, but kept his living when many others of his mind were ejected. Even though it was a book on bees, Parliamentary eyebrows might have shot up to read that: “bees abhor government by many, as well as anarchy, God having shown in them to men, an express pattern of perfect monarchy”.

The life of Charles Butler is not forgotten. On Saturday July 17 (1.30-5pm), Hampshire beekeepers supported by the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust and the Bumble Bee Trust are celebrating Charles Butler’s life and work in Wootton St Lawrence church.

The event will involve the local community and schools, beekeepers county-wide and others concerned with education and bee conservation.

There will be interactive workshops, presentations from beekeepers and a variety of stalls.

Rector of Oakley with Wootton, Rev Dr Ben Kautzer, said: “Butler’s insatiable fascination with bees became a window for him into the intricate beauty and fragility of God’s creation. At a time of serious environmental crisis, we are also becoming more and more aware of how important bees are for the sustainability of our natural environment.

“What a brilliant opportunity to gather local communities together to experience the significance of these little creatures in one of the nation’s finest beekeeper’s churches.”

For further information on the event, contact Ken Robson at: robson.ken48@gmail.com. For a special offer of John Owen’s edition of The Feminine Monarchie at £12 plus postage visit: northernbeebooks.co.uk, locate the book and apply the coupon HAMPT.

barryshurlock@gmail.com