Abstract

During the sixteenth century the English concept of equity dramatically narrowed as a result of factors including the Reformation, Machiavelli's political innovations, the reconception of law as sufficient by Francis Bacon and others rather than inherently defective , and the rise of the equality principle . The treatments of equity in Thomas More's Utopia and Book V of Edmund Spenser's the Faerie Queene both reflect and resist these changes. These texts draw upon the epieikeia derived from Aristotle's Rhetoric and Ethics, a concept employed to address the facts and circumstances of specific cases to fashion results fitting the punishment or penalty to the offense---something beyond the capability of the generally stated laws. Raphael Hythlodaeus' condemnation in Utopia on equitable grounds of the English law that punished thieves with death reflects this sort of epieikeia. ;More's and Spenser's treatments of equity in their texts also reveals an appreciation for the more esoteric meaning of epieikeia addressed in Aristotle's Politics and Plato's Laws , a meaning which treats an issue of the utmost delicacy: how to translate into practice the theory of the ideal commonwealth. This epieikeia is concerned intimately with an economic understanding of justice; it was employed surreptitiously by people Aristotle characterized as "equitable" to change a regime over decades until a ratio of four or five to one between the society's wealthiest and poorest segments was achieved: that is, until the regime achieved the practically attainable goal closest to the regime that eliminated the "money loving" that inevitably accompanied "justice"---a regime whose only "reality" existed in the absolute communism of the fictional republic of Plato or More's Utopian nation. Raphael draws upon this esoteric meaning of epieikeia when he associates the communism of Utopia with equity. This use of equity helps to explain how the "ideal" lesson of Book II of Utopia applies to the real world political issues of Book I. Britomart's reform of the Radigund's Amazon regime in Book V of the Faerie Queene is also derivative of the esoteric meaning of epieikeia; she restores the "ideal" regime---one in which male rule is restored