Political Communication and Political Culture in England, 1558-1688 9780804784580

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Political Communication and Political Culture in England, 1558–1688

Political Communication and Political Culture in England, 1558–1688 Barbara J. Shapiro

stanford university press Stanford, California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University All rights reserved Published with the assistance of Brewton-Parker College, Mount Vernon, Georgia. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shapiro, Barbara J., author. Political communication and political culture in England, 1558–1688 / Barbara J. Shapiro. pages  cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8047-8362-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1.  Communication in politics—England—History—16th century.  2.  Communication in politics—England—History—17th century.  3.  Political culture—England—History—16th century.  4.  Political culture—England—History—17th century.  5.  Politics and literature— England—History—16th century.  6.  Politics and literature— England—History—17th century.  I.  Title. ja85.2.g7s53    2012 306.20942'09031—dc23 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/13 Galliard

2012014299

For Martin and Nicholas

Contents

Acknowledgments  ix

1. Introduction  1



2. News, Information and Political Controversy  25



3. Empirical Political Description  54



4. Historical Writing and Political Thought   77



5. Drama and Political Education   104



6. Politics, Poetry and Literature   137



7. The Sermon and Political Education   166

  198 9. Law, Politics and the Legal System  231 10. Conclusion  266

8. Observation and Participation

Notes  299

Index  383

Acknowledgments

This book has been a long time in the making, and many individuals and institutions have contributed to bringing it to fruition. My interest in the history of political thought is one of long standing, going back to my undergraduate days at UCLA and my graduate studies at Harvard with C. J. Friedrich and Judith Sklar. I have had the opportunity to teach courses on early modern political and legal thought at the University of California, Berkeley, in the departments of Rhetoric, History, Political Science and Legal Studies and in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. I have had valuable discussions with many scholars including Victoria Kahn, Barbara Donagan, Blair Worden, Paul Sniderman, Paulina Kewes and Michael Mascuch. Brian Cowan, Fred Greenstein, Paul Raffield and Gordon Schochet read earlier versions of the manuscript and made helpful suggestions. I have been fortunate to have had several able research assistants to help me locate texts and track down missing footnotes. Among them are Steve Macias, J. T. Hoppes, Jared Greene, and Laura Carrier. I am especially grateful to Norris Pope, at the Stanford University Press, who has provided continual support for the project. Research on the project has been supported by a Huntington Library fellowship, grants from the University of California, Berkeley’s Committee on Research and the Mellon Foundation. Librarians and library staff at the Huntington Library, the William Andrews Clark Library, the University of California, Berkeley, the British Library and the Bodleian Library, Oxford, have uniformly been helpful. The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law has provided generous financial, computer and library support.



Acknowledgments

Law and Humanities has generously permitted me to use material from “Political Theology and the Courts: A Survey of Assize Sermons c. 1600– 1688,” Law and Humanities 2, no. 1 (2008): 1–28. This material was also presented to the Early Modern England seminar at the Huntington Library. I also wish to thank Eighteenth Century Thought for permission to use “Empiricism and English Political Thought 1550–1720,” Eighteenth Century Thought 1 (2003): 3–35 (copyright c. 2003 AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved). A paper on empirical political thought was presented at the American Political Science Association’s meeting in 2003. This book is dedicated to my grandson Nicholas Ridgers and to Martin Shapiro, who has been forced to read the manuscript more often and in more incarnations than anyone should be required to do. Under and beside my desk without complaint, Gracie has endured the manuscript’s many revisions.

Political Communication and Political Culture in England, 1558–1688

chapter one

Introduction

Thanks first to radio and television and then the cell phone and the Internet, we live in an age preoccupied with an explosion in the reach and density of the media and their penetration into our daily, and particularly our political, lives. Other ages too experienced a multiplicity of means through which people learned about politics. This book seeks to present a panorama of the genres through which early modern English men and women learned about politically significant ideas, events and institutions. It is about the channels through which the political culture of the time and place was acquired. Only enough of the substance of the messages sent and received is presented to allow us to gain an understanding of the agendas and target audiences of the plethora of media. Not without reason, intellectual historians pay a great deal of attention to what people thought and what people knew at various times and places. They have, however, paid far less attention to how people came to know what they knew, the written and nonwritten channels through which knowledge was acquired. There are, to be sure, many studies of literary genres, but each of those studies typically focuses on a single one. Real people, however, do not learn from any single genre. They know what they know through a melange of sources, and not only by reading and having heard about distant matters but also through seeing and participating directly in the world around them. The English public received political ideas and values through a wide array of channels ranging from erudite treatise to scurrilous ballad. How did the English people know what they knew about the political life of their country? What means did they have of communicating their beliefs and experiences? To what extent was government



Introduction

successful in disseminating its ideas and monitoring and controlling public discourse? Did the kinds and quantity of political expression change when governmental control lapsed or proved ineffective? By addressing these questions this book seeks to offer a fuller view of English political culture than previously has been presented. The treatment here differs from that of earlier studies in a number of ways. Unlike much of the work on political thought of this period, this study does not focus on the work of well-known innovative thinkers such as Hobbes, Harrington and Locke. Literary and other scholars have produced detailed studies exploring a single figure such, as a Milton or Dryden, or a single genre, often covering only a brief period of time. Examples of the latter that come to mind are those on Elizabethan or Restoration drama, sermons of the Jacobean era and civil war–era news media. Some scholars have focused on separate cultures or subcultures within the larger political sphere. There have been numerous studies of court culture, which is to be distinguished from the larger culture particularly by its aesthetic forms. Royal entertainments, courtly behavior and language and court masques figure large in this approach. This subculture was less likely than others to turn to print. Personal sociability and manuscript circulation were typical of its communicative structure. Thus far there has been greater attention to the pre–civil war court than to court life of the Restoration era, perhaps because of its greater informality, and the fact that it was less cut off from the world of polite society and commerce than its predecessor. The civic culture of towns is another subculture, the study of which gives special emphasis to the rituals of civic governments. There have also been studies of coffee house culture, an institution to which Jürgen Habermas gave particular attention in connection with the concept of a public sphere.1 Here we look at the whole spectrum of available venues and genres in which political ideas were expressed and through which the English people received and contributed to their general political culture from the reign of Elizabeth to just prior to the transformation of 1688.

Genres and Channels for Political Expression and Experience My approach to genres and modes of political expression may require some explanation. Focusing on particular types of expression and experience such as drama, sermons or poetry allows us to look at avenues of ex-



Introduction

pression familiar to contemporaries and to audience expectations as to subject matter, rhetorical conventions and tone. Although the genres or forms of expression discussed here were stable enough to be identified as such by contemporaries, I do not wish to use genre in a formal and technical sense because formal genre requirements were often ignored or modified, and some topics and subject matters were conveyed in a variety or mixture of formats. The focus on genre, somewhat loosely conceived, is useful, however, because it was widely recognized that different kinds of speech and writing were governed by different rhetorical conventions and appropriate styles. Genres or forms of expression thus provide a helpful window for examining political life. But they must not be treated as impermeable or entirely stable, and both the enduring and the unstable are worthy of attention. News, for example, might be conveyed in proclamations, pamphlets, broadside ballads, printed newsbooks, manuscript newsletters, trial accounts or gossip among friends and acquaintances. News writers adopted the norm of accuracy and impartiality, but, as contemporaries recognized, much of the news media they encountered were partisan efforts purveying rumor or misinformation. Several of the most important genres were vehicles for government communication. Some genres were used for political purposes throughout the period; others were adapted to political use for a short time and under particular political circumstances. Many had recognizable expectations as to format, length, subject matters; others were more loosely defined. I have treated historiography as a genre, but there were many types of historical writings ranging from chronicles and annals to perfect history and memoirs. Historical writing might appear in lavishly illustrated, expensive folios designed for the prosperous and also in brief inexpensive formats for popular consumption. Historical and legal discourse were often intertwined. Historical material might be blended with news or chorography, a form focused on the description of the present state of some particular political entity. It might be conveyed in prose or verse forms, in narrative or drama, presented as merely factual or mixed with fiction. Treatment of England’s national past, the Roman past and scriptural history lent themselves to discussion of a wide range of often contemporary political issues. The events recorded in Scripture were undoubtedly the most familiar. Some venues were more likely than others to make use of Scripture, others the English or Roman past. Although the chapter headings I employ suggest sharp distinctions





Introduction

among genres, there are instances in which the material in one chapter might well have been considered in another. Ballads often conveyed news of people and events and may be considered either as a species of poetry or as a news form. Satirical libels were often in verse. Some forms reached quite distinct audiences, depending on cost or whether they were personally viewed or read. Reading itself might be done privately with the opportunity for reflection and analysis or aloud to an audience, some of whom might be illiterate. While empirical political description was a genre devoted to matters of fact, the form could also be turned to fictional uses, as in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. For this reason several chapters emphasize the overlap among genres. The term “genre” is, therefore, used rather loosely to indicate a recognizable form of expression typically following a set of known rhetorical features. Despite occasional disregard for genre norms, most types of expression adhered to their own rhetorical conventions. The rhetoric of the sermon was quite different from that of the ballad, the news media or the libel. There were relatively fixed and differing conventions for such genres as the epic, elegy and pastoral. Some genres, such as assize sermons, lent themselves particularly well to conservative themes; others were more likely to emphasize conflict than harmony. There were also norms for different kinds of drama, some dramatic forms lending themselves more easily to political comment than others. Not all drama conformed to the strict norms announced by drama theorists. The popular historical drama, to which we give considerable attention, did not fit into the conventional classifications. The sermon is an easily recognizable, relatively stable genre, typically beginning with a biblical text and then providing an explanation of its meaning and implications for the audience. While most sermons focused on doctrine and practical piety, there were also sermons that dealt with political topics particularly when they were given in certain venues or delivered on particular occasions. We concentrate on sermon types most likely to communicate political messages. Something similar can be said of the trial. While most trials were not political in character, the well publicized trials of particular individuals, for treason or seditious libel, became the focus of political excitement and comment. We can therefore reasonably identify, if not precisely define, a category of political trials. If some forms of expression were fairly stable, others underwent considerable change. The “character” began as a literary form with little political content and then morphed into a decidedly political genre used to attack religious and political opponents. The use of the political printed play pro-



Introduction

logue during the Restoration era provides an example of an ephemeral genre. Petitions were a traditional form for presenting grievances but changed considerably over time. Not only did new types of petitioners appear, but petitions presented by large crowds in public spaces began to appear menacing to those to whom the petitions were addressed. Always a device for requesting change, the petition sometimes became a means of applying substantial political pressure backed by the threat of force. There were also new forms of expression, such as the serial newsbook, which came into existence during the revolutionary period, and may have evolved from the coranto or manuscript newsletter. One possible evolution runs from the familiar letter, written by a known person to another known person and then transformed into a newsletter written by a known person to an unknown audience and finally to the newspaper, written by an unknown person to an unknown audience, all the while retaining features of its origin.2 Despite permeability, overlap and changeability, the forms of expression and activity to be discussed were sufficiently fixed to be recognizable, although sufficiently flexible to be adapted to new uses. Examining the available modes and channels of political expression provides a convenient way to approach the question of how political ideas and information were expressed and disseminated. Collectively they provide a useful way of viewing political culture between the accession of Elizabeth and the Glorious Revolution.

Scholarly Traditions The emphasis on genres necessarily entails combining the approaches of intellectual, literary and political history as well as the history of printing and the book. Scholars from several disciplines come to the subject of English political thought with a variety of perspectives. The multidisciplinary “history of ideas” approach, which traced the development of particular ideas over lengthy periods of time, was not attentive to the context in which ideas developed and has not lately been much pursued. Influenced to a greater or lesser degree by Marxist approaches, some scholars have treated political ideas and assumptions as reflections of economic structures and class interest. There have been several traditions of literary scholarship, some more, some less useful to my endeavor. Older historical approaches, such as those of E. M. W. Tillyard and Basil Willey, were eclipsed by “new critics” who





Introduction

rejected their historicizing bent. These in turn have been largely displaced by “new historicists” and others who, under the influence of Foucault, have returned to investigations of epistemic regimes or have conceptualized literary activities as either subversive or contained by dominant political-intellectual structures. This approach sometimes shows a kinship with the notion of paradigms and paradigm shifts developed by Thomas Kuhn in the context of a particular discipline, by applying that notion to an entire culture rather than to one branch of intellectual life. Some new historicists, however, have preferred to focus on an event or even an anecdote and thus have not looked to categorizing movements or to charting long-term change. Literary historians also have been active in examining the political aspects of particular periods such as the Jacobean era or the Restoration or have focused on the works of individual dramatists such as Shakespeare or Middleton or poets such as Milton and Dryden, demonstrating that literary figures often participated in political discussion. When literary scholars moved in the direction of viewing literature as embedded in and a part of political discourse their work overlapped with scholars working in other disciplines. It is currently difficult to distinguish the work of many literary scholars from that of the cultural or intellectual historian or the contextually oriented political theorist. Of the numerous historians who have focused on political life, most have dealt primarily with political thought and political institutions. Many have investigated the tensions between concepts of limited and unlimited monarchy, or controversies over the ancient constitution. Some have produced institutional studies of Parliament, the courts, local administration, patronage or the military. Others have illuminated the importance of gender, social structures or religion. Current work on intellectual history and the dissemination of ideas is being reshaped by studies of literacy, manuscript circulation and the history of the book, as well as reading practices, marginal annotation and the practice of commonplacing. This work, again shared by historians and literary scholars, is complemented by studies of the use of governmental authority to supervise and control intellectual and cultural communication. The common interests and overlapping investigations of literary scholars and intellectual and cultural historians has greatly enhanced the possibilities for work dealing with political and other sorts of communication, whether in print, manuscript or oral form. For many decades political theorists, a group sometimes closer to philosophers, sometimes to historians and literary scholars, focused on the work of canonical figures, such as Richard Hooker, Thomas Hobbes and John



Introduction

Locke. For several decades now this approach has been overshadowed by an emphasis on the context in which such individuals wrote of general concerns about early modern republicanism or Machiavellianism. Contextual approaches, pioneered by J. G. A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner, have emphasized the languages of political discourse. Whether the principal interest is in forms of discourse or in the writer’s embeddedness in current political controversy, the scholarly work of the community of political theorists has come to overlap with that of the historian and literary scholar, all of whom collectively pursue interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary investigations of early modern English political life and thought. This study takes a more comprehensive view of the channels of early modern English political culture than has been achieved previously while making use of the insights of these scholarly traditions. Ideas themselves, modes of discourse, audiences and changes in these elements are obviously central to political culture. It is impossible to gain an understanding of political culture, however, without also paying some attention to the pressing political issues of the day, the conflicts they engendered and the institutions in which they were experienced and expressed. Culture involves both ideas and institutions. Culture, however, must be learned. It can be understood fully only if the means of transmitting all these elements of political culture to the citizenry are understood fully. The media may not be the message, but they contribute mightily to how, where, when and to what extent recipients receive the messages and how they process them. In order to gain a composite sense of how English men and women absorbed and participated in the changing political culture of their time, the chapters that follow bring together work in various disciplinary traditions. Some draw heavily on relevant previous scholarship. Others, particularly those dealing with the least formal and most ephemeral modes of communication, have little such scholarship to draw upon. Several issues also must be mentioned before describing the chapters that follow. The first is the choice of focusing on the period from the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 to the Revolution of 1688. The second involves chronology. It is also necessary to say something further about the widely used concept of “political culture” and to indicate how this study intersects with the debates that currently engage scholars dealing with early modern English political culture. Finally it is necessary to provide a brief outline of some of the basic assumptions of the era, assumptions so fully accepted that contemporary theorists and commentators rarely felt the need to speak or write of them.





Introduction

Why 1558–1688 Focus on any period of time, any particular set of dates, is always somewhat arbitrary. Not only are there always strands of thought, practices and institutions that may have a continuing existence both before and after the time period selected for study, but there are often alternative dates that may be plausibly offered. One might have begun with 1485, the beginning of Tudor rule, or 1509, the accession of Henry VIII or have chosen 1707, the end of Stuart rule as a closing point. However, I believe that the years from 1558, the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, to 1688, the year of the Glorious Revolution, share a group of characteristics that make them a reasonable and coherent period of time on which to focus. The pre-Elizabethan era was dominated by the separation from Rome and the attendant dismantling of the monastic orders, elimination of pilgrimages and controversies over the Oath of Supremacy. While there is continuity to be found in Parliament and legal institutions, this early period was an especially unstable one that experienced numerous rebellions. And while print was becoming an available means of political expression, it had not yet become a commonly used media. The salient characteristics of the 1558–1688 period are different. On the religious front, England experienced hopes of religious unity and the fact of internal religious division. It experienced the creation of a Protestant church coterminous with the commonwealth as a whole, with the sovereign as head of the church. Shortly after the succession of Elizabeth it became clear that the legislatively established Church of England would be Protestant. Domestically the focus was on defense or criticism of the doctrine, practice and form of ecclesiastical government. The shape of the church was contested by several Protestant groups seeking to shape it closer to their ideal form. The problem of how to handle Protestant dissent was continuous throughout the period. The question of religious dissent segued easily into more general issues relating to obedience and disobedience to authority and even the right of rebellion. The period was also characterized by the development of intense anti– Roman Catholic sentiment, and especially the fear of a Roman Catholic succession resulting in England’s return to Roman Catholicism. Domestically, fear and antagonism were focused on how to deal with those who could not or would not attend the established church. Much of the antagonism toward Spain in the first part of the period and toward France in



Introduction

the latter part was associated with the aggressive Catholicism of England’s most formidable enemies. Antagonism toward popery and the papacy were givens throughout the entire period. In the years between 1558 and 1688 many political issues were framed around question of law, courts and judges. This was a period in which both Crown and Parliament gained institutional strength. It was characterized by disagreement about the nature and powers of the monarchy and Parliament. The relationship between royal prerogative and law was frequently a source of friction. Conflicts emerged intermittently, most often when Parliament was in session. For most of the period rulers were reluctant to call parliaments and often dismissed them precipitately. Parliaments were often frustrated, with grievances unheard or unresolved. The pre–civil war period was one in which parliamentary self-confidence increased at the same time there was great fear for its continued existence as representative institutions elsewhere declined or disappeared. The issue became less important after 1688, when the Parliament met regularly, needed by the Crown to provide financial support for England’s engagement in Continental warfare. While the issue of the royal prerogative powers did not disappear after 1688, it was never again so central to political and constitutional debate. Although the legal system exhibited considerable continuity with the period before Elizabeth’s reign and that after 1688, aspects of that system became particularly politicized between 1558 and 1688. The role of the prerogative courts was challenged, and they were eventually destroyed. The judiciary between 1558 and 1688 became a center of political interest and dispute. After 1688, as legislation made the judiciary more independent of Crown control, judges were no longer a major political issue. The period selected has a coherence shaped by extreme anti-Catholic sentiment, intense intra-Protestant divisions, debate about the relationship between law and prerogative and even the existence and character of Parliament, and a politicized judiciary.

Chronology Although the book is organized around the forms of political expression, some chapters and parts of chapters are treated chronologically rather than synchronically because particular political conditions and events were important to how a given channel of communication developed. The chapter on news and the communication of political information about contempo-



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Introduction

rary occurrences necessarily must give some attention to those occurrences. The changing formats in which news was communicated were modified by the changing environments of government censorship and control. The “character” is treated chronologically in order to show its evolution from a purely literary genre to a highly politicized form of political writing. It has also been necessary to draw attention to how celebrations such as Gunpowder Day and Queen Elizabeth’s accession day changed from occasions for stressing Protestant unity into more divisive ones. Grievances were aired and petitions circulated most often when Parliament was meeting or about to meet. Periods with the least governmental control of printing that witnessed greater publication opportunities will be given special attention, not only because there is more data to examine but also because these were also the periods of greatest political activity. Some venues exhibited considerable continuity; others changed substantially over time. The Exchange and Paul’s Walk in London and meetings of quarter sessions and assizes remained locales for the exchange and communication of political information, news and debate throughout most of the period. Coffee houses became important focal points for political discussion after the Restoration. Some chapters feature periodization within the larger period 1558–1688 because to do otherwise would convey false and overly static characterizations. I thus differentiate the pre–civil war and Restoration theater environments but treat the historical drama of both periods topically rather than chronologically because this approach makes it possible to see how different historical personages or events were used by different political groups. Those channels and types of expression that were least affected by the politics of the moment are not treated chronologically. Empirical political description receives a largely synchronic treatment, as does the less broken experience of serving on juries and as justices of the peace. The degree to which each chapter is treated chronologically depends on the degree to which the various forms of expression were created or altered over time by changing political circumstances.

Political Culture This study makes use of the term “political culture,” a somewhat elusive concept that has been used differently in different scholarly communities. The term was introduced in the 1950s by political scientists engaged in com-



Introduction

parative politics who employed survey data in a variety of national settings. Later political scientists extended the concept, applied it to numerous locales, criticizing the methods initially employed and querying its utility as a causal explanation. It was used so expansively that political scientist Sidney Verba suggests that the term “political culture” had become “a residual category casually used to explain anything that cannot be explained by more precise and concrete factors.”3 Another influential approach to political culture has been that of Clifford Geertz’s symbolic anthropology. He and his followers have emphasized the role of forms and symbols in constructing public and political meaning. His technique, “thick description” of verbal and nonverbal materials, is utilized to get behind rationales for action in given cultures. This approach, which has influenced the writing of historians, literary scholars and art historians, emphasizes interpretation and “meaning” of cultural systems.4 Historians adopted the term but ignored the political scientist’s concern with methodological questions or causality. By 1988 “political culture” had become a topic for discussion by the American Historical Association. Historians of the United States associated political culture with political rituals, political education and symbolic politics, though the term was also used in connection with political tradition and patterns of political behavior. It has most frequently been associated with symbolic behavior of various kinds. Political culture was likely to be contrasted to those aspects of political life relating to elections, political parties, policy formation and the actions of legislative, executive and judicial bodies.5 The term has also been applied to a wide number of political entities, European and non-European, as well as to a variety of subcultures, by both historians and political scientists. A quick look at any library catalog reveals dozens of volumes that deal with past or present political cultures of France, Japan, China, Eastern European, Iran, etc.6 Historians of England have also adopted the concept of political culture, most often to discuss something distinct from politics. Some have focused on ritual and celebration, others on a particular form such as the masque or the drama or a particular institution such as the coffee house.7 The concept has been used to focus on royal propaganda efforts in a particular region of England,8 as well as to place individual writers in a larger political context.9 There have been important studies that investigate the close connection between literary and political culture.10 There are studies that focus on elite political culture, such as the culture of the court, and others where the emphasis is on popular thought and action, and still others that suggested a

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Introduction

distinction between political culture and cultural politics.11 Michael Hicks has employed the concept to deal with the entire fifteenth century and covers a very wide range of topics while largely ignoring ritual, ceremony and literary culture, topics that other scholars treat as central features of political culture.12 Many collections of essays with a wide range of topics have adopted the term “political culture” to signal that the collection deals with things political. Used in this way it serves as an umbrella under which a wide range of topics relating somehow to the political can be grouped together.13 In a relatively early effort to discuss political culture, Dale Hoak attempted to differentiate it from politics but insisted that the two must be drawn together for a full understanding of early Tudor political life.14 Focus on “political languages” has made it possible for some of the efforts of political theorists to be assimilated into or at least associated with the notion of political culture. Perhaps the best-known effort of this type is Pocock’s Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law which attempts to show how the language of the ancient constitution and the common law shaped the political thinking of an era. Although the term “political culture” is widely employed by scholars of early modern England without topical or methodological consistency, it has nevertheless proved to be a useful concept. In this book the term is used to include political assumptions that were so widely held as not to merit discussion, the many written and spoken forms in which political matters were discussed, disseminated and debated, and the forms of political participation available to members of the English polity. Each of the forms of expression dealt with in subsequent chapters is, therefore, treated as one component among many that together constitute political culture. My study focuses predominantly on forms of written and oral expression and on the experience of participating in or observing institutions and practices. Political culture as used here also involves political education and the means by which individuals, especially literate individuals, absorbed that political education. This study, for the most part, concentrates on material that was available to fairly broad audiences. It, therefore, relies primarily on printed sources rather than privately held information or government or other documents available to only a small number of people but extends to hearing as well as reading sermons, participating in borough and parish government and serving on grand and petty juries. The approach used here is eclectic and focuses on a number of different genres and forms of expression, some obviously political, others less so.



Introduction

It is contextual in the broadest sense. Although it is concerned with the available languages of discourse, it also is cognizant of immediate political issues, the institutions generating political discussion and significant political actors when they are pertinent to examination of the genres and venues used for the creation and dissemination of political information and beliefs. It assumes that written forms of political expression can not be severed from other aspects of political life. It, therefore, also investigates opportunities to participate in and to observe political activities such as petitioning, processions, celebrations and executions. This study then, while cognizant of institutional development and formal political philosophy, focuses on the more pervasive modes of expression that were available to English men and women.

The Scholarly Context The much studied period from the accession of Elizabeth to the Revolution of 1688 has been variously interpreted for several centuries. Although it would be inappropriate to discuss all these interpretations at length, several long-standing scholarly debates and approaches that bear on political expression and political culture more generally must be noted. Among those are the views of revisionist historians who have emphasized high politics over popular politics and political consensus over political divisiveness, rejecting any picture of intense political conflict, especially for the years preceding the civil war.15 Revisionists challenged both Whig and Marxist interpretations of the civil war. They rejected the Whig view, which emphasized conflict between forward- and backward-looking political groups, and rejoiced at the victory of a Puritan-parliamentary cause seen as looking forward to more progressive later regimes. Revisionist emphasis on consensus and harmony, as many have noted, makes the outbreak of civil war difficult to explain, though some revisionists have focused on the difficult and complex relationships among the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland in precipitating the conflict. This in turn has led to new studies of the three kingdom problem and a concern with the creation of “Britain.” Revisionists also rejected the Marxist approach, which, like that of Whig historians, emphasized internal conflict, but attributed it to the ideologies and interests of a rising bourgeoisie and a declining feudal aristocracy. Revisionist views, especially of the pre–civil war era, are now being contested, with scholars increasingly emphasizing conflict and divisiveness,

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Introduction

albeit without a return to the Whig view of the Puritan-parliamentary cause as harbinger of a better future. A variant of the pre–civil war revisionist debates can be found in scholarly disagreement as to whether the post-Restoration period should be considered one of divisiveness and contention or as a confessional regime that can be grouped with Continental repressive ancient regimes. The relative degrees of consensus and divisiveness must, therefore, be kept in mind as we review the various channels for political expression. Another related, contested issue involves the question of whether English political and intellectual life should be considered one of heavy censorship, control and repression or as a regime of sufficient laxity for a wide variety of opinion to be expressed. This debate, in turn, involves questions relating to the role of print, an issue much discussed since Elizabeth Eisenstein’s pioneering work on the role of printing in intellectual and cultural development.16 Her investigations have been both extended and criticized, with a substantial number of scholars now examining manuscript publication and oral transmission as well as printed material. A new and growing scholarly field deals with the history of the book and news, conveyed in its many forms. Such studies have drawn attention to the differences between single and serial publication, cheap and expensive forms of printing and their respective audiences. Reading practices too are now being studied in the context of politics,17 as are cultural artifacts such as paintings and other visual media. Royal rituals and public celebrations are now recognized as significant forms of political expression.18 The concept of the public sphere, derived from the work of Jürgen Habermas, has also informed the work of a considerable number of literary scholars and historians who have adopted it as a useful way of characterizing some decades. Habermas viewed the emergence of the public sphere as a function of the bourgeois stage of development and believed that the sphere first emerged in England. He treated the public sphere as something distinct from government or the state. The Habermasian public sphere was characterized by rational public debate, a development he associated with the English coffee house environment. Historians of early modern England have taken up the concept, which obviously bears on the debates relating to consensus and divisiveness, the degree of censorship and other forms of government control and the forms and venues available for public debate. These interrelated issues will be discussed in greater detail after we have completed our survey of the genres and venues available between the accession of Elizabeth and the Revolution of 1688.



Introduction

Institutions and Assumptions Not all aspects of political knowledge and culture were discussed or debated. Some things were so basic or so well understood that they did not need to be mentioned. A brief account of the assumptions and some of the most widely held beliefs that underpin early modern political culture provides part of the context for the forms of expression to be explored in subsequent chapters. The monarchy was the most prominent political institution in England as well as in the rest of Europe. For most of the period being considered here, it would have been difficult for most English men and women to think of their government without a monarch at its head. Differences of opinion focused primarily on the nature of the monarchy. Hereditary male monarchy was the norm, even given the acknowledged success of Elizabeth. Dynastic monarchy brought with it a number of systemic succession problems. Sudden death of the ruler, real and alleged assassination plots, potential and actual marriages, possibly to a member of a foreign and perhaps Catholic ruling house were matters frequently in the public mind. Succession of a Roman Catholic was a recurrent issue. Other royal issues involved access to the sovereign as counselors and courtiers. Factional struggles that spilled into public channels often involved which individuals or groups would be placed in position to influence royal policy and to make best use of its patronage resources. The political problems inherent in the early modern monarchical system were projected to the public at large by a wide range of media and shaped the political culture of England and indeed most European states. Like most European states, England’s governmental tradition included representative institutions as well as monarchs. There was widespread consensus that Parliament was, and had been for many generations, a fundamental part of the English constitutional structure and heritage. Its existence was closely linked to the monarch, who summoned and dismissed it. Its relationship with the Crown, however, was not always smooth. English monarchs tended to call Parliaments when they had pressing financial needs, but Parliament was not always willing to provide what was requested. Parliament traditionally was the appropriate place for the expression of grievances, both local and national. Together with the monarch, Parliament was necessary for the making of new law and, from the time of the Reformation,

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Introduction

for establishing the form of church government. For this reason efforts to make alterations in England’s religion and ecclesiastical institutions were focused on Parliament. In the public mind Parliament was thought to be a representative body, although the meaning of representation was anything but clear. As representative bodies declined in importance in many European states during the course of the seventeenth century, many in England expressed anxiety about Parliament’s continued existence. Law was central to the English political experience. The English entertained various concepts of law and encountered a multiplicity of courts that ranged from local manor and borough courts, to ecclesiastical courts, petty and quarter sessions, the central common law courts, the prerogative courts and chancery. This was a nation that thought of itself as ruled by law, and there was considerable confidence that individuals could pursue the “rights of Englishmen” and have wrongs addressed in legal settings. The common law and the jury were part of the English legal heritage. Like most European countries, England was a hierarchically arranged society, and it was commonly believed that social distinctions were natural and right. Social and economic inequality was obvious to all. It was assumed that deference was owed to those of higher social and economic status and that political participation was the right of the propertied.19 Seating arrangements in parish churches were constant reminders of the relative social status of parishioners. Wealth played a role in social status, and wealth in land had the greatest prestige. Many were very poor, though a system of poor laws helped to mitigate the worst aspects of economic deprivation. Although conventional wisdom implied a static social system, in reality there was considerable social and physical mobility and awareness of societal change. Local ties were strong, but people moved seeking work and marriage and an ever increasing percentage of the population lived in towns. London and its environs contained a significant portion of the entire population as well as being the center of government, the courts, the royal court, publishing and the theater. Some kinds of social mobility were obviously built into the social system. The “younger son” phenomenon, royal enoblements and economic success moved people and families in and out of the aristocracy and the land holding gentry and consequently in and out of the professions, trade and lesser occupations. This was a society that accepted social stratification as natural, but also one that experienced considerable change. The family and gender relations too were given aspects of the social system with political significance. This was a highly gendered society in which



Introduction

the male was more powerful and more honored than the female at all levels of society. Husbands controlled their wives’ property. Obedience to paternal authority was expected and valued. Individual relationships, of course, did not always conform to the norm, and women, especially in the absence of their husbands, often assumed responsibilities for the family’s financial well-being along with traditional household management. State and local office holding, as well as the professions, was limited to men. Women did not serve on juries or participate in elections. Even the Levellers did not consider extending the franchise to women. The public arena was not felt to be appropriate for women. Formal education and literacy, especially for men, shaped the nature and impact of the media. Although those who could read and write were better positioned to participate in political life, those without these skills were not excluded from knowledge of political affairs and events. The illiterate and semiliterate heard sermons, sang ballads, listened to gossip and witnessed royal progresses, lord mayor’s shows and other events of political significance such as executions for treason or celebrations of Gunpowder Day. Literacy roughly mirrored the social hierarchy, with those of higher status more likely to be literate. Townsmen were more literate than countrymen, lawyers and clergymen than yeoman and husbandmen, and men more so than women.20 The creation of grammar schools and the expansion of universities significantly impacted English political culture. Humanist education, increasingly a part of the education of the upper classes and professional men, created an audience for classical allusions in contemporary political commentary. The humanist, classically based curriculum, with its heavy borrowings from Cicero and Quintilian, emphasized participation in the world of politics through the ability to speak and write persuasively. Through the influence of Castiglione’s The Courtier, rhetorical values became applicable to court settings. Poetry, often with a political dimension, flourished. “Prudence,” so important to civil life, was to be cultivated by experience, travel and the reading of history. These values provided the ideological support for parliamentary service, the often onerous duties of local magistracy and providing counsel to the ruler. An increasing portion of the male population received at least a portion of their education at the university, though opinion during the latter half of the seventeenth century became increasingly ambivalent about the spread of education. Humanist education familiarized the English with classical texts and literary forms and encouraged belief in the superiority of classical genres. It

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Introduction

reinforced the classical categorization of political regimes into monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, as well as familiarizing the educated with the notion of mixed government and the distinction between republican and imperial forms of government. The concept of the body politic, involving an analogy between the human body and the political system, was a commonplace of political discourse. A typical formulation was that of Thomas Elyot, who wrote, “A public weal is a body living, compact or made of sundry estates and degrees of men, . . . governed by the rule and moderation of reasons.”21 When all the body parts worked together to achieve the good of the whole, harmony would prevail. The monarch was the head and the people the body in most formulations, but there are occasional references to Parliament as “the head and body of all the realm.”22 Law was sometimes the sinews of the body.23 If the head should obviously rule, it was equally clear that the opposite of a well ordered state was a headless body without reason or direction. The king and/ or the magistrates were often depicted as physicians to the diseased body who were to administer harsh medicine or even amputate diseased limbs when necessary. The concept of the body politic tended to reinforce social hierarchy and status norms. Each part of the body was to remain where nature had placed it and not usurp the functions of other parts. It was a concept of political life that could not easily accommodate acceptance of factions, parties or dissent or the language of contract or conscience. When such pluralism became an accepted part of political life, the organic concept with its premise of political harmony would become less prominent. Other analogies and correspondences also were part of the conventional political wisdom. The king was the father, the sun among the planets, the oak among the trees, the lion among the beasts and the eagle among the birds. The analogy between father and king was frequently employed. Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, famously refuted in John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government, argued that paternal authority was the origin of government and equated royal and paternal power.24 Patriarchal and contractual theories of government were much discussed rivals. Another frequently employed concept was that of the commonweal or commonwealth, to suggest the well-being of the whole political community. The concept, which may have had its origins in the Roman concept of res publica, was used in a variety of contexts by humanist writers who had differing visions about what institutions were most capable of ensuring the health and wealth of the national community. Religious assumptions and experience were obviously a significant as-



Introduction

pect of early modern English political culture. There was a shared Christian tradition, the English experience of Protestantism and theological and other differences within the English Protestant community. State involvement in religious affairs and the church’s involvement in secular affairs meant that religion and politics were inextricably combined. Several Christian tenets fit uneasily with conventional social and political beliefs. The principle of equality before God encountered beliefs about social hierarchy, deference to social superiors and male superiority. Protestant emphasis on the individual conscience was sometimes in tension with belief in polities as organic wholes. Old and New Testament narratives and personalities would have been more familiar than the history of England, and scriptural texts and analogies became a constant template for political analysis. The doctrine of Providence was used to explain successes and failures on and off the battlefield. The language of God’s mercies and judgments was frequently invoked. Adherence to Protestantism or Catholicism was perceived by the English as a fundamental divide both among and within countries. England did not experience civil war in the course of becoming a Protestant nation, but intra-Protestant divisions helped to tear the country apart in the mid-seventeenth century. The English Reformation church was established by legislation. The ruler became the head of the church. Parliament established the nation’s religious doctrine, form of church government and penalties for nonconformity. Those desiring change in the established church sought to amend the existing legislation, making Parliament the primary institutional focus for those seeking such modification. When the Crown used the royal prerogative to achieve toleration for Catholics and Protestant dissenters, Parliament’s response was typically harsh legislation and renewed concern about the prerogative powers. Because legislation required the agreement of the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the Crown, disagreement about religion generated conflict within and without England’s political structure. Virtually everyone in England shared the experience of belonging to a religious community. For most this meant worship in the local parish church, although Roman Catholics and some Protestants sometimes worshiped within their own, often clandestine, religious communities. The importance of homilies and sermons in inculcating political ideology cannot be overestimated. Most individuals must have heard hundreds, perhaps thousands, during their lifetime. It is still not entirely clear when Protestantism captured the hearts and

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Introduction

minds of the English people, but hostility toward Roman Catholicism was expressed throughout the period. Fear of Roman Catholic plots against Elizabeth and her successors, both real and imagined, were a prominent feature of English political life, although punitive actions against Catholics waxed and waned. Deeply held religious beliefs, identifications and habits of mind were embedded elements of the English political culture in which the genres of political expression were at play.

Genres of Political Communication, Teaching and Learning Chapter 2, “News, Information and Political Controversy” is focused on the kinds of political information that were available to both elite and nonelite groups. It includes both the dissemination of information by the government through proclamations and the use of printed media by governmental and nongovernmental actors. A substantial portion of this chapter is devoted to the development of the news pamphlet, the subscription newsletter and the serial newsbook. The latter part of the chapter discusses the Restoration-era coffee house as a venue for the dissemination of news and locus for political discussion. This chapter necessarily involves discussion of government licensing and censorship. Chapter 3 examines the development of a genre of political writing that reported personal observations of empirical political phenomena, particularly those writings conveying political information about non-English countries and locales. It treats three overlapping subgenres; travel accounts and guides, diplomatic reports and natural histories. All three share both a common set of categories or grid for understanding governmental institutions and a preference for political description. These texts aspire to be, and purport to be, based on credible firsthand observations or the reliable firsthand accounts of others. Many such works, which often dealt with both civil and natural information, adopted titles such as “The Present State of . . .” typically of a particular polity. Some were labeled chorography or geography. This descriptive, empirical genre provided a nuanced mode of thinking about particular governments that played a significant role in the way government officials, travelers, educators, naturalists and ultimately the general public thought about political matters. Chapter 4, “Historical Writing and Political Thought,” focuses on his-



Introduction

torical theory, in particular the perceived role of history as a preparation for government service by the political elite. It investigates the literate classes’ widening interest in history and the political implications of some of the most popular histories, as well as beliefs about the usefulness of past examples and parallels. Accounts of the ancient constitution, the Norman Conquest and the origins of Parliament were used to support differing visions of the contemporary constitution. Varying views of the English civil war helped shape the political thinking of the post–civil war decades. English ecclesiastical history is treated as part of the effort to justify the nature of the English church against the writings of Roman Catholics. This chapter also shows how ecclesiastical history was related to the development of a national narrative and to making Protestantism part of the nation’s ideology. It examines the way in which Roman and biblical history were brought to bear on English political culture. Chapter 5, “Drama and Political Education,” emphasizes history plays and tragedies because these genres taught their audiences about rulers and highly placed individuals dealing with politically relevant issues. This chapter draws attention to the changing relationship between English historical writing and the dramatic treatment of historical events. Rather than treating the drama chronologically from Elizabeth’s reign onward, the discussion is organized around the historical periods treated in the plays, a method that allows us to see how succeeding generations of playwrights approached the same historical events, such as the deposition of Richard II or the coronation of Henry IV. Plays dealing with more contemporary English events and those that are set abroad also are examined. This chapter also includes discussion of the separately printed play prologue, a short-lived genre deeply engaged in Whig and Tory polemics. Drama was somewhat less direct in its political messages than some other forms of expression, but all the more salient for that reason. It authorized audiences to evaluate stage rulers, putting them in a position to judge which were competent, irrational or tyrannical, or were led into making bad decisions by evil or incompetent advisors. If it were permissible to pass judgment on past and fictitious rules, why not present real ones as well? And perhaps to do so by drawing parallels to the on-stage actions. Because the drama focused on individuals, it was not a format suitable for comment on institutions such as Parliament or the common law. Although the public theater attracted large audiences prior to the civil war, theaters also were dependent on royal and aristocratic support that affected what could be presented on stage. Unlike the pamphlet, poem or sermon, the drama

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Introduction

offered little opportunity for anonymity and considerable opportunity for regulation, either by prior licensing or subsequent punitive measures. This chapter draws heavily on the enormous body of scholarly writing on the Renaissance and Restoration drama. Chapter 6, “Politics, Poetry and Literature,” is designed to show that literature, and especially poetry, were part of the political discourse of the period. Poetic theory supported a teaching function for poetry. Many poets were politically involved. The chapter examines how various modes of poetic expression were used to comment on political institutions, events and individuals. Different types of poetry are examined to show how various forms were adapted to different political messages. In addition to wellstudied poetic forms, the chapter discusses the political uses of several less studied literary genres such as the ballad, “character,” fable and ghost dialogue. The political aspects of poetry have been much studied during the past few decades, and this chapter makes use of the wide-ranging work of literary scholars. The chapter on “The Sermon and Political Education” discusses the role of the sermon in political discourse. Although most sermons did not focus on political issues, several venues and occasions were occasions for sermons that delivered political messages. We note both those that only occasionally gave rise to politically relevant issues and those that did so with some regularity. Examined are sermons given at court, before Parliament and at the assizes, as well as those commemorating such special occasions as royal coronations, Gunpowder Day (November 5) and the execution of Charles I (January 30). Special attention is given to assize sermons because they are less well known and were heard by substantial audiences over the whole period we cover. The next chapter focuses on several aspects of political culture involving personal experience or personal observation that imparted or reaffirmed political values and commemorated events of political importance. The chapter begins with the rituals of royalty, most of which were observed and experienced by those who were not direct participants. Attention is given to royal progresses, royal entries and coronations, as well as to the lord mayor’s shows, pope burning processions and days of national celebrations. Many of these occasions were accompanied by bell ringing, bonfires and fireworks. Effigies, pope burnings, book burnings and the display of the heads or bodies of executed traitors too were part of political life and delivered strong messages. Consideration also is given to the practice of petitioning, a particularly pointed and sometimes mass mode of political



Introduction

communication and experience. Material objects such as royal portraits, wood cuts and engravings, buildings, medals, coins, playing cards and the wearing of colored ribbons, used to convey political meanings and to identify political allegiances, are also examined. Some attention is given to the opportunities that various individuals or groups might have to observe, experience or participate in this wide range of activities, or come into contact with these material objects. Somewhat longer than other chapters because the law was such an important part of the political system, Chapter 9, “Law, Politics and the Legal System,” discusses beliefs and controversies about English law and legal institutions. It examines the different kinds of law and the variety of courts that English men and women encountered. Because the monarchy was the central political institution, the chapter examines those aspects of monarchical rule that engendered the most legal controversy, in particular disputes over the law of succession and the nature and limits of the royal prerogative. Special attention is given to contemporary discussions of the common law and their implications for the broader political culture. Also noted are the roles of the judiciary, the grand jury and the jury in the formation of English political culture and the occasions on which these institutions became particularly salient in the political disputes of the day. There is also a discussion of the role of oaths, both those required in legal proceedings and those affirming loyalty to the monarch, the existing government or a particular form of religion. Some attention is given to the law-making functions of Parliament. Degrees of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the legal system are discussed. The last portion of the chapter is devoted to examining well-publicized trials that became catalysts for public discussion. The role of such trials in focusing public opinion on political issues, and the role of governments in publicly defending particular prosecutions, has been largely neglected as a channel for political information and political education. The final chapter takes up the question of what this study, with its focus on genres and channels of expression, contributes to a number of related issues that have engaged students of this period. What can we learn from studying modes of political learning about such questions as the relative divisiveness or consensus of contemporary opinion, the degree of censorship and other control of political expression and the aptness of the concept of the “public sphere” in describing the political culture prevailing from the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign to the Revolution of 1688? The chapter also includes a general discussion of the advantages and dis-

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Introduction

advantages of approaching political culture in terms of genres and other forms of politically relevant expression and experience. It concludes with an attempt to characterize the political culture that spanned 1558 and 1688. The political culture sketched in this study was a complex and vibrant one. It can be approached in many ways: issue by issue, chronologically in terms of interaction of events and ideas, by concentrating on the ideas themselves, by close reading of the great texts and no doubt numerous others. The chapters that follow largely proceed genre by genre and channel by channel to build up a picture of how ideas and information about politics were purveyed, the institutional and ideological settings in which political communication occurred and the extent to which political authorities themselves sought to contribute to and control political discourse.

chapter two

News, Information and Political Controversy

This chapter focuses on news and other forms of information and printed polemic with the aim of showing the extent to which the English were informed about personalities and events of political significance and about major political controversies. News, and especially news of political events, was eagerly sought. The query “What news?” was a common greeting, used by “clothiers, hose carriers and wain men” as well as more elite members of society.1 Throughout the period contemporaries commented on the insatiable interest in news, and preachers often complained that news distracted from church attendance. This voracious interest was characterized as “an itch our natures to delight in newness and varietie.”2 London played a key role in the printing, circulation and distribution of news. The areas around the Royal Exchange and St. Paul’s Walk are often mentioned by contemporaries as bustling centers for the exchange and distribution of news. News quickly was transmitted from these centers to the whole of metropolitan London by word of mouth and by hawkers selling news pamphlets, broadsides and ballads, as well as by watermen who ferried passengers across the Thames. Peddlers, chapmen and travelers, and later the post, brought printed news to the countryside. Individuals sent news in personal letters and sent newsletters and printed publications to friends and relatives. Inns and alehouses and other places where travelers stopped also were sources of news.3 Although news did not spread out evenly across the country or across the social classes and professions, the dissemination of news, some accurate some not, became part of early modern life. News and rumor were difficult to distinguish. Wild rumors, especially those stemming from fear of Roman Catholic plots and uprisings, were endemic.

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News, Information and Political Controversy

While we have no choice but to rely heavily on printed materials, less easily documentable forms of oral communication and manuscript formats also played a central role in shaping political learning. News might be transmitted orally in the form of gossip or sung ballads. Too sharp a distinction ought not to be drawn between print and oral transmission. Printed texts were often read aloud, and speeches given in Parliament were often known via gossip and manuscript reports. Printed news appeared in single-page broadsides, short and long pamphlets about particular events and newsbooks that initially covered only foreign affairs. Manuscript newsletters of professional news writers were also important transmitters of news. Information about current religious and political controversies was also derived from the publications of the controversialists, which in turn were commented upon in sermons, conversation and print.4 England was a somewhat late arrival to printed news. The Reformation and the political upheavals stemming from it stimulated interest in foreign events. The transformation from manuscript to print was easily made in Zurich’s Neue Zeitung, largely a printed version of Heinrich Bullinger’s correspondence. By 1594 Cologne’s Mercurius Gallobelgicus, a serial publication with an international audience, was circulating in England.5 The government played a central role in the dissemination of news. Statutes and proclamations announced things forbidden or required and major events such as declarations of war. Proclamations were read aloud and posted in marketplaces. That printed proclamations occurred as early as 1486 suggests how quickly the Crown adapted to print media. The government or its surrogates were major producers of news and policy-related pamphlets. To a greater or lesser extent the transmission of printed news was supervised by the Crown, which developed a licensing system for books and other printed material. Licenses were sometimes refused or authors required to alter their work before permission to publish was granted. The licensing system involved the government, the Stationers Company and the Bishop of London. Unlicensed publications were subject to punishment, and High Commission and Star Chamber prosecuted violations. Manuscript communications, such as private letters or manuscript newsletters, were not subject to licensing. Politically provocative material, often anonymous or identified with a foreign place of publication, occasionally appeared unlicensed. The licensing system worked reasonably well except during the breakdown of government controls in 1640 and during the lapse of the licensing act in 1679. Yet even when it worked most efficiently there was an output from illegal and clandestine presses.6



News, Information and Political Controversy

Scholars differ substantially on the question of how effectively the licensing system controlled the expression of ideas, circulation of information and freedom of authors to publish. There are claims that surveillance was constant, censorship strenuous and harsh punishment frequently threatened or administered. The contrary view is that the censorship was the inefficient product of several ill-coordinated groups and individuals, implemented so episodically that for much if not all of the period, discussion was not seriously impeded.7 The Crown certainly attempted to prevent circulation of what it felt to be seditious material, but did not consistently pursue its policies. Decisions about what could be printed were sometimes influenced by the complaints of foreign ambassadors or by one faction of the Privy Council attempting to suppress the views of another. The civil war era undoubtedly enjoyed a freer press than preceding decades, but civil war and Interregnum governments continued earlier efforts to control the printed word. The Crown also had the law of libel to punish those who spoke or wrote unfavorably about the government and its officials. Seditious speech had been a criminal offense from the thirteenth century, and a second conviction became a capital crime in 1581. Until its abolition, Star Chamber played a major role in handling prosecutions relating to libel. Even derogatory songs and verses might lead to prosecution.8 Adverse comment about prominent political figures was “news” for some, for others a prosecutable libel. For this reason such comments and verses typically circulated anonymously in manuscript form. When libels featured figures of political importance, as they did during the reign of James I, they became of direct concern to the government. Libels were thought to lead to “contencon, malice and sedition,” as well as breaches of the peace, insurrections and rebellion.9 News, particularly printed news, developed a set of conventions and norms. The epistolary model was frequently followed,10 with many reports using such formats as “from Cadiz they write . . .” or “by Letters from Tangier, we are given to understand . . . .” News reports were to communicate “matters of fact” that were supported by the testimony of “credible witnesses” or reliable reports. Above all, news was to be truthful. Reports often bore titles beginning “A True Account” or “An Exact and True Account.” News reporting was distinguished from rumor and hearsay and contrasted to fiction on the one hand and lies on the other. Accounts often advertised themselves as intended “to prevent Misinformation,” and news writers claimed to be “faithful” and impartial reporters. Mid-seventeenth century newsbooks often bore titles such as Impartial Intelligencer or The Impartial Scout.11 Often these norms were breached. Newsmen claimed impartiality

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and fidelity for themselves but accused rivals of distorting the news or reporting rumor, fiction or even lies. News was often slanted to favor or disfavor a certain policy or to praise or condemn a particular event or interest. When serial newsbooks developed during the civil war era, they presented news from the point of view of the Parliament, the king, or the army. It was never difficult to distinguish between a Royalist and a parliamentary newsbook or later between a Whig and a Tory publication.

The Reign of Elizabeth The reign of Elizabeth was full of controversy, especially over issues dealing with religion. Many publications dealt with the appropriate form of the church, its doctrine and its vestments. Some were structured as serious debate; others were popular polemical pamphlets such as those of “Martin Marprelate.” The government attempted to regulate printed materials by licensing, and a Star Chamber decree of 1586 limited the number of presses. The Stationers Company was actively engaged in censorship. Theological tracts were vetted by the Bishop of London’s chaplains. Some publications emanated from government sources. During the Northern Rebellion there were appeals to watch for subversion and conspiracy. Mary Queen of Scots was the subject of printed news and pamphlet material for twenty years. There was a government-sponsored campaign of rumor and printed material directed against her proposed marriage to the Duke of Norfolk. In 1586 the government issued a publication justifying her execution. When the proposed marriage of Elizabeth to the Duke of Anjou divided the Privy Council, those opposing the match turned to print media to convince the public of its dangers. John Stubbe, who attacked the proposed marriage, was punished by the amputation of his hand.12 The Crown’s attitude varied over time and depended on what kinds of news and other publications were being circulated. Several of Elizabeth’s speeches were printed. There were printed reports of the Spanish victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571 as well as news of Turkish incursions in Hungary. In 1590 there was The Newes From Rome, Spain, Palermo, Geneva and France, an early “coranto.” There was particular interest in affairs associated with the fate of Protestants in Europe. The English had information concerning the Dutch wars against Spain and could follow Parma’s successes and failures in the Netherlands. During the war with Spain, and especially at the time of the Armada, there were anti-Spanish pamphlets,



News, Information and Political Controversy

and the Crown explained in print its reasons for sending the navy to sea against Spain.13 Elizabethans were particularly well provided with news of the French civil wars. They knew of the 1572 massacre of French Protestants and of the successes and failures of the Guises and the Huguenots. Information on French affairs after 1584 appears to have been provided by a network of government and church officials working together with printers, translators, diplomats and spies. Readers of news pamphlets had regular reports of the struggles of Protestant leaders such as Admiral Coligny and Henry of Navarre, later Henry IV. They learned of the French succession crisis, the famine during the siege of Paris and League edicts for the extermination of Huguenots. Printed news of France largely ceased when Henry IV converted to Catholicism. Accounts of France transmitted information about a variety of political theories, including those advocating popular sovereignty, papal arguments for excommunication and deposition of heretic rulers and the writings of French politiques who emphasized unity and peace over religious purity.14 Domestic news was more difficult to come by. The Privy Council attempted to suppress “libels” and other provocative materials, often attached to church doors or posted at the Exchange, that attacked churchmen, the Earl of Leicester, Lord Burleigh, the lord mayor of London and other government officials. These highly personal attacks peaked in the 1590s and again in the wake of the Essex rebellion in 1601, when many blamed Raleigh and the Cecil circle for Essex’s fate.15 Although information concerning its proceedings and debate legally could not be distributed, news of Parliament’s activities was sufficiently well known for the queen to complain in 1585 that parliamentary business had become “common tabletalk.”16 In 1599 Lord Keeper Egerton complained that those “at ordinaries and common tables, wheare they have scarce mony to paye for their dynner, enter politique discourses of princes, kingdoms and estates and of counsels and counselors, censuring every one according to their owne discontented and malicious humours.”17 The appetite for news would only grow.

The Early Stuarts Unlike his predecessor, James I publicly advertised his theory of kingship. His Trew Law of Free Monarchies (1598) and Basilikon Doran (1599)

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were available to English readers even before he became king of England. Absolute divine right monarchy would be given further expression in the king’s speeches before Parliament and in publications following in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot. While the king’s views on the divine origin and divinely ordained duties of kingship were not new, their circulation in the early years of his reign meant that they became public knowledge. In 1605 James’s speech to Parliament and numerous pamphlets, some produced or sanctioned by the Crown, dealt with the Gunpowder Plot that fueled English anti-Catholicism for decades. Soon after the discovery of the plot, legislation requiring an oath of allegiance rejecting the pope’s claim to an authority to depose kings resulted in another round of pamphlets to which the king himself contributed.18 James used his speeches to Parliament to inform the public of his views. In 1607 he advertised his controversial proposals for a Union of England and Scotland. His 1610 speech, also published, again publicized his view that kings were “Gods Lieutenants upon earth.” But the speech also sought to provide assurance that he would not use “the absolute power of a King” to alter the government. His 1616 speech given to judges, also printed for public distribution, reiterates his views on divine right kingship and warns against encroachments on the royal prerogative.19 Manuscript attacks on highly placed individuals circulated widely. There were libels on Robert Cecil and Sir Edward Coke, as well one attached to Archbishop Whitgift’s funeral hearse. Some attacked James’s Scottish companions and favorites. Many were connected to the sensational Thomas Overbury scandals and murder. News of Overbury was a constant topic of gossip in Paul’s, the Exchange and taverns, and “spread far and near” to the provinces, helping to confirm suspicions of corruption at court.20 Libels would also be directed at other unpopular individuals such as the Duke of Buckingham and later Archbishop Laud. Yet many agreed with Sir Francis Bacon’s view that frequent and open “libels and licentious discourse” were dangerous to the state.21 News, and particularly political news, was avidly sought. It was “the fashion of these times . . . for the principal gentry, lords, courtiers and men of all professions . . . to meet in Paul’s Church by eleven and walk in the middle aisle till twelve, and after dinner frome three to six, during which times some discourse of business, others of news. Now in regard of the universal commerce there happened little that did not first and last arrive here.” Those walking the aisles at Paul’s were “most inquisitive after affairs of state.”22 News, rumor and gossip about public matters and public figures



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were sufficiently widespread to be ridiculed in Ben Jonson’s comic character, Sir Politic Would Be, and lampooned in similar characters presented in the writings of Sir Thomas Overbury.23 Parliamentary meetings triggered public interest. After an acrimonious exchange with Parliament in 1621, James again reached out to the public, printing his answers to Parliament’s petitions and assailing its insistence on discussing Charles’s marriage. Despite the ban on the dissemination of parliamentary speeches, information about them circulated in private letters and newsletters. Although the king wished to curtail political discussion, he instructed members of Parliament that they were to carry news of state back home.24 Although there was relatively little in the way of printed domestic news, the public was fairly well informed about Raleigh’s trial, the Spanish match, and Buckingham’s involvement in foreign policy. At least fifteen publications appeared in connection with Raleigh’s trial. The Crown was sufficiently worried about public reaction to produce a printed justification for the trial.25 The Duke of Buckingham, first a supporter of the Spanish match and, after its failure, an antagonist of Spain, was the subject of gossip, rumor, parliamentary debate and libelous verse. Parliamentary manuscript “separates,” which recorded important speeches, were produced by teams of scriveners and distributed among the country gentry. Foreign news was more acceptable to the Crown. During the first part of James I’s reign, news pamphlets kept the English informed about the Dutch-Spanish war and peace negotiations. Typical reports were Newes out of the Low Countries (1606) or A Relation of the late horrible treason, against the Prince of Orange, and the Whole State of the United Provinces (1623). News pamphlets reported the execution of the Dutch republican John van Olden Barneveld in 1619 and the massacre of Englishmen by the Dutch at Amboyna.26 French affairs were not widely reported, with the exception of the assassination of Henry IV in 1610. There was great interest in the Palatinate and Bohemia. Maps were printed of these areas so that the English could more easily follow the war news. There was also news about conflicts with the Turks in Hungary and Poland and even an occasional report about Russia.27 The 1620s brought a substantial increase in foreign news as corantos, news reports in serial form following the Continental model, began to appear. These inexpensive and fairly reliable publications, initially translations from the Dutch and other Continental venues, were dominated by news of the Continent. Butter’s newsbook even carried the Elector Palatine’s coat

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of arms on its title page. First in single-page folio format and later in 16– to 24–page quarto form, corantos were sold on London streets by the hawkers of ballads before being sent to the countryside.28 There were complaints that corantos “euerie week besmeare each public post, and Church dore” and that the walls were “Butter’d with weekly News compos’d in Pauls.”29 Subscription newsletters became increasingly important during the 1620s as a group of semiprofessional journalists began to provide fairly regular news of the court, copies of parliamentary speeches and Continental news. Pamphlets such as Thomas Scott’s sensational Vox Populi vehemently attacked the Spanish. Buckingham’s exploits and failure during the Ile of Re expedition were well publicized.30 Robert Burton wrote: I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, . . . cities besieged in France, Germany, Turkey . . . . New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes . . . . Today we hear of new Lords and officers created, tomorrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred. . . . This I daily here, and such like, both private and publicke newes.31

James was not pleased with these developments and even earlier had complained about “itching in the tongues and pens” of his subjects, who should not search into the “deepest mysteries that belong to the persons of state of kings and princes.”32 Royal proclamations complained of licentious speech on matters of state and warned against meddling with secrets of empire. A proclamation of 1621 complained of “excess of lavish and Licentious Speech of matters of State” that did “dayly more and more increase.”33 By the end of James’s reign the English, and especially those in and around London, were well provided with news, finding it readily available at Paul’s or the Exchange, from whence it circulated outward by word of mouth or newsletter to the countryside. Corantos reported foreign news with some regularity, and individual pamphlets reported on particular events. Domestic news, less readily available and typically conveyed orally or in manuscript form, tended to wax and wane with meetings of Parliament. Expectations and hopes on the part of Parliament and Crown were at their height at the beginning of a session and disappointments and grumblings in their aftermath. Although it would be wrong to speak of parties, some were more sympathetic to Parliament’s grievances and desires, and others to Crown views. There were sufficient differences of opinion within the political elite on foreign and domestic policy and on the nature of the English monarchy and its prerogatives to generate controversy and sometimes distrust. Richard Cust has persuasively argued that the increase



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of news during the 1620s contributed to the political polarization of this crucial decade.34 Despite some unlicensed printing and the circulation of manuscript libels, the Crown had the advantage in making its views known and could draw more easily than its critics on the printed media. Corantos continued to fuel the view that England was not doing enough to support Protestantism abroad. The English now avidly followed the victories of Gustavus Adolphus. After the battle of Breitenfeld, Charles complained that newsbooks were dealing with matters of state “unfit for public view and discourse.” When the Spanish ambassador complained about their treatment of Spain, printed newsbooks were suppressed.35 Clarendon indicated that “the whole nation” was anxious “to know what pass’d weekly in Germany and Poland, and other parts of Europe.”36 The Privy Council condemned the “great abuse in the printing and publishing of Gazetts and Pamphletts of newes from forraign parts,” and John Pory’s newsletter reported the “smothering of the Currantoes.”37 Manuscript newsletters, however, continued and do not appear to have been intercepted or their authors arrested. Parliamentary sessions continued to focus public attention. Information about its proceedings leaked to groups crowded around the lobby. Newsletters reported on Parliament’s hostility to Buckingham, apprehension about a Roman Catholic French queen, grumbling about financial requests from the Crown and perennial concerns about religion. In 1626 Charles issued a proclamation blaming “ill affected” members who had “purposely published and scattered copies” of a remonstrance and expressed ill opinions of the Duke of Buckingham. In another proclamation the king found it “fit and necessary” to inform the public of his reasons for his actions in order to stop “the mouth of malice” and satisfy the “doubts and feares” of his subjects.38 Londoners’ insatiable appetite for news did not diminish. All “trafficke for Newes,” wrote Bishop John Earle, whose 1628 “character” described St. Paul’s walk, the bustling center of those seeking news, as a noisy Babel. It was “the great Exchange of all discourse, . . . the Synod of all pates politicke, joined and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not halfe so busie at the Parliament.”39 The Petition of Right was the center of controversy in 1628. Charles insisted that the House of Commons had made “false constructions” on what he had agreed to. Printed copies were confiscated only to be reprinted together with the king’s speech.40 After dissolving Parliament, the king explained that it was necessary to declare to “all the world” that he had hoped

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for “a better and more right understanding” with the House of Commons, an understanding made impossible due to the “malevolent dispositions” and “disobedience and seditious carriage” of some of its members who “represent[ed] him unfairly to the Publike view.” The king denied damaging the “liberties and privileges” of Parliament, defended tonnage and poundage on historical grounds and criticized efforts of the House to bind judges, “a thing never heard of in ages past.”41 Though the king generally disliked the circulation of news, on this occasion he reached out to the public to counter adverse publicity. At one point Charles considered a government-sponsored publication to help mold popular opinion but in the end rejected the example of Richelieu, who had established a gazette to support the French Crown. Despite efforts to control the production of news, John Taylor reports on the quantity of written material to be found in “taverns, ordinaries, inns, bowling greens and alleys, ale-houses, tobacco-shops, highways and water passages.”42 The Parliament of 1629 again proved contentious. Adjournment was delayed when the speaker was physically coerced to remain in place and several members were arrested, accused of seditious words. A royal proclamation again denounced “ill-disposed persons” who “spread false and pernicious rumours” and raised “causeless fears.”43 The Crown investigated and attempted to punish those responsible for the frequently copied and widely distributed manuscript Propositions for your Majesty’s Service containing two Parts: the one to secure your state and bridle the impertinency of Parliaments: the other to increase your Majesty’s reveune, much more than it is, which purported to originate among the king’s councilors. Characterized as a Machiavellian “project how a prince may make himself an absolute tyrant,” the Propositions appears to have been circulated by a disaffected group including Sir Robert Cotton, John Selden, Oliver St. John and the earls of Clare and Bedford, who feared the elimination of Parliament, illegal taxation and a standing army. Although the Council ordered all copies of the fictitious council memo to be destroyed and investigated those suspected of distributing it, the pamphlet received even wider circulation when a bill designed to show that the pamphlet’s purpose was to raise popular fear of the king’s government included the full text of the offending pamphlet. As Noah Millstone has shown, the manuscript and the excitement surrounding its distribution indicate that we have seriously underestimated the reach and power of this critique of the regime.44 During the parliamentary hiatus between 1629 and 1640, controversy was sparked by religious issues and ship money. Refusals to pay culminated



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in the well-publicized case of John Hampden. Star Chamber meted out severe corporal punishments for seditious publication. Denunciations of prelacy by Henry Burton, John Bastwick and William Prynne resulted in physical mutilation rarely meted out to gentlemen. Laud expanded censorship of religious books, substantially narrowing the range of religious views expressed in print.45 Despite Laud’s efforts it was noted that “matters of consequence” and “pro and conning” were to be heard in bake-houses, barbershops and ale-houses. Common people were disputing about the “whole estate of the kingdom.”46 The outbreak of rebellion in Scotland radically altered the political scene. Printed corantos reappeared, and a patent was issued for printing and translating foreign news.47 The rebellion and the calling of Parliament in 1640 would not only alter English politics but would also dramatically change the distribution of news and polemical pamphleteering and, therefore, public knowledge of and participation in public affairs.

Civil War and Interregnum The next twenty years brought dramatic changes to English politics, institutions and political communication. The summoning of Parliament in 1640 was marked by an explosion of news, political polemic, religious controversy and petitioning. Serial news in printed form dealing with domestic politics was the most obvious innovation, one that greatly altered access to the proceedings of Parliament. News was now focused on Parliament, battles and sieges and negotiations with the king.48 Abolition of Star Chamber and its punitive apparatus for enforcement of licensing encouraged an explosion of publication. There would be no authority to prevent the dissemination of domestic news until the House of Commons itself attempted to reinstate licensing in 1642. Some 848 books, pamphlets and other items were printed in 1640; by 1642 they numbered 3,666.49 Although the Short Parliament did not permit its members to take notes of its proceedings, speeches were circulated and some printed. This was a period of riot and disorder in London, especially from the dissolution of the Short Parliament to the time Charles left London. It would have been virtually impossible for most of the country to ignore the political upheavals, the war between king and Parliament, changing constitutional arrangements and the fracturing of the church. Whatever political consensus had existed evaporated as the kingdom dissolved into a state of civil war. Most

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would have agreed with the report of “much discourse in court, parliament and city, nay, and country too, and much discontent in all of them.”50 “Innumerable multitude of Pamphlets” and “thousands more scandalous libels, and more invective against the State” appeared.51 “Poison was carried up and down in books and cried at mens doors every day, in which there are many strange doctrines going abroad open-faced.”52 Literacy was increasing the audience for printed materials; in 1640 it had reached approximately 30 percent for men and 10 percent for woman. London literacy figures were considerably higher at 70–89 percent for men and 12–20 percent for women.53 In London a wide spectrum of the population became engrossed in the political events of the day, as both consumers and producers of news. In these our days, the meanest sort of people are not only able to write . . . but to argue and discourse on matters of highest concernment and thereupon desire, that such things which are most remarkable, may be truly committed to writing and made public, expecting to receive such satisfaction out of the variety of the present several actings, as may content all indifferent men and stop the mouths of willful opposers.54

News circulated to the countryside even more quickly than earlier. By 1649 postal services were leaving London twice a week; by 1655 it was three times a week.55 Late in 1641 the first serial news publication to focus on domestic news, Heads of Severall Proceedings in this Present Parliament, appeared, soon followed by Continuation of the Most Remarkable Passages, Diurnal Occurrences or, the heads of proceedings of Both houses of Parliament and then by a plethora of continuations and competitors. This was only the beginning of a bewildering number of newsbooks and news reports, many short-lived, with a confusion of overlapping titles. For the first time speeches by members of Parliament were printed on a continuing basis, some authorized by the speakers, some not. This practice was limited to the period 1640–42.56 News soon extended beyond Parliament’s activities, especially after the king left London and actual hostilities began. The printing of the Grand Remonstrance in 1641 was also an innovation, being addressed to the people rather than the king. Printed without the consent of the king or the House of Lords, it contained over 200 items listing the king’s misdeeds and Parliament’s demands. Clarendon characterized the Remonstrance as “a very bitter representation of all the illegal things which had been done from the first hour of the King’s coming to the crown” which “might disturb the minds of the people.”57



News, Information and Political Controversy

The year 1641 brought news of the Irish Rebellion, an event that fueled an already exaggerated fear of Roman Catholicism. There were hysterical accounts of barbarous massacres.58 There was a torrent of parliamentary declarations, and petitions to Parliament poured in from the counties. Tracts dealt with Parliament and the king. The queen was often depicted as having a pernicious influence on the king, Mercurius Civicus characterizing her as “an Incendiary of the Commonwealth and great causer of the Combustions and Miseries of the Kingdome.”59 Parliament relied on ministers to read its declarations from the pulpit in order “to possess the people with the truth and justice of Parliament’s cause.” Like the early declarations of the monarch, these were sent to sheriffs in market towns for distribution and then pasted “upon posts of the Exchange and other chief places of the City and suburbs.” The post and other carriers were directed to send packets of its declarations “into all parts of England.”60 Royalists followed similar methods as both sides attempted to reach as many people as possible. When the king arrived in York in March 1642, he set up his own press and issued a proclamation for the suppression of the rebellion. The multiplication of newsbooks and pamphlets, substantially uncontrolled by the government, exposed purchasers to a variety of political views, first those of Parliament and the king and eventually to a much wider range of political and religious opinions. By January 1642 one contemporary noted the existence of seven newsbooks.61 As soon as it was able, Parliament attempted to resume control of the press. It reinstated licensing provisions and issued a declaration for the suppression of seditious and scandalous pamphlets. During the hostilities at Hull, Parliament ordered that its own account be read in all churches and chapels. Parliament’s control efforts were largely unsuccessful. The year 1643, the year of a new Licensing Act, was marked by the development of the influential Royalist newsbook Mercurius Aulicus. When the Royalist cause collapsed and the king and his followers left Oxford, the Royalist press went underground.62 Mercurius Britanicus . . . for the better Information of the People, a parliamentary newsbook designed to refute Aulicus, began the same year. Another influential parliamentary paper, Mercurius Civicus, London’s Intelligencer, was directed primarily at Londoners. The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer labeled Charles a tyrant and reported that the king did not want peace. A large and sometimes bewildering barrage of newsbooks reported on battles, sieges and other military news. Over sixty newsbooks could be found listed in the Stationers’ register.

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Religious controversy in pamphlet form radiated out from the Westminster Assembly, a body appointed by Parliament to work out a religious settlement. As Puritans fractured into a myriad of religious groups, Presbyterians, Independents and others engaged in vociferous public controversy over forms of church government, doctrine, baptism and other practices and the increasingly explosive issue of religious toleration. Whatever consensus had existed earlier on religious reform was shattered. The parliamentary army developed its own newsbooks and pamphlets. The Levellers and their leader John Lilburne also turned to print. In 1644 one commentator, “Walking the London-streets, which echo with nothing more of late than Newes, and Newes Books,” reported that he saw for sale at some stationers’ stalls publications “reeking hot, as new as day, being by the midwifery of the Presse newly brought into the world.”63 The year 1645 brought the sensational publication of the king’s letters, which revealed his duplicity to all.64 Some newsbooks and pamphlets favored peace with the king; others were adamantly opposed. There was a great deal of military news and a good deal of attention to Oliver Cromwell. Army chaplains published battlefield reports “according to order.”65 At least a dozen newsbook titles could be purchased six days a week, many of which would disappear within the year. Prince Charles had news sent to him in exile so as to be informed of the actions of Parliament and the Council of State.66 Newsbooks and news writers were criticized for egregious violations of the norms of truthfulness and impartiality, not surprising since most promoted the goals of particular political groups. The Moderate Intelligencer, for example, which promised news “without invective,” was characterized by a competitor as “the great Historian and Chronicler of the Sectaries.”67 One critic complained that the newsbooks “weekly utter, slanders, libel, lies”; another that they promoted “new fangled” heresies.68 Royalist poet John Cleveland denigrated the “weekly fragments” and ridiculed parliamentary publications such as “Scoticus,” “Civicus” and “Britanicus.”69 The government used licensing both to control the press and to bolster its own position. During the next few years, new newsbooks appeared and old ones faded away. Royalist publications increased during the second civil war but ended when the army purged Parliament. In 1647, Marchamont Nedham, the most prominent journalist of the era, changed sides, now producing the Royalist Mercurius Pragmaticus. Royalist mercuries and satirical poems were said to travel “up and down the streets with so much impunity, that the poor weekly Hackneys, durst hardly communicate the ordinary Intelligence.” Parliament became wary of public exposure and for-



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bade the printing of its proceedings “or other Matters, agitated in both or either of the Houses of Parliament” except by “special order.”70 Nevertheless, reports of the negotiations between the king and the Parliament were publicized, as well as the army’s responses. The trial and execution of the king in 1649 was undoubtedly the most astonishing news. The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligence reported, “The Triall of the King is the great Hinge on which for this week the Doore of this Intelligence must Move.” The Impartial Intelligencer noted that “this Nation hath been long abused by the Tyranny of Kings” and was “now delivered.”71 In 1649 a new printing act outlawing newsbooks attempted to end opposition printing and led to the searching of shops for seditious and unlicensed pamphlets.72 With the creation of the Commonwealth government, the Council of State and the House of Commons faced the problem of how to secure public allegiance. They were aided by Marchamont Nedham, who, changing allegiance again, produced his long-running pro-Commonwealth and later pro-Protectorate Mercurius Politicus.73 This chatty, witty, opinionated newsbook noted “how sweet the Air of a Commonwealth is beyond that of a Monarchy” and reassured readers that ordinary trials would continue to be tried in the traditional manner. Nedham also used the newsbook as a vehicle for discussing the nature of political obligation and for justifying the current regime. Pamphlets, sermons, news reports and government declarations all featured discussion of the Engagement, the loyalty oath required of all men over eighteen. Pamphlets pro and con flew off the presses.74 The wars in Scotland and then Ireland were well publicized, as was the ever growing visibility of Oliver Cromwell, the victories of the New Model Army, conflict between the army and Rump Parliament, its demise, the creation of the Protectorate and Cromwell’s conflicts with his parliaments. New laws controlling the press were issued in the summer of 1655. Nedham’s official Mercurius Politicus and The Public Intelligencer now provided information about and support for Cromwell’s policies. His newspapers attacked Levellers, religious groups opposed to the Protectorate and those “afflicted with the infectious Itch of scribbling political discourses,” a group that included Hobbes and Harrington.75 Cromwell was succeeded by his son Richard Cromwell, whose shortlived government quickly collapsed. The revived Rump disseminated An Exact Accompt of the daily Proceedings in Parliament along with a supplement dealing with foreign news. The army provided its own version of the news. A flurry of republican pamphlets appeared, among them Milton’s Readie

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and Easie way to establish a Free Commonwealth and Harrington’s The Rota: or a Model of a Free State. One pamphlet noted how “Sedition and Rebellion” had been “propagated in full Treatises, Murder . . . [and] practic’d by the late Writer of Politicus, Marchamont Nedham, whose scurrilous Pamphlets flying every Week into all parts of the Nation, ’tis incredible what influence they had upon numbers of unconsidering persons.”76 Anti-Rump publications also flourished. On his return to England from Scotland, General Monk recruited journalist Henry Muddiman to issue The Parliamentary Intelligencer, which publicized Monk’s speech advocating a full and free Parliament.77 When the Convention Parliament met, however, it again forbade the printing of parliamentary proceedings without its permission, and newsbooks were again suppressed. Circulation of news and information and polemical works of all sizes and shapes increased at an unprecedented rate during the revolutionary period despite the efforts of the Long Parliament, the Commonwealth and then the Protectorate governments to control the press. Revolutionary-era governments all retained a licensing system for printed material and attempted to control publications thought damaging to the state. Given the prominence of government-authorized newsbooks, taken as a whole the news media were hardly champions of free speech versus an authoritarian government. Yet the English public, always avid for news, experienced unprecedented exposure to domestic political and religious news and opinion, giving it a far greater opportunity to engage with political affairs during this period than it ever had before. This was a politically transforming experience.

The Restoration The reign of Charles II was proclaimed May 8, 1660, in the principal places of London accompanied by bells, bonfires and an outpouring of laudatory poems, pamphlets and sermons. It was not immediately evident what policy the Crown would follow with respect to the media. The Duke of Newcastle advised the king to forbid newsbooks and manuscript newsletters. On the other hand Sir Edward Nicholas suggested a propaganda campaign “to mind the people what an advantage and happiness the king’s restoration would be to the nation.” Charles himself believed that “the exorbitant Liberty of the Press” had “been a great Occasion of the late Rebellion in the Kingdom and Schisms in the Church.”78 The government initially turned to the experienced journalist and sub-



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scription newsletter writer Henry Muddiman, suppressing all printed news except his Parliamentary Intelligencer and Mercurius Publicus. Employed to organize the correspondence of the secretaries of state, Muddiman also prepared abstracts for his weekly manuscript newsletters that contained information about parliamentary matters. In 1661 legislation less repressive than that of Cromwell and the Rump was enacted that controlled news and reduced the number of printing presses.79 Further legislation was enacted the following year because “evil disposed persons have been encouraged to print and sell heretical, schismatical, blasphemous, seditious and treasonable books, pamphlets and papers.”80 Although Muddiman’s printed newsbooks The Kingdomes Intelligencer and Mercurius Publicus ended in 1663, when Roger L’Estrange was granted a monopoly of official news, his sought-after, revenue-producing newsletters continued. L’Estrange produced the Intelligencer, Published for the Satisfaction of the People and The News, Published for Satisfaction and Information of the People. Yet he himself did not favor a “public mercury,” believing such a medium made “the multitude too familiar with the actions and counsels of their superiors, too pragmatical and censorious, and gives them not only an itch but a kind of colourable right and license to be meddling with the Government.” Nevertheless he concluded that the times required a “safe and expedient” newsbook “to combat the pamphlets.”81 For a time the only newsbooks available were produced by L’Estrange and the only newsletter by Muddiman. This situation changed when Secretary of State Sir Joseph Williamson created the Oxford Gazette, a twice-weekly publication providing mostly foreign news with Muddiman as its first editor. This widely distributed newsbook, soon renamed the London Gazette, also featured noncontroversial domestic information such as royal speeches, acts of the Privy Council, royal ceremonies and proclamations and new appointments. There were complaints that the Gazette lacked news about Parliament.82 Given the civil war and Interregnum experience, it is not surprising that there was greater demand for news than the official Restoration newsbooks could satisfy. There were different views within government circles about how to handle news. Williamson, now a newsman, commented that “the itch of news” was now “grown a disease.”83 Danby advised the king to manage rather than suppress the news and suggested that someone be directed “to write both about the present state of things to give the world a better impression of them than they are now possessed with and to give constantly weekly accounts of what is done at any time which may be for the satisfaction of men’s minds.”84 Writing somewhat later, Chief Justice North thought the

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best method for dealing with seditious publications was “to set up counter writers” to answer libels.85 Government-controlled news media, however, were only a part of the world of news and cannot provide an accurate view of what kinds of political information were available or what issues divided the country. Word of mouth, private letters, ballads and the new institution of the coffee house helped to circulate information and facilitate debate. Political news and comment could also be found in printed pamphlets, some a page or two in length, others fifty or more pages. Andrew Marvell suggested that pamphlets first circulated in various London venues were then sent to friends at universities, then on to the county and cathedrals, where “those . . . that can confide in one another, discourse it over in private.”86 One did not need newsbooks or privately circulated newsletters to be informed of the ferocious debates relating to religious dissent. There were countless publications in a variety of formats advocating toleration, comprehension or persecution of Protestant dissenters. The controversial Act of Uniformity of 1662 and the various statutes against conventicles were widely discussed in a variety of polemical formats, as was the legality of the King’s Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, which aroused fears over the use of the prerogative to implement religious toleration. The Test Act of 1673 that excluded Roman Catholics from public office also engendered pamphlets, sermons and treatises. Domestic events such as the plague and the Great Fire of London generated a plethora of publications. The First Dutch War, largely fought over competition for the overseas trade, elicited a substantial number of news accounts, some favorable to the war, some not. In 1672, when England was again at war with the Netherlands, an increasing number of publications expressed reservations about the war. Opinion had shifted from an antiDutch to an anti-French point of view. France was increasingly associated with popery, absolutism and poverty.87 There was far less information about Parliament than the public desired. Although it was forbidden to print the votes or proceedings of Parliament without special permission, there were evasions. In 1673 several publications discussed parliamentary affairs, one providing votes and addresses of the House of Commons.88 From 1674 on, publications called for new elections,89 which in turn provoked a royal proclamation restraining “the Spreading of False News and Licentious talking of Matters of State and Government.” About this time Roger L’Estrange reported to a committee of the House of Commons that manuscripts were currently “more mis-



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chievous than prints because more bitter and dangerous.”90 When the 1677 speeches of the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Shaftesbury favoring the dissolution of Parliament were printed, the two were imprisoned.91 Parliament’s role in the imprisonment was much discussed “in Discourses and Printed Papers,” and “the strangeness of these Proceedings” was reported to be “the publick Discourse of the Town.”92 Elections, prorogations and dissolutions were much spoken of and written about during the 1670s and still more during the elections and proceedings of the Exclusion parliaments. Efforts to exclude the Duke of York from the succession were widely discussed in a flood of pamphlets. Parliamentary actions became better known in 1680, when the House of Commons ordered that its votes and transactions be printed daily. Sir Francis Winnington noted, “I think it neither natural, nor rational . . . that the People who sent us hither, should not be informed of our actions.”93 When Charles dissolved that Parliament he issued a declaration justifying his action to the public. Another royal declaration in 1680 warned that those who claimed Monmouth was legitimate would be prosecuted “according to the utmost Severity of the Law.”94 Provocative pamphlets such as A Letter from a Person of Quality to His Friend in the Country (1675) provided news of Parliament and argued against requiring members of Parliament and officeholders to swear that it was “unlawful on any pretence whatsoever to take arms against the king or to endeavor any alteration in the government of church and state.”95 That tract, ordered burned, was answered by Nedham. Another Nedham publication warned of a civil war instigated by “Pamphlets spread in citie and Country” that would again “seduce the publicly People.”96 Anti-Catholic sentiment remained a central part of English political culture. Publications denounced the machinations of the pope and popish rulers, and enflamed fears of popish dangers. Andrew Marvell’s An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England (1677) charted the dangers of popery from the Elizabethan treasons and the Spanish Armada to current threats of “a French slavery” and “Roman idolatry.”97 Marvell’s Account was countered by Roger L’Estrange’s An Account of the Growth of Knavery, which “paralleled” Marvell and his associates with those responsible for the civil war.98 Fears of popery reached a high point in 1678 with news of a Popish Plot that allegedly involved the assassination of Charles II and the Duke of York. The allegations resulted in a series of well-publicized trials and another outpouring of pamphlets. Whigs, or those who would soon be labeled Whigs, whipped up anti-Catholic sentiment. Parliamentary speeches and debates

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relating to the “Horrid Popish Plot” were printed.99 Despite the London government’s restriction on news venders, it was reported that the streets “are much pestered with a sort of loose and idle person, called Hawkers, who do daily Publish and Sell Seditious Books, Scurrilous Pamphlets and scandalous Printed Papers.”100 Printed material and rumor flew around the country. In 1678 some 1,178 titles were published in London; that number rose to 1,730 the following year, peaking at 2,145 in 1680.101 Whig efforts to prevent the succession of the Duke of York resulted in another deluge of printed tracts and broadsides. Supporters often espoused a theory of government based on popular consent that allowed for revocation of government authority when rulers violated their trust. Locke’s famous two treatises on government were written in this context but would not be published for another decade. Opponents emphasized the need for unbroken lineal succession or a divinely ordained kingship and warned of a renewal of civil war. Filmer’s Patriarcha (1680) was perhaps the best known of these efforts. Elkanah Settle’s The Character of a Papist Successor (1681), a provocative Whig pamphlet, triggered several replies, including one by Roger L’Estrange, which in turn elicited a Settle response.102 Some publications operated at the level of vilification, others at a higher intellectual plane. One commentator noted, “There is no Coffee-house, and a few private houses, but their Table-talk” is about succession.103 Even porters discussed the Duke of Monmouth’s claim to the throne.104 The excitement engendered a large number of publications consumed by a wide social spectrum in a wide range of venues. It also led to new forms for conveying political argument, among them the anonymous published letter typically labeled “A Letter from a Gentlemen of Quality to his Friend.” This format often was purported to present views from the country to the city or the city to the country. These pamphlet wars were facilitated by the expiration of the licensing act in 1679, which the government did surprisingly little to revive. It did, however, issue a proclamation that year for the suppression of seditious and treasonable books and pamphlets. Nevertheless this was a time of “publick Prints, Diurnals, Courants, Gazettes, Pamphlets, which fly up and down thick and threefold, especially of late.”105 London “swarms with Pamphlets. Two or three appear every day.”106 “Ware Houses” were said to be “Cram’d,” book stalls full, and “all Tongues and Pens agog” with news of the Popish Plot.107 There were now Whig as well as Tory accounts of the news. Benjamin Harris’s radical Domestick Intelligence lasted until 1681 when its editor was tried, fined and pilloried. Henry Care’s anti-Catholic



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A Pacquet of Advice from Rome was directed at those in London and Westminster of “meaner Capacities” unable to “comprehend large and elaborate Treatises.”108 There was also Janeways’s Impartial Protestant Mercury, and Smith’s Protestant Intelligence. Although the word “Protestant” in the title typically signaled Whig affiliation, The True Protestant Mercury was designed to counter the Whigs in “some Popular Medium,” to rectify “Vulgar Mistakes” and to instill “Dutyful, and Honest Principles into the common People, upon that Turbulent and Seditious Juncture.”109 A fair amount of council business, often quite detailed, was leaked to the news media, despite the fact that privy councilors were sworn to secrecy. Partisan newspapers flourished, though the official Gazette largely ignored controversy. Several Whig publishers were prosecuted for seditious libel, among them Jane Curtis, who was one of the increasing number of women involved as printers, publishers, booksellers and hawkers.110 The petitioning movement demanding that Parliament meet was well advertised in Whig publications. In 1680 newsman Benjamin Harris not only printed the monster petition the day after it was presented, a petition he reported as being over one hundred yards long, but also provided progress reports on petitions being collected in the various counties. An antiWhig paper reported with disapproval that “Tables, Pen, Ink and Petitions have been placed upon the Royal Exchange at Change time, and People invited to subscribe them.”111 The Gazette included proclamations against tumultuous petitioning and expressed opposition to the forms being sent to the country for signature. Addresses to the king “abhorring” the practice of petitioning were reported positively by the Tory press. Roger L’Estrange, who emerged as the government’s most prolific polemicist, began a news publication, The Observator, despite his belief that newsbooks and newsletters “misrepresent[ed] proceedings of State.” His own government-approved publications designed to refute “seditious doctrines” were the only “remedy” for the “epidemicall” distemper of the press.112 L’Estrange also introduced Hericlitus Ridens in 1681 to provide readers with “a true Information of the state of things” and advance their “understandings above the common rate of Coffee-House Statesmen who think themselves wiser than the Privy Council, or the Sages of the Law.”113 In 1681 readers would find four Whig, three Tory and one neutral paper plus the official London Gazette.114 Muddiman subscribers were provided full reports about proposed legislation and parliamentary activity. His immensely influential and widely distributed newsletter was characterized by an unfriendly commentator as

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News, Information and Political Controversy the Cream of Intelligence, Communicated twice a week by his Letters to very many in diverse countries, who do largely pension him, and to the Countrey Coffee-House that pay him a very considerably yearly Rent for his State Informations; where Lecturers being read, and Annotations made upon them . . . Faction spreads her wings and carries it as fast as she can home unto too many of the Gentlemen and Farmer’s Houses; . . . From Whence it comes to be chewed over again at every Conventicle or congregation meant, and repeated at every Market.115

The constant bombardment of partisan publications led John Evelyn to refer to “this diffuse age, greedy of intelligence and public affairs.”116 Thomas Bayly also remarked on “these scribling Days (wherein the Press groans under the insupportable Burthen of Pamphlets)” that “inveigh against one another by Bitter Sarcasms and Biting Satyrs.”117 Another wrote of “the Pen and Ink War. . . . We live in an Age wherein was never less Quarter given Paper.”118 Mark Knights estimates that there were about 1,800 pamphlets published in 1680, double the number three years earlier.119 The defeat of the Whigs dampened the news and pamphlet culture that had created and sustained the excitement of the previous few years. Already in 1680 a judicial opinion ruled that the king could prohibit the printing and publishing of all unlicensed “News Books and Pamphlets of News whatsoever.” Soon afterward, the Privy Council announced a ban on all unlicensed newsbooks. Muddiman reported, “The Whigge party are quite down in the Mouth.”120 Despite the ban, there were still those who complained of “Vain Reports,” which “Scandalize the Government, and of those who print and publish pamphlets of news without license or authority.”121 In 1682 the author of Julian the Apostate, directed against the Duke of York, was fined and imprisoned. In January of 1682 there were seven papers. After the prosecution of Whig newsmen, only the London Gazette and L’Estrange’s Observator remained. Despite the ban, however, some news and information, mostly foreign, continued to circulate. Gilbert Burnet reported in 1682 that “Our gazettes and newsletters have been of late” filled with the conflict between the pope and the French king.122 Turkish incursions in Europe were widely reported and their siege of Vienna closely followed.123 On the home front the quo warranto proceedings against and the subsequent loss of London’s charter in 1683 were well publicized.124 Political excitement revived with the revelations of the Rye House plot, an allegedly Protestant conspiracy led by Whig notables to kill the king. Publications attacked Lord Russell’s treason; others defended his innocence. His “last dying speech” was on sale the day of his death, and 2,500



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copies were available for sale the next day. Russell became a Whig martyr remembered by generations of Whigs as a victim of tyrannical government. On this occasion too the Crown commissioned an account of its version of the conspiracy.125 The trial of Algernon Sidney, like that of Russell, was well publicized, especially by government and Tory publicists. One publication suggested that dissenters and fanatics had assumed “to themselves that Liberty, of aspersing their Superiours, in Common Prints, Libels, and Pasquils . . . whilst their Coffee Houses, and Tables afforded no other Discourse then the wise Methods of altering the Fundamental and Integral parts of Government they lived under.” Though their “general Cry was Religion, Property, and a Parliament, ’twas a Common Wealth at the bottom, and nothing less would satisfie this all asking Party.” The author denounced lower-class “mechanicks and Joyners of State” who “railed at their Prince and Government” as well as the “Hellish Plot, to Rout out the True Protestant Religion,” and kill the king, subvert laws and liberties and set up popery and arbitrary power.126 The scarcity of newspapers did not mean an absence of news or controversy. James II’s reign began with a new licensing act. The Gazette continued to purvey reports of royal progresses, sometimes exaggerating popular response to them, royal proclamations and events such as the birth of a new Prince of Wales. The new king wished to limit public discussion as much as possible. He increased postal surveillance and the number of informers. It was widely believed that it was “imprudent as well as dangerous to write any news.” Many quite humble persons were charged with criticizing the regime. As one government supporter indicated, “shops were made for trade and commerce, and not for stating the question about politics and the arcana of government.”127 The Observator closed in 1687 with L’Estrange’s opposition to the king’s Declaration of Indulgence, but Elkanah Settle and Henry Care, now supporters of James II, were permitted to publish news. Care’s Publick Occurrences Truly Stated supported the king’s policy of religious toleration. News letters, however, became illegal in 1686. James’s multifaceted efforts at re-Catholicizing England, which included appointing a Roman Catholic king’s printer and allowing a Roman Catholic press in Oxford, ran into difficulties when censors refused to license Roman Catholic books. Nevertheless, the Crown distributed over 100,000 Catholics books in a single month, free of charge.128 Despite harsh press controls, newsworthy events, such as Monmouth’s rebellion, James’s Declaration of

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Indulgence and the trial of the seven bishops, were publicized. News and information, some accurate, some not, continued to circulate at quarter sessions and the assizes and in ale houses and coffee houses. Although prosecutions for seditious libel shut down several newsbooks, there were only four prosecutions for seditious libel during the lengthy reign of Charles II and three, including the trial of the seven bishops, under James II. The years 1688–89, however, would not prove to be a watershed for liberty of the press. Although printed newsbooks revived, licensing remained in force until 1695. News of Parliament, however, would circulate not only in licensed newsbooks but also in unlicensed accounts, newsletters, gossip and in the coffee houses that had developed over the last few decades.129

The Circulation of News and the Culture of the Coffee House The dissemination of political news and polemic cannot be fully understood without an examination of the coffee houses that provided a public venue where information could be transmitted and debate about current affairs could be conducted with relative freedom. Given the fact that for a modest charge one could read and discuss the most recent newspapers and pamphlets, it is not surprising that Jürgen Habermas identified the age of the coffee house, c. 1680 to 1730, with the emergence of the “public sphere.”130 Coffee houses began to spring up in the 1650s in Oxford and London. By 1663 at least eight could be found in London. Even the plague could not keep patrons away. By 1673 the coffee house had spread to “most cities and eminent towns throughout the nation.”131 In Cambridge scholars would repair to the coffee house after chapel, where “hours are spent in talking; and less profitable reading of newspapers, of which swarms are continually supplied from London.”132 At Oxford, “Nothing but news and the affairs of Christendom” were the staples of coffee house talk.133 In 1681 a grand jury complained that coffee houses had become places where individuals were “debating state matters and hearing news.”134 After the Oxford Parliament dissolution there were “all sorts of pamphlets and libels; one side running down the papists and upholding the dissenters, the other side crying down both, aspersing the last two houses of commons and ridiculing the proceedings . . . Publick intelligencers news abounding every day . . . filling



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town and country with notorious falsehoods.”135 The coffee houses were full of such fare. Coffee houses were thought to be social levelers attracting “A great concourse of all degrees of persons . . . from high to low.”136 It was said that any person could visit, “That great privilege of equality is only peculiar to the Golden Age, and to a coffee house.”137 “The Rules and Orders of the Coffee House,” a broadside, reported that “all are welcome thither. . . sit down together” without concern for rank.138 The coffee house was one of the few places “where people of all qualities and conditions meet . . . no distinctions of persons, but gentleman, mechanic, lord and scoundrel mix.”139 A song from the lord mayor’s show suggests the court and country, camp and navy could be found there.140 While such comments, especially those to be found in the satirical “character” genre, no doubt exaggerated the degree of social equality, coffee houses allowed more social interaction among different classes than occurred elsewhere. Some, like John Aubrey, favored the opportunity to mix and converse with those outside of his immediate circle or viewed the social mixture as yielding “the most intelligent Society,” or even an “Academy of Civility, and Free-school of Ingenuity.”141 Others were disgusted by the “lower sort” who sat “at Coffee houses” and undertook to “Judge of the Actions of great Persons.”142 Roger L’Estrange objected to its habitués acting as “judges of those councils and deliberations which they have nothing to do with at all.”143 News, domestic and foreign, was the staple of conversation. Printed newsbooks dominated the coffee house scene, but manuscript newsletters, often more frank than printed sources, could also be found in abundance. “For a penny” one could “have all the news in England, and other Countries . . . in the weekly News-books.”144 Coffee houses were “dasht with diurnals and books of news.” “He that comes often, saves Two pence a week in Gazettes, and has his News and his Coffee for the same Charge.”145 Because the coffee houses had become a “Store of Mercuries” available to multiple readers, press runs greatly underestimate readership.146 The most coveted news was political. Parliamentary news was readily available, some of it supplied covertly by a clerk of the House of Commons, some by rumor and gossip. So were the “Designs, Projects, Intrigues . . . and the cabals of the court.”147 Coffee drinkers discussed the “growth of Popery” and “French Power” and commented on the king and his ministers.148 Patrons sat all day and “discourse with all companies that come in of State Matters, . . . arraigning the judgment and discretion of their gover-

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nors, censuring all their actions, and insinuating into the ears of the people a prejudice against them.”149 It was reported that the Cabal requested that the king make “coffee-clubs” talk of humbler matters than “state affairs and interest of Kings.”150 The Dutch wars, liberty of conscience, the king’s proFrench policy, the Popish Plot trials and the Exclusion controversy were all discussed. News appeared thick and fast. “For home Intelligence, we have it Daily, and Hourly, and minutely, and half Minutely. So that there is ample provision made for divulging and publishing the Affairs of this World.” News came from “all Parts of the Earth, Dutch, Danes, and Turks, and Jews.”151 “There’s nothing done in all the world From Monarch to the Mouse, But every day and night ’tis hurl’d Into the coffee house.”152 Satirical pamphlets suggested that the coffee house denizen discussed “What hath been done, and is to do, ’Twix Holland and the King, What Articles of Peace will bee, He can precisely show; What will be good for Them or Wee, He perfectly doth know.”153 What appeared to be authentic on one day or the next often turned out to be rumor or misinformation. Some thought the coffee house to be the “Midwife of all false Intelligence.”154 The Character of a Coffee House noted, “He discovers some mysterious Intrigue of State, told him last Night by one that is Barber to the Taylor of a mighty great Courtier’s Man.” There were reports of 550 Jesuits “mounted on Dromedaries, seen by Moon-shine on Hampstead Heath” and “a terrible Design hatched by the College of Doway, to drain the narrow Seas, and bring Popery over dry-shod.” Ignorant coffee men mistook Hungary to be the home of the hungry and Morea that of the Moors.155 Though satirists had a field day with the coffee houses and their patrons, the political significance of coffee house culture was clear and sometimes feared. One commentator thought they functioned “in the Nature of a common assembly, to discourse of Matters of State, News and great Persons.” Because separate tables were sometimes provided for patrons of different interests, a character in a 1681 play could query, “Which is the Treason-table?”156 Aubrey refers to a meeting of a fairly large group of Rota-men that included Henry Neville, Major Wildman and himself as a “philosophicall, or Politicall Club, where gentlemen came at night to divert themselves with Politicall discourse.”157 Tories associated the free-wheeling conversation of the coffee houses with rebellion and the Whigs. Coffee houses were the “rendezvous of idle Pamphlets, and a Person more idly employed to read them; . . . where every



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little Fellow . . . takes upon him to transpose Affairs both in Church and State, to shew Reasons against Acts of Parliament.”158 Clarendon thought them “places where the boldest calumnies and scandals were raised, and discoursed amongst a people who knew not each other, and came together only for that communication and from thence were propagated all over the Kingdom.” He claimed that it was “generally believed that those Houses had a Charter of Privilege to speak without being in Danger” and recommended that the king “apply some Remedy” to the “growing Disease.”159 The coffee house was “a Lay Conventicle, Good-fellowship turned Puritan” or even “a Rota room.”160 In 1673 a government intelligencer informed Joseph Williamson of their “indecent, scandalous and seditious discourse.”161 Roger L’Estrange not only wrote that the Popish Plot was the “subject of every Coffee-House Discourse” but that “Coffee-Houses brew Sedition.”162 Although Tory comments were often exaggerated, Whigs did use coffee houses and taverns to collect signatures for their petitions. In 1680 Shaftesbury was charged with bringing “the King and Governours into disgrace, by frequent Clubs at Coffee-Houses and Taverns.” These “Places and Sinks of Sedition and Rebellions” were used “to breed Differences between the Two Houses of Parliament” and hatch designs like those of 1641.163 By 1681 it was being said that “most, if not all,” coffee houses were “Whiggified.”164 L’Estrange saw no difference between “Conventicle and Coffee-house” except “that the Laws allows one and not the other, . . . they are both full of Noise and Phanaticks.” “Coffee-house Statesmen” thought themselves “wiser than the Privy-Council or the sages of the Law.”165 He complained of coffee houses “furnished with News-Papers and Pamphlets . . . of personal Scandal, Schism and Treason,”166 but himself used Sam’s coffee house as the center for his propaganda efforts. Whigs, however, did not accuse the Tories of plotting in coffee houses. Not all comment was negative. Some found the coffee house “liberty of Speech” desirable. It was a place “Where men of differing judgments crowd,”167 where the people were “free and communicative, where every Man may modestly begin his Story, and propose to, or answer another, as he thinks fit.”168 John Aubrey praised the liveliness of political discussion, and thought “arguments in the Parliament House were but flat” by comparison.169 Coffee houses were occasionally defended as “a friend to monarchy,” and as venues where “the principles of a popular government at the Rota were weakened, and rendered contemptible.”170 Like alehouses and taverns, coffee houses were licensed. Efforts were periodically made to exclude politically suspect Catholics and dissenters from

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proprietorship. Uncontrolled political discussion and dissemination of domestic and foreign affairs alarmed government officials and resulted in surveillance. Clarendon suggested suppression or spies to discover those “who had talked with most license.” Secretary of State Arlington had scouts collecting information at coffee houses. However, when the attorney general was directed to prepare a proclamation for suppression, Sir William Coventry, a strong supporter of the government, surprisingly objected, arguing that coffee houses had been beneficial to Royalists during Cromwell’s time and had contributed to the Restoration in that the king’s friends at that time had “used more liberty of speech in those places” than elsewhere.171 Suppression was considered by Parliament in 1673. A proclamation for closure was issued in 1675 charging that coffee houses attracted the disaffected and produced false, malicious and scandalous reports against the king’s government. A petition advocating revocation soon followed, and the proclamation was quickly rescinded. Grateful proprietors promised to “prevent treasonable talk in their houses.”172 In 1677 the Privy Council withdrew the licenses of twenty coffee houses because customers “of mean birth and education” discussed affairs of state there. Two years later they were forbidden to receive newsletters. A Tory pamphleteer declared that the royal proclamation had successfully prevented “saucy Prying” into “Arcana Imperii” or “irreverent Reflexions of State.”173 Additional regulatory efforts followed in 1681 and 1682. During the Oxford Parliament university officials forbade scholars from patronizing coffee houses. Coffee house culture remained politically significant during the reign of James II despite the king’s order that the Middlesex justices suppress coffee houses and forbid discussion of political affairs by writing, print, speaking or listening.174 When the Bishop of London complained to the presiding judge at his trial that he did not have a copy of the indictment, Lord Jeffreys retorted that “all the coffee houses had it for a penny.”175 In 1688 a proclamation was aimed at coffee house patrons for “assuming to them a liberty” of censuring and defaming “proceedings of state.” By this time, however, such royal efforts were hopeless. William had already landed in England.176 The coffee house and coffee house conversation about news and politics were a prominent feature of English political culture, despite periodic governmental efforts to contain or suppress them. By the early eighteenth century, the Craftsman could confidently claim, “[We] are become a nation of statesmen. Our Coffee-houses and taverns are full of them.”177 While they may not have been quite the model of a civil society governed by rea-



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soned arguments, they were a venue in which political matters could be discussed, often with partisan passion. Despite continued surveillance, the coffee house had become an accepted part of political life.

Conclusion A distinct pattern emerges from the whole period. There is an acceleration in the conveyance of oral and written political news and argument, a proliferation of the means of that conveyance, most notably the multipage, periodically published newsbook, and emphatic claims of veracity for what is reported. The coffee house provided a kind of multiplier effect for the volume and velocity of available political information and opinion. Most of the communication is initiated in London but then transmitted outward. There are fluctuating and only partially effective efforts of the Crown to control this communication through licensing accompanied by Crown attempts to employ the media to its own advantage. The explosion of the news media in 1640–42 and 1679–81 provides us with some sense of what the news marketplace would have been like without government counterpressure. Throughout the period there are streams of commentary on public figures, a good deal of it defamatory and eliciting accusations of libel, both personal and seditious. There is a considerable increase in the transparency of government motives and actions, particularly those of Parliament. Whether the marked increase in the amount of political information and misinformation readily available to the public at large, or at least to the reading and politically conversing part of it, actually increased the influence of public opinion on government policy-making is difficult to determine. It might be assumed, however, that the amount of effort expended by whoever controlled government at any given movement to control or influence news reporting and commentary indicates that it was a significant factor in the politics of the day.

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chapter three

Empirical Political Description

This chapter traces the development of a neglected cluster of genres of political writing that flourished in England from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and beyond. They sought to convey political knowledge by reporting firsthand observation of political phenomena. Together they constitute one of the “ways of knowing” politics and government. Seemingly disparate, this body of writing consisted of travel accounts and instructions, diplomatic reports and natural histories. They shared a common set of categories for understanding governmental institutions and a preference for empirical description. Their approach played a considerable role in shaping the reading public’s acquisition of political knowledge. These texts are empirical in that they present observations, descriptions and characterizations of the political or governmental features of a particular locale, typically a state or kingdom. Many of these works do not conform to modern disciplinary boundaries. They might be called chorographies, cosmographies, geographies, natural histories or surveys.1 Titles such as “The Present State of . . . ,” “A Description of . . . ,” “An Account of . . . ,” “A Survey of . . .” or even “The Natural History of . . .” were prevalent. Widespread distribution of this material meant that the English were far more familiar with foreign countries than one might think if one concentrates on well-known political theorists or philosophers. Given the quantity and popularity of works in this empirical political mode throughout the early modern period and beyond, it is surprising that they have received so little scholarly attention.2 For these publications moved early modern English political culture to value empirically derived political observation organized around a topical grid applicable to all existing states.



Empirical Political Description

Although it was understood that firsthand observations were subject to error and bias, reporters aspired to provide accurate accounts of things, events and practices. The very nature of their work implied that subsequent observers would correct errors and record alterations in the conditions and institutions observed. These genres should be considered as species of the early modern “discourses of fact.”3

Origins These empirical genres were deeply indebted to the natural histories and geographical works of Pliny and Strabo, the firsthand political accounts of ancient historians and the wide-ranging reports of Herodotus that drew attention to local customs and practices.4 Pliny’s Natural History covered an enormous range of topics in addition to the flora and fauna now associated with natural history. Although it did not treat manners and customs, it did note the physical attributes of human beings and the physical aspects of place, including the climate and the seasons. It provided a description of the world, and included land masses, seas, important islands and cities, topics we are more likely to think of as belonging to geography.5 Strabo’s Geography also concerned itself with a wide range of subjects, one of which was government. For Strabo, geography informed statesmen of the positions of the continents, seas and oceans, ignorance of which resulted in military and political disaster. Geographic knowledge was essential to the “actual government of the country.” He presented forms of government and modes of life as were related to, but not determined by, climate, some being the result of social institutions and education. When Strabo turned to describing particular countries he emphasized physical description, natural resources, products, the fertility of the soil, the characteristics of various groups or tribes and a variety of manners and customs that we are more likely to treat as anthropology and ethnography as well as geography.6 The revival of the classical traditions of geography, natural history and historiography played a significant role in the shaping of Renaissance and later empirical genres. This revival began with a description of Italy by Flavio Biondo and various chorographies of German towns and was elaborated in the worldwide treatment of Ortelius. These and later empirical studies typically combined the physical description of place with information on manners, customs, buildings, trade, natural and strategic resources and government. Many included maps.

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Empirical Political Description

Travel and Political Education Many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English writers emphasize direct observation of foreign states as a means of political education. If the reading of history prepared gentlemen for public service by placing before them the experience of the past, foreign travel, properly pursued, provided informed encounters with existing states and political systems. Firsthand political observation would complement the vicarious “experience” derived from the reading of history.7 Foreign travel was considered a means of creating a politically well informed political elite, but it also created the risk of corruption through exposure to alien mores and religion. That danger might be countered by proper instruction to the traveler. Travel advice typically featured a list of topics to which travelers were to attend. These agendas did much to organize how governments were conceptualized. The Elizabethan statesman William Cecil insisted that travelers pay particular attention both to the governments of the countries visited, including their criminal and civil courts and provincial parlements, and to their principal commodities and industries. Those visiting France, for example, were to acquire knowledge of the court, especially of the king and royal family, the personnel of the Privy Council, the principal officers of state, state revenues, military and naval preparedness and the principal adherents to the reformed religion. Such information was to be recorded in a daily or weekly journal.8 Francis Bacon, similarly advised on the need to develop knowledge of the consanguinities, alliances and estates of their princes, the proportion betwixt the nobility and the magistracy, the constitutions of the courts of justice, the state of their laws . . . how the sovereignty of the king infuseth itself into all acts and ordinances . . . ; how many ways they lay impositions and taxation, and other revenues to the crown. What be the liberties and servitudes of all degrees; what disciplines and preparations for wars; what inventions for increase of traffic at home, for multiplying their commodities . . . also what good establishments to prevent the necessities and discontents of the people, to cut off suits at law and quarrels, to suppress thieves and all disorders.9

Bacon treated foreign travel as education for the young and as “experience” for the mature. Travelers should keep a diary, giving special attention to “the courts of princes” and encounters with ambassadorial secretaries that allowed travelers to “suck the experience” of the knowledgeable. Travelers



Empirical Political Description

must observe the courts of justice and ecclesiastical consistories as well as military preparedness and with subcategories of “walls and fortifications,” “havens and harbours,” shipping, navies, armories and arsenals.10 Robert Dallington, who also advised travel for “ripening in knowledge” in the “service of his countryie,” directed the traveler to cosmography, that is climate and natural resources, lakes and rivers, ports and geography, as well as provincial divisions, commodities, cities and fortifications. Under the category “governors,” he includes “law,” both fundamental and temporary, and “magistrates,” supreme and subordinate. There should also be observation and notation of the “nature and inclination,” customs and characteristics of the “governed,” or “the People.”11 If travelers were as diligent as Dallington hoped, they would compile a complete and useful description of the chief governmental institutions. Those who hoped to play a role in government were expected to be well informed on the constitutional arrangements, military matters and economies of the nations of Europe. Later seventeenth-century works followed in the same vein. Profitable Instructions; Describing what special Observations are to be taken by Travellers in all Nations, States and Countries (1633) again suggests that book learning is insufficient for those entering “on the stage of publike employment.” Personal observation of “men of several humours, factions, and countries” was essential. A complex set of topics, listed under the headings of “the Country,” “the People,” and “Policy and Government” are presented in diagrammatic form. To comprehend “Country” the traveler observed and recorded data on geographical “scituation,” topography, climate, fertility, commodities and “strength,” the last of which focused on defense and fortifications. Information collected on the “People” included population size, trade, and social divisions. The virtues, vices and revenues of the nobility, their factional affiliations and participation in government required special attention. “Policy and Government” was a broadly conceived category, comprehending civil, canon and municipal law and their “conformity with the nature of the people.” “Governors” were “sovereign,” monarchical, aristocratic, popular, or “subaltern.” Travelers should indicate whether monarchical authority was gained by succession, election or usurpation. It should be noted how the ruler “doth carry himself in administration,” a phrase comprehending the ruler’s “wisdom, his inclination to peace, war, how he is beloved or feared by the people and neighbors, his enterprises and designs, his disposition . . . his favorites, the confidence or distrust he hath in his people,” his revenues, and his friends and confederacies. The heading “the State” involved an account of those having “the managing of the state”

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or “Counsell of Estate.” These were further subdivided into “ordinary” or “extraordinary,” the former including the “Great,” “Privy,” and “Cabinet” councils, the latter, the “Estates of Parliament.” An adequate description of a Parliament required an account of the number of members, their authority and counsel, wisdom and fidelity, as well as their credit and favor with prince and people. Information on councils of finance and war and provincial governments is also to be recorded. “Justice,” civil and criminal, must be observed, and the information recorded.12 The turmoil of the mid-seventeenth century civil war and Interregnum spurred travel and travel instructions, but they remained remarkably consistent. For instance, James Howell’s Instructions and Directions for Forren Travell; Shewing [how] one may take an Exact Survey of the Kingdoms and States of Christendom again praises the firsthand “moving Academy” over vicarious or “sedentary” travel, arguing that the “most materiall use” of foreign travel was “to finde out something that may be applyable to the publique utility of one’s own country.” The traveler, before setting out, should become well versed in the topography, government and history of his own country. Knowledge of France was particularly important. Comparison of different states was recommended.13 The Restoration era brought even greater numbers of English gentlemen to the Continent and elicited new guides but familiar advice. In 1665 Edward Waterhouse’s The Gentleman’s Monitor advised those wishing to become informed about foreign governments to “discourse with their Statists, understand the Art of their Manufacturers, and Improvement of their land.” Like Howell, he insists that knowledge of “the Laws, Customs and Usages of their [own] Country,” prior to foreign exposure, was necessary to retain respect for “native English rules and practices.”14 The Gentleman’s Companion recommends meeting ambassadors and observing “Government of the State and places Civil.” The law courts must be observed, particularly the ways in which causes were pleaded, judged and determined. A daily written account of observations, especially those with potential strategic value, was necessary.15 The importance of knowledge of foreign nations was also underlined by Jean Gailhard in 1678. Although Gailhard advised regular visits to Parliament, Westminster, the Exchange and Old Bailey to gain familiarity with English institutions, equally necessary was to become familiar with the laws and governments of other nations, and it was especially important to understand the “constitutions and interest” of that “potent Monarchy France.”16 Gailhard, too, emphasized the role of travel in fitting a gentleman “for the service of his King and Country.” With firsthand knowledge a gentleman



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ought to “bring good observations and maxims that may contribute to the good order and right Government of his Nation.”17 The conventional prescriptions were echoed by the great luminaries of the late seventeenth century. Isaac Newton advised travelers to observe the policies and state of affairs, taxation, trades and commodities, fortifications and “laws and customs” as well as the “power and respect” given to the nobility and magistrates and “how far” foreign nations differed from England.18 From John Locke we hear that knowledge and familiarity with the “Laws and Fashions” of England armed the observer to learn the “Customs, Manners, Laws and Government” of other nations.19 From the midsixteenth to the eighteenth century and beyond, up-to-date political and strategic information, foreign and domestic, was central to the political education of the English political elite.

The Empirical Description of England, Scotland and Ireland Surveys or descriptions of England employed virtually the same categories as those urged on the foreign traveler in search of political education. The most important early surveys of England were William Harrison’s The Description of England and Sir Thomas Smith’s De Republica Anglorum. The former, based on personal experience, eyewitnesses and “conference . . . either at the table or secretly alone,” covered the standard chorographical topics—topography, climate, flora and fauna, language, customs, marvels, antiquities and government. Designed to provide a total picture of England, Harrison’s “description” outlined the division of the country into shires and counties, described the “degrees” of people and noted the character and authority of the High Court of Parliament, the laws and legal organization. Parliament is characterized as having “the most high and absolute power of the realm, for thereby kings and mighty princes have from time to time been deposed . . . laws either enacted or abrogated, offenders of all sorts punished, and corrupted religion either disannulled or reformed.” It is “the head and body of all the realm and the place wherein every particular person is intended to be present, if not by himself, yet by his advocate or attorney.” The procedure and functions of each house are surveyed, the role of the Crown in lawmaking described and lists provided of counties and boroughs sending members to Parliament. The law was composed of “statute law, common law, customary law and prescriptions.”20

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Unlike Harrison’s multitopic survey, Sir Thomas Smith’s De Republica Anglorum focuses on government and law. Smith, who served as both secretary of state and ambassador to France, sought to “sette” a “chart or mappe” before the reader’s eyes showing the “forme and manner of the government of England” and how it differed from contemporary European states. The English should reject ideal and “feigned” commonwealths devised by “vaine imaginations” and the “fantasies of Philosophers.” Instead they should judge which real states had taken “the righter, truer, and more commodious way to govern,” in order to be better positioned to serve prince and commonwealth and to give “counsell for the better administration” of government.21 Accurate information was superior to political speculation. Smith’s account, based on what could “be seen with eyes,” described how “England standeth and is governed at this day the xxviii of March, Anno 1565”—that is, at the time that its present state or condition had been observed. Smith outlines the monarchy, the monarch’s relation to the Privy Council, the royal prerogative and the role of the queen in the justice system. He treats of the chief legal institutions, among them Parliament, including its rules of debate and its relation to the Crown and the common law courts. Justices of the peace are discussed in terms of personnel, duties, organization, procedures and role in the criminal justice system. The best known Restoration survey of England, Edward Chamberlayne’s Angliae Notitia; or the Present State of England, was first published in 1669. Chamberlayne, too, employs the familiar chorographic grid to provide information on England’s current government and courts of justice, geography, climate, language, religion, attire and diet. Unlike Harrison and Smith, he lists current officeholders rather than describing the functions of offices and institutions. Emphasis on the immediate present and on current data meant that frequent revisions were necessary. By 1738 the eighth edition described the then-current condition of England’s trade, military strength, Crown, Parliament and courts of justice.22 The English were also interested in the political and economic conditions of Ireland and Scotland. During the civil war and Interregnum, extensive land surveys of Ireland were undertaken by William Petty, whose “great Political knowledge . . . taught the Age.”23 In addition to these surveys Petty also described the Irish government and its relationship to the English government, as well as Irish political and religious factions. He argues that politics requires “long, tedious and reiterated Observations and comparisons.”24 A publication dealing with the “present state” of Scotland contained the standard brief treatments of climate, air, soil and commodities, as well as



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a description of its constitution. Scotland is characterized as an “Independent Monarchy, and an Imperial Crown” whose “Prerogatives are great.” Property in Scotland was secured by law and the people were in possession of great “Liberties and Freedoms.” Although the author focused on the law and the constitution, like Chamberlayne, he lists important institutions and offices and their current occupants.25 This is an empiricism that particularized without any concern for analysis or comparison.

Diplomats and Empirical Political Description Many empirical accounts in the “present state” vein were the work of diplomats who had the opportunity for firsthand observation. Along with routine narrative reports of particular events and negotiation, some of them published synchronic efforts describing the “present state” of a particular country. These publications, which significantly contributed to the circulation of empirically derived information, are typically organized by the same categories as the travel advice genre—geographical features, economic conditions, political and military strength, governmental institutions, current rulers and high officials and political factions. Diplomatic reporting began as an innovation of resident ambassadors dispatched by the Italian city states and rapidly spread beyond the Italian peninsula. The best known are the Venetian relazione, initiated in 1425, that often contained a sketch of contemporary government, national characteristics, resources, industry, defenses and customs, as well as reports on the ruler, his revenues and his expenses.26 Early modern diplomats were thought to need “an observant mind” that pursued knowledge of “the position of various European states, of the principal interests which govern their action, which divide them from one another, of the diverse forms of government which prevail in different parts, and of the character of those princes, soldiers, and ministers who stand in positions of authority.” Diplomats, even more than travelers, were expected to know “the material power, revenues and the whole dominion of each prince or each republic.”27Although diplomatic reporting was well developed in England prior to 1660, we focus primarily on post-Restoration examples because it was only then that printed accounts become readily available. Publication often coincided with significant political developments in the country described and highlighted their relevance for the English.

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The Netherlands elicited firsthand accounts from the sixteenth century onward. Thomas Overbury’s “Observations, in his Travels, upon the State of the United Provinces,” recorded during the 1609 peace negotiations, begins with a depiction of the disposition of the people and the country’s physical attributes. He suggests that the remoteness of Spain led to the rise and maintenance of the Dutch state. The Netherlands is characterized as a “Free State” with a “democratical” government. Attention is given to the Council of State and the Assembly of the States, the latter likened to the English Parliament. “Care” in “government is very exact and particular” because everyone has “an immediate interest in the State.” Egalitarianism produced democracy. With republican Rome in mind, Overbury writes that the Netherlands exhibited “private poverty and public weal,” the signs of a still uncorrupted commonwealth. Like so many on-the-spot observers, he reports on the justice system, state revenues and expenses and the strengths and weaknesses of the state. Precisely because the Netherlands was a “free state” with a “democratical” government, Overbury was uncertain whether it would “subsist in peace, as it hath hitherto done in war.”28 Sir William Temple, whose diplomatic career centered on the Netherlands, associated the collection of empirical knowledge with the government’s need “to know and reflect upon the Constitution, Forces, and conjectures among their neighboring States, as well as the Factions, Humours” and the “Interest of the Subjects.”29 His treatment of the Netherlands combines an historical account of its “late Revolutions and Change” with a “Map” or description of its “State and Government.”30 Temple discussed the influence of geography and climate and comments favorably on the policy of religious toleration. He attributes the military disasters of 1672 to a false sense of security and the disloyalty of Holland’s burgomasters to the Prince of Orange.31 Temple’s Observations upon the United Provinces makes use of his secretary Aglionby’s Present State of the United Provinces, which traces the origin of the Dutch state to the desire to preserve liberty. The revolution of 1579, according to Aglionby, involved only a change in sovereignty and had not altered the state’s ancient laws and customs. Aglionby, who was interested in charting the “rise, growth, and grandeur of States and Empires,” remarked on the “marvellous progress of the little State” whose “robust and athletick” constitution “infinitely transcended all the ancient republics” and was little inferior to the “greatest Monarchs of these latter Ages.” Aglionby surveys the “State and Government” sketching its chief institutions, including the States General and the Council of State as well as the nation’s “riches” and



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“forces.” He pays particular attention to Holland’s town government and to the East and West India Companies, noting conditions that contribute to the “lasting or decay” of commonwealths. Invoking the maxim “Those states that have suffer’d least in their changes, are likely to last longest,” he concluded that because there was no Dutch domestic interest in political change there was little likelihood of dissolution.32 Publications describing France and French institutions were popular. Early examples are Robert Dallington’s 1604 The View of France, Sir Thomas Overbury’s “Observations on the State of France, 1609” and Sir George Carew’s 1609 “Relation of the State of France,” all of which combined description with political comment. Overbury, who reports France to be “flourishing with peace,” found it “the most absolute of monarchies” because the king makes war and peace, “calls and dissolves Parliaments, pardoneth, naturaliseth, ennobleth, names the value of money . . . [and] makes laws and imposes at his pleasure.” In addition to providing an assessment of the kingdom’s “strengths” and “weaknesses,” Overbury points out how seldom representative bodies met, as well as the venality of office and the corruption of civil justice. French judges were “not bound to judge according to the written Law,” and decided cases “according to the equity drawn out” of law, a practice he thought meant that judges were “without limits.”33 Royalists traveling in France during the civil war and Interregnum years contributed their observations. John Evelyn, who provides “a succinct Method” for anatomizing the French, emphasizes the importance of observing “the mysteries of their Polity.” He reports on the nature, powers and resources of the French Crown, the officers of state and the French system of taxation. His “anatomy” gives special attention to the Council of State, the parlements, military forces and fortifications and to France’s relations with other European powers.34 Peter Heylyn, another Royalist exile, dealt with a similar set of topics.35 His The Present State of France, first published in 1673, went through several editions. A translation of Nicolas Besongne’s The Present State of France, Containing a General Description of the Kingdom, said “to be had in every Shop in London,” appeared in 1687.36 Most descriptions of France included condemnations of its absolutism. Robert Molesworth’s An Account of Denmark reflected fear of Continental absolutism and radical political thinking. It is a striking example of how the empirical “Present State” genre might be linked to current political issues. Formerly envoy extraordinary to the Court of Denmark, Molesworth claims that his portrayal of the “present state” of Denmark is based on the observations of “sensible grave Persons, or what my own Knowledge and

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Experience have confirmed to be Truth.” He promises to relate the present conditions in Denmark impartially, “with the greatest exactness possible.”37 Molesworth stresses the kingdom’s former elective kingship and powerful Estates, whose crucial role vanished when Danish kings became “Absolute and Arbitrary.” This alteration resulted in arbitrary taxation, decline in property values, impoverishment of the gentry and peasant misery. Other Western European nations, once governed by elected kings, had become or were becoming “absolute and arbitrary.”38 The fate of Denmark was an object lesson for England. The Danish legal system is described at length with an eye to the defects of the English legal system. Features favorably noted are the single-volume vernacular code of law, low legal fees, efficient legal proceedings, clear jurisdictional boundaries, a salaried judiciary and a bar on removing suits from one court to another.39 His assessment echoes the Interregnum law reform program and may indicate that Molesworth hoped to revive English interest in law reform. While Molesworth’s condemnation of absolutism has often been noticed, scholars have ignored the fact that he follows the conventions of the empirical descriptive genres, providing information on royal revenues, the army, fleet and fortresses, the royal family, ministers of state and the court. Although Molesworth’s account was hardly the sole example of how the empirical “present state” genre might be combined with a political agenda, it was exceptional in the public response it provoked.40 Following the familiar grid, works by Guy Miege and Gideon Pierre­ ville, both of whom had diplomatic connections, described Denmark’s transition to absolutism more favorably. Pierreville, general secretary to the king’s minister at the court of Denmark, outlines the powers of the Crown, principal councils, provincial government, laws, Crown revenues and their sources and military strength.41 Two “Accounts of Sweden” were also published, both of which followed what had become the standard grid or list of topics.42 Poland attracted attention at a time when Polish political developments seemed relevant to the English. Bernard Connor’s report on Poland took the form of letters dedicated to important English diplomats. The letter on the “ancient state” of Poland was dedicated to Lord Dartmouth, whose “Genius” led him to inquire not only into the Government, Laws, and Characters of the several Nations you passed through, but likewise to examine nicely into their Maxims



Empirical Political Description of State, and their different Interests; and this, that by discovering the Excellency of some of their Constitutions, and Defects in others, you might likewise and Thinking Patriot, advise our own, Goodness of our Laws, and Wisdom of our Senate of which you are a member.

Connor explains how the Poles maintained “liberties, Properties and peculiar manner of Government,” as well as their opposition to “any change to the succession of kings without subjecting themselves either to a Despotic or Hereditary Monarchy.” Another letter is dedicated to the well-traveled Charles Lord Townsend, who is characterized as giving “constant application to Sciences and Politics,” especially to “maxims of State and Forms of Government.” Connor’s recurrent theme was the value of accurate political information to those engaged in government work.43 The subject of a substantial number of works, the Ottoman Empire was typically characterized as an absolute monarchy, dependent on slavery and a standing army.44 Richard Knolles’s popular The General History (1603) described the statecraft, manners and military system, and concluded with a “brief Discourse of the Greatness of the Turkish Empire.” Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary (1617) provided descriptions of the military, finances and government. Henry Marsh’s A New Survey of the Turkish Empire and Government appeared in 1633. Henry Blount’s often reprinted Voyage to the Levant (1636) described the manner, policies and government of the Turks, while Francis Osborne’s Politicall Reflections on the Government of the Turks (1656) included “maxims” governing Turkish rule. John Marsh’s New Survey of the Turkish Empire and Government . . . with their Laws, Religion and Customs, reprinted in 1663 and 1664, provided a hostile account of recent Turkish expansion along with a plea for a holy war against the Turks. Paul Rycaut’s often reprinted The Present State of the Ottoman Empire, first published in 1668 and allegedly based on embassy documents and the registers and records of the viziers, presented a “true System or Model of the Turkish Government and Religion,” along with maxims governing its policies.45 Sir Thomas Smith’s Remarks upon the manners, religion and Government of the Turks appeared in 1678. Depictions of Turkish despotism often provided a contrasting vision of English political practice. Due to difficulties of language, travel and government surveillance, little was known of Russia, though it, like Turkey, was thought to epitomize autocratic government. Giles Fletcher’s Of the Russe Commonwealth or Maner of Government utilized the typical list of topics, ranging from physical description to provincial divisions and natural resources. Fletcher reported on the chief state offices and their functions, and provided information on

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state revenues, military strength and conquered territories. The “tyrannical state” is depicted as being “without written Lawe, without common justice; save that which procedeth from their Speaking lawe,” the magistrate. Ambassador to Russia in 1588, Fletcher compares England, whose “subjects” are kept “within dutie” by “love, not by fear,” to Russia, where the emperor subjugates the nobility and people and collects “impositions” and “exactions” at will.46 Samuel Collins’s 1671 The Present State of Russia was the best English account of Russia in several generations. On the whole, because Russia was not treated as a part of Europe and, unlike Turkey, was not engaged in expansion threatening to English interests, it inspired relatively little public interest.47 Nor did the English have much firsthand knowledge of the Far East. What they learned about China they learned from French and Dutch translations. It was generally believed that China’s huge population was governed with an exceptional degree of centralization, which operated evenly and without obstacles over a vast territory. Its government was thought to be open to advice and criticism and staffed by well-qualified officials. Its stability was attributed to Chinese reverence for authority. The Japanese government was characterized as despotic, its population industrious, frugal, cruel and warlike.48 The English, however, were in no position to determine the accuracy of such descriptive treatments, and An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, which followed the standard topical pattern, was a complete fabrication.49

Geography and Political Information The “present state” genres we have thus far examined for the most part describe a single state. A “geography,” as its name suggests, was envisaged as a composite work covering the entire globe, a compilation of material derived from the reports of explorers, navigators and “present state” accounts. “Geography” thus shared many of the aims and characteristics of the present state genres and frequently offered political descriptions. Laurence Echard, who provided “Rules” for a “large and compleat Geography,” insisted that it include treatment of “The Government, shewing the Original and Fundamental constitutions, how Absolute or Limited it is, good Properties, Disease or Defect of it, with their Remedies and compared with others.” Geographers should cover topics such as military and naval forces and courts of judicature and should provide a general history of the coun-



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try, “relating all the several Governments, Sovereignties, and Revolutions that ever were.” Statesmen and politicians required information on matters of war and “all the several sorts of Government and Interests in other parts, and by the Knowledge of them is capable of correction of many Faults, and supply Defects of the matters of Policy and State in his own Country.”50 The English public, from the sixteenth century onward, was offered a variety of “geographies,” many of which were indebted to classical and humanist models. Given the need to cover the whole earth, geographies, of necessity, drew on the descriptive accounts of earlier observers.51

Empirical Political Description, Natural History and the Royal Society Having surveyed the overlapping travel and diplomatic traditions of empirical description and taken note of geography, we are in a better position to investigate the contributions of seventeenth-century naturalists and the role of the Royal Society in furthering an empirical approach to government and politics. In this connection, Bacon is an important but ambiguous figure. His “Essay on Travel” is devoid of “scientific” motivation. On the other hand, his wide-ranging natural history project, which inspired so much of the research and data collection of the Royal Society, included social as well as physical data. Baconian natural history was to be built on careful firsthand observation and its participants were to observe, collect and carefully record observations of matters of fact. Historians of political thought largely have overlooked the Royal Society’s involvement in the collection of political and economic data. From its inception the Society was committed to descriptive natural history, an enterprise encompassing the acquisition of political, economic and anthropological as well as plant and animal data. Natural history overlapped chorography, geography and the “present state” genres. The Royal Society’s efforts to gain information were systematized in a series of “articles of inquiry” that provided a set of topics or grid on which to organize observations. These topics overlapped substantially with those of chorographers and travel writers. In 1661, and again in 1664, the Society drew up “General Inquiries” to guide the description of “foreign parts.”52 Soon Thomas Sprat was claiming, albeit prematurely, that “The English have describ’d and illustrated, all parts of the Earth.”53 Society members traveling abroad were expected to contribute to the enterprise. Some of

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their reports included descriptions of political, social and economic conditions, along with observations of natural phenomena. Members of the Society with diplomatic posts were encouraged to transmit physical and sociopolitical data.54 By 1681 Robert Hooke wished to further regularize the articles of inquiry to ensure that observers would record “what is pertinent and considerable to be observ’d.”55 Sir William Petty’s “Method of Enquiring into the State of any Country” perhaps most clearly shows the virtuosi’s attention to economic and political topics. The ideal inquiry, based on firsthand observation, would include information on who held the legislative power and how jurisdictions of the courts were distributed, as well as information on agriculture, housing, population, rents and prices. “Matters of fact” relating to money, interest rates, banking and provisions for the sick and aged were to be observed and recorded. An account of the most flourishing trades, the structure of the professions, typical recreations and the pursuit of the arts and sciences would help to fill out the portrait. In keeping with the diplomatic and travel accounts for the instruction of gentlemen, Petty asked that special attention be given to current rulers, their strengths and weakness and their friends and foes. State revenues and available military resources were to be recorded, as was information concerning who was feared and envied and what alliances and conflicts existed among the powerful in the country. The names of the principal noble families and their interests were to be reported, as were the principal officers of state and reigning court beauties. Many publications dealing with the “present state” of countries conformed roughly to Petty’s method, though few would cover all the prescribed topics.56 Petty wanted more than accurate data suitably arranged. He hoped to learn “How hath the Globe of Earth been divided into Soveraintyes for the 30 last centuryes of the World, & under what formes & species of government.” It was necessary to know “the weight and power of each at this day; in People, wealth, territory, shipping, armes, money, reputations, duration, &c.” A survey of “all the practiced formes of Civill Governements . . . And their Respective durations & achievements” had not, he thought, been yet attempted, let alone completed. Petty hoped for a worldwide series of “Political Anatomyes.”57 The “political arithmetick” of Petty and John Graunt was integrated into the Royal Society’s research program. Graunt’s Natural and Political Observations explicitly associates the accurate compilation of information with both the Baconian program of the Royal Society and with policy-making necessities. “The Art of Governing and the true Politiques” required ac-



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curate, up-to-date information dealing with the “land and the hands of the Territory to be governed, according to all their intrinsick and accidental differences.” It was necessary to know a country’s “Scituation” and geography, its productive capacities and population distribution. A clear knowledge of “particulars” was essential for “good, certain, and easie government, and even to balance Parties, and factions in Church and State.”58 A multisubject, multivolume publication sponsored by several members of the Royal Society, Richard Blome’s Geographical Description of the Four Parts of the World directed travelers to observe and produce daily written accounts that would include the types of law encountered, their conformity to the nature of the people, who governs, the type of sovereign, and the mode of succession, as well as information on the character and aims of specific rulers and their relations with their subjects, favorites and the court. It was also necessary to collect data on subordinate magistrates, the administration of state business, the strength of land and sea forces and the causes and success of past wars. Observers must itemize the chief officers of state, army and navy and report on the civil and criminal law and the legal profession. Blome’s topical arrangement indicates how deeply embedded the pattern had become for conceptualizing states and their governments.59 Restoration writers producing “present state” surveys often associated their work with the Royal Society by noting their membership on the title page or in prefatory remarks. Bernard Connor, the author of History of Poland, was a member. Edward Chamberlayne, author of the Anglicae Notitia, was an original member, and his son, who continued the popular handbook, also was a member. Aglionby’s The Present State of the United Provinces was advertised as coming from “the elegant Pen of a Virtuoso of the Royal Society.” John Evelyn, an active member, wrote a description of France some years before the Society was formed. Defoe’s Tour of England, a “Natural History” in the Baconian tradition, followed many of the standard topics.60 English monarchs provided little financial support to Royal Society projects. They did, however, give the Society’s questionnaires to diplomats leaving for new posts and made diplomatic channels available to the Society’s foreign correspondents. Several issues of the Philosophical Transactions were dedicated to powerful government figures in order to publicize and cement these connections.61 The overlapping interests of government and society in political information or “intelligence” are perhaps best exemplified by Sir Joseph Williamson, the principal secretary of state, who, in this capacity, sought up-todate political and naval information from a wide variety of sources. Despite

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a busy political life, Williamson was an active member of the Society and served as its president for several years. If, for obvious reasons, diplomat members were not active participants in the Society’s experimental program largely conducted in England, their contribution to knowledge and commitment to Society objectives should not be underestimated because of infrequent attendance at meetings.

Norms of Empirical Political Reporting The various modes of early modern empirical political reporting shared norms of credibility, simplicity of style and impartiality. The most frequently mentioned was reliance on eyewitness observation and credible reports of firsthand observers, a norm shared by the natural and civil historians.62 Authors writing in the “present state” and related genres promised readers a plain writing style, because ornate and highly rhetorical styles were associated with deception and plain style with accuracy of observation.63 Diplomatic dispatches were expected to be “stripped of verbiage, preambles, and other vain an useless ornaments.”64 Petty insisted that reporters make their observations “without passion or interest, faction or party.”65 Normative statements about impartiality, however, often existed side by side with policy recommendations or pursuit of political agendas. Critics of particular travel accounts were quick to charge failures of impartiality. A substantial number of such accounts were related to current political issues, which inevitably inspired partisanship. Yet this literature was written and read under the belief that accurate, up-to-date information was important to both foreign and domestic policy initiatives. Those responsible for making and implementing foreign and military policy were supposed to be concerned with acquiring information on the offensive and defensive capabilities of foreign nations and their current political condition. Thus, even when data collection is intermixed with policy considerations, the proclaimed norm is accuracy in matters of fact.

Greatness The question of what conditions were responsible for the “greatness” of nations was closely linked to the present state genre. Such concerns had, of course, been explored by Machiavelli and by Giovanni Botero, whose vol-



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ume on greatness was translated into English in 1601. Bacon’s essay “Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates” emphasized military strength and argued that, among contemporary states, Spain best embodied the military arts and values necessary to greatness and power. Bacon also examines trade and the relations between Crown, nobility and commons as relevant to assessments of national power.66 While many, such as the author of Profitable Instructions (1633), thought “power and strength” were measured by military capabilities, increasing attention was being given to the role of trade and economic resources. The Ottoman Empire’s military strength, for instance, was seen as undermined by the general impoverishment brought about by Turkish rule.67 Considering the “greatness” of France and Holland, Petty wrote that in spite of France’s vastly greater population and territory, its strength was only three times as great because of Holland’s better geographic situation and greater trade, prosperity and sea power. He was confident that England’s wealth and strength could overtake that of both France and the Netherlands. On another occasion Petty devised “Ten Tooles making the Crown and State of England more Powerfull than any other now in Europe.”68 The contrast between Bacon’s and Petty’s generations is noteworthy. Both rely on observation and experience, but Bacon’s “experience” was to a considerable extent provided by Roman history and only modestly by current economic analysis, while Petty’s was focused on observations of the world about him. Roman experience counted for a great deal, but it was being supplemented, and for some replaced, by current observation and current experience.69

Interest Many empirically oriented writers considered something they called “interest.” Each state was thought to possess its own “interest,” though aspects of it might change over time. This approach is exemplified in The True Interest of Christian Princes by Henri, Duc de Rohan, which outlined the national interests of Spain, France, Italy and England. National interest–oriented work was also produced by Fulke Greville, John Dury, Marchamont Nedham and others. Slingsby Bethel’s The Present Interest of England (1671) emphasized the importance of trade. The Duke of Buckingham produced A Letter . . . upon Reading of a Book called The Present Interest of England Stated (1672), to which Bethel replied. The issue of England’s interest was frequently discussed during the Anglo-Dutch War, when several writers

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emphasized trade and liberty of conscience. The concept of “interest” was also employed during the English civil war as a means of arguing that this or that religious group or religious policy was in the “interest” of the entire country.70 The relative value of peace and war in the pursuit of national interest was also discussed. Thomas Sprat thought, “The arts of peace, and their improvements, must proceed in equal steps with the success of arms: the works of our citizens . . . must be equally advanced with the triumphs of our fleets or else their blood will be shed in vain; they will soon return to the same poverty, and want of trade, which they strove to avoid.”71 Others thought peace and prosperity were likely to lead to rebellion. Still others saw war and peace as parts of a cyclical process. Other publications treated “interest” somewhat differently. One characterized the country being discussed as having no distinct “interest” separate from that of its king. There were domestic as well as foreign interests. One reporter suggests that it was in the domestic interest of the Swedish Crown to preserve the government in its current state and to keep the nobility and gentry “very low,” while its foreign interest was to avoid offensive wars, keep possession of conquered lands and maintain friendly relations with France, England and Holland.72 The Practice of Diplomacy distinguished between “the general public interests of the state” and the private and personal interests of princes, ministers and favorites. Diplomats, not surprisingly, were expected to understand the “principal interest of European princes.”73 Discussions of “interest” and “greatness,” which sometimes resulted in statements of a comparative nature, were increasingly treated in terms of recently acquired information gathered by travelers, diplomats and naturalists.

The Grid and Empirical Observation Much of the literature described in this chapter both prescribed and employed a pre-existing grid or topical arrangement to organize presentations of matters of fact. One might think of the grid as a frame of reference, a taxonomy or, as Petty and Evelyn did, as an “anatomy.” This topical arrangement had a remarkable degree of consistency from the Renaissance onward and was the most salient aspect of the empirical genres of early modern political and economic observation. The broadest categories were celestial, terrestrial and subterrestrial. That portion of the terrestrial category that dealt with flora and fauna, topography and geography, easily entered into



Empirical Political Description

the notion of natural history. The portions of the grid that deal with government, customs, and social structure have been largely ignored by those interested in the history of political thought. Just like the treatments of plants or animals, governmental topics might be brief or extensive according to the interests of the reporter and the length of the report. The grid provided a conceptual apparatus for thinking about government and politics more generally. Even those travel accounts that were organized chronologically often employed the taxonomy when stopping to survey a particular political entity. The grid often employed the traditional categories of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy and absolute versus limited monarchy. But it emphasized the insertion of current, concrete and particular data on rulers, advisors, courts and councils and detailed military and naval information. And it encouraged multidimensional assessments of the strength and weakness of regimes on the basis not only of the capacity of rulers and citizenry and actual military strength but also in terms of geographic, trade and population resources. Although the traditional concern with the greatness and decay of states remains of central concern, such evaluations are increasingly seen as dependent upon data, particularly on political, military and economic data. Despite the myriad changes in political fortunes of states and the status and interests of the observers of the political and governmental scene during the early modern era, the categories by which observers examined or described what they saw remained remarkably consistent and created the rudiments of an empirical political science.

Particulars and Generalization Throughout the early modern era, those of an empirical bent, whether naturalists or political observers, emphasized the observation of particulars. Even treatments of “interest” tended to focus on the particular interests of particular states at particular times rather than on a concept of longterm “national interest.” There was some concern with “maxims” appropriate to the particular states, and a few writers associate a state’s “interest” with its maxims. Both maxims and interests were assumed to be subject to modification with changing circumstances rather than seen as independent variables. Although there are occasional statements of the desirability of comparison between states, very few actually attempted it, and those who did, did so only in a cursory manner.

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Concern with the particular also led observers to emphasize departures from the norm. If naturalists from the time of Pliny and Strabo were attracted to “marvels” and “rarities,” political and anthropological observers were similarly attracted to unusual manners, practices and institutions. This concern for the unique meant few political observers sought generalizations or maxims common to more than a single political entity. One of the few exceptions, as we have seen, was consideration of “greatness” and “strength.”

The Empirical Genres and English Political Culture Texts attempting to provide political information on the basis of eyewitness observation were eagerly sought by English buyers, and many were produced in multiple editions over considerable periods of time. One of the earliest and surely the best known contribution to the present state genre, ironically, is a work seldom if ever associated with empiricism and the truthful description of observed matters of fact. Thomas More’s description of Utopia is a matter-of-fact description of a fictional country. Raphael Hythloday, an intelligent traveler and model observer, reports his firsthand observations of a distant land, describing its geography, topography and cities, and then its manners, customs, education, economic and military institutions and political and legal arrangements. Utopia, with its utilization of what would become the increasingly familiar grid adopted by chorographers, geographers, educators, travelers, diplomats and naturalists, also mixed description with reform proposals.74 More’s Latin language work for a humanist audience highlights the role of the humanists as a bridge between classical and modern genres. The grid was a heritage of the Renaissance revival of ancient letters. The employment of the grid by educators, diplomats and Royal Society reporters suggests how aspects of the humanist interest in applied knowledge based on experience were transmitted to empirical writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Political and economic information gathering also became more directly associated with the needs of early modern governments. Diplomats were pressed for up-to-date data and their efforts occasionally resulted in publications available to nongovernmental audiences. Their efforts too made use of the grid. The data collection efforts of the Royal Society continued to employ the same categories. Government officials and “virtuosi” cooperated in expanding a growing fund of empirically derived data.



Empirical Political Description

Because this mode of data collection was so widespread over such a lengthy period, we must ask why this immense body of information and the grid on which it was organized has received so little scholarly attention. One answer is that the accumulation of political, economic, military and ethnographical data remained scattered among numerous and variously titled accounts. Only a few, such as Petty, thought in terms of an omnibus compilation of the data. Moreover, this widely scattered material was never given collective institutional scrutiny comparable to that given to flora and fauna. There was no organization whose primary interest lay in the political, social and economic realm. Nevertheless, English audiences voraciously purchased descriptive publications of all kinds. They were far more familiar with foreign countries, European and otherwise, than one might think if one concentrated on well-known political theorists or philosophers, or were primarily focused on constitutional issues. The English were not uninformed of the institutions and practices of other nations and were not limited to thinking about government and politics solely in terms of the ancient constitution or liberty versus absolutism. A vast amount of political information had become the possession of English readers by the end of the seventeenth century. While the possibility of error, bias and even deceit was recognized by observers and readers, there was considerable cultural confidence that the matters of fact described by credible observers and their most reliable informants could not only be believed but also be put to use. Current empirical information about governments was useful information that supplemented the “experience” derived from reading histories. Empirically derived political observation was an important aspect of early modern English political culture. This information, organized around a familiar topical grid, had the advantage of being applicable to all existing states, empires and colonies. However, the particularizing assumptions of this empirical endeavor did not result in either fruitful comparisons or political generalization. We should recall, however, that the accumulation of “particulars,” without the search for generalization, was characteristic of many naturalists as well. This tradition, embodied in chorographies, geographies, surveys and the literature labeled the “present state” of kingdoms and republics, did focus on countries and nations as a whole rather than on particular rulers or dynasties. Considerations of “greatness” and “interest” too put emphasis on the whole—England, France or the Netherlands rather than Elizabeth, James I or Louis XIV. Although kingship and individual monarchs are noted, they are not the primary focus of attention. This is not to say that there

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was a general shift of attention from ruler to nation but rather that the descriptive mode of national surveys as well as the great interest in mapping individual countries and regions lent themselves to conceptualization of national wholes. Other genres, the historical in particular, featured the perspective of rulers and reigns. When the English thought in terms of the history of England, they collected together works such as More’s history of Richard III, Bacon’s history of Henry VII, and Camden’s treatment of Elizabeth, which tended to focus on the actions and policies of particular rulers and their relationships with their chief advisors, other rulers and particular institutions such as Parliament. Their method was diachronic rather than synchronic. It was not that the English became more attached to nation than to monarch, but that the genres of history on the one hand and chorography and related genres on the other displayed different approaches to political life. The mode of thinking or knowing about states described here had a lengthy history of its own, and was adopted by humanist educators, diplomats and the scientific community. It was a familiar part of English political writings. Yet it lies along a vector that intersects the great books by great authors normally considered by historians of political thought at only a single point, and then in an atypically fictional version, More’s Utopia. For contemporaries it was a significant part of political thought itself in that this untheorized piecemeal way of knowing served as the basis for political understanding and political action. Its long history suggests that, along with such divisive categories or epistimes as “Renaissance humanism” and “Restoration science,” there are intellectual continuities across time and across disciplines that are as important as cultural discontinuities. The descriptive empirical tradition provided a mode of thinking about political entities for many generations and played a significant role in the way governments, naturalists, chorographers, travelers and diplomats thought about the political sphere. It must be taken into account by those interested in English political culture and the evolution of political thought and inquiry more generally.

chapter four

Historical Writing and Political Thought

It would be difficult to overestimate the role of historically framed communication in shaping English political culture. The English, European, Roman and scriptural pasts did much to shape early modern English political thinking, and particularly that of the educated classes. Central to the period were an emphasis on the value of reading history for governing elites, a canon of desired characteristics for historical writing and a hierarchy of values assigned to its various subgenres. Scholarly investigation of historiography has been extensive but has highlighted historiographical innovation rather than the conventional histories that were most widely read.

Uses and Lessons of History History played a central part in the education of the political elite because it provided praiseworthy and reprehensible examples of past events to guide present moral judgment and political action. History provided vicarious experience resulting in the political prudence necessary to those serving the state. Historians and polemicists often invoked parallels from the past as guides to evaluating royal and other conduct. Rulers were compared to Solomon or Nimrod, Augustus or Tiberius, Edward the Confessor or Richard II, these invocations immediately conjuring positive or negative assessments. There was little doubt about history’s capacity to teach. The Elizabethan humanist Thomas Wilson advised “Every good subject” to “compare the time past with the time present, and ever when [he] heareth Athens, or the

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Athenians, should remember England and Englishmen . . . that we may learn by the doings of our elders how we may deal in our own affairs, and so . . . avoid all harm that else might unawares happen to us.”1 Thomas Blundeville’s True Order and Method of Reading and Writing (1574) taught that history should be read to gather “judgment and knowledge” in order to be better equipped “to give Counsell like a most prudent Counciller in public causes, be it in matters of war or peace.”2 Similar views were expressed by Elizabethan historians William Camden and John Stowe as well as seventeenth-century historians Francis Bacon, Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Sir Robert Cotton.3 Sir Thomas North, the Elizabethan translator of Plutarch’s Lives, wrote that the reading of history augmented personal experience by allowing one to observe the “setting up of empires, the overthrow of monarchies, the rising and falling of kingdoms” without the pain or danger of actually being present. History also helped rulers become “skilful in . . . well ruling and governing.”4 Not only educators and historians made such claims. Henry Wotton believed that in the “reading of history . . . a politique should find the characters of personages and apply them to some of the Court he lives in.”5 The Elizabethan courtier-politician, the Earl of Essex, advised “above all other books be conversant in histories, for they will best instruct you in matters moral, politicke, and military.”6 Utilitarian sentiments continued to be expressed throughout the seventeenth century. Richard Braithwaite’s handbook for young gentlemen taught that reading history enabled them better to understand monarchy and that states might be “more weakned by civill broiles, than forraine warres.”7 Two of the most original political thinkers of the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes and James Harrington, despite major differences in political perspective, also emphasized the usefulness of history. Writing early in his career the absolutist Hobbes insisted that “the principall and proper worke of History” was “to instruct and enable men, by the Knowledge of actions past, to bear themselves prudently in the present, and providently towards the future.”8 The republican Harrington wrote: No man can be a politician except he be first a historian or a traveler, for except he can see what must be or what may be he is no politician. Nor if he has no knowledge in history he cannot tell what is; but he that neither knows what has been nor what is can never tell what must be nor what may be.9

Restoration writers expressed similar views. For John Evelyn history fitted one “to serve and speak in Parliaments and in councils; give us good magistrates and justice . . . in a word qualified patriots and pillars of state.”



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Historian and dramatist Sir Robert Howard indicated that history “best teach[es] by what Methods Kingdoms have been preserv’d and shaken.” John Locke believed that history provided “the true foundations of politics.” The radical political thinker Henry Neville, wrote, “Whosoever sets himself to study Politics, must do so by reading history.”10 There was no question in the minds of sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Englishmen that reading history fostered political judgment. It allowed readers to acquire sufficient competence to evaluate their rulers, their policies and their advisors. Belief in the capacity of historical learning to instruct current conduct thus helped both to create a critical mentality and to instill political confidence. Constant repetition made these views a key component in English political culture. Although sometimes annoyed or angry with what a particular historian wrote, English monarchs and their advisors and officials shared the view that historical knowledge was necessary for political success. King James I advised his son to learn the craft of kingship by reading history and then applying “bypast things to the present state.”11 Lord Burleigh encouraged William Camden to write a history of Elizabeth’s reign and gave him access to state correspondence and state records. Charles I urged Lord Herbert of Cherbury to write his Life and Reign of Henry the Eighth. George Morley’s sermon at the coronation of Charles II emphasized the importance of “the experience of former Ages as well as his own.” Kings therefore must “spend some time in Books as well as in business; especially in Histories, whereby he shall be truly and impartially inform’d how, and by what means some princes have made themselves happy and glorious, and others have made themselves miserable and infamous.” Especially important was the history of his own nation, from which he would lean “the particular temper and humour of his own Pople, and how he is to apply himself to them, to make himself honour’d and obeyed.12 England’s rulers were also concerned about the negative political potential of historical writing. Queen Elizabeth was reported to “teach her subjects in Parliament . . . [not] to make a curious inquisition among their Records, to colour any encroaching upon the sacred Circles of Monarchy.”13 James I’s apprehensions about the Society of Antiquaries, a group of lawyer-historians investigating England’s historical past, led to the Society’s demise despite the society’s rules forbidding members from meddling with matters of state and religion. Historians recognized that the writing of history, especially the history of events amenable to contemporary parallels, held dangers. Although Wil-

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liam Camden promised not to conceal things “manifest and evident,” he cautiously declared that he would interpret favorably “things doubtful” and would not pry into “things secret and abstruse.”14 Sir Walter Raleigh recognized “how dangerous it is to follow truth too near to the heel,” but nevertheless thought it “better it is that the teeth of a historian be struck out of his head for writing the truth than they remain still and rot in his jaws by feeding too much on the sweetmeats of flattery.”15 John Hayward suffered imprisonment in the Tower for his Life and Raigne of King Henrie the IIII (1599), viewed by authorities as implying criticism of Elizabeth and support for the Earl of Essex. Shortly afterward the Council ordered that “noe English histories be printed” without permission of the Privy Council. Despite Hayward’s imprisonment, his account of Henry IV was reprinted several times before the civil war, during the political turmoil of 1641 and 1642 and again in 1679 and 1681–82.16 History was popular. Large numbers of long and short histories were published.17 Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, or the Book of Martyrs, a best-seller that highlighted the Protestant martyrs of Mary’s reign, was perhaps the most widely read historical work. It treated the nation as something other than the possession of the ruler and associated English national identity with Protestantism.18 John Stow’s chronicle of London and the chronicles of Edmund Hall and Raphael Holinshed enjoyed wide circulation and were brought up to date by Stow and Richard Grafton.19 These volumes provided Shakespeare with material for his history plays. In 1608 William Fulbecke noted that “histories are now in speciall request and Accompt.”20 There were abridgements and longer works, expensive folios and cheap editions. A Mirror for Magistrates, an account of several lives in poetic form, had numerous editions between 1559 and 1620.21 Though little respected by modern historians, Richard Baker’s Chronicle of the Kings of England had nine editions during the seventeenth century.22 The anonymous writer of A Cat May Look at a King (1652) wrote because he thought that the common people could not “attend to read Chronicles.” During the Restoration inexpensive histories were marketed for popular audiences.23 Although some epitomes and abridgements may have provided little more than lists of rulers and the chief events of their reigns, they nevertheless made at least minimal knowledge widely available. Almanacs, too, frequently contained brief historical accounts or provided dated lists of great events. Personal libraries were well stocked with historical publications. Even the smallest was likely to contain Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. Sir Robert Cotton’s huge history collection was used by Sir Edward Coke, Sir Francis



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Bacon, Sir Julius Caesar and others to produce historically based political argument for audiences both in and out of Parliament.24 One example, The Forme of Government of the Kingdome of England (1642), was “published for the satisfaction of all those, that desire to know the manner and forme of the Government of the Land, and the fundamentall Lawes of the Kingdom” and to show “that the Kings of England have beene pleased usually to consult in their great Counsells . . . with their Peeres and Commons in Parliament.”25 Anthony Wood’s Restoration-era library boasted over four hundred mostly English historical items.26 In 1658 the Catalogue of the Most Vendible books in England listed some seven hundred history titles.27 Historical publications, particularly those that emphasized the usefulness of historical knowledge for participants in public life, were tilted toward a male audience since only men had opportunities for public service, but it is clear that histories were read by popular as well as elite audiences.

Genres of History and Historiographical Norms Historical writing focused on the actions of rulers and generals and the changes in political life wrought by war and peace. Antiquarian scholarship sometimes had political implications. Interest in documentary evidence gradually increased. There was a slowly growing appreciation that the actions of nonpolitical actors such as Foxe’s Protestant martyrs were worth recording. The lives of religious and other “worthies” were collected and published. In the late seventeenth century John Evelyn suggested that medals be struck to record the feats and accomplishments of sailors, inventors and scientific virtuosi, as well as the accomplishments of rulers and military heroes.28 Historical writing came in a variety of forms. Some historical works were titled histories; others chronicles, annals, chorographies, memoirs or “perfect history.” Typically narratives of major events occurring over a relatively long period of time, chronicles decreased in prestige. Annals, which recorded things year by year, often included a miscellany of events, ranging from the political to storms and natural disasters. Written from a personal vantage point, memoires were sometimes not considered “histories” but often were not easily differentiated from publications carrying the word “history” in the title. Chorographies often included brief treatments of the region’s “ancient” as well as its “present state.” Blundeville’s handbook recommended

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that historians discuss trade, public revenues, military forces and the manner of government, topics more commonly found in chorographies, along with consideration of the beginning, augmentation, decline and end of governments. Histories were also to trace princes’ lives in order to see “how things were governed under every kind of Prince, were he good or bad.”29 The most admired type, perfect history, presented an extended account of military matters and matters of state that provided lessons drawn from and explanations of the facts narrated and their causes. It was generally thought that those who had participated in events were best suited to record them. For Francis Bacon, perfect history focused on a period of time, a person worthy of mention and an “action or exploit of the nobler sort.”30 Despite Bacon’s reservations about other forms of history, many treated memorials, reports, accounts of antiquities and narratives without explanations as history. Few historians, outside the classical exemplars, were thought to have achieved “perfect history.” All agreed that historians should be truthful and impartial, though few were thought to conform to the norm. The historian was “to tell things as they were done without either augmenting or diminishing them, or swarving one iota from the truth.”31 The historian should reject “poetic fictions,” “mythic reports” and “bardish hymns.”32 “History without truth or with a mixture of falsehood degenerates into romance which may delight the fancy but will not much approve the understanding or conduct the reader into those practical and useful experiences so advantageous in the management of human affairs.”33 History was, therefore, frequently contrasted to poetry. The former dealt with the real or matters of fact, the latter with the imaginative or fictional. For some, historical examples taught “with greater weight and gravities, than the inventions and devises of the Poets: because [history] helpeth not itself with any other than with the plain truth, whereas Poetry does commonly enrich things commending them above” their worth.34 Others thought the reverse because historical actors and events often did not provide appropriate moral examples. In poetry, virtue could always triumph.35 Although Bacon would attribute history and poetry to different parts of the mind, the demarcation was not always so clear in practice. The relationships between history and the historical drama and between history and poetry will be discussed in later chapters. Whether or not historians might invent fictional or “feigned orations” to provide verisimilitude was debated, with sixteenth-century historians more likely to permit the invented speech than their seventeenth-century successors.36



Historical Writing and Political Thought

Distinctions between history and other discourses of fact were particularly difficult to pin down when historians dealt with recent events. Whatever their actual practice, both news writers and historians promised to report matters of fact faithfully. Historians writing on the civil war used newsbooks as source material. Heath’s Brief Chronicles of the Late Intestine War (1681) was criticized for being “mostly compiled from the lying pamphlets, and all sorts of news-books.”37 Historical writing and the work of precedent-seeking lawyers also overlapped. Searching the English past for supportive historical precedents was common for both lawyers and nonlawyers. Historical precedents were sought by those who supported monarchical authority over that of Parliament and by those seeking to show that parliaments existed prior to the Norman Conquest. Historians often distinguished themselves from the lawyers, suggesting that lawyers were necessarily advocates of a cause and a party while they were impartial. Dryden denounced historians who acted not as “historians of an Action but Lawyers of a party.” Such historians, he thought, should provide a prologue, saying, “I am for the Plaintiff, or I am for the Defendant.”38 Some historians thought it necessary to deal with causation; others wished only to record “matters of fact.” Bacon, for example, thought that the “true office of History” was to “represent the events themselves . . . and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon, to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgment.”39 Those who discussed causation often referred to the personal characteristics of political actors, providing a somewhat psychological account. The most frequently invoked form of causation was divine providence, it being widely believed that God intervened to reward or punish good and bad behavior of both individuals and nations. Foxe’s Acts and Monuments provided an account of God’s actions, showing “manifold examples and experiments” of his “great mercies and judgments in preserving the church, in overthrowing tyrants, in altering states and kingdoms.”40 Edmund Bolton was not unusual in treating history as a record of God’s assistance, disappointments and overruling in human affairs.41

The English Past: From Saxons to Normans England’s medieval past figured largely in political discourse. Of particular importance was the concept of the “ancient constitution.” Reference to the “ancient constitution” signified the belief that the nature and character

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of England’s most important institutions, the monarchy, Parliament, and the common law, took shape in the past and that their past should inform current evaluations of them. Many political writers and speakers utilized the real or imagined characteristics of Saxon kingship and legal institutions and the consequences of the Norman Conquest to support views of England’s current constitution. The concept of England’s “ancient constitution” has received a good deal of attention, first in J. G. A. Pocock’s seminal study, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, and subsequently in the investigations of Glenn Burgess, Corrine Comstock Weston, Janelle Greenberg, Johan Sommerville and others.42 Pocock described a “common law mind” epitomized by Sir Edward Coke that emphasized the continuity between Anglo-Saxon and Norman law, thus blunting the Saxon-Norman divide. English law and government were held to have existed substantially unchanged from the beginning of time. For Coke, the “ancient law of England” was independent of monarchical will.43 The common law mind is characterized as conservative and smug, suspicious of other legal forms and traditions. Yet Pocock also drew attention to the new understanding of feudal tenures introduced by Henry Spelman and then Robert Brady that underlined the break between Saxon and Norman law. Glenn Burgess and others have criticized and extended Pocock’s research to show that many English lawyers were less insular than Pocock suggested and recognized change in English law including the legal repercussions of the Norman Conquest. Although Burgess suggested that Coke’s view of an unchanging immemorial law was atypical, he, like Pocock, emphasized the ways in which the “language” of the common law shaped political discourse. Janelle Greenberg and Corinne Comstock Weston have extended this line of research, pointing to the revolutionary potential of invocations of an ancient constitution. The Saxon king Edward could be portrayed as an elected king and founder of the common law who excised obsolete laws and codified the rest with the help of Parliament. Until 1688 English monarchs promised to keep the laws of Edward the Confessor. The nature of the Norman Conquest was central to the political discussion of the time. At issue was whether the Conquest was accompanied by a complete revamping of the powers of the monarch or whether Norman practices were fused with Saxon law, providing unbroken continuity between the Saxon and Norman regimes. Did the Normans introduce a new legal regime based on feudal tenures or agree to the previous Saxon legal regime? Was William really a conqueror? If so, did William and his succes-



Historical Writing and Political Thought

sors rule as conquerors, leaving later monarchs free to impose law at will? If King William agreed to accept the law of the Saxons, he and successive monarchs might be viewed as being bound by law. Some of these politically loaded historical questions were discussed by the Society of Antiquaries. William Hakewill argued that the Normans had altered Saxon laws, and Sir Henry Spelman was among the first to note the introduction of feudal tenures at the time of the Conquest and their subsequent importance for English law. William Lambarde’s 1568 Archaionomia provided access to some aspects of Anglo-Saxon laws. Competing views of Saxon and Norman law and polities increasingly found their way outside antiquarian circles and into the political arena. James I invoked quite a different view of the nature and evolution of English law from Coke’s vision of pre- and post-Norman continuity. James argued that England’s laws dated from the time of the Conquest and stressed that kings not judges made laws.44 Samuel Daniel’s verse history viewed the Norman Conquest as a break with the past, signaling the introduction of Norman customs and the beginnings of the common law. Speaking in the House of Commons in 1610, Thomas Hedley argued that pre-Norman law was immutable and immemorial.45 John Selden characterized the ancient constitution as a mixed monarchy in which monarchy, nobility, clergy and the representatives of the people had shared sovereignty from the very beginning. He acknowledged that the Norman Conquest was indeed a conquest that introduced feudal law, but argued that this feudal law had blended with Saxon customs.46 John Hayward argued that William was not a conqueror because he had a plausible pretense of title to the Crown. By the 1620s images of the Saxon and Norman past and their relationship to the common law were closely linked to competing political views of law. During the 1628 debate on the Petition of Right one speaker announced, “There are the plain footsteps of the Laws in the Government of the Saxons” that had outlived the Conquest.47 During the debates John Pym argued that William conquered the kingdom but not the law.48 On the other side, Peter Heylyn, who believed that “the power of making laws . . . is properly and legally in the King alone,” insisted that William had become king by conquest. “His Sword was then the Scepter, and his will the Law.” The Crown, therefore, had no need for an act of Parliament to make law.49 The political implications of conquest reemerged after the death of Charles I. In 1650 Mercurius Politicus argued that the chronicles showed that the power of the sword and conquest were the foundations of all titles to government,50 a position used to support the new Commonwealth re-

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gime. The vicissitudes befalling Nathaniel Bacon’s Historical and Political Discourse of the Laws and Government of England (1647–51) suggest how easily historical writing and politics were intertwined. Bacon, a member of Parliament, referred to the debate over whether Charles I as “Successor to the Norman Conquerour” exercised “arbitrary rule” over his subject. He noted that “some mens Pens of late” were denying the “Commons ancient Right in the Legislative powers; others, even to annul the Right both of Lords and Commons therein.” A Restoration reprinting alleged that many again “endeavoured to advance the Prerogative beyond its just bounds.” Still another printing followed due to great demand, scarcity and high price. Now, however, the government prosecuted the publisher as well as seizing and burning many copies. The book was published yet again in 1682 after the licensing act had expired, and it “met with a new Persecution, . . . the Prerogative then getting above the Law.”51 The Norman Conquest was featured in Whig and Tory polemics. The Whig Argumentum Anti-Normannicum argued that William had never made “an Absolute Conquest, abolished English laws nor taken away the estates of the English.” The volume’s frontispiece depicts William accepting the scepter and the laws of St. Edward from Britannia and promising not to perform arbitrary or illegal acts “under pretense of Prerogative Royal” nor to “pretend to any Absolute or Despotical Powers over the Lives, Liberties and Estates” of his subjects.52 The concept of a “Norman Yoke,” which suggested the introduction of rule by a tyrant or at least rule by will and/or the introduction of unjust laws, provided radicals of the civil war era with material to attack existing political and legal institutions. Midcentury radicals looked to an idealized Saxon past for a model of kingship limited by law and as a repository of the rights of Englishmen. John Hare’s St. Edward’s Ghost: or Anti-Normanism (1637) describes Normanism as an “alien yoke . . . unsuitable to the dignity or tolerable to sprit of this nation” and argues for the restoration of the laws of Edward the Confessor.53 Levellers hoped to recover lost Saxon rights and end “Norman bondage.”54 John Lilburne advocated eliminating the centralized justice of the Norman kings and their successors and restoring the power of local juries and local courts along Saxon lines. The radical midcentury law reform movement was fueled by anti-Normanism.55 The radical vision of an idealized Saxon past and a malevolent Normanism was rejected both by those who insisted on continuity of law and institutions and by such figures as Colonel Ireton who insisted that there was no evidence to suggest what the ancient constitution had actually been. Radicals



Historical Writing and Political Thought

then seemed to shift from arguments based on history to those based on natural rights. The implications of the Conquest continued to be studied and debated during the Restoration era by those seeking historical justification for their vision of the proper relationship between king and Parliament. Sir Matthew Hale, the most respected jurist of the Restoration era, wished to “wipe off that false Imputation upon our Laws, as if they were the Fruit or Effect of a Conquest, or carried in them the Badge of Servitude, the Will of the Conqueror.” William had not been a conqueror, having succeeded to Harold’s crown, and he did not alter or impose law “per Modum Conquestus, or Jure Belli.”56 Norman laws were not binding until “received and authoritatively engrafted unto the Law of England.”57 Historical argument, or what John Phillip Reid has aptly called “forensic history,” was also brought to bear on discussions of the powers of Parliament,58 particularly the question of whether or not parliaments had existed before the Conquest. If Parliament had existed in Saxon times it was a necessary part of the constitution. If it had been created by the Normans, it might exist at the discretion of a Crown exercising the powers of a conqueror. In 1561 the House of Commons imprisoned one of its members for denying the immemorial antiquity of the House of Commons. Speaking before the House of Commons, Sir Edward Coke insisted that Parliament dated from Anglo-Saxon times. In 1641 Parliament arranged for the publication of a fourteenth-century description of the holding of a Saxon Parliament.59 The question of when the Commons were first called to Parliament was treated in a proparliamentary work of 1642.60 In 1658 William Prynne vociferously argued that the members of the House of Lords “sate antiently” many hundreds of years before the Conquest.” William Petyt, William Atwood and Sir Robert Atkyns were active participants on behalf of the Whigs, offering a standard litany of arguments against the “innovating” historians and writers who dated the origin of the House of Commons from the reign of Henry III.61 Tories often argued that Parliament had no legal basis independent of the Crown.62 Magna Carta became an icon for those asserting that kings were bound by law.63 The document, however, was variously interpreted, either as embodying Saxon liberties and the laws of Edward, which had only been confirmed by King John, or, alternatively, as Norman liberties recognized by the king. James I insisted that it had been granted by the Crown under duress in the context of an unjust rebellion.64 Magna Carta played a central role in the 1627 case involving the imprisonment of the Five Knights. It was

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used by the defense to deny the legitimacy of discretionary imprisonment by the Crown. The prosecution denied that it contained guarantees against such confinement. The two sides disputed the meaning of the lex terrae clause of Magna Carta and its relationship to the concept of “due process of law.”65 In debates leading up to the Petition of Right the following year, Magna Carta was again used to support claims of ancient liberties.66 Feudal rights thus were transformed into a general charter of liberties.

Post-Norman Conquest History Some reigns and periods were more relevant to political discourse and political ideology than others. The reign of Henry III became relevant during the civil war and Restoration. Sir John Cotton published A Short View Of the Reign of King Henry III in 1627, detailing Henry’s conflicts with subjects and overassertive parliaments and his vigorous reforms. While it is unclear to what extent Cotton’s account was intended as a lesson for Charles I, he was nearly prosecuted because his work was seen as “a parallel for these Times.”67 Later editions appeared in 1641, 1642, 1679 and 1681, all politically tumultuous years. Only a year after its first publication, Cotton was urging Parliament to remedy grievances and reform the royal finances.68 Both Royalists and parliamentarians purported to draw instruction from Henry III’s reign.69 The deposition of Richard II and the subsequent rule of Henry IV were often deployed in political debate. Those who espoused the divine nature of kingship depicted the deposition as an execrable act because Richard had been an anointed king.70 Those favoring a limited or contractual monarchy presented the deposition and replacement of one monarch by another as sometimes legitimate. For those who deplored the deposition, Henry was a wicked usurper responsible for the death of an anointed king. For those with a contractual or consensual view of kingship who emphasized cooperation between Crown and Parliament, Henry IV had rescued England from tyranny. Yet there remained an ambivalence about Henry IV, who was simultaneously a successful prince and a rebel against the “lord’s anointed” responsible for the civil wars that subsequently plagued the country. John Hayward suffered as the result of his The Life and Raigne of King Henry IIII (1599) because he was thought to have equated Richard II to Elizabeth. He was examined in Star Chamber by Sir Edward Coke, who indicated that he had chosen a “story 200 years old . . . intending the appli-



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cation of it to this time.”71 Several treatments of Richard II appeared in the early 1640s when Parliament and king were at loggerheads.72 The Life and Death of Richard the Second (1642) explained that Richard had been deposed “by reason of his not regarding the councell of the sage and wise of His Kingdom but followed the advice of wicked and lewd Councell.”73 A more ominous lesson was offered in 1648 when Parliament was castigated for not calling Charles to account as parliaments had Edward II and Richard II. History was said to provide ample precedents for the deposition of the current king. Richard’s deposition became relevant again during the reign of Charles II, when worry about the Duke of York’s Catholicism gave rise to efforts to exclude him from the succession, and again at the departure of James II in 1688. Sir Robert Howard used the depositions of Edward II and Richard II to argue that their arbitrary designs and policies were being repeated during the latter part of Charles II’s and the early part of James II’s reigns. Edward II and Richard II had “forfeited the Trust” of the people and had been deposed by their representatives.74 Knowledge that England had deposed earlier kings was widespread. Negative treatments of Richard II and later Richard III often took the form of a dichotomized classification of the “good king” who cares about his people and “the tyrant” who does not and pursues a variety of villainous activities and policies. The habit of using parallels meant that an account of an earlier “tyrant” might easily be taken as commentary on the current ruler. It was not difficult for critics of Charles I or Oliver Cromwell to use historical references to characterize them as tyrants.75 Richard III, the last of the Yorkist kings, was depicted as the epitome of the tyrant. Sir Thomas More’s early-sixteenth-century history of a physically and mentally deformed ruler indelibly marked him as the worst of kings. Shakespeare’s Richard III brought More’s characterization to the stage. The play was reprinted at least eight times before 1635, making the portrayal available to readers as well as playgoers. William Martyn’s portrayal of the “wicked and bloudy tyrant” reinforced More’s characterization.76 The civil wars between Yorkists and Lancastrians became known through the popular works of Edward Hall, Raphael Holinshed and Samuel Daniels. The baleful effects of the civil wars they described helped to establish the idea of the Tudors as rescuers from civil strife.77 Although these works expressed a positive view of the Tudors, the Privy Council required some changes in Holinshed’s chronicle before permitting its sale. These and later accounts of the late medieval civil wars were used to warn of the undesir-

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able effects of civil war and to blame those responsible for the mid-seventeenth-century upheavals. Historical treatments of more recent monarchs were less directly applicable to current politics. Francis Bacon’s History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh depicts a shrewd, cautious, not-much-loved monarch but did not offer specific lessons. Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Life and Raigne of Henry the Eighth, although encouraged by Charles I, did not depict Henry as a model monarch.78 Treatments of Mary Tudor were typically accompanied by denunciations of Roman Catholicism and of Spain. Mary, Queen of Scots, who claimed to be her successor, received hostile treatment. A brief history of the life of Mary Queen of Scots appeared in 1681 when the dangers of a popish succession were again aired.79 From Foxe onward, treatments of Elizabeth underlined the view that England was a Protestant nation under God’s protection. William Camden’s The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth was laudatory.80 For Francis Bacon Elizabeth was “the Pattern of Princes.”81 Though frequently criticized during her lifetime, after her death Elizabeth became a heroic figure “of famous memory” whose example was frequently used to criticize her successors. Parliamentary historian Thomas May treated Queen Elizabeth as a model monarch who had maintained “The right use of her subjects’ hearts, hands and purses in a parliamentary way.” May contrasted Elizabeth with James I and Charles I, who had drawn England into a “calamitous and consuming” war.82 Charles I and his defenders responded by emphasizing continuity between the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline regimes. Although Elizabeth was generally ignored during the commonwealth period, Nathaniel Bacon presented her positively but suggested that Elizabeth realized that her authority depended on parliamentary support. Francis Osborne’s Cromwellian era Historical Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James contrasted her moderation and frequent parliaments with early Stuart high-handedness.83 During the Restoration Elizabethan history was interpreted according to the interpreter’s political orientation. For some, Charles II was the second Elizabeth. Charles II himself viewed Elizabeth as the embodiment of absolute authority and, like his father, James I, emphasized the continuity between Elizabethan and Stuart rule. Others contrasted her moderation with the king’s overreaching. The Royalist Duke of Newcastle II viewed Elizabeth as “the beste presedent for Englandes Government” and a practical model for Charles II. He characterized her as an absolute monarch, head of state as well as of the church, the military and the law courts. She



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had been above the law and had retrenched parliamentary liberties—quite a different Elizabeth from that of May or Osborne. The moderate constitutional Royalist Clarendon also viewed Elizabeth as a model for the restored monarchy, but his Elizabeth, unlike Newcastle’s, was a mediator who maintained law and respected parliamentary privileges.84 For Thomas Sprat, Elizabeth’s reign was “triumphant, peaceable at home, and glorious abroad.” In her days “the Reformation was settled, commerce was establish’d and Navigation advanc’d.”85 Elizabeth’s image was redrawn yet again during the intensely partisan 1670s and 1680s. For those fearing popish plots and the revival of popery she became an antipapist heroine, her accession day being celebrated with antipapist speeches and pope burnings. A pope burning procession of 1679 included a statue of Elizabeth along with banners reading “Magna Carta” and “Protestant Religion.” When the town corporation ceased to be in Whig hands, Elizabeth Day pageants were forbidden.86 Accounts of James I’s and Charles I’s reigns were also utilized by later polemicists. James was criticized for his divine right theories of kingship, his views of the law, pacific policies, lenience to papists, the Spanish match and his dealings with Parliament.87 Some years later, however, Thomas Sprat applauded his reign, as “happy in all the benefits of peace.”88 As Charles I and Oliver Cromwell gradually became historical figures rather than contemporaries, their images became attached to partisan ideologies and polemic. Some portrayed Charles I as a tyrant, or the subverter of English law and English Protestantism, while for others he was a martyr who valiantly stood by the English church and the constitution. Peter Heylyn’s pro-Charles Observations on the Historie of the Reign of King Charles was written to rectify misguided critical treatments of the king.89 Cromwell was depicted as a tyrant by both disappointed republicans and apologists for the Restoration. Explanations of the midcentury civil wars were informed by partisanship. As Thomas Fuller observed, those who “wrote in or since our civil wars are seldom apprehended truly and candidly save of such of their own persuasion.”90 Most accounts and explanations can, without difficulty, be categorized as Royalist or parliamentarian or later, Tory or Whig.91 Most historical commentary focused on the character of the key participants. Only rarely did those seeking to explain the midcentury upheavals look back as far as the reign of Elizabeth or seek structural causes. Those with parliamentarian sympathies typically focused on Charles and his ministers or, less often, on James I or the Duke of Buckingham. The tradition

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of placing blame on evil advisors proved useful to those who wished to avoid putting too much blame on the king. In one account Strafford was the “arch traitor” who “had well nigh stabbed the state to the Heart.”92 Others placed blame on Henrietta Maria. Still others emphasized that the war had been fought to defend the law, liberties and Parliament. Royalist accounts such as that of Sir William Dugdale frequently denounced the ambitions of individuals such as John Pym or factional groups, suggesting that they had used the “cloak of religion” to hide their selfish ambitions.93 William Lilly thought the imposition of the book of Common Prayer on Scotland was the sole cause “of all the miseries and wars” in both England and Scotland.94 Clarendon sought “the grounds, circumstances and artifices of this Rebellion” in the very recent past. He blamed both conspirators and Puritan clergymen, who spread “strange wildfire among the people.”95 Thomas Sprat thought history would show “a full view of the miseries, that attended rebellion” and “better means to preserve . . . obedience.”96 The most interesting explanation was that of James Harrington, who traced the causes of the civil war to the social and economic changes of the early Tudor era when a massive transformation of land ownership weakened the aristocracy and put greater political clout into the hands of the landed gentry. It was the dissolution of the government that had caused the war, “not the War the dissolution of the government.” But Harrington also pointed to a prince “stiff in disputes” who received “unhappy encouragement from his clergy.”97 Thomas Hobbes thought the rebellion had been fostered by reading books “of Policy, and Histories of the ancient Greeks and Romans.”98 Some years later he attributed the “core of the rebellion” to the seditious ideas taught at the universities. He also blamed parliamentarians with views on mixed government and seditious ministers.99 Charles II attributed the “late rebellion” to “the exhorbitant Liberty of the Press.”100 Intermixture of historical narrative and political polemic was common. One of the most influential was Andrew Marvell’s Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government, a pamphlet presenting a “naked narrative” of a conspiracy to turn English government into a tyranny. His account was in fact a potent attack on royal policy, an attempt to promote fear of its consequences and a defense of the tradition of mixed monarchy.101 Those attempting to arouse fears of popish plots printed histories of Mary’s reign or the Gunpowder Plot. Tories argued that Whigs desired to repeat the upheavals of the civil war and Interregnum. The phrase “1641 is come again” could be found in many Restoration treatments of the civil war.



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Document-oriented Restoration historians were no less enmeshed in political controversy. John Rushworth’s Historical Collections (1659) was designed to show “the true causes, the rise and growths of our late miseries.”102 The Royalist answer to Rushworth, John Nalson’s Impartial Collections of the Great Affairs of State, was intended to demonstrate the innocence of the government and vindicate it from those notorious detractions and calumnies which some factious and turbulent spirits who have had all along designed to subvert the establishment both of Church and State persuading the nation of strange designs to introduce arbitrary government and re-establish popery. . . . [T]he truth is . . . that these popular bugbears were only the contrivance of the antimonarchical and schismatical faction to draw in a party, to enable them to carry on their own wicked designs, and of at least reducing the monarchy to an impotent Venetian seigniory, and utterly to extirpate the most apostolical government of episcopacy and set up the anarchy of Toleration and Liberty of Conscience.103

Nalson believed that nothing had harmed Charles I more than “the paper bullets of the Press” and that those currently sloganizing on behalf of Parliament were the same people who in the past had “betrayed us into the most deplorable shipwreck that ever England saw.” The documents he provided would counter such “pretences to maintain Liberty, Property, Protestant religion, and Privileges of Parliament.”104 Reprinting of older works was also put to political use. Both Catholic works such as the Jesuit Robert Parson’s A Conference about the next Succession to the Crown of England (1598) and earlier anti-Catholic works were reprinted between 1678 and 1682 to underline the anti-Catholic themes in Whig polemics during the Popish Plot and Exclusion era. The English past, distant and recent, was a politicized past, a past deployed to defend preferred constitutional arrangements and conceptions of English law and to assign responsibility for the disasters of civil war and rebellion.

Ecclesiastical History The history of the Church of England was closely tied to the history of the nation and the English sense of identity and, like civil history, was politically engaged.105 Largely written by Anglicans, it was used to justify the break from Rome, to defend the church from the charge of novelty and to affirm the close relationship between church and state. It leaned in the

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direction of Erastianism, justifying the role of king as head of the church. Especially prominent were efforts to show that the church had had an independent existence before Augustine came to England. It was the Roman, not the English, church that had departed from the path of primitive Christianity. Differing views of what the character of the English church should be were often reflected in the way its past was presented. Anglicans and Puritans, high churchmen, latitudinarians and dissenters produced recognizably different histories. Ecclesiastical history and anti–Roman Catholic polemic were inextricably intertwined. The separation from Rome itself was supported by history. In 1534 the Act in Restraint of Appeals justified its action by “divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles.”106 Most influential in shaping the English sense of itself as a Protestant people was Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563). His account of the “the renewing of the old aucient Church of Christ,” the sufferings of persecuted Protestants and Elizabeth as a divine instrument to further the reformation of the church could be found in most churches and many homes.107 Archbishop Parker encouraged “diligent search for such writings of historye, and other monuments of antiqities, as might reveale unto us what hath ben the state of our church in England.”108 For Parker the Elizabethan church settlement was a return to the original English church. Among the best known histories were James Ussher’s erudite Britannicarum ecclesiarum antiquitates (1637), which attempted to find a primitive Protestant episcopal church independent from Rome, and Thomas Fuller’s The Church History of Britain (1655). Fuller’s history was attacked by Peter Heylyn, who found the account too favorable to Puritan nonconformists. Heylyn’s Ecclesia Restaurata or The History of the Reformation of the Church of England emphasized the divine origin of episcopacy and argued for an enhanced role of Convocation.109 This account was in turn challenged by Gilbert Burnet’s History of the Reformation, most of which was published during the Popish Plot and Exclusion era. The latitudinarian Burnet highlighted the Royal Supremacy and the role of Parliament in shaping England’s ecclesiastical polity.110 Antipapist sentiment fueled several latitudinarian, apologetic histories. William Lloyd’s Historical Account of Church Government vindicated an English church independent from Rome governed by bishops, while Edward Stillingfleet’s Origines Britannicae, which defended Lloyd’s account, traced the English church to the conversion of the Saxons.111 John Selden’s politically engaged History of Tithes (1618) provided a refutation of the contentious claim that the payments that supported the



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clergy were of divine right. It was designed not to “shew barely what hath been . . . but to give other light to the Practice and doubts of the present.” Selden’s study was sufficiently inflammatory for the king to forbid Selden to answer his many critics.112

The Roman Past The history of Rome played a significant role in shaping English political thinking throughout the early modern era. While educating boys in the Latin language and classical texts, humanist grammar school teachers inculcated the values of a politically active life. The humanist curriculum that helped to shift the universities from a largely clerical orientation to one also dedicated to educating young gentlemen gave history and especially Roman history an important place. The educated classes, both lay and clerical, thus became familiar with Caesar and company, emperors admirable and despicable. They learned of the expulsion of the Tarquins, the establishment of the Roman republic, republican institutions such as the Senate and the Tribunes, Rome’s social conflicts and civil wars, its military prowess and expansion and the decline of Roman power. Familiarity with the Roman past was enhanced by the practice of commonplacing, in which both schoolboys and adults collected information and quotations from their reading according to subject matter and topic. It was thus a simple matter to retrieve what a given Roman historian or other writer had to say about a particular subject. Commonplace books provided a readily available source of examples, quotations and allusions for student compositions, personal reflection, parliamentary speeches and polemical tracts. Greek historians were less well known than Latin, but the much admired Thucydides and Polybius must be noted because of their political import. Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War was translated by Thomas Hobbes. Polybius was a key figure in the transmission of the Greek classification of good and bad versions of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy and the theory of mixed government. Applied to England, this theory was treated as calling for a combination of monarch, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The theory was often utilized by those opposed to absolute monarchy and was criticized by absolutists and by Hobbes. Polybius was also important for transmitting the idea of historical cycles in which states had a beginning, a prime and a decay.

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The first chairs of history at Oxford and Cambridge were devoted to Roman history, which taught the evils of sedition, the poor end of rebels and the presence of God in history. Readers of history were to collect historical examples and then develop precepts from them.113 Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, founder of the Cambridge chair, expected the chairholder to focus on the Annales of Tacitus, an account sharply critical of the Roman emperors. The first lecture, delivered in 1627 by Isaac Dorislaus, was embroiled in controversy. Dorislaus emphasized limits on monarchical authority that, when exceeded, gave the people the right to resist. The numerous translations of the Roman historians suggest a substantial audience with insufficient Latin proficiency to read them easily in the original. Despite the many translation efforts, in the middle of the seventeenth century Marchamont Nedham still stressed the need to uncover works too “long locked up” in Latin.114 There was a lively market in the translations of Caesar’s writings throughout the early modern era. Sallust, who focused on the Cataline conspiracy and the enervating influence of wealth and corruption and emphasized the decline from ancient Roman republican virtue and frugality, was widely read. North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives, dedicated to the queen, promised that her subjects would be taught reverence, zeal and devotion to princes. Livy’s moralizing treatment of republican Rome, available in English from 1589, was reprinted several times. Machiavelli’s well-known commentary on Livy brought the questions of citizen armies, mixed constitutions and the preference for war over peace to widespread public attention. Gabriel Harvey read, reread and annotated his Livy over several decades as a guide to political action and frequently discussed Livy with others to better understand “the forms of state, the conditions of person, and the qualities of actions.” He read Livy in the context of the views of Aristotle, Bodin, Althusius and Lipsius because “it is fitting for prudent men to make strenuous efforts to use whatever sheds light on politics.”115 Like Harvey, Francis Bacon and John Locke thought Livy’s discourses were the “fittest” to instruct in politics.116 Tacitus was widely read. Translation began in 1591 with Sir Henry Savile, who in The Ende of Nero and Beginning of Galba, taught “in Galba” you “maiest learne, that a good Prince governed by evill ministers is as dangerous as if hee were evill himself.” Readers would learn about “the calamities that follow civil warres, where lawes lye asleepe, and all things are iudged’d by the sworde.” For Savile it was “more tolerable” to be governed by “one tyrannie then manie, and better to live where nothing then when al things



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were lawful.”117 Bacon was influenced by Tacitus, as was historian John Hayward who, like Bacon, was a member of the circle of the Earl of Essex. When Hayward was called to answer for the allegedly treasonous implications of his history of Henry IV, Bacon defended him, saying that he had simply borrowed from Tacitus. Tacitus was often cited by those who were critical of the English court and analogized the corruptions of Tiberius and his favorite Sejanus to their own era.118 Historian Edmund Bolton, who wished to refute Tacitus’ negative portrayal of Tiberius, complained that Tacitus had been too “vehement a lover of [the] popular partie” and “zealous for Tyrannicide.”119 Lucan’s Pharsalia or The Civil Warres of Rome was translated several times, first by Christopher Marlowe, again in 1614 by Sir Arthur Gorges and still again in 1627 by Thomas May. Some modern scholars have treated Lucan’s Pharsalia as favoring a republic because of its hostile treatment of the tyrant Nero and his corrupt court, but Charles I, to whom May dedicated his translation, does not appear to have raised any objections. Nevertheless, Lucan was frequently associated at the time with hostility to tyrannical government. Given the number of translations and condensations, we are safe in assuming that moderately educated males were likely to have had at least a passing familiarity with the Roman past. Of course some figures were better known than others, and some lent themselves to contemporary political uses more easily than others. Julius Caesar was both the best known and the most controversial. Although his military accomplishments were widely admired, Caesar’s responsibility for the demise of the republic was seen differently in different quarters. Opinion was divided as to whether his assassins, Brutus and Cassius, should be viewed as republican heroes or as ambitious and jealous malcontents. The popular martial figure Prince Henry was associated with Julius Caesar in a positive way, and his father, James I, viewed Caesar as a good monarch overthrown by treacherous subjects. Bacon placed him among the founders of states, lawgivers and liberators.120 In 1642, however, it was suggested that Caesar had introduced “a tyranny more absolute, and worse conditions” than that of the kings who had been expelled at the time of the creation of the republic.121 James Harrington saw Julius Caesar as the destroyer of liberty.122 Cromwell was ridiculed as a mock-Caesar by both republicans and Royalists.123 While tutor to the Duke of Gloucester, the historian Gilbert Burnet tried to make “Julius Caesar, ever odious in his eyes.”124 Those who were attracted to the virtues of the republican era saw Caesar and imperial rule as a decline from republican

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virtue. Their opponents viewed the change simply as the assumption of full legislative authority by a single monarch or as a desirable end to republican rule. Augustus Caesar was a less divisive figure often associated with the end of civil strife and with patronage of the arts. The Jacobean peace could be defended by comparison to the Augustan peace. For historian John Speed, James I was “another Octavius” who ruled “a stout stirring Nation” peacefully. William Fulbecke contrasts the corruption and disruption of the late republican era with Augustan rule.125 In 1632 Peter Heylyn contrasted the stable Augustan regime with the earlier unstable Roman democracy. Poet Edmund Waller compared Lord Protector Cromwell to Augustus, viewing both as having calmed a divided country. When Cromwell considered taking the title of king, it was rumored that he would be given the title “Oliver Maximus Insularum Britannicarum Imperator Augustus.”126 Charles II was also viewed as an Augustus who would provide a stable, peaceful regime after a long period of civil strife.127 Tiberius and his corrupt favorite Sejanus received considerable attention during the reigns of James I and Charles I, when Sejanus was identified with the unpopular Duke of Buckingham. In 1626 Sir John Eliot was imprisoned for suggesting a parallel between Buckingham and Sejanus, a parallel that implied that the king was Tiberius. In 1626 there was The Powerful Favorite, the Life of Aelisu Sejanus. Sejanus was also the subject of a popular Ben Jonson play. Oliver Cromwell was treated as a Sejanus-like figure and parallels were drawn between Charles II and Tiberius.128 Those wishing to point to the corruption of the royal court could use the Sejanus-Tiberius allusion without commenting directly on the current political scene. While references to tyrannical Roman emperors risked royal displeasure, sometimes matters could be finessed. Although Edmund Bolton, in his Nero Caesar, concluded, as did many others, that Nero was a tyrant, he contrasted the evils of Nero with the beneficent rule of James I, concluding that those who rebelled against the emperor were worse than Nero himself.129 The emperor Constantine, who had Christianized the Roman Empire and protected the church, was seen positively and his example was often used to provide support for the Royal Supremacy. Elizabeth was depicted in Constantinian terms.



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Republicanism Republicanism has been a topic of considerable recent interest to historians of English political thought. Although one can point to numerous instances in which writers expressed admiration for the Roman republic, republicanism, in the sense of favoring the establishment of a nonmonarchical form of government for England, seems to have been limited to a small number of writers of the civil war and Interregnum era.130 Pre–civil war thinkers might contrast the virtuous republic with a tyrannical empire, but prior to 1642 even the most dissatisfied did not think in terms of a nonmonarchical English state or importing Roman constitutional arrangements. A dramatic change occurred in 1649, when England actually became a kingless state. Even then the declaration by Parliament of the transition from tyranny to a free state emphasized that only minor alterations of form could be expected. Even during the monarchless Commonwealth, it is difficult to find more than a handful of writers who can comfortably be labeled republican. As Blair Worden has recently shown, many of those traditionally labeled classical republicans mixed their republicanism with arguments drawn from the ancient constitution, limited monarchy and natural rights.131 Discussion of England as a “free state,” to a greater or lesser extent on the Roman model, was largely limited to the brief period in which England abolished monarchy. Among those who drew on Roman republican traditions to one degree or another during the Interregnum were John Milton, Marchamont Nedham and James Harrington. A spokesman for the Commonwealth government who became disillusioned with the Protectorate, Milton drew his ideas from the humanist tradition, the religious ferment of the age, resistance theory and classical republicanism.132 Marchamont Nedham, a spokesman for the Commonwealth and later the Protectorate, used both his newspaper, Mercurius Politicus, and the pamphlet format to voice republican views. His The Case of the Commonwealth of England Stated (1650) recommended a return to the polity of republican Rome and emphasized the importance of manly virtue and a citizen militia. Rome played a substantial role again in Nedham’s The Excellencie of a Free State (1656).133 James Harrington used English history to account for the collapse of English government but used the Roman past to design an “immortal commonwealth” that drew upon and improved on the Roman republican experience. The creation of the Rota club to expound and discuss Harringto-

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nian ideas ensured that Harringtonian republicanism would continue to be discussed during the Restoration era in coffee houses and elsewhere. Two radical Restoration political thinkers continued to draw on the Roman republican tradition. Henry Neville’s Plato Redivivus (1681), said to have made “a great noise in the world,” mixed contractual elements and ideas drawn from the ancient constitution along with an emphasis on republican Rome.134 Algernon Sidney’s Discourse Concerning Government, published some years after his execution for treason, also combined classical republicanism, contract and natural rights.135 Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, a work of interest to both republicans and nonrepublicans, inspired discussions of what constituted the “greatness of states,” what was responsible for their longevity and decline and a host of subsidiary questions. As we noted earlier, Giovanni Botero, also interested in the question of “greatness” and how rulers might increase the strength of their states, further stimulated English discussion of these topics. Answers to these Machiavellian questions tended to be offered piecemeal rather than in extended treatment. Bacon’s essay “Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates” argued that nations aspiring to greatness must “profess arms as their principal honour, study and occupation” and treated strength at sea, trade and the relations between Crown, nobility and commons as relevant to assessments of English national power.136 Following Machiavelli there were those who favored a warlike state that supported the values of masculine vigor, valor and patriotism. Others preferred the more Augustan era as a model of peace and prosperity. Yet peace and prosperity were seen by some as politically dangerous.137 References to a cycle of war and then peace and plenty followed by moral decline eventually leading to civil war are to be found in many writers of the period. Although the question of colonial expansion received some attention before the mid-seventeenth century, the Interregnum and Restoration paid greater attention, often with an eye to Roman practice.138 Harrington, for example, criticized Roman-style expansion by conquest as creating hostile colonies, suggesting instead planting colonies with English people who would operate under the rule of law. Like Machiavelli, Nedham favored an expansionist policy based on a citizen army. Cromwell’s expansionist inclinations were often discussed in the context of the Roman experience. David Armitage has even characterized the Cromwellian era as an imperial moment. If earlier English support for the Dutch had been based on a common Protestantism, there was increasing feeling that the Dutch and English now competed for empire. Questions relating to empire and the best



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forms of colonization continued during the Restoration. Sprat admired the Roman practice of giving “the liberty of Roman Citizens to whole towns, and Countries” as a means of extending its empire “as farr as the bounds of the Civil World did reach.”139 Roman imperial example did not determine English colonial policy, but that historical experience was very much in mind as the English empire grew.

Scriptural History Although English and Roman history were central to the development of English political culture, it was scriptural history that had the deepest and widest impact. Scriptural history was known to all, literate and illiterate alike, child and adult, via sermons and Bible reading. Scripture was the source of the widely held view that God might intervene in human affairs, either directly or indirectly. In almost every medium there were references to God’s mercies and judgments. Political and military failures were often treated as punishments for sin or shortcomings in worship. God’s providence was seen as having been responsible for victories and defeats. God might also act through secondary causes and human agents, having purposes that humans could not fathom, a view that helped to explain how evil persons and rulers sometimes gained victory. Raleigh’s History of the World was perhaps the most influential historical work that emphasized the role of providence. Scripture also shaped the idea that history had a direction and a purpose. All events, personal and public, could find an explanation in God’s judgments. At times apocalyptical thinking would have a powerful influence on political expectations and goals. Although this strand of thought had its greatest influence during the civil war and Interregnum, it was also important in shaping earlier and later thought. Scriptural history reinforced thinking in terms of parallels and analogy. The analogy between England and Israel was pervasive. English rulers were often compared to biblical counterparts. Elizabeth was often characterized as Deborah, Mary Queen of Scots as Jezebel, James I as Solomon and Charles I as David or Josiah. James I’s funeral sermon was published as Great Britain’s Solomon (1625), extending the king’s vision of himself as Solomon beyond his lifetime. Open analogies were drawn in such works as A parallel between the Israelites desiring of King Saul, and England’s desiring of a Parliament (1643) and Parallela dysparallela, or . . . an unparallel’d parallel between the professed murtherer of K. Saul and the horrid actual murtherers of

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King Charles I (1660). English colonization might be supported by “divine testimonies” showing that “the state of the Jewes was farre more glorious, by the conquests of David, and under the ample raigne of Solomon, then ever before or after.”140 Rulers were often castigated by comparing them to biblical tyrants such as Nimrod.141 Abraham Cowley’s epic poem Davideis makes use of the conflict between David and Saul. Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel would have been incomprehensible without a knowledge of the biblical account. New Testament history was also put to political uses. Many incidents, such as those in Romans, were used in sermons, political tracts and treatises to underline the necessity of obedience to established authority and to counter theories that justified rebellion. The sufferings of Christ were easily and quickly adapted to produce the image of Charles I as a Christian martyr. Old and New Testament accounts thus were often used to buttress desired political beliefs and to refute undesirable ones.

Conclusion Political thinking in early modern England was permeated with history. History provided political and moral exemplars and precepts. Reviewing historical experience, English, Roman, foreign and biblical, it was possible to draw lessons that were useful in the present. Civil history helped train rulers and their privy councilors and ambassadors, and provided a necessary body of knowledge to gentlemen who might sit in Parliament. Knowledge of English history was essential for those wishing to understand the nature of the ancient constitution and those who would protect English laws, precedents and liberties by shaping or reshaping governmental institutions in the present. Historical understandings of the relationship between Saxon law and kingship and the subsequent Norman Conquest helped to shape and support a variety of political views. The Roman past was used to inform and support ideas relating to civic virtue and civic participation. Roman actors and institutions provided models to be imitated or avoided. The Roman experience as recorded by its historians played a role in shaping how the English viewed their government and empire and informed their views of what was responsible for a nation’s success or failure. Providence and Scripture assisted in understanding and shaping England’s role in God’s plan. Historical accounts, especially of the English past, appeared in many



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formats and lengths, both written and oral, and were avidly absorbed by English men and women. Perhaps most important was the invitation to readers to make use of history to evaluate past and present rulers. The past played an important role in the way the English thought about politics, political events and the state.

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This chapter examines the role of drama in early modern English political culture, a topic that has received considerable scholarly attention during the last few decades. It surveys contemporary views of the uses of drama, Crown surveillance, the popularity of the form and briefly charts differences over time, with treatment of the Jacobean and Caroline period giving special attention to the court masque. The remainder of the chapter focuses on historical drama, highlighting indebtedness to historical texts and linkages to contemporary political issues and debates. An enormous body of scholarship has been produced on the substantive content of the English drama. This chapter seeks neither to summarize nor to supplement that scholarship. Rather it describes the agenda of political issues pursued by the dramatists, the distinctive features of drama as a mode of political communication and the place of that mode of communication in the whole network of channels shaping the period’s political culture.

Dramatic Theory and the Usefulness of the Drama Drama, both tragedy and comedy, was a form of poetry, contrasted to history on the one hand, which dealt with the specifics of actual persons and events, and philosophy on the other, which concerned itself with generalized precepts and abstract principles. Poetry, or poesy, was a term applied to most forms of imaginative literature both verse and prose. The historical play, sometimes labeled “history” and sometimes “tragedy,” was a hybrid,



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often based on historical sources but less fettered by them than historical writing. Poetry, and therefore drama, was viewed as a powerful force for moral and political reform. Influenced by the resurgence of Aristotelian poetic theory, sixteenth-century English literary theorists such as Sir Philip Sidney believed that tragedy “openenth the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue, that maketh kings fear to be tyrants, and tyrants manifest their tyrannical humours.”1 Serious drama was meant to have a political impact. George Puttenham insisted that poesy had always dealt with princes whose “infamous life and tyrannies were layd open.” “Trumpeters of all praise” and “well deserved reproach,” poets possessed the capacity to “worke for a secret representation to others . . . with the same abuses.”2 “An excellent Actor” by “his actions . . . fortifies morall precepts with examples; for what wee see him personate, we think truly done before us: a man of deepe thought might apprehend, the ghost of our ancient Heroes walk’t again.”3 The early seventeenth-century playwright Thomas Heywood wrote that tragedies were “to teach the subjects obedience to their King, to show the people the untimely ends of such as moved tumults, commotions and insurrection, to present them with the flourishing estate of such as live in obedience, exhorting them to allegiance, deporting them from all traitorous and felonious stratagems.”4 The Puritan polemicist Thomas Scot, who like Heywood emphasized the political potential of the drama, commented, “We see sometimes Kings are content in plays and masks to be admonished of divers things.” He pointed to contemporary figures such as Gondomar, the Duke of Alva, and the Spanish king as suitable subjects for the stage.5 Restoration dramatists continued to emphasize the educative function of the drama. John Dryden, who expected tragedy “to Reform Manners by delightful Representation of Human Life in great Persons,” also mentioned the frequency with which “Matters of state are canvassed on the stage, and things of concernment there managed.”6 Despite the continuity in dramatic theory, there was considerable change over time in the size and composition of audiences, the degree to which dramatic productions were sponsored and/or censored by successive governments and the kinds of politically relevant subject matter presented. Renaissance drama, and particularly the drama of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, has been explored by a community of scholars who have focused on the political import of these plays and who have debated the extent to which early modern English drama should be seen as conserva-

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tive, reinforcing traditional ideas of hierarchy and monarchy, or subversive, reflecting a politically conflicted society.7 Dramatic productions until 1642 were mounted in commercial and coterie theaters, and serviced primarily by troupes of professional actors and playwrights who required aristocratic and royal patrons as well as public support to survive. Theaters were “frequented by all sorts of people old and younge, riche and poore, masters and servants, papists and puritan, wise men . . . churchmen and statesmen.”8 Before the playhouses closed in 1642 they attracted as many as 25,000 Londoners and visitors weekly. Critics viewed theater crowds as a source of social disorder or condemned widespread attendance for keeping playgoers from work or attending sermons. Many Puritans feared the theater as a source of deception and illusion, and some were offended by male actors wearing female dress or wearing clothing inappropriate to the social status of actors.9 Despite government licensing and some censorship, early modern English governments were not generally hostile to the theater. The royal family and court patronized the theater and, on some occasions, acting companies. At the outset of her reign Elizabeth confirmed the role of the Stationers Company in overseeing publications, including plays, as well as its authority to destroy presses and punish offending printers. The Master of Revels arranged court functions, licensed companies and playhouses, approved plays before they appeared on stage and sometimes asked for script changes. Printed plays were vetted by ecclesiastical authorities who sometimes required cuts or changes. A government proclamation prohibited unlicensed “interludes and playes, especially on Religion or Policy.” Although plays were not to contain “matters of religion or of the governance of the estate of the commonwealth,” playwrights frequently invited audiences to draw “parallels” between what was presented on the stage and contemporary events. Officials were alert to the possibility of politically offensive parallels, and City of London authorities periodically attempted to suppress the theater. In 1597 in response to a City petition to suppress playhouses, the Privy Council ordered them destroyed, though the order was not enforced. The degree and harshness of censorship has been much debated, with more recent investigations emphasizing intermittent interference and unsystematic practice rather than monolithic power and purpose. Of the roughly two thousand plays seen between 1590 and 1642, only a handful show evidence of censorship.10



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The Early Stuart Era During the Jacobean era the king, the queen and Prince Henry took over several acting companies. Functioning under royal patronage, plays were unlikely purposely to offend the Crown. At the beginning of the reign several plays dealt with succession issues, and at least seventeen between 1619 and 1625 related to court corruption and evil favorites.11 John Marston’s The Faun, set in Urbino, satirized court life,12 Ben Jonson’s Sejanus dealt with the corruptions of Tiberian Rome and Samuel Daniel’s Philotas with dishonesty at the court of Alexander. Several dramas showed a disguised ruler who attempts to learn about the ills of his state.13 Some have viewed such plays as implying criticism of the current monarch; others as a warning of what might happen if they were insufficiently vigilant. James I allowed the staging of plays presenting evil ministers and favorites. Yet there was regulation and some censorship, including a proclamation forbidding plays dealing with religion and state affairs. Jonson was called before the Council over Sejanus despite the fact that he had kept close to his sources in Tacitus and Suetonius. Samuel Daniel was questioned about Philotas for possible allusions to the Essex rebellion. The deposition scene in Shakespeare’s Richard II was said to have offended Elizabeth and was omitted from the printed text until 1608.14 In that year the French ambassador obtained suppression of Chapman’s 1608 The Conspriacty and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Biron, which dealt with contemporary French politics. A play about the Dutch massacre of English merchants in Amboyna was disallowed by the Privy Council in 1625 at the request of the Dutch ambassador. Middleton’s anti-Spanish, antipapist allegorical drama A Game at Chess was immediately recognized as a critique of the king’s Spanish policy. The play used black and white chess pieces to represent figures such as Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador widely believed to have an excessive influence on the king. The play, which some scholars think to have been sponsored by the now anti-Spanish Buckingham, was approved by the Master of the Revels in the normal way. Middleton’s play was “all the neuws,” having been seen by about 30,000 people in nine days, the longest run on the Jacobean stage.15 The play ran concurrently with anti-Spanish parliamentary speeches and anti-Spanish pamphlets. When the Spanish ambassador complained, the play was suppressed. Despite these examples, in general plays were not tightly controlled.

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Plays continued to be popular during the Caroline era, and play texts circulated widely. In 1630 it was reported that Londoners frequented the theaters daily.16 In 1633 William Prynne, an opponent of the theater, claimed that the Stationers informed him that “above forty thousand play-bookes were printed within the last two years” and were “more vendible than the choicest sermons.”17 Censorship continued but was not extremely onerous. Davenport’s King John and Matilda, which presents rebellious barons sympathetically, was performed before the king and queen, and Julius Caesar, which featured tyrannicide, was performed in 1630. One contemporary noted that players did “not forbear to represent upon their stage the whole course of this present time, nor sparing either King, state, or religion, in so great absurdity, and with such liberty, that any would be afraid to hear them.”18 The controversial issue of what policy to follow in the Palatinate was reflected on stage. When the popular exiled Elector Palatine arrived in England in 1635 seeking aid, he was given a variety of royal entertainments. Henry Glapsthorne’s Albertus Wallenstein (1634) provided a Protestant propagandist view of the famous general. There was also Dekker’s Gustavus King of Poland and Alphonsus Emperor of Germany, which dealt with a Spanish tyrant king.19

The Masque The court masque was a fixture of Renaissance and seventeenth-century court life. Unique in combining music, visual effects, dance and verbal texts, unlike most dramatic forms it was performed both for and by the royal family and the court. The most respected poets, dramatists, artists, architects and musicians contributed to these coterie performances that reinforced social hierarchy and the separation of the world of the court from that of ordinary people. Masques were extravaganza productions, costly to mount and rarely repeated. They were designed for a small group of participant-observers rather than for the broad mixture of classes that attended the public theater. Typically they celebrated the dignity and glory of the ruler and the mystique of divine right monarchy. Masque kings were represented as embodying the virtues of harmony and unity, the sources of benevolence, peace and justice. The monarch might be cast as David, Neptune, Apollo or a Roman emperor.20 Most featured a two-part organization. The first, the antimasque, typically performed by professional actors, presents dangerous and sometimes



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malevolent witches or devils engaged in comical or grotesque behavior. Occasionally the antimasque included a critique of current policy.21 As noted earlier the Puritan polemicist Thomas Scot indicated that kings were sometimes “admonished” in “plays and masques.”22 The second portion, which displayed and enacted the semidivinity of monarchs, was performed by courtiers and members of the royal family. Courtly dancing was expected of gentlemen and aristocrats. According to Sir Thomas Elyot, dancing not only trained elite men and women in court decorum but also reinforced social hierarchy by formalizing and displaying the rank and gender of the participants.23 Masquing was one of the very few activities of a political nature that permitted, indeed required, the participation of women. Masques, like the drama, did not win universal approval. Already during Elizabeth’s reign, Sidney’s Arcadia presents masques as pastimes of a ruler who has neglected his responsibilities. Sir Francis Bacon thought of masques as “toys” of the monarchy. George Wither thought the masques shamefully flattered the monarch by assigning him inappropriate attributes and had made “gods and goddesses” of the king and queen.24 The costliness of these productions also provided fuel for those angered by high court expenditures. Though masques reached their apogee during the reigns of James I and Charles I, they were also featured at the courts of Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth. Several Elizabethan masques were performed at the Inns of Court. In a masque performed at Grays Inn, Sir Francis Bacon’s prince seeks advice on enhancing the “honour and the happiness of our state” and how “our government should be rightly bent and directed.”25 Several masques were the joint productions of Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones. Some were designed to celebrate particular occasions, such as royal marriages, visits of foreign diplomats or the proposed union with Scotland. Pro-union sentiments were voiced in early Jacobean masques and in the king’s 1607 speech before Parliament.26 In Jonson’s The Golden Age Restored (1616), Astraea, the goddess of justice, banishes the ills of the former Iron Age when the court was rife with conspiracy, slander, ambition and fraud. Prince Henry’s masquelike entertainments, which often featured chivalric themes, were used to support vigorous foreign action. The return of Prince Charles from Spain without a Spanish bride was to have been celebrated with a masque financed by the Duke of Buckingham but was unperformed due to the king’s reluctance to offend the Spanish. Jonson’s similarly themed Neptune’s Triumph for Albion’s Return (1624) was canceled for similar reasons. During the period in which Buckingham and Prince Charles opposed James’s foreign policy, masques reflected tension within the court.27

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Several Caroline masques also featured political issues. Britannia Triumphans (1637), for example, vindicated the king’s ship money policy. Continental turmoil was highlighted in several masques sponsored by the queen.28 Charles and Henrietta Maria often danced in the idealized fictions performed in the new, lavish, Inigo Jones–designed Banqueting House. Carew’s Coelum Britannicum (1634) was typical in asserting the godlike character of the monarch. The unadulterated adulation and exaltation of divine right monarchy of the masque may have helped to insulate Charles from the harsher political realities of his reign. Yet the myth of national harmony emanating from the monarch must have seemed unrealistic to critics of royal policy and unacceptable to those who rejected the divine right of kings. The last masque of the era, Salmacida Spolia (1640), has been viewed as both courtly escapism and as an assertion of the king’s determination to impose his will on his subjects.29 Despite the masque’s emphasis on the ruler as divine authority and beneficent source of wealth and peace, the masque allowed for some elements of discord, especially in the antimasque. However, it is unclear whether the discordant elements of the antimasque should be seen as voices of criticism. The conventional antimasque offered unpleasant characters doing unpleasant things to serve as a dramatic contrast to the subsequent masque itself, which paraded magnificent characters full of courtly graces and noble behavior. It would be unclear to the court audience whether the negative aspects of the antimasque were meant as social criticism or were merely dramatic devices to highlight the glorification of the monarch and court that followed. This lack of clarity has led scholars to find somewhat different political messages in the same masques. It is also unclear just how well dancers and invited spectators understood the political meanings of some of the more obscure masque figures. Masque themes relied heavily on complex myths and symbols capable of quite different interpretations. The outbreak of the civil war led to the decline and then the cessation of the masque, though the term continued to be used for noncourtly shows featuring costumes, dance and music. During the Protectorate, Davenant’s masquelike The Siege of Rhodes became an opera with recitative, music and lavish scenery. Opera, however, would be performed exclusively by professionals before a nonparticipatory audience, and historical themes would largely replace mythological and biblical ones. The masque was not revived during the Restoration, perhaps because the persona of Charles II was incapable of generating the necessary mystique of divinity. However, masquelike operas, now performed both at court and in public venues, sometimes



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featured Royalist messages. The Tory Albion and Albanius characterized London as beguiled by democracy and zeal, mocked the loss of its charter and allegorized England’s recent political history. Albion, who represents Charles II, complains that his heir, like the Duke of York, has been betrayed and forced abroad and proclaims that “zeal and Commonwealth” again infect the land. In the end Albion is saved, Albanius returns and Albion goes to heaven.30

Civil War and Interregnum Drama The opening of the Long Parliament did not immediately result in the closing of the theaters. In 1641 Simonds D’Ewes could still complain that parliamentary business was being hindered because “the greater parte” of the members were to be found in “Hide Park & Playes.”31 Reflecting longstanding Puritan hostility to the drama, Parliament soon closed the theaters because stage plays did not “well agree with Public calamities” or “Seasons of Humiliations,” the times being more appropriate to “Repentance, Reconciliation and Peace with God.”32 Because the theaters had been closed from time to time in the past, the cessation of public drama was not necessarily seen to be permanent. Parliament repeatedly issued antitheater ordinances. In 1647 it ordered the suppression of “stage playes and Interludes,” given that they produced “the high provocation of God’s wrath and displeasure.” In the following year the House of Commons again voted to suppress playhouses and apprehend players. Plays were not to be tolerated “amongst Professors of the Christian Religion.” During the Commonwealth the Drury Lane and Fortune theaters were raided.33 The civil war and Interregnum years were obviously not entirely bereft of dramatic fare, as the need for repeated suppression attempts clearly shows. There were also semidramatic, though unperformed, playlets. Revolutionary era governments did not prevent the advertisement or publication of play texts. A contemporary noted the “liberty to reade these inimitable Playes,” despite the “silence of the Stage.”34 Performances continued at Oxford when the court was established there. Highly politicized pamphlet dialogues or playlets discussed contemporary issues such as the Parliament’s and the Crown’s right to raise an army. A New Play Called Canterburie His Change of Diot (1641) was accompanied by woodcuts showing Archbishop Laud dining on the “tippits of mens eares.”

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Another was titled The Earle of Strafford’s Ghost (1644). Mistris Parliament (1648) depicted Parliament as being delivered of a deformed body-politic. There were also the Arraignment of Mr Persecution (1654), which was an attack on the Westminster Assembly, The Cuckoos Nest at Westminster (1648) and The Committee-man Curried (1647). Another playlet condemned ship money judges for having made the laws “a contagious pestilence of the Common-wealth.”35 Such minor unperformed efforts, however, were hardly a substitute for the powerful, publically performed drama of the pre-1642 era. The trial and execution of the king was itself high drama. As Samuel Butler later remarked, “We perceive at last, why Plays went down: to wit, that Murthers might be acted in earnest. Stages must submit to Scaffolds, and personated Tragedies to real ones.”36 The short-lived Protectorate appeared ready to tolerate a modest theatrical revival. In 1653 the Royalist William Davenant was advising the Council of State that a reformed stage under government oversight could educate the common people. A similar proposal was made to Cromwell’s secretary of state.37 Davenant’s First Days Entertainment at Rutland House (1656), a “declamation and musick after the manner of the ancients” rather than a play, was characterized as “history digested,” providing “publique Entertainments by Morall Representations.”38 Davenant’s History of Sir Francis Drake and his Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru provided support for the Protectorate’s anti-Spanish policies. Royalists often turned to the tragicomedy, many of which commented on contemporary events. They often featured themes of legitimacy, authority and power, or depicted the loss and eventual recovery and restoration of a ruler. Sir Richard Fanshawe dedicated his 1647 translation of Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido to Prince Charles.

Restoration Drama The Restoration brought back the theaters. John Denham cheered the end of the dramaless decades when rebels had broken “the Mirror of the times, the Stage.” “They that would have no King would have no Play. . . . The Laurel and the Crown together went, Had the same Foes and the same Punishment.”39 The restored theater, however, was not the prewar theater. There were fewer theaters, and their fare was often more openly political.40 The Restoration audience was diverse, although the upper classes may have been overrepresented. According to John Dryden the theater audience



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was composed of “persons of Honour, Noblemen and Ladies” or men of pleasure about town. Yet fellow dramatist Sir William Killigrew reported that the audience included “not the king only for state, but all civil people to think they may come as well as any.”41 In 1662 Pepys found the theater “full of Citizens, there hardly being a gentlemen and women in the crowd. A few years later he found “a mighty company of citizens, prentices, and others” along with “mean people” in the pit. The king and “all civil people” attended. At various time Pepys noticed Lord Arlington, secretary of state and the Archbishop of Canterbury.42 Members of Parliament and their families attended when Parliament was in session, and students, lawyers from the Inns of Court, merchants and their wives and apprentices attended, along with courtiers, foreign ambassadors, professional and military men, clergymen and students. The theater audience was large, with daily estimates ranging from four to five hundred, or five to eight hundred, spectators. Between 1660 and 1685 Charles II saw at least 280 public and 125 court performances.43 The publication of most play texts made them available to those who did not visit London.44 There appears to have been somewhat less censorship during the Restoration than before 1640, though some plays were prevented from being performed or had to be altered. Control was sporadic, especially between 1673 and 1677. Nathaniel Lee’s Lucius Junius Brutus was silenced for “Scandalous Expressions and Reflections upon ye Government,” and John Crowne’s City Politiques was permitted, then withdrawn, then permitted again. Printed play texts were not censored.45 Dramatists Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery and the Duke of Buckingham were important political figures as well as playwrights. Leading playwrights Sir John Denham, Sir William Killigrew and Sir Robert Howard were active members of the House of Commons. The political potential of the drama was widely recognized. Elkanah Settle, a prominent playwright, noted how “plays and ballads have reform’d the State.”46 The new dedication to Davenant’s Siege of Rhodes suggested that plays heightened “temperance,” “natural justice” and “complacency to Government.”47 This was a period in which playwrights, especially loyalist and Tory playwrights, were not hesitant to present their political views or to point to political parallels. Plays of the early Restoration were characterized by loyalist themes and many mocked or pilloried earlier political and religious figures.48 The Earl of Orrery’s The Generall (1661), in an only slightly disguised fashion, lauded General Monk for restoring the rightful king. The theme of rebellion was to be found in half of the plays written between 1660 and 1665.49 Anti-

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popish themes were prominent during the same period that witnessed a flood of antipapist pamphlets, the Popish Plot trials and pope burning processions. Plays were clearly part of the political discourse. Among the most popular was Elkanah Settle’s The Female Prelate, dedicated to Shaftesbury. Not much later Settle would publish The Character of a Popish Successor, a wildly popular Exclusion pamphlet. Another popular dramatist reported that “Plots and Parties” and “state Distractions” were providing “new matter” to the theater. Dramatists “Without desert, can dub a man a Traitor./ And Toryes, without troubling Law, or Reason,/ By loyal Instinct can find Plots and Treasons.”50 Numerous plays between 1678 and 1682 reflected the conflicting ideologies of the emerging Whigs and Tories, though not all plays dealing with politics can be confidently labeled Whig or Tory. Thomas Shadwell’s 1681 The Lancashire Witches, usually seen as a Whig drama, was, as Steve Pincus suggests, politically ambiguous.51 Presentations of court corruption, support for law, opposition to rebellion, and moderation were not exclusively Tory themes, although Shadwell, writing shortly after the Revolution of 1688, claimed that the theater of the previous two reigns had been dominated by “loyal writers.”52 The drama, along with most politicized genres, declined after 1682. Exceptions included John Crowne’s anti-Whig The City Politiques (1683), Dryden’s polemical Duke of Guise and his opera-masque Albion and Albanius.

The Printed Play Prologues The Restoration introduced the printed play prologue as a vehicle of political expression during the politically turbulent years 1678–82. Typically a page or two in length, and often having little to do with the play it advertised, the prologue extended the playwright’s opportunities for airing political opinions. Most excoriated Whigs and exclusionists and lauded Tories. The prologue to Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserved alludes to the Popish Plot, the martyred king “and the Rebel tribe” and to the times “when each Man dreads, the Bloody Strategems of Busy Heades.”53 Aphra Behn’s Prologue to Romulus condemned the “lies that advance the Good Old Cause,” Whig “green ribbon men” and arbitrary jurors.54 A Thomas D’Urfey prologue gleefully announced, “Tories are upmost, and the Whigs defy’d/ Your Factious Juries and Associations/ Must never think to ruine twice Three Nations.” He recommends “Hang[ing] up all those for an Examples show,/



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That have deserv’d it Twenty years ago.”55 In 1682 John Banks identifies himself with those who love their “Country, and would serve the King” and refers to the current danger “betwixt the Scarlet, and Green-Ribbon.”56 A John Crowne prologue lambastes Shaftesbury, Whig coffee houses, City Whigs, packed juries and those who “by Stealth, Promote the Traffick of a Commonwealth.”57 Dryden, who often wrote on behalf of the Tory cause, refers to “fawning Whigg Petitions” and the unresolved murder of Sir Edmondberry Godfrey in one of his prologues.58 In another he not only harkened back to the sad experience of the civil wars, the murder of the martyred Charles I and the ruin of the monarchy but also reproduced portions of the king’s recent Declaration explaining the royal dissolution of Parliament. Dryden himself was the probable author of the anonymous pamphlet His Majesties Declaration Defended.59 Printed play prologues and many of the plays they were designed to promote participated in the political discourse of the era and interacted with pamphlet literature, the news media, nondramatic poetry and the offerings of the pulpit.

The History Play Historiography and historical drama dealt with similar material. Both were designed to provide political and moral instruction. While often indicating the historical texts on which they relied, playwrights were freer than historians to alter the order of events and add or subtract characters. John Dryden declared, “I have neither wholly follow’d the truth of the History, nor altogether left it: but have taken all the liberty of a Poet, to adde, alter, or diminish . . . it being not the business of the Poet to represent Historical truth, but probability.”60 History was popular, and so were history plays. In 1592 we hear of the many plays borrowed “out of our English Chronicles, wherein our forefathers valiant actes . . . [are revived] and brought to pleade their aged honours in open presence.”61 More than 150 plays dealing with English history have been identified between 1562 and the closing of the theaters in 1642.62 About 42 percent of reprinted plays were history plays. Plays were widely advertised and booksellers often pasted title pages on posts in the City.63 History plays provided a more vivid experience of history than reading the texts of Holinshed and Hall. The illiterate and the semiliterate of London learned much of their English history from the stage. Historical plays

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“taught the unlearned the knowledge of many famous histories, instructed such as cannot read in the discovery of all our English Chronicles.”64 A Jacobean master of revels reiterated the view that “the ignorant, and never understanding vulgare[s]” knowledge of history was drawn from pamphlet, ballad and the stage. Thomas Gainsford confirmed that the “stages of London . . . instructed those who cannot read” in history. Because fewer women than men were literate, the drama was an arena in which women especially might absorb the lessons of history. Until the theaters were closed in 1642, history plays were probably the principal source of historical knowledge for semiliterate and illiterate Londoners. If some viewed the plays as history reenacted, others read them as “parallels” in which the events and personages of another era might be linked to the present. The best-known example of the latter view is Queen Elizabeth’s anger at the deposition scene in Richard II, about which she was reported to have said, “I am Richard the Second, know ye not that.” She believed the play had been revived to provide support for the Essex rebellion.65 Audiences were often explicitly directed to view dramatic performances of past events in light of their own time. Popularity of the history play was not constant. The decline that took place about 1630 has been variously explained. Some point to a growing disconnect between history and poetry that occurred when historians abandoned the “invented speech” which had allowed them, like dramatists, to place plausible speeches in the mouths of historical characters. But history plays may simply have gone out of fashion. Playwright Thomas Heywood thought that “no history” had been “left unrifled” by the muses.66 Although new history plays became rarer, older ones were replayed and continued to be read. The Restoration era again saw a fair number of history plays, though they never quite regained their earlier popularity. History plays taught political lessons whether intended by the author or not. History and tragedy centered on great and powerful personages and those that surrounded them, not ordinary subjects. Since drama requires tension and excitement, few dramas featured good rulers surrounded by good advisors under conditions of peace and plenty. Typically they featured flawed rulers plagued by succession problems, potential usurpers, rebellions they were unable or unwilling to deal with and evil and self-seeking advisors. Playgoers became privy to the actions and minds of rulers and their closest advisors and enemies. They gained access to political actors and political situations from which they were normally excluded. They saw into the arcana imperii. Playgoers saw monarchies at their weakest. They



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were exposed to the fragility of monarchical states and witnessed the destructive forces of civil wars. Most important, audiences were placed in a position to evaluate and judge rulers, indeed were being taught to do so. They were invited to judge those who had ruled in the past and to draw parallels to their own time. They became privy to the problems endemic to the early modern monarchy, problems of succession, the impact of dynastic marriages, and the difficulties of having rulers who were too old or too young, too self-centered or more attuned to their personal desires than to the business of the state. Playgoers received a critical political education. Though audiences were often shown weak, flawed or evil rulers, they were unlikely to be exposed to dramas that were hostile to monarchy itself. The remedy for bad rulers and corrupt courts was not nonmonarchical rule and institutions, but able and moral kings surrounded by good advisors and a contented populace. Because the drama focused on individuals, not institutions, it was unlikely to provide opportunities to propose solutions to problems such as how to finance a growing bureaucracy or to explore the relationship between rulers and representative bodies. Nor could it readily deal with monarchy in the abstract, as an institution. Rather each play was likely to deal with a particular reign, real or fictional.

History Plays Set in Mythical and Pre-Norman Times Succession and the dangers of a divided kingdom are at the heart of Thomas Norton’s and Thomas Sackville’s Gorbudoc and Shakespeare’s King Lear. A tragedy set in ancient Britain, Gorbuduc concerns an aging ruler who, despite the plea of his wise counselor, divides his kingdom between his sons with disastrous consequences. The chorus proclaims that the play “a mirror shall become to princes all/ To learn to shun the cause of such a fall” (I.ii, 390–92). Its “argument” was to show a kingdom divided, dissension, popular rebellion and civil war, and in the aftermath “the land for a long time almost desolate and miserably wasted.” The failure to follow good counsel led to a state in which subjects rebel and even “judge of him that sittes in Caesars Seate.”67 A Parliament should have been held and “certaine Heires appoynted to the Crowne/ To staie their title of established right;/ And plant the people in obedience/ while yet the Prince did live, whose name and power/ By lawfull Sommons and auctoritie/ Might make a Parliament to be of force, And might have set the state in quiet state” (sig

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3v-E4r). Gorbuduc was first performed at the Inner Temple and then before Elizabeth the same year that Parliament named a committee to consider the succession. The drama proved freer than Parliament to air the issue of succession.68 Shakespeare’s King Lear also featured an elderly monarch who unwisely divides his land with dire consequences. Lear, who wishes to give away governance but retain the externalities of royalty, fails to understand the need for unity of regal authority and power. Fragmentation of the state and civil war result from the ruler’s unwillingness to rule and from his inability to distinguish good from evil counsel. The play echoed sentiments of King James I’s Basilicon Doron, which warned his heir that “dividing your kingdoms, yee shall leave the seed of division and discord among your posterities.”69 About one-third of the plays on English subjects written between 1500 and 1642 dealt with pre-Norman England.70 A Thomas Middleton play, whose subject was the invasion of Kent by the Saxons, portrays an unworldly king whose power and then throne are usurped. The usurper faces a popular rebellion of the people. He is temporarily saved from deposition by the invasion of Hengist the Saxon, who puts down the popular revolt and then challenges the usurper for rule of the country. Hengist proves to be a strong king who attends to his subject’s grievances. Based on ancient Scottish history, Shakespeare’s Macbeth has been variously interpreted. Some consider it critical of the Scots; others view it as a royal play that emphasizes James I as the heir to Banquo’s line. Largely based on Holinshed’s brief account, the play features a gentle, legitimate but not particularly effective king in war-ridden Scotland killed by a usurper, Macbeth, a tyrant possessing only “a barren scepter” and “a fruitless crown.” Malcolm, the legitimate successor, flees to the protection of Edward the Confessor, the powerful and holy English king. Malcolm’s succession at the end of the play restores public order.71 There would have been no reason for James to have been offended by the treatment of Scottish history.

Medieval Chronicle Plays Composed largely in the sixteenth century, a series of chronicles purportedly retailing English medieval history had become familiar to Englishmen. Subsequently they became sources for English playwrights. The chronicle plays of England have been subject to detailed and often conflict-



Drama and Political Education

ing criticism and interpretation.72 I, for the most part, limit discussion to simply what audiences saw rather than attempt an analysis of what particular playwrights might have intended. We need to be reminded that playgoers viewing a drama did not dissect characters and speeches in the same way that modern critics do. Unlike modern critics, audiences would not have had their Holinshed and Hall before them to analyze and ponder the playwright’s departures from those texts. Monarchy is at the center of these plays. Audiences saw weak kings and tyrants, depositions and succession crises of the past. They did so in the context of their own culture’s emphasis on the doctrine of obedience to divinely instituted monarchy and an alertness to the dangers of rebellion imparted by contemporary sermons, proclamations and statutes. History plays were most often performed during those decades when theories of divine right and constitutional kingship were widely canvassed, when French Huguenot and Roman Catholic justifications for rebellion were circulated and refuted and when Machiavelli’s ideas of princely behavior were being aired. Although many plays focused on conflicts between kings and their barons, audiences may not have responded by favoring one side or the other. Both feudal and early modern kingship had as their goal the attainment of balance between powerful but lawful kings on the one hand and barons or people on the other. Kings were owed obedience and loyalty; barons owed adherence to custom, privilege, property and law. Plays portrayed the problems of feudal monarchs, but were viewed from the vantage of early modern political conditions and institutions. They also must have been experienced differently depending on immediately pressing issues. Plays featuring problems of succession or the dangers of ambitious favorites, for example, had quite different implications when viewed as long past historical dramas rather than when paralleled by current events. We must also keep in mind that rulers and members of the royal family were often present at performances and were patrons of the theater, and that playwrights had to be careful of the implications that might be drawn from their plays. John Bale’s King Johan, one of the earliest history plays, served the purposes of the Henrician reformation and provided propaganda against papal tyranny. The audience was informed that “The adminystracyion of a princes gouernance Is the gifte of God and his high ordynaunce.”73 That king, however, was presented differently in both The Troublesome Reign of King John (1591) and in Shakespeare’s King John. In Shakespeare’s version he is neither a just nor strong ruler, but a usurper, responsible for the death of the legitimate heir. The nobility, viewing John as an illegitimate ruler, renounce their

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fealty and oppose him. Audiences viewed a violent struggle for power, assassination, poisoning, civil war and a succession crisis over who should be king. Embroiled in Continental conflicts, John gives Continental lands to the French king. The play offers no clear resolution between the claims of might and right and does not answer the question of whether John should be treated as a usurper or as a de facto king legitimized by what he calls his “strong possession”(I.i., 39–40). Neither conflict with the papacy nor the Magna Carta is featured, though the latter was central to historical discussions of John’s reign. Marlowe’s The Troublesome raigne and lamentable death of Edward the Second depicts a bad king manipulated by favorites and a struggle between the king and nobility. The play, whose sources are Holinshed, Fabyan and Stowe, offers both a weak and selfish monarch and a selfish and disloyal nobility, making it difficult for audiences to sympathize with either party. Certainly it would have been difficult to view John or Edward II as a model monarch. The same would have to be said of plays dealing with Richard II and Henry IV, which were typically based on Holinshed and Daniel. In Shakespeare’s play, Richard voices the doctrine of divine right kingship and is a weak, self-indulgent ineffective ruler who faces rebellion of the nobility and deposition for his misdeeds. Richard ignores advisors and seizes the land of a powerful family. The play raises the issue of what is to be done when one has a bad but legitimate ruler. How is one to view the rebellion of the powerful and the replacement of an ineffective king with one who is effective but whose royal pedigree is lacking? Is it Richard or Bolingbroke who should be held responsible for the latter’s rebellion and the former’s deposition? The playwright does not offer an answer as to whether rebellion is acceptable under some circumstances or whether subjects must bear what God and his Providence provide. Richard may deserve to be deposed, but Henry does not deserve to be king. Because Parliament plays a relatively minor role, the play underlines the view that a successful monarchy depends on the character, intelligence and ability of the ruler. It does not offer a legitimate alternative to a failed or flawed monarch. Nevertheless the play aroused the ire of Elizabeth because of the presumed parallel between Elizabeth and Richard II and Essex and Henry IV. The play was reprinted many times before the civil war, with the deposition scene sometimes included and sometimes expunged. Shakespeare’s Richard II was performed by the king’s troupe in 1634. Presumably it was not thought subversive or offensive to the Crown at that time.



Drama and Political Education

A revival or rather rewriting of Shakespeare’s Richard II took place during the Restoration, when divine right theories were again current. Tate’s version presents Bolingbroke as a Whig leader who manipulates London crowds with slogans such as “Liberty and Rights.” He has become a Machiavellian parliamentarian who calls “a senate in King Richard’s Name/ Against King Richard, to depose King Richard,/ Is such a Monster of curst usurpation.”74 Tate eliminates the barons’ and the people’s grievances, encouraging his audience to think of the chaos of the late civil war. Despite the more favorable view of Richard, the play was banned, not surprising given the then current Whig arguments that used Richard’s deposition as precedent for altering the succession. The treatment of Henry IV was ambiguous both in historical writing and in the drama. The stain of his manner of succession remains to haunt his reign and those of his successors. Shakespeare’s Henry IV shows the audience relatively little about royal governance, though the king does meet with his peers and listens to their advice on governing. The play focuses on the education of Prince Hal and shows him growing into the responsibilities of kingship. Shakespeare’s Henry V portrays the young king at the height of his powers. Though his character has been dissected by countless critics, Shakespeare’s Henry V was the most admired monarch seen on the early modern stage. He is treated as a politically skilful unifier of the country who is effective appealing to humble soldiers, wooing a French princess or meting out harsh justice. He is portrayed as a king well supplied with noble counselors who uses counsel well. Despite horrific acts at the siege of Harfleur, the king is presented as an effective military and political leader who rallies his countrymen in the war against France. Though modern critics have debated whether Henry should be viewed as the drama’s ideal monarch or a deceitful Machiavellian prince, the qualities that he uses to gain the victory of Agincourt surely elicited the contemporary audience’s patriotic pride in his exploits. The series of Shakespeare plays dealing with the reign of Henry VI presents a quite different picture, a picture in which the fragility of the recently successful monarchical state is on display. Shakespeare treats the reign in three plays, the first beginning with the funeral of the warrior king Henry V, soon followed by the collapse of military efforts, internal dissension and factionalism and the emerging spectacle of political chaos. The second shows an appalling level of conspiracy and chaos in which there is no one, including the king, capable of providing effective rule. His withdrawal from active rule leads to more violence and a savage popular rebellion. In

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the third play the situation grows still worse and the destructiveness of the Wars of the Roses is presented in all its horrors. It is likely that contemporary audiences, given the issues of the day, must have seen these plays as cautionary tales rather than as editorials in support of particular political actors or causes. Restoration revisions of Shakespeare’s plays are again instructive. Restoration plays are far more openly political than their pre–civil war predecessors. As Thomas Durfey noted, “[In] this Age . . . ’tis not a Poets Merit, but his Party that must do his business.”75 Crowne’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays, entitled The Misery of Civil War, comments on the politics of the Exclusion era and the growing anti-French and anti–Roman Catholic sentiment. The prologue and epilogue include the ghost of Richard II, who enunciates the dangers of deposing a legitimate monarch and insists on the need for expiation of his usurpation. When “The Royal rights, and Throne invade,/ Then a high road for vast destruction’s made.” The play announces that the Crown of England was made “Of Antient Rights, and ’tis the gift of Heaven.” “A Monarch’s Right is an unshaken Rock, Nor storms of War nor time can wear away,/ And Wracks those Pirates that come there for prey.”76 Here Henry VI is a weak, incompetent but religious king whose title was “founded on Rebellion/ The murder of a King and usurpation.” Characters discuss the nature of kingship and the right to rule. One argues If Kings may lose their Rights for want of Virtue, And Subjects are the Judges of that Virtue; Then Kings are Subjects, and all Subjects Kings And by that Law that Subjects may destroy Their Kings for want of Virtue, other Subjects May think those Subjects Rogues, and cut their throats. Thus Babel might be builded, but no Kingdom.77

Another questions the notion of lineal succession and suggests that obedience is not owed to those who “know not how to rule” (5.1.6). Shakespeare’s Richard III, based on Sir Thomas More’s history, portrays the English monarchy at its moral nadir. The deformed tyrant not only performs horrific acts but informs the audience of his evil intentions. “I am determined to prove a villain.” As King Edward “be . . . true and just,” I “am subtle, false and treacherous” (91, 1, 30–32, 36–37). There were other unfavorable dramatic representations of Richard before and after the civil war.78



Drama and Political Education

Recent English Subject Matter The Tudor period was also the subject of historical drama. There was a 1634 play about Perkin Warbeck, claimant to the Tudor throne, based on Holinshed and Bacon’s history of the reign of Henry VII, as well as several plays dealing with the reign of Henry VIII.79 During the Restoration John Banks provided a Tory play dealing with Anne Boleyn and espousing divine right kingship, as well as another drama dealing with Lady Jane Grey.80 The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1601) dealt with the 1554 rebellion aimed at putting Lady Jane Grey on the throne. The problems of Elizabeth during Mary’s reign were staged in Thomas Heywood’s If you Know Not Me, You know No Bodie; or, The Troubles of Queen Elizabeth, a popular play of 1603–4 based on Foxe and Holinshed in which Elizabeth represents the benefits of Protestantism and exhibits her bond with her subjects. Heywood also published a prose history dealing with the same events,81 again suggesting the connection between historical drama and historiography. Elizabeth is celebrated and the papacy denounced in Thomas Dekker’s The Whore of Babylon. The Generall scope of this Drammaticall Poem, is to set forth (in Tropicall and shadowed colours) the Greatness, Magnanimity, Constancy, Clemency, and the other incomparable Heroical vertues of our late Queene. And . . . the inveterate malice, Treasons, Machinations, Underminings, and continual blody stratagems, of that Purple whore of Rome.82

The Duchess of Suffolk, licensed in 1624 after having been purged of “dangerous matter,” presented the sufferings of the Protestant duchess during the Marian years.83 The Restoration-era play The Island Queens, or The Death of Mary, Queen of Scotland, which dealt with the death of the Queen of Scots, was prohibited from being played. Banks’s The Unhappy Favorite, or the Earle­ of Essex (1682) appeared when treason again was of great public concern. In general the more recent the history presented, the more pointed and immediately relevant the political messages presented and taken away by the audience.

European History Staged Plays dealing with European history and especially with the history of the French civil wars explored the problems of succession and were used to reinforce anti-Catholic sentiment. Many were based on recent historical

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accounts and contemporary news pamphlets, blurring the line between history and the drama. Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris (1594), which dealt with near contemporary events, utilized the deluge of French pamphlets to depict the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of French Protestants.84 In 1608 Chapman’s The Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron, which follows Edward Grimeston’s General Inventorie of the History of France (1608) fairly closely, dealt with the period in which Henry IV has largely suppressed the Catholic League but continued to face conspiracies, such as that of the ambitious Duke of Byron. Byron is a martial figure whose career is treated as roughly paralleling that of the traitorous Earl of Essex. He is manipulated into rebellion against a generous and forgiving monarch. The play was suppressed, probably as a result of the complaint of the French ambassador. There was also Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois (1603), which had five editions before 1657, his The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France and Thomas Dekker and Michael Drayton’s Civil warres of France, written in 1598 but never printed. The French civil wars also provided ample material for Restoration dramatists. Typically they displayed anti-Catholic themes and condemnation of rebellion against virtuous monarchs.85 The most controversial Restoration drama dealing with the history of the French civil wars was The Duke of Guise, the joint work of Nathaniel Lee and John Dryden. The separately printed Prologue to the Duke of Guise declared, “Our Play’s a Parallel” and issued a series of warnings against Whig machinations.86 The play inspired a flurry of Whig responses. Thomas Shadwell rejected the parallel between Guise and Monmouth and the play’s critique of London and its “ignoramus juries.”87 Dryden replied with The Vindication, or, the Parallel of the French Holy-League and the English League and Covenant, defending his historical accuracy and advising readers to compare the play text to Davila’s history. The political lesson of the play was “to reduce men to Loyalty, by shewing the pernicious consequences of Rebellion, and Popular Insurrections.”88 When Dryden’s translation of Maimbourg’s History of the League (1684) appeared, the Tory Observator commented favorably on both the translation and its “Application.” In this febrile political environment plays engendered pamphlets, and the pamphlets more pamphlets and historical commentary. While pre–civil war plays dealing with the French civil wars tended to laud Protestants and condemned the Guises and the Holy League, Restoration efforts were more likely to castigate both the French and the English for rebellion. Events in Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and elsewhere also provided material for politically charged drama. Already in the early seventeenth century



Drama and Political Education

Thomas Scot commented on the dramatic potential of a wide array of foreign persona. He queried, Why not “borrow a Spanish name or two, as well as French or Italian. . . ? Why not Gondomar as well as Hieroymo of Duke d’Alva? And why not Philip as well as Peter, or Alfonso, or Caesar?” These characters might be as useful as the “Black Prince, or Henry the Eighth or Edward the Sixth, or Queen Elizabeth, or King James, or the King and Queen of Bohemia.”89 Spanish settings often featured tyrannical rulers, the dangers of Catholicism and critiques of the Spanish conquests in Mexico and Peru. Dryden’s The Conquest of Granada featured a divided, faction-ridden country with rival kings and characters who debate the nature of kingship. It celebrated the institution of monarchy but also reminded Charles II and James, Duke of York of their limitations. Dryden’s The Spanish Fryar (1680) attacks priests, denounces conspiracy and usurpation and enunciates the Tory doctrine of divine right kingship. Spanish settings were used to comment on contemporary politics. A Larum for London, or the Siedge of Antwerpe (1602) presented Spanish atrocities in the Netherlands and warned of Spanish danger. The wildly popular A Game at Chess of 1624 contrasted the malevolent Spanish with the virtuous English and offered a critique of current English policy. During the Restoration The Great Favourite or the Duke of Lerma by Sir Robert Howard offered a parallel between the Spanish minister Lerma and the English politician Clarendon, whose impeachment the politician-playwright supported. Samuel Pepys thought that the play was designed to reproach the king and his mistresses. Given the inclination to look for parallels, corrupt foreign courts presented on stage were frequently taken as critiques of current English courts exhibiting similar behavior. Spanish conquests in the New World provided settings for several plays. Davenant’s Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658), which featured heroic Englishmen rescuing natives from the wicked Spanish conquistadors, provided support for the Protectorate’s anti-Spanish expansion policies as well as appealing to ever-present anti-Catholic sentiments. Librettos were sold at the door to assist the audience in following the songs and tableaux. In 1664 The Indian Queen, jointly written by Dryden and Howard and acted before the king and queen, dealt with the problems of obedience, rebellion and usurpation and endorsed the divine right of kings with allusions to the martyred Charles I and the usurper Cromwell.90 Dutch settings were occasionally employed to comment on current relations with the Dutch. The massacre of English merchants by the Dutch at

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Amboyna in 1624 resulted in anti-Dutch ballads, pamphlets and even paintings portraying tortures inflicted on the English. A play on the subject, however, was suppressed after Dutch complaints to the Council. The Amboyna massacre again provided dramatic fare during the 1672 Anglo-Dutch War when Dryden’s Amboyna (1673) became part of the government’s antiDutch propaganda campaign. Dryden dedicated the play to Lord Treasurer Thomas Clifford, who was widely viewed as primarily responsible for the declaration of war. Conflict between Dutch republicans and monarchists was depicted in Massinger’s and Fletcher’s Tragedy of Sir John Van Olden Barneveld (1618). The republican Barneveld, who had been executed for treason shortly before the play was written, analogizes the Prince of Orange to the Roman Octavius, who “seized the absolute rule of all” and prophesies that the Dutch government would become a monarchy.91 The play was allowed after close scrutiny and revision. It was reported that the play had “many spectators and received applause.”92 Several dramas referred directly or indirectly to the plight of the Protestant Elector Palatine, often with oblique references to the failure of his allies to support him. These include Massinger’s Maid of Honour (1632) and his Believe As you List (1631). Henry Glapthorne’s Albertus Wallenstein (1634), which played at the Globe in the 1630s, also dealt with the current wars on the Continent. Plays with Italian settings were numerous, though most were devoid of explicit political themes. A substantial number, however, offered opportunities to comment on court morality, condemn the actions of tyrannical rulers or portray corrupt favorites. In John Marston’s The Faun (1604–5), the audience viewed the vices of courtiers and the rise and fall of favorites. Like Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, the playwright used the device of a disguised ruler who learns of the disordered state of his domain. John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi portrayal of corruption warned: a prince’s court Is like a common fountain, whence should flow Pure silver drops in general, but if ‘t chance Some curs’d example poison ‘t near the head, Death and diseases through the whole land spread. And what is ‘t makes this blessed government But a most provident council, who dare freely Inform him the corruption of the times? 93

Some of the Italian plays offered easily recognized parallels to English affairs.



Drama and Political Education

In 1647 there was a popular but violent revolt against Spanish rule in Naples. Two years later the title page of the play The Rebellion of Naples proclaimed that the events dramatized were “Really Acted upon that bloudy stage, the streets of Naples.” A prose account of the revolt appeared in the same year. Written during the English civil war by a Royalist, the play emphasizes the dangers of rebellion, especially one led by the lower class. While the author, who claimed to have been an eyewitness to the events in Naples, insists that the play did not allude to English affairs, the epilogue warns the king not to provoke subjects “with too hard a Yoke.”94 Dramatic treatment of Ottoman and Byzantine rulers, especially during the Restoration era, also provided opportunities to present tyrannical rulers, dangerous faction-ridden courts and succession conflicts. At least forty plays set in Asia or the Levant appeared in London between 1660 and 1714. Playwrights often relied on travel books and histories for source material. Ottoman expansion in Europe was a constant worry throughout the early modern period, and events in the region were closely followed in travel and news accounts. The Ottoman Turks, fascinating because of their continuing danger to Europe, provided an exotic locale for pointing to a variety of state dangers. The locale was sufficiently distant to allow criticism of tyrannical and corrupt rule without openly appearing to suggest English parallels. An early “tyrant” play dealing with Ottoman rulers was Robert Green’s “most lamentable history,” Selimus (1590). Fulke Greville’s early Jacobean Mustapha was one of several plays using Turkish material to focus on the dangers of evil counsel. Davenant’s Siege of Rhodes emphasized Turkish despotism and its continuing conquests. Orrery’s popular Mustapha (1665) and the Siege of Rhodes, first performed in 1656 and revised in 1661, drew on Knolly’s prose account. In Ibrahim, The Illustrious Bassa (1676), Elkanah Settle again draws on Solyman material. Although Settle’s Solyman is a heroic, martial figure, the playwright depicts the corrupt and immoral nature of Ottoman rule as the source of the state’s problems.95 Tyrants were also portrayed in Persian settings, though Persia was sometimes viewed as a civilized country and sometimes as a possible bulwark against the Ottomans. In Denham’s The Sophy (1642) the king and the state are ruined by bad advice from the chief civil and ecclesiastical ministers.96 Robert Baron’s Mirza: A Tragedy Really acted in Persia in the last age (1655), which, like The Sophy, relied heavily on Sir Thomas Herbert’s account of his travels in that part of the world, explicitly offered a “parallel” from which readers were to draw lessons. Later in the century John Crowne’s Darius,

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King of Persia portrays a king who views himself as “God’s minister” and “a deputed God” and is deserted by his people who wish to establish a republic. The duplicitous rebels, who argue that there is no such thing as treason but “ill success” makes it so, are eventually defeated as Darius’ kingdom is conquered by Alexander. In this drama, viewed by King James II, the message, “Leave the dispose of Crowns to Kings and Gods,” delivered by Darius, made the divine right of kings ideology clear.97

Roman Plays Roman history was familiar fare in English theaters, some fifty-seven Roman plays having been staged in England by 1640. Many of these invited discussion of Roman virtue and participation in public life or focused on republican values and institutions and their imperial counterparts. Others used Roman contexts to comment on or provide parallels to current political issues.98 Given that Roman plays were performed in a monarchical environment, there was no direct advocacy of republican rule. Plays were not publically performed during England’s republican era. Even portrayals of tyrannical emperors were not accompanied by suggestions that monarchy should be replaced. English governments, therefore, were not inclined to forbid plays featuring Roman tyrants. Many Roman characters came with pre-existing notions as to their virtues, vices and political significance. Nero and Tiberius could be expected to appear as tyrants. Julius Caesar, Brutus and Augustus were more ambiguous. The role of Julius Caesar in the transition between republic and empire was problematic in both drama and historiography. Playwrights using Roman materials and Roman characters typically based their plays on historical texts but, like playwrights using other historical settings, felt free to add to or alter them to suit dramatic needs. The Roman plays were and were not quite history. The demise of the early kings and the establishment of the Roman republic were the events with most potential for a positive treatment of the republican era. Nathaniel Lee’s Lucius Junius Brutus (1681), performed and then banned during the volatile Exclusion controversy, was halted for its “Scandalous Expressions & Reflections upon ye Government.” The play refers to the contrast between “the sway/ Of partial tyrants and a freeborn people.”99 Its theme, the establishment of republican liberty, was worrisome given that the recent provocative pamphlet Appeal from the Country to the



Drama and Political Education

City was signed “Junius Brutus,” who had been the founder of the Roman republic responsible for the fall of the Tarquin tyranny. Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, heavily indebted to Plutarch, is set in the early republican era. Neither the overly confident patrician general nor the plebeians are shown in a good light. Audiences may have associated Coriolanus with the Earl of Essex, another military hero who fell into treason. Contemporary concern with the scarcity of food and the London food riots are echoed in the play’s concern with the price of food. The failure of the play’s magistrates to deal with the crisis was parallel to the contemporary failure of the English authorities.100 The play includes the fable of the belly, which underlines the dangers when all parts of the body politic fail to follow the common good. The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth (1681), Shakespeare’s Coriolanus as rewritten by Nahum Tate, like many Restoration plays, was far more openly partisan than its pre-1642 predecessor. Tate highlighted the parallel with “the busie Faction of our own Time” which “Seduce the Multitude to Ingratitude, against Persons that are not only plac’t in Rightful Power above them; but also the Heroes and Defenders of their Country.” The play’s “moral” was “to Recommend Submission and Adherence to Establish’d Lawful Power.”101 Several plays situated in the late republican era focus on Julius Caesar. As with historiography some dramas viewed the republic as the site of Roman virtue and deplored its displacement by Julius Caesar and his successors as the beginning of a descent into tyranny, while others pointed to the horrors of civil war during the latter phases of the republic and applauded the new regime for initiating greater political stability. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which draws heavily on Plutarch’s Lives, was politically ambiguous, offering no clear answer to the question of whether assassination can be justified. The audience is treated as competent to evaluate and make judgments on complex political issues after considering several points of view rather than told how to judge the characters and their actions. This play and others that are similarly ambiguous contributed to the creation of a politically thoughtful subject seeing himself as capable of making judgments on those who exercised power. Paulina Kewes suggests that the historical Caesar was viewed differently during the reign of Elizabeth than in that of James I. During the latter’s reign, she suggests, monarchical strength was feared more than its weakness, and there was a growing anxiety about absolutism and tyranny. Perhaps so, but Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar remained in repertory during the

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early seventeenth century and was revived in 1672. It is likely that its audiences, like readers of the historical works on which it was based, came away with mixed opinions as to the rectitude of the political actors and actions portrayed.102 The Tragedy of that Famous Orator Marcus Tullius Cicero, attributed to Fulke Greville Lord Brooke, remained unpublished until 1651. The admirable republican Cicero is killed and the state turned into a monarchy. The orator’s brother pronounces “the state is now so wounded/ That there’s no hope of cure.”103 It is not surprising that Brooke did not attempt to mount the play during his lifetime or that it was printed during England’s brief republican era. The romance of Antony and Cleopatra obviously made for great theater. It also might be a vehicle for conflicting political messages. In Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra the great martial figure Antony abandons public duty for private desire while his rival Octavius is seen as steadfast in his duty to the Roman state. Fulke Greville used the same subject matter for his Antony and Cleopatra but is thought to have destroyed it because it too closely paralleled the Essex rebellion.104 The Essex rebellion appears to have had a substantial impact on the drama, either inducing playwrights to withhold their dramas or resulting in censorship or suppression. John Dryden’s All for Love (1677), a Restoration adaption of Shakespeare’s play, emphasizes the seductiveness of Cleopatra, who appears dressed as one of Charles’s French mistresses. The drama surely evoked in its audience thoughts of the supposedly Francophile eroticism of Charles II and his court. Dryden dedicated the play to the Earl of Danby, a proponent of an anti-French policy. Plays with later Roman themes naturally focused on imperial rulers. Good rulers, admirable courts and able advisors might provide suitable material for the masque, but did not provide the basis for exciting drama. Plays dealing with imperial topics were more likely to deal with tyrants, corrupt courts and evil advisors. It seemed obvious to Thomas Heywood that playwrights would use Nero to exemplify tyranny, as does the Restoration playwright Nathaniel Lee in his The Tragedy of Nero (1674). Nero and Tiberius were such stock dramatic villains that many of their negative depictions may not have appeared to imply criticisms of contemporary kings. Many of these plays were performed before English monarchs and English courts. The most studied play dealing with the reign of the emperor Tiberius is Jonson’s Sejanus, which closely followed the Tacitus account of the corrupt minister. It displays a court full of informers and spies, rife with bloody



Drama and Political Education

deaths and suicides. Sejanus pursues power, is contemptuous of religion, employs flattery and dissimulation and is eventually destroyed. The play may have been viewed as an indictment of the corruption and immorality of James I’s court. The parallel between Sejanus and the unpopular Duke of Buckingham had become common. Jonson denied a contemporary application when questioned by the Privy Council. Yet there is no evidence that when performed the play offended the king, and Jonson continued to produce masques on behalf of the court.105 The play Constantine the Great (1684) by Nathaniel Lee, written about the time of the playwright’s conversion to Toryism, glorified divine right theory, and its separately printed epilogue attacks Whigs and Trimmers. John Fletcher’s Valentinian (published in 1647 but written c. 1610–14) deals with the role of corruption in the fall of Rome. An adaptation was presented in 1685. Modern critics have argued pro and con as to whether the play recommends rebellion and republicanism.106 Whatever the author’s aim, the play allowed the audience to behold a corrupt state and corrupt ruler and to draw a conclusion about the causes and consequences of that political condition. Plays did not have to have an explicit contemporary political message to have a political impact, particularly one of authorizing citizen playgoers to exercise their own judgment about political actors and events. Audiences and readers of the Roman plays learned of the contrasting vision of republican and imperial regimes and values. They vicariously experienced the acts of good and bad rulers. Some productions clearly sought to teach a political lesson; others were ambiguous or appeared to deliver different messages depending on the changing political circumstances in England.

Conclusion Early modern England witnessed the emergence of a vibrant theatrical tradition that from the 1580s or 1590s offered numerous plays dealing with English, Continental and Roman history. While historical plays, especially those dealing directly with the English past, were more frequent before 1620, a substantial number of plays of the 1620s and 1630s related to current political events or the Roman past. During the revolutionary years, when the drama largely disappeared, highly partisan play pamphlets came into existence but could not offer the intense experience of seeing historical

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figures and events on stage. After the Restoration history plays were often set in non-English or colonial settings. During 1678–82, the years of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion controversy, plays often reflected intense partisan conflicts. Separately printed play prologues and epilogues as well as characters within plays were frequently explicit about current political issues and ideologies. As historiography and poetry drew apart, and audiences became less likely to view historical drama as history itself, there was an even greater emphasis on drawing parallels, a practice that enhanced the possibilities for a drama that participated in current political discourse. The lessons of Restoration drama were often more openly and directly political than those of the pre–civil war era. Prose historical writing and the historical play were related in complex but not easily definable ways. Playwrights did not treat historical plays as fictions and often indicated the historical sources on which they drew. They might deviate somewhat from well-known accounts, but not too much. It would have been difficult to mount a play making Richard II an effective monarch given the historical material that would have been familiar to a substantial part of the audience. Although playwrights presenting entirely fictional personages, times and locales obviously had greater freedom to invent, many chose to portray the historical past and sometimes events close to the present. History was popular at the same time that historical plays were popular. Historical drama, like history and poetry, was expected to provide appropriate moral and political lessons, but poetry and drama were expected to entertain as well as teach. The entertainment function was crucial to commercial success and court patronage. The drawing of parallels was commonly used to point audiences toward the desired lesson, though audiences were already in the habit of thinking in terms of parallels even without explicit instructions. The habit of thinking in parallels sometimes led to difficulties because it occasionally led authorities to see parallels unintended by authors. What was innocuous in some circumstances might be perceived as politically provocative in others. Lessons were to be taught, but it was often unclear what the message was other than the obvious message that tyranny was to be condemned as were evil advisors and corrupt courts. The brief sampling of plays presented in this chapter has not attempted to tease out the political lessons or the political implication of individual plays. Rather in a general way it indicates what playgoers saw of political significance and had the opportunity to respond to. The aim is to determine the contribution of the drama, particularly historical drama, to early



Drama and Political Education

modern political culture. In this context it is important to remember that the opportunities and constraints inherent in different media meant that no single medium, drama, news, poetry or the sermon, should be taken by itself to represent the political discourse of the era. To assess the contribution of the historical drama to the political education of early modern English men and women we must remind ourselves that audiences were most often exposed to rulers, some good and effective, but more often weak, ineffective or even tyrannical. Audiences saw courtiers and advisors, some admirable, others corrupt or overly ambitious, who endangered the ruler, the state and the people. Some featured a few villainous courtiers; others courts so deeply corrupt or faction-ridden they undermined the polity. Audiences were frequently exposed to rebellions that resulted in civil wars and other chaotic conditions. Only rarely were those who opposed legitimate rulers treated positively. If we could draw a composite picture of the monarchies that audiences viewed, it would be monarchy in a perilous state. The historical drama, for the most part, provided a dark picture of monarchy. Even when a historical drama ended on a bright or happy note, it would have been obvious, at least to the historically knowledgeable, that bad times would follow. What then did such dramas teach? They taught or rather implied that monarchy was the key institution of government and that the character, intelligence and effectiveness of the monarch were the keys to monarchical success or failure. Historical plays often displayed the problems of succession and the difficulties flowing from the lack of a clear, effective and adult heir or from a disturbing excess of claimants, difficulties that sometimes resulted in usurpation and tyranny. The plays underlined the importance of good counsel and the evils that followed from its absence. They displayed the dangers of faction, whether found in court, among the king’s barons or among the Roman republic’s generals. Most often the historical play portrayed trouble, either for the state or for the people. On stage the state was a fragile institution, perennially endangered by domestic or foreign elements threatening its stability. The historical drama thus provided a somewhat different conception of monarchy from that found in other media. Other genres dealing with present monarchs were rarely as critical of incapable or tyrannical rulers. Sermons commonly idealized rulers and repeatedly emphasized that kings and magistrates possessed divinely granted authority, although they also frequently pointed to or threatened God’s punishment of rulers and nations. Only the masque consistently presented idealized monarchs in idealized surroundings. Plays showed flawed rulers, flawed

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counselors and flawed courts. Neither the dramatized English nor Roman past offered a vision of a Golden Age or utopian state. Because the history play exposed audiences to defective rulers and defective states, it taught them to be critical of unfit and immoral governors, whether they were English, European, Ottoman or Roman. The theatrical context seemed to entitle audiences to evaluate the actions and abilities of rulers and other powerful figures. They gained access to the minds and motives of rulers, something that they were not permitted or positioned to do in real life. They were being educated to judge their social and political superiors: English kings and those who rebelled against them, the actors and actions of the French civil wars, Spanish rulers and conquerors, Italian rulers and courts and Roman senators, citizens, generals and emperors. Viewers were positioned to think about what made a good king, to judge whether a particular ruler acted morally or effectively and to consider the extent to which he was responsible for his actions. Audiences were also placed in a position to evaluate whether advisors and courtiers provided good or poor advice and to make judgments about whether those who conspired or rebelled against the ruler acted justly or unjustly. Playgoers were invited to make political judgments on political actors that it had not been deemed appropriate for them to view critically as part of everyday life. Most important, audiences were taught to make moral and political judgments about those who ruled and to evaluate those involved in making decisions that affected the entire nation. Elite male members of the audience might take away lessons to guide themselves when they assumed positions of authority. Women and nonelite members of the audience were given the opportunity to think and criticize. When the common people appeared in historical dramas, they were not often treated favorably. Especially when presented as rebels, they were not represented as models to be emulated. Playgoers thus were taught to become critical observers but not political activists. The drama did not encourage disobedience, let alone outright opposition or rebellion. Rebellion, which resulted in disastrous civil war, was not offered as a suitable means of solving the problems of ineffective or tyrannical rule. The solution for bad rulers and bad advisors was good rulers and advisors. In this sense, plays reinforced monarchical rule. There were also some limitations to the drama as a teacher of politics. Plays typically focused on individuals and their relationships with other individuals. It was primarily the lack of personal understanding, ability or morality that led historical actors astray. Solutions were to be found in characters that possessed those qualities. Legal and constitutional arguments,



Drama and Political Education

so prominent in other genres, were rarely found in the drama, and institutional solutions were rarely offered. Institutional constraints on monarchs exercised by parliaments or law courts, which were so much part of the political discourse in other genres, were not often a part of dramatic offerings. Genre constraints thus shaped certain types of political discourse. The literary conventions that tragedy involved rulers and elites and that history was to focus on rulers and war limited the kinds of problems and the kinds of solutions that would be offered on the stage. The drama did not offer much of an opportunity to consider abstract concepts of the state or the constitution that were explored in pamphlet, treatise or sermon. Although the drama portrayed many defective rulers, it did not, given government supervision and royal patronage, offer solutions likely to undermine current English rulers. Kings allowed historical or mythical tyrants to be portrayed because they did not view themselves as tyrants. Where some might see parallels, others might see contrasts. Rebels and revolutionaries are not treated positively even when victorious against an ineffective ruler. When Bolingbroke deposes Richard II and assumes the Crown, the stain of his usurpation remains. Plays, like other forms of printed materials, were supervised and controlled, albeit not consistently, by a mixed group of individuals and institutions that occasionally called on dramatists to explain or defend the political implications of their work. Like most kinds of writing, plays were seen as having the potential to harbor moral, religious and political dangers. Given the fact that some dramatists might be punished for their productions or forced to alter them, there must have been a good deal of self-censorship. This, of course, was the condition under which most early modern writers worked. It is also clear, however, that the Crown was generally favorable to the theater, offering patronage and attendance. The Crown treated the drama with more sympathy than did Parliament or those who governed London, especially during the middle decades of the seventeenth century. Indeed, it is difficult to see how the English theater could have flourished without royal support. Yet we have seen that occasionally rulers did feel threatened by dramatic productions and that the Crown was willing to bow to the wishes of foreign ambassadors offended by particular plays. We have also seen that government attitudes sometimes changed with circumstances. Changes in the political climate might transform a politically innocuous play into a dangerous one or vice versa. Plays dealing with succession might seem subversive under one set of circumstances and blameless in another. Succession was a sensitive topic during the reign of

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Elizabeth and again during the reign of Charles II when Exclusion was being promoted by Whigs. The historical drama of the period, though it reached an audience of mixed classes and genders, was nevertheless a limited one that did not extend much beyond the environs of London except for those who visited the metropolis. Despite the high aims of playwrights and theorists, the primary draw of the theater was entertainment. We remain uncertain as to how much historical knowledge was absorbed from the theatrical experience, as well as uncertain as to whether audiences were as receptive to the “lessons” as playwrights might wish. In this instance as in most others, it is easier to know what authors purveyed than what playgoers and readers took away from their experience. For better or worse much of our understanding of early modern culture is derived from what was produced and not from how it was consumed.

chapter six

Politics, Poetry and Literature

Literature, and especially poetry, was part of the political discourse of the period. Various modes of poetic expression were used to comment on political institutions, events and individuals, as were several less well-known literary forms such as ballads, the character, the fable and the ghost dialogue. The reading and writing of poetry was not an esoteric activity but one widely appreciated and frequently practiced by those involved in political life. Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh were poets as well as courtiers active in military and political affairs. When poets’ lives were disrupted, as they were during the civil war, some turned to political pamphleteering or government service. The best known example is that of John Milton, whose pamphleteering served the Commonwealth government. Andrew Marvell wrote on behalf of Cromwell, sat in Parliament during the Restoration era and became an important anticourt polemicist. The Duke of Buckingham, an important Restoration politician, was also a major literary figure. John Dryden supported Tory causes for many years in several genres. Although a prestigious calling, poetry was not a profession. Poets served as tutors and secretaries, produced dramas and masques or were members of the clergy, aristocratic courtiers or prosperous gentlemen. Some were steadfast in their political loyalties, others changed allegiance, writing for whoever provided adequate support. The court was an important site both for the presentation and production of poetry. Following the advice of Castiglione’s The Courtier, courtiers placed a high value on verbal skill. Courtiers were advised to use indirection, “salutary deception” and pleasing speech to move rulers in the desired direction. The rhetorically oriented curricula of educational institutions

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fostered verbal skills and drew attention to the close relationship between rhetoric and poetry. For Ben Jonson, “the Poet is the nearest Borderer upon the Orator,” “equall in ornament” though “above him in his strengths.”1 Poetry was a serious endeavor often written by serious intellectuals with a serious purpose, not merely an entertainment. It could be found at the most elevated literary level and, at the other end of the scale, in anonymous rhymed libels and popular ballads. Some poetic efforts were published, but many circulated in manuscript among a few intimates or among larger groups by scribal publishing.

The Uses of Poetry Those educated in the humanist tradition were confident that poetry contributed to making useful members of the body politic. George Puttenham’s Art of English Poesie (1589) taught that poets might “rebuke vice, carpe at common abuses,” criticize “the evil and outrageous behaviors of Princes” and show “their infamous life and tyrannies.”2 Sir Philip Sidney, himself a model of a life of active virtue, was confident that poetry could teach as well as delight.3 Jonson wrote that only the poet could govern a commonwealth “with counsels, strengthen it with Lawes, correct it with Judgments, inform it with Religion and Morals.”4 Poets felt that they were better equipped to instruct because they, unlike historians, were not limited to the often unedifying events that had actually occurred but could construct edifying scenarios. Milton believed that poets possessed the power “to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue, and public civility . . . to sing the victorious . . . deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations . . . [and] to . . . deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice and God’s true worship.”5 Later John Dryden insisted that poets were profitable “members of the Commonwealth” when they “animate others to those Virtues” necessary to public service.6 Although poetry was much admired, some expressed hostility on religious grounds or thought it a waste of time. Sidney found it necessary to defend poetry against the “poet-hater[s]” and “poet-Whippers.” Richard Baxter rejected “Play-books and History-Fables and Romances” as the “poisen of Youth, the prevention of Grace [and] the fuel of Wantonness and Lies.”7 Fabulous tales and magical settings were popular during much of the sixteenth century but were being increasingly criticized by the mid-sev-



Politics, Poetry and Literature

enteenth century. Abraham Cowley rejected “fabl’d Knights in Battles Feigned” in favor of biblical themes, and Thomas Sprat, writing in the early years of the Restoration, suggested that since the “Wit of the Fables” was “well nigh consum’d,” poets should turn to civil history, the Bible and images of familiar things “intelligible to all.”8 The fairy land of Spencer and the Arcadia of Sidney would be replaced by poems that dealt with or were inspired by actual events, places and persons.

Poetic Genres Poetry was categorized in a number of ways. Sidney distinguished three ancient types, one imitating “the inconceivable excellencies of God” in biblical psalms and hymns, a second dealing with matters moral or astronomical. The third, that imitated, taught and delighted, was the creation of the poet who borrowed “nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be.” It included the heroic, lyric, tragic, comic, satiric, iambic, elegiac and pastoral, some characterized by subject matter, others by the kind of verse employed. Tragedy opened “the greatest wounds and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue; that maketh kings fear to be tyrants, and tyrants manifest their tyrannical humors.” Heroic poetry had the greatest capacity to “inflameth the mind with desire to be worthy, and informs with counsel how to be worthy.”9 Ben Jonson distinguishes epic, dramatic, lyric, elegiac and epigrammatic; Hobbes, the heroic, scommatick [satiric or derisive] and pastoral, each having a narrative or dramatic form. The first of Hobbes’s categories yielded tragedy and the heroic poem that focused on rulers, princes and others who could be cast as heroic figures.10 Tragic drama, often classified as a species of poetry, has been discussed earlier. Heroic or epic poetry, long narrative verses modeled on Virgil’s Aeneid, a poem associated with imperial rule and victories, was most prized though not often attempted.11 Heroic poems with nationalistic themes were particularly admired. Dryden thought the heroic poem would always be “esteemed . . . the greatest work of human nature.”12

Panegyric If heroic poetry proved difficult to create, there was no lack of panegyric poetry praising princes, generals and other eminent figures. Although

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praise was the genre’s staple, it was also used to exhort rulers to become figures worthy of admiration. Such poems often featured comparisons to Caesar and Augustus or to biblical figures such as David and Solomon. Poems praising Elizabeth often featured her as Astraea. Charles I was praised for the peace and plenty of his reign’s halcyon days. Typically full of conventional flattery, panegyrics were offered on the occasions of royal accessions, marriages, coronations, births and birthdays. Criticism was rare and generally considered inappropriate to the genre.13 Poetry celebrated the military victories of Oliver Cromwell14 and the restoration of the king in 1660, and often included overt political commentary. The tradition of publishing collections of laudatory verses issued by Oxford and Cambridge was maintained throughout the early modern period. Locke’s verses on Oliver Cromwell, printed in Musarum Oxoniensesium Helaiophoria (1654), praised him for combining the martial qualities of Julius Caesar and the peaceful policies followed by “the great Augustus.”15 Locke’s contribution to Oxford’s Britannia Rediviva characterized Charles II as “the summe/ of all our present joys, of all to come.”16 The euphoria of the Restoration resulted in an outpouring of panegyric verse to Charles II and General Monk and to the lamented Charles I.17 Charles II was often called David or Noah or portrayed as Augustus ushering in a new age of peace and plenty.18

The Elegy Elegies lamenting the loss of particular individuals were written about friends, family members and figures of political importance. Sir Philip Sidney’s death, which evoked a sense of loss in those who saw him as the ideal Protestant leader, elicited several elegies. Elegies mourned the death of the popular Prince Henry, whom many hoped would pursue a forward anti– Spanish Protestant policy when he became king. Other offerings presented Henry as a defender of traditional liberties opposed to the corruptions at the royal court. Several elegies marked the death of Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedish military hero of the Thirty Years’ War.19 Royalist poems such as Sir Richard Fanshawe’s On the Earle of Straffords Tryall present the doomed minister as sacrificed by the king to prevent civil war. Fanshawe compares Strafford to a Roman “who gave his blood to quench a civil war.” Many poems mourned the death of Charles. Some were printed; others, like Katherine Philips’s Upon the Double Murther of King



Politics, Poetry and Literature

Charles I, circulated in manuscript before its Restoration publication.20 Like the prose Eikon Basilike, many elegiac offerings presented Charles as a Christ-like martyr. Poems also mourned the death of Oliver Cromwell. Dryden’s “Heroicque Stanzas to the Glorious Memory of Cromwell” attributes Cromwell’s greatness to military prowess and emphasized that “Dominion was not his Designe,/ We owe that blessing not to him but Heaven.”21 During the Restoration the elegy continued its traditional function, marking the death of Charles II. Dryden’s Threnodia Augustalis, an elegiac tribute, lauded the king who had held “the Rudder with a steady hand/ Till safely on the Shore the Bark did land” together with criticism of the “Factions” of the time.22 The mock elegy became a satirical vehicle about the time of the Popish Plot, when black-bordered broadsides marked the deaths of Edward FitzHarris and Viscount Strafford. There was England’s mournful elegy for the Dissolving the Parliament in 1681. In 1683 satirical elegies commented on the deaths of Earl of Shaftesbury, Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney. Shaftesbury was addressed as “Thou Idol of the Crown, Dread of the Crown . . . doom’d to Hells hottest burning Seat.”23 Sidney was memorialized as “A Foe to Heaven, and a Plague on Earth.”24

Historical Poetry Historical poetry, though rarely mentioned by contemporaries as a poetic genre, flourished at the same time as historical drama and prose history. Historical poetry, as Gerald MacLean has convincingly shown, was a distinctive, politically engaged, poetic genre. For George Puttenham historical poetry was the genre “by which the famous acts of Princes and the virtuous . . . lives of our forefathers” were reported. It ensured that “experience” would be “more than a masse of memory assembled.”25 Samuel Daniel, author of the historical poem The First Four Books of the Civil Wars Between the Two Houses of Lancaster and York Civil Wars, was called “our Lucan” by John Speed.26 Claiming authenticity of his treatment despite its poetic form, Daniel revised the work as political conditions changed, moving from a poetic to a prose format. Michael Drayton’s Poly Olbion (1612) combined celebration of Elizabeth’s glorious reign with criticism of James. Elizabeth’s “man-like gouernment/ This Iland kept in awe, and did her power extend/ Afflicted France to ayde, her owne as to defend:/ Against th’ Iberian Rule,

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the Flemmings sure defence;/ Rude Ireland’s deadly scourge; who sent her nauies hence. . . . Scarse any rul’d so well.”27 Romes Monarchie, a poem dealing with Caesar’s conquests, reminded readers of the renewed threat of an “insatiable Monarch whom the worlds Empire wil not suffice.”28 The debate surrounding Lucan’s Pharsalia, an anti-imperial account of the civil wars in Rome, helped to shape attitudes toward historical poetry. Was his account the work of a poet or an historian? Thomas May, himself a historian-poet who translated Lucan into English, thought he had written a “true History” but one “adorned and heightened with poeticall raptures.” His translation led to commissions from Charles I to write historical poems as well as appointment as poet laureate.29 Christopher Brookes’s The Ghost of Richard III (1614), a poem claiming to provide more information than could be found in earlier “Chronicles, Plays, or Poems,” was written by a member of Parliament who opposed impositions and the expansion of the prerogative.30 Thomas May, who produced rhymed histories of the reigns of Henry II and Edward III, portrays Henry as a deceitful monarch who unjustly seizes Anjou from his brother and is responsible for the war and rebellion that follow. The poem also contains references to a united peaceful Britain under James. May’s verse account of Edward III emphasized the sacredness of monarchy and the unlawfulness of rebellion.31 Fulke Greville’s A Treatise of Monarchy, written in verse probably early in James’s reign, suggests that monarchy frequently degenerated into tyranny and advises limiting “the excess of a Crowne.” Caesar is treated as a tyrant though Brutus and Cassius are not commended. The Roman people eventually decide that a “brave Monarchical state” is superior to a republican “manie-headed power.” Rome was rescued by Augustus, but monarchies require good counsel and the advice of subjects.32 The civil war era, which produced an explosion of pamphlets and newsbooks, did not produce a great deal of historical poetry. There was John Vicars’s poem on the Gunpowder Plot as well as Abraham Cowley’s The Civil War, which dealt with King John’s conflict with the barons analogized to the current civil war. This Royalist poem depicted a time when barons with “their old vaine noise of Liberty” opposed their “angry Sovereaign,” who was, though a “fond wild man, but yet their king.” The barons who extracted Magna Carta from King John, treated so positively by parliamentarians, were for Cowley “the mighty Traytours” who “Talk, plot, conspire, vote, cov’enant.” Cowley’s poem also condemns “the base Mechanicks” who cried “Noe peace” in London’s streets, as well as the “hot-brained



Politics, Poetry and Literature

Calvinists,” Independents, Brownists and others sects. The current state of England is contrasted with the glorious reign of Queen Elizabeth when England pursued a successful foreign war and yet experienced domestic peace under an able and just ruler. Cowley also idealized Henry II, Richard I, Edward III and Henry V.33

Poetry on Contemporary Affairs The decline of the historical poem roughly coincides with the rise in poems featuring contemporary events. During Elizabeth’s reign there were poems on the defeat of the Spanish Armada. James’s reign produced poems on the Gunpowder plot, among them John Donne’s well known “Pseudo-Martyr.” Published with royal approval, Donne’s poem challenged the claims of martyrdom made on behalf of executed Catholic plotters, rejected the pope’s power of deposition, and supported the oath of allegiance.34 Prince Charles’s plan to marry a Spanish princess was celebrated in John Taylor’s Prince Charles his welcome from Spaine (1623). There were poems dealing with the battles of the Thirty Years’ War.35 The Caroline peace was commended in many poems, among them Sir Richard Fanshawe’s 1630 ode Now warre is all the world about. Court poetry of the 1630s often portrays contemporary England as a peaceful paradise in which Charles is “the author of peace/ And Halcyon dayes.”36 Marvell’s An Horation Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland presents the vision of a Cromwell who “could by industrious Valour climbe,” and has returned “his Sword and Spoyls ungirt,/ to lay them at the Publick’s skirt.” His victories being marks of God’s approval, it would be “Madness to resist or blame/ The force of angry Heavens fame.” Marvell treats Cromwell as an Augustan figure who would restore peace and harmony after his great conquest.37 For Marchamont Nedham, now a supporter of the new regime and editor of Mercurius Politicus, Cromwell was “the only Novus Princeps that ever I met with in all the confines of history.”38 Marvell’s anonymously published The First Anniversary of the Government under Oliver Cromwell was designed to strengthen the Protectorate regime. Here Cromwell is “the Angel of our Commonweal” whose “one Soul/ Moves the great Bulk, and animates the whole.” Cromwell is characterized as a builder, “Here pulling down, and there erected New,/ Founding a firm State by Proportions true.” “Though not a king, . . . He seems a King by long Succession borne,/ And yet the same to be a King does scorn./

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Abroad a king he seems, and something more/ At Home a Subject on the equal Floor.” Advertised in Mercurius Politicus, the poem also alluded to the dangers posed by the Levellers, Fifth Monarchy men and Royalists.39 There were also poems that dealt with the First Dutch War. Restoration poems also recorded important events, often with a political message. Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis provided an account of the miraculous year 1666 that had witnessed the Second Dutch War and the Great Fire of London. His depiction of the naval battles, which closely followed the official account, offered praise to naval leaders. London’s recent sufferings are recorded and its glorious future prophesied. The poem portrays the king as an ideal monarch and emphasizes the mutual interest between king and people.40 Elkanah Settle’s Mare Clasum: or A Ransach for the Dutch (1666) was one of several poems treating the Dutch conflict. A collection of poems of 1668 included complaints about the Dutch wars, the merchants’ loss of trade, as well as taxes, the Roman Catholic menace and judges who overawed juries. Poems in the collection called upon Parliament to call the “Leeches of State” to account and repeal the laws forcing conscience.41

Satirical Poems and Libelous Verse Satirical verses, sometimes labeled lampoons, libels or “verses of rebuke,” were an important form of political expression. Never expected to be fair to its subject, satire was to “lance wide the wounds of men’s corruptions, open the side of vice.” Poets could “better cure some soars then a surgeon’s balm.”42 A commentator of 1679 contrasted satire with panegyric. “In the character of an hero, as well as in an inferior figure, there is a better or worse likeness to be taken; the better is panegyric, . . . and the worse is libel.”43 According to Dryden, author of several satirical works, “the nicest and most delicate touches of satire consist in fine raillery.” It was easy to “call rogue and villain and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave” without using any of those opprobrious terms.44 Numerous verse libels directed at individuals circulated in manuscript during the Jacobean and Caroline eras because, if printed, they might have led to prosecution. There were satirical libels directed against Buckingham and Mompesson, the monopolist. Others denounced Spain and Catholicism.45 During the revolutionary era some were directed against episcopacy and the bishops, and Royalist satires attacked parliamentarians and religious figures.46 Verse lampoons of the Rump Parliament were common



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and lasted throughout the early years of the Restoration. Satire became a particularly favored form during Charles II’s reign. Satirical poems continued to attack sectaries and Presbyterians. George de F. Lord located some three thousand satirical poems dealing with political subjects between 1660 and 1714.47 Subversive and libelous texts were far more likely to circulate in personally or commercially produced manuscripts than in print because printing this kind of material brought greater danger. The government and licensing authorities were not the only sources of censorship. Those who produced commercial manuscripts often altered authorial texts to make them less offensive. When printed, poems often appeared anonymously. Printed poems with the author acknowledged, anonymous printed poems and manuscript poems all circulated in the coffee houses and elsewhere. Many satirical poems dealing with political matters and political actors appeared in printed form only in 1697 in Poems on Affairs of State.48 Among the better known poems on affairs of state was Andrew Marvell’s Second Advice to a Painter, which exposed the fiascos of the Dutch wars. A reply accused him of making “new combustions . . . Twixt prince and People.” His unlicensed Third Advice to a Painter again railed against the Dutch War, and his The Last Instruction to a Painter dealt with parliamentary debates, the excise and naval and other affairs. It criticized government and church, explained the parliamentary struggle over government finance and provided unflattering portraits of several public figures. Such poems interacted with polemical pamphlets. Unsurprisingly, the government tried to suppress such “advice” poems, which appeared both in manuscript and print formats.49 As dissatisfaction with the king and the Cavalier Parliament increased, so did the quantity of satirical poems. In 1671 On the Prorogation of Parliament denounced “Prorog’d on prorogations—damn’d rogues and whores/ Our pockets pick’d and we turn’d out of doors!” after having provided generous financial support to the king. The poem attacked Buckingham, “that pocky peer/ That neither Roundhead is nor Cavalier, But of some medley cut . . . a Commonwealth’s man . . . [now] or absolute monarchy.” There were poems dealing with the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey as well as John Oldham’s Satires upon the Jesuits, which associates the Jesuits with “king killing.” Other poems celebrated the downfall of Danby or attacked the Duke of Monmouth. The satirist who attacked Buckingham, Shaftesbury and Halifax in The Cabal asserted: “To correct vice key satire may prevail/ Beyond the law when preaching blockheads fail.” For law and satire “from one fountain flow to rail at state and monarchs ill entreat.” The fig-

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ures attacked were attempting “to supplement the government, and cry/ Allegiance down, and rail at monarch.”50 The air was full of satirical and libelous poems, many of which required reader familiarity with politicians, public affairs and the news of the day. In 1679 it was observed that “there came out every day such swarms of impudent licentious libels upon all sort of persons, and upon all subjects printed, as the like was never known.”51 Roger L’Estrange testified to the importance of manuscript circulation when he wrote, “It is notorious that not one of forty libels ever comes to press, though by the help of manuscripts they are well neigh as public.”52 Both manuscript and printed satirical verse were readily available in London’s numerous coffee houses.53 The most famous political satire was John Dryden’s anonymously published Tory Absalom and Achitophel, an Exclusion era poem employing easily identifiable biblical figures to represent the king, Lord Shaftesbury, the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke of Monmouth and other leading political figures. David, that is Charles II, is a god-given legitimate ruler who “governs with unquestion’d Right;/ The Defender, and Mankind’s Delight/ Good, Gracious, Just observant of the Law.” Achitophel (Shaftesbury) seeks to persuade Absalom (the Duke of Monmouth) that he should replace his aging father as king. Absalom, at first uninterested, believing that his father governed by unquestioned right, then becomes attracted to the evil Achitophel’s advice. Zimri (the Duke of Buckingham, Shaftesbury’s ally) is “A man so various, that he seem’d to be/ but all Mankind’s Epitome. . . . Stiff in Opinions, always in the wrong.”54 The immensely successful poem should be viewed as part of the multimedia Tory effort to discredit Whig exclusionists. Narcissus Luttrell thought it “an Excellent poem agt ye Duke of Monmouth, Earl of Shaftesbury and that Party, and in Vindication of the King and his friends.”55 Shadwell characterized Dryden’s poems as the Observator in Ryme.56 The poem went through several editions during its first six months and was attacked, answered and imitated. Even with Dryden’s impeccable loyalism, the poet chose anonymous publication.57 Dryden’s attack on Shaftesbury continued with his anonymously published The Medal: A Satyr against Sedition, which appeared shortly after Shaftesbury’s supporters had struck a medal commemorating the Ignoramus verdict of the London grand jury. Shaftesbury is characterized as “the Pander of the Peoples hearts,” a “crooked Soul . . . Serpentine in Arts/ whose Blandishments a Loyal Land have whor’d/ and broke the Bonds she plighted to her Lord.” He “maintains the multitude can never err/ and sets the people in the papal chair.”58 Whigs responded with The Mushroom: or,



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A Satyr Against Libelling Tories and Prelatical Tantivies: in Answer to a Satyr against Sedition called the Medal. Shaftesbury’s flight to the Netherlands occasioned The Politicians downfall: or Potapski’s Arrival at the Netherlands; and the Congratulation of the Protestant Joyner At their Meeting (1684), which places Tapski, that is Shaftesbury, with Stephen Colledge, recently executed for treason, in hell. Satirical political poetry declined during the last years of Charles II’s reign but revived in the eighteenth century. Collections of political poems of the Restoration era, many of them satirical, were published after the Revolution of 1688.59

Pastoral and Romance The pastoral, which employed the conventions of rural settings and characters to comment on rulers and their courts, was especially popular during the Elizabethan era. Typically written by courtiers, it offered an opportunity to contrast the order and peacefulness of the countryside with the corruption, avarice and materialism of the court. Many scholars have commented on the political content of the pastoral. Gerald MacLean has called it the most politicized genre of the sixteenth century.60 Puttenham explained that ecologues or shepherds “under the vaile of homely persons . . . insinuate and glance at greater matters, and such as perchance had not been safe to have been disclosed in any other sort.”61 For Sidney, too, the pastoral could draw attention to wrongdoing “under the pretty tales of wolves and sheep,” and “show the miseries of the people . . . under hidden forms.”62 Spencer’s Shepheardes Calendar (1579), which proceeds through the months and seasons of the year, dealt with “abuses of some whome he would not be too plain withal.”63 In Colin Clouts Come Home Againe the court is associated with malice and duplicity and contrasted with the more beneficent rural life. The pastoral was often fused with the romance in poems in which bucolic scenes were set alongside questing knights and enchanted castles. These efforts often referred obliquely or directly to the ruling monarch. The 1590 preface to Spenser’s The Faerie Queene indicated that “in my particular I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our sovereign the Queen, and her kingdom in Faery land.” His tales referred to England obliquely. He characterized the poem as a “Veil in Type of Faery Land, Elyzaes blessed field, that Albyon hight,/ That shields her friends, and warres her mighty foes.” In a series of romantic episodes, a variety of characters embodying virtues and vices are used allegorically to comment on Elizabethan political life.64

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The political import of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, an imaginative creation reflecting the problems facing the English monarchy by a somewhat disaffected aristocratic courtier, has been recognized.65 Sidney’s friend Fulke­ Greville wrote: [In] all these creatures of his making, his intent, and scope was, to turn the barren Philosophy precepts into pregnant Images of life; and in first on the Monarch’s part, lively to represent the growth, state and declination of princes, changes of Government, and lawes: vicissitudes of sedition, faction, succession, confederacies, plantations, with all other errors, or alterations in publique affairs. Then again in the subjects case: the state of favor, disfavor, prosperitie, adversity, emulation, quarrel. . . .66

As Greville suggests, Sidney’s combination of pastoral and romance presents monarchy in its good and bad manifestations. Basilius, who rules by will rather than law, abdicates his political responsibilities to pursue private desires. Although not a portrait of Elizabeth, Basilius shares some of her weaknesses. Blair Worden suggests that the poem implies that Elizabeth has been too lenient with Mary Queen of Scots. Basilius is contrasted with Euarchus, a ruler who governs by law and follows justice even when it endangers members of his own family. The poem also explores the importance of good counsel. The advice of Philanax, Basilius’s able counselor, is rejected as Elizabeth rejected the counsel of those who favored a more aggressive Protestant policy. Rebellion, caused by royal rejection of good counsel, is featured in the poem as is succession, another endemic problem of monarchy.67 There is disagreement as to whether the Elizabethan and Jacobean pastoral should be seen as continuing in the same direction during Charles I’s reign or, as Gerald MacLean argues, as having moved from offering a critique of rulers and courtiers to idealization and defense of the social-political order and the court.68 The pastoral was, as he and others have noted, used to present country living as an ideal and to promote traditional customs and pastimes. When the king issued a proclamation urging the gentry to spend more time in the country, Richard Fanshawe praised the directive and country ways in his Ode upon Occasion of His Majesty’s Proclamation. Herrick’s Hesperides (1648) laments the passing of traditional social activities and values. Caroline and Royalist versions of the pastoral defended an idealized social order. There were also pastoral and romance elements in the court masque and in tragicomedies such as The Shepheards holy-day; A pastoral tragic-comedy (1635). In Samuel Daniel’s Queenes Arcadia, Arcadia was losing its “plaine honesty,” its “modest seat of undisguised truth,” and becoming corrupted



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by disloyalty, fashion and disputes. Some poets offered praise of the court while others were becoming more hostile. One commentator noted “[t]he perverse petulance of many Poets, which laid so many odious aspersions upon Courts, as if no virtue had in them any residence.”69 Romance was increasingly criticized for dealing with the fantastic and improbable. One of its harshest critics, Thomas Hobbes, ridiculed its “Impenetrable Armors, Inchanted Castles, invulnerable Bodies, Iron Men, [and] flying Horses.” As noted earlier, both Abraham Cowley and Thomas Sprat recommended that poets write about familiar things.70 The fairy land of Spencer and the Arcadia of Sidney were being replaced by poems depicting actual events, places and persons. Romance, however, was not entirely abandoned, being favored by Royalists to display their loyalty to the king. Victoria Kahn has shown how romance plots could be used effectively to comment on political obligation and how marriage and love relationships could serve as an alternative mode of obligation. Royalists used the marriage contract with its claims of love and affection as an analogy to the obligations owed the Crown. Examples of enduring faithfulness and constancy countered the language of interest and calculation.71

The Country House Poem A variant of the pastoral was the country house poem, which praised country estates as sites of social harmony and their owners as a source of social and political virtue. This genre typically contrasted the grasping commercial urban world and the decadent world of the court with an idealized countryside characterized by social harmony, community and neighborliness. The countryside could be treated as either an escape from the court or a solution to it. Country house poems praise the life of the country gentlemen, who embodied generosity and a sense of reciprocal rights and duties. They did not expose the hardships imposed by rural poverty, enclosure or rack renting. The genre offered a new twist on the humanist debate as to whether a life of intellectual withdrawal was preferable to the active, engaged political life. Proclaiming country house virtues was not an easy task because many country houses were enormous structures of arriviste court officials and courtiers rather than centers of rural peace and benevolent landowners.72 Ben Jonson’s To Penshurst solved the problem by contrasting the medieval communal manor that “stand’st an ancient pile”

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without “polish’d pillars, or a roofe of gold” with the “envious show” of the ostentatious country house.73 Jonson made Penshurst personify a moral community and the moral virtue of its owner. Andrew Marvell’s Upon Appleton House, written on the occasion of Lord Fairfax’s retirement from political and military life after the execution of the king, praises Fairfax’s country retreat. Fairfax’s home, “a sober frame,” not the work of a pretentious “Forrain Architect,” provides a setting for a moral though no longer public life. Fairfax needs no “marble Crust” but lives virtuously in a setting in which “all things are composed here/ Like Nature, orderly and neat.”74 After the execution of the king, Royalists in exile and at home would offer a positive treatment of forced retirement.75

Court and Country The court thus could be portrayed as a place where the verbally skilled used language to improve its moral and political tone, or it could be visualized as a source of moral and political failing. The country house could be treated as a seat of extravagant and unnecessary display or the site of virtuous, plain living. Outsiders could view the court as a place of flattery, excessive ambition, corruption and decay, or as a place that might be virtuous if only its leaders would listen to good advice. Courtiers disappointed with the ruler’s failure to heed their advice might become critics of the court. Castiglione’s Courtier had emphasized the need to use “salutary deception,” “pretty flowers” and indirection, to make one’s message palatable to rulers. But when the “salutary deceptions” of poetry failed to bring its author into the charmed circle of the court, it became easy to view this kind of indirect speech as falsehood, dissimulation and flattery. As the Elizabethan reign came to a close, it became more difficult to view the court and court-oriented poetry as exemplars of personal and political virtue. Sir Walter Raleigh could write, “Say to the Court it glowes,/ and shines like rotten wood,”76 Spenser attacked the “hell” of abiding in the court with its fawning, crouching and spending in his “Mother Hubbard’s Tale.”

The Ballad There were many politically engaged varieties of poetry. Sonnet sequences, fashionable at court during Elizabeth’s reign, used the language of



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love and suitorship to pursue personal and political goals. Epigrams, which typically dealt with individuals, were complimentary or condemnatory, and those dealing with public figures were sometimes turned into political attacks. Typically short and easily memorized, epigrams were similar to verse libels and, like them, were not usually printed. Usually printed in broadside format, ballads were a particularly accessible form of political expression. Ballads were easily passed orally from singer to singer so that neither singers nor listeners required literacy. The ballad overlapped the news media and poetry so far as it dealt with contemporary events and employed a poetic form, though several leading poets did not deign to recognize ballads as poetry.77 Many, perhaps most, ballads have vanished; only those collected by contemporaries remain extant. About one-third of those that survive dealt with political topics.78 The beginning of the printed ballad coincides roughly with the beginning of printing. Because of their potential for political comment and libelous innuendo, ballads periodically became matters of governmental concern and regulation. Printed ballads, like other printed material, waxed and waned with the strenuousness of government surveillance and more general political interest.79 Ballads were sung in public places and private houses. Some were handwritten; others printed. Copies were sometimes placed in church pews or posted on church doors. They were “caste abroade . . . in diverse and sonderye open and public places” and fixed “upon diverse and sundry doors, walls and posts” for all to see.80 Drinking had a substantial place in ballad culture. Many were sold at alehouses, inns and taverns. They were sold or sung on the streets of London and distributed by chapmen and peddlers in the countryside from at least 1570. Peddlers were said to carry bundles of ballads in their packs.81 By Elizabeth’s reign ballads had become part of political communication. Like more formal poetry, they commemorated coronations, royal entries and royal marriages. They reported news of the Northern Rebellion of 1569–70, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots and the conflict with Spain. A ballad of 1581 proclaimed A Triumph for true Subiucts, and a Terrour unto all Traitours. There were ballads treating of departing English armies, battles in Ireland and the Armada defeat. They commented on the French civil wars and marked the execution of the Earl of Essex in 1601.82 The ballads of the Jacobean period echoed and overlapped broadsides, pamphlets, newssheets and the satirical verses called “libels.” A substantial number greeted the king’s accession. Others recorded the birth and death of Prince Henry and the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to the Elector Pala-

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tine. They expressed suspicion of the Scots and hostility toward the king’s debasement of titles of honor. At least nine dealt with the Gunpowder Plot. Sir Walter Raleigh’s trial and execution were also the subjects of song. The Overbury murder elicited “divers ballets” “almost every day.” A Scourge for the Pope celebrated the expulsion of Jesuits and seminary priests. “Songes and ballades, sung up and downe the streetes in many places” maligned the Spanish. The year 1624 witnessed at least thirty-one antipapist ballads. The Bohemian war was followed in popular ballads. There were songs as well as plays and pamphlets on the massacre of English merchants by the Dutch at Amboyna.83 Unpopular royal advisors, such as Robert Cecil, were the object of ballads and verse libels. The monopolist Giles Mompesson was vilified by balladeers, as was the Duke of Buckingham, especially during the period when the Spanish match was pursued. Its failure was also marked by ballads. Several musicians were summoned before Star Chamber for performing libelous songs about Buckingham. The duke’s assassination in 1628 elicited celebratory verses and ballads.84 John Selden astutely remarked that “though one might slight libels and ballads, Yet you may see by them how the wind sitts; More solid things doe not shew the complexion of the times so well as ballads and libels.”85 The number of printed ballads declined during the 1630s as censorship became more severe, but ballads continued to be sung, often in the same venues where the news was read. The prolific ballad writer Martin Parker turned his attention to political topics, producing a newslike song about a naval battle between the Spanish and Dutch as well as several ballads castigating the Scots for their involvement in the Bishop’s War. Other balladeers denounced ship money, Archbishop Laud, Strafford, Secretary Windebank and Lord Keeper Finch, who complained of “lamentable Ballads and Pamphlets.”86 During the civil war ballad production became a substantial trade, ballads now being sold by “whole hundreds.”87 Both pro- and anti-Parliament ballads were common. In 1640 about a hundred ballads were entered in the Stationer’s register, most of them supporting the king and the war against Scotland. Most ballads of the civil war era, however, were printed clandestinely.88 Royalists used ballads effectively, especially in the context of drinking.89 John Cleveland supplied an anti-Parliament ballad as well as one condemning the Assembly of Divines.90 Matthew Parker’s When the King Enjoys his Own Again circulated for decades. The potency of his ballads is suggested



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by a petition denouncing them sent to Parliament allegedly subscribed by 15,000.91 Other Royalist offerings, such as When the King comes Home in Peace again, reprimanded those “whose high-brain’d zeal hath long disturb’d the common weal.” I Love my King and Country Well (1645) condemned “these unnatural wars,” insisting that king and Parliament must come to an agreement. Several Royalist songs expressed fear of social upheaval. Servants, it was said, now rode with swords by their sides, and made their masters footmen. In The Commoners (1648) the “scum of the land” were now “the men that command.” “First down does the crown, Then follows the gown, Thus levell’d are we by the Roundhead” to whom we will “lose our estates, by plunder and rates,/ To bedeck those proud upstarts that swagger.”92 There was an outpouring of Royalist ballads when the king was executed. Relatively few ballads have surfaced from 1650–55, though Royalist ballad writers and hawkers still managed to ply their trade.93 Dissolution of the Barebones Parliament in 1653 produced The House Out of Doors and The Parliament Routed; or, Here’s a House to be Let. The years 1659 and 1660 saw an outpouring of scurrilous anti-Rump songs and attacks on Cromwell and the regicides.94 Audiences required considerable familiarity with political and military affairs in order to make sense of songs such as Chips of the Old Block: or Hercules cleansing the Aegean Stable, which referred to Lenthall, Vane, Marten, Neville, Glyn and St. John. In one, “We have seen a new thing, cal’d a Council of State/ Upheld by a power that’s now out of date/ . . . Eleven years mischiefs, tumults and rage,/ Are the only memorials of this Common-wealths age.” Another proclaimed, “Now the Rump is confounded,/ There’s an end of the Roundhead.” Nevil and Vane “with the rest of that train” have fled to Oceana and “Now Mr. Prynne/ With the rest may come in/ And take their places again;/ For the house is made sweet For those members to meet.”95 Anthologies of anti-Rump songs and poems also appeared. The king’s return in 1660 was celebrated in song. Several described the king’s progress from Dover to London, others related Charles’s recent travails. Ballads soon referred to Charles’s sexual laxity.96 One has Charles saying, “I melt away their treasure . . . And swive at my pleasure.” “I corrupted the age,” and make a nation of men into “slaves again.”97 Contemporary events such as the Dutch wars attracted balladeers as well as newsmen and pamphleteers.98 The Popish Plot, the Exclusion controversy and Whig-Tory skirmishing between 1678 and 1683 produced am enormous number of ballads, many echoing views expressed in Whig and Tory

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pamphlets. The volume can be explained by both the lapse in the Licensing Act and the intense Whig and Tory polemical warfare. The sensational revelations of Titus Oates resulted in a flurry of political tracts and ballads, some expressing belief, others disbelief, in the existence of a plot to kill the king. There were replies and counter-replies.99 We possess far more Tory than Whig ballads. A Ballad Called Perkin’s Figary (1679) attacked the Duke of Monmouth, then being proposed as an alternative heir to the Duke of York.100 In 1681, Young Jemmy, An Excellent New Ballad and Old Jemmy proclaimed the Duke of York as “the true and lawful heir to the crown by right of birth and laws.”101 Other ballads related Whig efforts to obtain parliamentary elections, their behavior in Parliament, and their petitioning campaigns.102 The Earl of Shaftesbury, often derisively labeled “Tony,” “the Tap” or the King of Poland, bore the brunt of Tory balladeers’ venom. The London grand jury’s ignoramus verdict on Shaftesbury was lampooned in Ignoramus, an Excellent New Song, and defended in New Ignoramus: Being the Second New Song.103 One ballad condemned the London grand jury that refused to indict Stephen Colledge as a “jury of rebels.”104 Others commented on the Whig Association, London sheriffs, the election of the lord mayor of London and the king’s revocation of London’s Charter.105 Several Tory ballads of 1683 and 1684 dealt with the Rye House plot, one declaring that “the Whiggs must mount for Tiburn in Course . . . we have their Confession the Men and their Arms.”106 Another, The Lord Russells Last Farewell to the World (1683) has Russell boasting, “The best of Kings I sought to Kill,/ and draw’d in Thousands more,” and accused him of having endeavored “To lay the Kingdome all in gore/ To please a Parliament.” The executions of the Earl of Essex, Russell, Hampden and Sidney were marked by ballads, mostly unfavorable.107 Despite James II’s pressure on the lord mayor of London to forbid ballad singing in the streets, there were ballads rejoicing at the acquittal of the Seven Bishops.108 Despite the destruction of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ballads, those that remain demonstrate that they were a widely used mode of political communication and a potent means of ridiculing and attacking political opponents. One of the most striking features of the ballad was how well informed writers, purchasers, singers and listeners must have been. Many songs, particularly from the late 1650s onward, would have made no sense without prior knowledge of events and participants. Ballad output waxed and waned, with peaks occurring in the 1620s, at the close of the Interregnum era, and during the fierce party conflicts of 1678–82. Licens-



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ing, punitive laws and ordinances and institutions such as Star Chamber and the courts were utilized by the government to control their output and circulation but were not sufficient to prevent them from being printed and sung. The popular ballad was obviously a powerful means of political expression.

Nonpoetic Literary Genres The “character,” the politically oriented fable and ghost dialogues and narratives are literary genres that have as yet not been sufficiently recognized as participating in early modern political discourse.

The Character The “character” began during the Renaissance revival of classical letters as a nonpolitical literary form modeled on the Characters of Theophrastes. During the mid-seventeenth century it evolved into a satirical genre used to ridicule religious and political figures and movements. Initially the character was defined as “a picture (reall or personall) quaintly drawne, in various colours, all of them heightned by shadowing: like an emblem or hieroglyph,” or, more briefly, “In little comprehending much.”109 In its early incarnation the character was a brief prose essay on a type of individual or particular occupation, similar to the stock characters of dramatic comedy. Typical were the boisterous soldier, the fop or a figure akin to Jonson’s “Sir Politick Would-be.” Collections of “characters,” which began to appear in the early seventeenth century, sometimes contained characters of tyrant kings and wicked magistrates, often paired with those of good kings and good magistrates.110 There were also characterizations of Puritans, mostly critical.111 The corantos of the 1620s were attacked by several character writers for insufficient truthfulness and partisanship and for containing inappropriate and excessive news of Continental affairs. Thomas Fuller’s The Holy and Profane State (1642) served as a bridge between the largely apolitical character writing of the pre–civil war era and the political and often vituperative characters of the later period. The king is characterized as “a mortal God” who holds his crown immediately from God. “He willingly orders his actions by the Laws” and “loves to be legal; in all his practices, and thinks that his power is more safely lock’d up for him

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in his Laws, than kept in his own will.” He “harkneth to the advice of good councilors” and is “careful to maintain his just Prerogative, that as it not be outstretched, so it may not be overshortened.”112 Characters of the “holy state” are balanced by those of “the profane state.” Fuller provided portraits of the wise statesman as well as the traitor and tyrant. What modern writers might be more inclined to label caricature than character became extremely popular during the civil war and Interregnum decades, with an estimated five hundred printed between 1640 and 1661.113 The genre was now used to ridicule, criticize and condemn by means of exaggeration and vitriolic hyperbole. Many vilified religious figures or groups, often in the context of Presbyterian-Independent conflict and the rise of the sects.114 Characters helped to create and cement political and religious stereotypes. They sharpened difference, focused on undesirable traits and encouraged simplification and generalization. We have, for example, the 1640 Character of a True Subject and The Lively character of the malignant Partie (1642); A Character of an anti Malignant or right Parliamentier (1645), A Description of the Round-head and Rattle-Head (1642), the very hostile A Short Compendious, and True Descriptions of the Round-Heads, The King no tyrant; or, the Character of them both (1643) as well as Thomas May’s The Character of a right Malignant (1645), Edward Sherborne’s The Character of an Agitator (1645) and An Agitator anatomiz’d, or, a Character of a Agitator (1648). The 1645 Character of an Oxford Incendiary blasted the queen, characterized Laud as “the pope’s pigmie champion” and the prelatical clergy as “the excrement of ill-governed Monarchy” feeding “the Vulture Prerogative with the Carcasse of the Commonwealth.”115 In 1646 Royalist Sir Francis Worthley published fourteen characters, several ridiculing antinomians and praising the king. Times Anatomized included characters of a good king, a rebel, an honest subject and a corrupt committee man.116 The character had become a significant part of the campaigns of denunciation and counterdenunciation found in the pamphlet and ballad and played a role in establishing the stereotypes of Cavalier and Roundhead. Several characters took aim at the increasingly ubiquitous newsbooks, which were “silent traitors that affront majesty, and abuse authority, under the color of an imprimatur.”117 Aulicus, the Royalist newsbook, was said to “speak for the Courtier,” and would “have the King . . . be a Tyrant . . . and men that live in his Dominions to be used like slaves rather then like loving Subjects.” The author suggested that “Aulicus hath done the Parliament more harm than 2000 of the King’s Soldiers.”118 The Character of a



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Diurnal-Maker by Royalist poet John Cleveland ridiculed the “weekly fragments” that “pass for history.”119 Cleveland’s Character of a London Diurnall characterized the corantos of the 1620s as the “original sinner” and the “Dutch, Gall-Belgicus protoplast.” He denounced modern mercuries for propagating “parliament’s bye blows, . . . law[s] still-born, dropped before quickened by the royal assent.” Newsbooks were erroneously “taken for the pulse of the body politic.”120 Replies objected to Cleveland’s calumnies of Parliament and its ordinances, the Assembly of Divines, parliamentary military officers and the Royalist Aulicus.121 The Cromwellian era saw The Character of a Protector and Tyrants and Protector Set Forth in their True Colours. In the former Cromwell apes a king; in the latter he is depicted as holding himself accountable to none but God and as having “Prerogative Pleaders” as “his orthodox Preachers.”122 The civil war and Interregnum years produced several collections of characters,123 as well as characters that exist only in manuscript versions. The year 1659, a year of turmoil and uncertainty, witnessed a sharp increase in the number of characters. The brief revival of republican hopes produced The Leveller (1659) and The Character of the late upstart House of Lords (1659) “by a friend to the good old cause,” while the demise of the Rump saw The Character of the Rump (1660) and the Character of the Parliament, commonly called the Rump (1660). By the Restoration the character was a well-established literary form employed to vilify religious and political opponents. It was now described as “a witty and facetious description of the nature and qualities of some person, or sort of people” featuring “tart nipping jerks about their vices or miscarriages” and “conclud[ing] with some witty and neat passage, leaving them to the effect of their follies or studies.”124 Readers were not expected to find impartiality. Characters ridiculed fanatics, Presbyterians, Quakers, papists, Jesuits and coffee houses.125 The character provided an ideal weapon for mutual vilification by Whigs and Tories and played a substantial role in fixing Whig and Tory stereotypes. They were tools for sharpening political difference and obscuring shared beliefs and values. Tories blamed Whigs for the civil war, often suggesting that they wished again to push England to rebellion. In The Character of a modern Whig (1681): He is a certain insect bred in the corruption of the late rebellion and is . . . a traytor extraduce. At his Majesties happy Restoration . . . [he] began . . . to crawl with new life in the warmth of the Act of Oblivion and afterwards basked himself in the rays of the royal indulgence and toleration, till the old poisonous

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Whigs offered their “Popery and Arbitrary Government” mantra, ridiculing Tory professions of loyalty and support for a persecuting church and lampooning the Tory periodicals of Roger L’Estrange.127 Tories responded with A Description of his Majesties True and Loyal Subject Scandalously called Toreys (1682). The Popish Plot treason trials also produced characters, several directed against informers and Titus Oates. The character attracting most attention was Elkanah Settle’s The Character of a Popish Successor, an exclusionist pamphlet that elicited numerous replies.128 Settle’s pamphlet marks a change in the character from a brief, often single-page effort to an extended polemic. Settle argued that the dangers of popery were real and serious. Disinheriting James, was not “illegal or monstrous as some think” because “succession . . . in the direct line of descent since the Conquest” had rarely lasted more than three reigns and had frequently been determined by Acts of Parliament. The “bugbear passive obedience” must be rejected. Government originated in the natural desire for peace. Kings were made for the people, not the people for the king. Settle concluded that “a Popish successor is the greatest Plot upon England since the Creation.”129 A Tory response, The Character of an Honest Man, insisted that princes were made by grace of God. Only knaves believed that princes were creatures of the people and might and ought to be called in question by them with respect to their stewardship. Knaves, that is Whigs, accepted successive oaths of allegiance, countenanced rebellion and failed to observe January 30 and May 29, those all-important days on the Tory calendar. They pretended to observe the Sabbath zealously while vilifying the Church of England and found “fault with Government and Governors, . . . the first step to Sedition.” The honest man, obviously a Tory, was humble and peaceable, conformed to the established law and refused to reproach the king’s “Loyal Brother” or meddle with “the Arcana imperii of his Prince.”130 In the course of the seventeenth century this literary genre, initially a nonpolitical weapon characterizing human foibles and professions, was forged into a powerful partisan political weapon. After the defeat of the Whigs the number of characters dwindled to a handful. Although some



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publications after 1688 bore the name “character,” fewer exhibited the vitriolic qualities that had for a time made the character such an effective political weapon.

Fables and Analogies Analogies and fables, Aesop’s in particular, were used to instill political values and draw political lessons. Publication of Aesop’s fables began in the late fifteenth century, and numerous editions were produced thereafter, especially for use in grammar schools. There was general agreement about the value of fables. Sir Philip Sidney thought that “Aesop’s tales give good proof: whose pretty allegories, stealing under the formal tales of beasts, make man, more beastly than beasts, begin to hear the sound of virtue from these dumb speakers.”131 Beast stories, according to Thomas North, were “full of Moralities, examples and government . . . wherein [one] may . . . see into the Court, looke into the commonwealth, . . . A Glasse it is for [courtiers] to looke into, and also a meet school to reform” those who “unjustly seek to aspire, or otherwise abuse the Prince.”132 Sir Francis Bacon valued fables and parables because arguments could not otherwise “be made so perspicuous nor true examples so apt.”133 An Aesopian fable was employed in a 1628 House of Commons speech, the speaker asserting that “the moral whereof shall be that when actions are regulated by law you may guess at the proportion, but if it be regulated by the prerogative there is no end.”134 The most common analogy employed by fablists and others was that of the body politic to the body natural. Typically the king was designated the head of the body politic and the populace the body. The health of the body required that each part perform its duties and responsibilities, neither shirking nor making claims on the roles of the others. The headless body suggested a leaderless polity, the “many-headed monster.” James I was among many to refer to the idea of a king who, as head, had the duty of directing the body politic, as well as to the familiar cliches about health and disease, suggesting that corrupt “members” might be cut off for the health of the whole. In 1606 Edward Forset argued that sovereignty was the soul of the political body. He invokes the mutuality between the head and members and argues that, as the chief physician of the state, the sovereign must sometimes bring the body politic back to health.135 For the most part the notion of the body politic was used to underline the need for political

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order and social harmony. For Tory polemicist Roger L’Estrange, “There is so Near an Analogy betwixt the State of the Body natural and Political, that the Necessity of Government and Obedience, cannot be better Represented.”136 Beast fables and analogies were often employed to make political references. The king of the beasts, the courageous lion, referred to the king. There was the sly fox and the bee, “a perpetual figure of a just governance or rule.”137 Spenser’s Prosopopoia or Mother Hubberds Tale used a beast fable to comment on Queen Elizabeth’s French marriage, while Fulke Greville used the beast fable to show how tyrannies develop.138 Royalist James Howell’s Parables, Reflections upon the Times was designed to show how the “materiall passages of this long’d for Parliament” had distorted and dislocated the English state. In “The Parliament of Stars” Apollo commands the “Syderian Synod” not to tamper with his sovereignty or to create grievances where there were none. When “the Great Counsell of the Birds” is called to redress “some extravagancies” of their hereditary king, the Eagle, one group of birds would not be satisfied till “The Griffons head, . . . was offered up as a sacrifice” [“Strafford” is printed in the margin]. Then birds of prey, instead of consulting for the common good, commit outrages against the “successive hereditary Monarch,” usurp regal power, attack the bishops and attempt to “barre the Holy Church of her Rights.” The moral to be drawn from the fable was that “Changes in Government are commonly fatall, for seldome comes a better.”139 In 1651 John Ogilby’s popular but expensive folio edition of Aesop’s fables explicitly states, “Statesmen-men study’d Beasts to Govern Men.” Again the parliament of birds fable is used to show that “The Birds reduc’d this to a Popular State” ejecting king and lords of prey. Ogilby warns, “When Civil War hath brought great nations low/ Destruction comes oft with a Forein Foe.” The fable of the “Rebellion of the Hands and Feet” taught “Civil commotions strongly carried on/ Seldome bring Quiet when the War is done:/ Then thousand Interests in stranger shape appear/ And through all ways to certain Ruin Steer.”140 In Thomas Fuller’s Ornitho-Logic, or the Speech of Birds (1662), birds summon a parliament to complain of the cruelty and lust of the eagle. After his deposition some oppose all government, arguing that they are “free by nature” and all should be restored to their “Primitive Liberty.” The assembly, convinced that subordination and subjection are necessary, eventually selects a new ruler. After several defective rulers, the eagle is reinstated and again rules over the kingdom, this time with greater appreciation of the flock’s needs.141



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Aesop’s fables continued to be treated as a source of political wisdom. A 1666 edition argued that fables contained as much truth for the conduct of life as did history, admitting, however, that “Distorted Misapplications to Political, or Personal Meanings” were possible.142 A 1673 version insisted that Aesop’s lessons could preserve individuals, families and kingdoms “from those courses which have proved to be their ruin.” A few years later another praised their “great Advantage” during “these tumultuous Times, wherein men use Fraud and Equivocations, to carry on their devilish Designs.”143 L’Estrange used Aesop’s fables to emphasize political obedience and the dangers of popular governance.144 Still another edition taught that fables contained “sound Maxims of Policy” valuable for those with “considerable office in a Commonwealth,” noting that the “greatest Statesmen of all Nations, in their most supreme Councils, . . . made frequent use of them.”145 The fable of the belly and its members pointedly was used to teach political lessons throughout the early modern era. In this fable other parts of the body become jealous of the belly, starving themselves to deprive the belly of sustenance, believing it contributed nothing to the organism as a whole. This fable, which made an appearance in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, demonstrated that cooperation was essential to the health of the body politic and that each part had its duties and responsibilities.146 Bacon’s essay “Of Seditions and Troubles” referred to “rebellions of the belly” as “the worst” kind of rebellion.147 For Roger L’Estrange this fable was “a Political Reading upon the state and Condition of Civil Communities, where the Members have their several Offices, and every Part Contributes respectively to the Preservation and Service of the Whole.”148 In the fable “The Frogs desiring a King,” frogs, living in liberty, request a king from Jupiter. When given King Log, they complain of his inaction and request another. They are granted a new monarch, King Stork, who promptly devours the frogs. Ogilby provides a Royalist moral. “No government can the unsettled vulgar please/ When change delights think quiet a disease/ Now Anarchy and Armies they maintain/ And wearied are for Kings and Lords again.”149 A broadside declares, “We English men are worse than Aesop’s F[r]oggs/ We call’d these tyrants Kings which were but Loggs.”150 For Roger L’Estrange “The Frogs Petitioning for a King” showed the murmerings and unsteadiness of the common People, who are never satisfied with their present rulers. They cannot bear to be without government, but then cannot bear the yoke of it. . . . By which the Frogs are given to Understand the

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Politics, Poetry and Literature very truth of the Matter, . . . which is, That Kings are from God, and that it is a Sin, A Folly, and a Madness to struggle with his Appointments.151

An Exclusion era fable, Grimalkin, or the Rebel Cat, insisted that the cat, no less than the fox, was capable of a “politick character.” The “Lusty Puss” [Shaftesbury] was a “little Machiavel” who used “specious Notions of Liberty” to foment rebellion against the Lion.152

The Ghost Dialogue Among the less-known literary vehicles for political commentary was the ghost narrative or dialogue, in which a figure of political significance comments from the grave justifying or, more often, condemning his past actions or vilifying his confederates. Many are broadsides preserved in single copies and, as in the case of the similarly ephemeral ballad, it is likely that those extant are only a handful of those printed. Like so many politicized genres, the ghost dialogue was used most effectively during the 1620s and the 1640s and in 1659–60 and 1679–83. One of the earliest appears to have been Alexander Craig’s Elizabeth, Late Queene of England, Her Ghost, in which Elizabeth praises James and urges loyalty to him.153 The Vision in the Tower (1606) purports to be a dialogue among the recently dead Gunpowder plotters. In 1612 there is George Wither’s antipapist, anti-Spanish dialogue between Prince Henry’s ghost and Great Britain.154 Two years later Christopher Brooke’s The Ghost of Richard the Third demonstrated the damage done by a tyrant king.155 In the 1620s the ghost dialogue was one of the many genres used to criticize James I’s foreign policy. In John Reynolds’s Vox Coeli: or News From Heaven the ghosts of six English rulers criticize the current pro-Spanish policy. Elizabeth, “that glorious Queen,” is contrasted with the pacifist James, and Essex is a mouthpiece for anti-Spanish sentiment and an aggressive Protestant policy in Thomas Scot’s Robert, Earl of Essex, his Ghost (1624).156 In 1642, the now “good king” James I’s ghost charges that the Duke of Buckingham poisoned him, a charge that the favorite readily admits.157 The following year the ghost of Sir John Suckling remonstrates with the Protestants of England to defend the country, its laws and liberties and follow the “good motions of King and Parliament” to gain a desired peace.158 In 1645 Strafford’s ghost admits to subverting the laws, raising huge taxes, persuading Charles to renew ship money, arming Irish Catholics and having caused



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the best men to be punished. Now, however, he advises Charles to “be accessory to no more blood” and to mend the devastation of his three kingdoms.159 The Ghost of Sir John Presbyter (1647) characterized Presbyterianism as “a devouring monster . . . begot in Hell, nursed up in Scotland.”160 In The Ghost of King Charls [sic] and Sergeant Bradshaw (1649), which appeared shortly after the trial and execution of the king, the king blames Laud for turning the people’s “tongues and hearts” against him. Charles blames Parliament for beginning the war and claims that he had the law on his side. The dialogue also discusses the means for preserving the church and state “from the gaping ruines which threatned to devour them.”161 In another dialogue Charles and Bradshaw discuss recent events. Bradshaw, who refers to Cromwell as “that sink of sin and forge of Satan, Nich. Machiavels elder brother,” reports of telling him that usurpation of government was “the most horrid Treason.” Bradshaw admits that he had “counted it a small matter to imbrew my hands in the sacred bloud of my King.”162 Another anti-Cromwell effort, Abraham Cowley’s A Vision Concerning his late Pretended Highness, Cromwell the Wicked, depicts a naked Cromwell holding a bloody sword in one hand and in the other “Acts, Ordinances, Protestations, Covenants, [and] Engagements.” Cromwell’s ghost offers a strong defense, insisting that it was lawful for him to succeed Charles because he had assumed power only after England’s government had been “totally broken and dissolved.” He had not destroyed the “ancient building of the Commonwealth” and instead had built anew from its ashes. Nevertheless Cromwell is condemned for putting the king to death, trampling on Parliament, excessive taxes and promoting “the rage of all the Sects.”163 Ghostly reports during the tumults of 1659 echoed prorepublican pamphlets. Lilburns Ghost attacked the Protectorate grandees “loaded with the ruines and spoils of the People” and proclaimed the popular origin of all just power and government. Parliament “smothered our Free State, in its infancy,” and sent “the Good Old Cause, to Utopia.” Never again should executive and legislative authority be placed in the same hands, as they had been under Charles I and Oliver Cromwell. The ghost rejects “reason of state,” a concept that “makes War and Peace, raiseth Taxes, cuts off and pardons Offenders, treats Embassadores” and has caused many of England’s past and recent ills.164 In The World in a Maize, or Old Olivers Ghost (1659) Cromwell is accused of being a “Fiend sent from Hell . . . Who altered the Government of the Commonwealth” and admits to having been “both a Pollitician and a Machiavellien” who had “done unjust things.”165 The ghost format was less used during the early years of the Restoration,

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though The Dream of the Cabal; A Prophetical Satire (1672) portrays the king and members of the cabal discussing taxes, France, and policy toward dissenters. Shaftesbury is characterized as “A little bobtail’d Lord, urchin of state,/ A Prasegod-Barebones-peer whom all men hate,” while the king is reminded “tis law that makes you King . . . And very vain would be the plea of crown, When statute laws and parliaments are down.”166 The ghost dialogue, however, reemerged in force during the Popish Plot and Exclusion years. Clod-Pates’s Ghost, for example, charges that “courants, diurnals” and “gazetts” are refusing to report on several Popish Plot trials.167 In Oliver Cromwells Ghost: or Old Noll Newly Revived (1679), the shade admits his “Pondrous guilt, of Treason,” “the Sacred Blood . . . [he] spilt” and the “crouds of Loyal Subjects I made groan, Under pretence of strickt Religion” and warns of the papist “black Design” to “both King and Government.”168 Several ghost dialogues feature executed papal plotters.169 The ghost of convicted traitor Lord Stafford, for example, accuses “Toney” [Shaftesbury] of having ruined him with “false pretences of a wretched Plot, Whose vile Conception, thy own Brain begot.” Shaftesbury admits that his design had been to promote anarchy, sedition and the destruction of the kingdom.170 The murder of Sir Edmund-Berry Godfrey, allegedly at papist hands, also elicited several ghost dialogues. Discussion of several ghost dialogues in The Impartial Protestant Mercury and in the Protestant and True Domestick Intelligence indicate that the genre was well known and interacted with the pamphlet and news media.171 The ghost dialogue proved particularly useful to Tory polemicists. The Ghost of the House of Parliament to the New One (1681) advises the new body to preserve itself from “the Fate of my Tumultuous ways.” The ghost of the former parliament admits that the “subtile Serpents of the Law” had drawn it from “true Obedience,” seditiously prescribing limits on the king.172 Another Tory effort has the Interregnum radical Hugh Peters report from hell about the current “Hatching up a Common-Weal” and “fighting for the good old Cause.” Peters speaks favorably of “pulling down the Church” and of “the Little Venial Crime of Killing Kings.”173 The trial and conviction of Stephen Colledge for his treasonous broadside, the Ra Ree Show, produced several apparition dialogues. In one, Colledge reports, “I am now Joyner in Ordinary in the Commonwealth of Fiends, where the Earl of Shaftesbury is received in Favor.” He notes that Hell awaits the arrival of several eminent Whig lawyers and suggests that Lord Russell has his passport for Hell ready.174 In another, Colledge is depicted as a puppet under Shaft-



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esbury’s control. Still another warns Monmouth to curb his ambition.175 The last flurry of the genre attacked Whig leaders charged with treason. Shaftesbury, who is compared to Sejanus, Cataline and Noll [Cromwell], worked by petition, Cromwell “by Fire and Slaughter.”176 Other examples give voice to the late Earl of Essex, to the executed Whig hero Lord Russell, and Algernon Sidney.177 Whigs use the genre to praise Russell, “that noble Lord, who lately shin’d As a bright Star, in our terrestrial Sphere.”178 The ghost genre proved to be an effective though relatively short-lived political genre that disappears from political polemics at the end of 1683. It proved particularly useful for castigating recently deceased political figures, allowing them to condemn themselves and their allies. Looking back we can see that the ghost dialogue, which emerged as a tool of royal critics during the Jacobean era, become a polemical tool during the civil war and Interregnum and a potent form of political communication for Whig and Tory partisans during the Restoration era.

Conclusion The many poetic and prose genres treated in this chapter show how readily literary forms could be adapted to serve politics. Poetry of several types was employed for political purposes throughout the period, though some types were more prevalent in some periods than in others. Pastoral and romance were in their heyday at the beginning of the era that we have examined and then declined; satirical verse was favored during the Restoration. Ballads may not have been political in origin but their political potential was eventually realized. The character did not begin as a political genre but quickly became one as politically motivated writers saw how readily it could be adapted to exaggerate the qualities of disliked individuals and groups and create long-lived stereotypes. Fables were employed to comment on political events and problems. The ghost narrative or dialogue had only a brief lifespan, but was a useful tool for commenting on recently deceased political figures. There can be no doubt that all these literary forms were part of the political culture of the early modern era and that several of them attracted popular as well as elite audiences.

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The Sermon and Political Education

The sermon was the genre to which people of all ages and classes were most often exposed, and indeed were compelled by law to attend. Sermons were discussed by friends and families. Many listeners took shorthand notes. Although sermons differed somewhat according to occasion, venue and the predilection of individuals, sermons, like many genres, tended to follow a recognizable format. Sermons began with a text from the Old or New Testament that was explained at greater or lesser length. The implications for religious doctrine, for religious duties and application of doctrine and duties followed. The body of the sermon appealed to the reason but typically concluded with an exhortation that appealed to the affections. The rhetorical format was provided in a series of treatises on preaching.1 Published sermons sold well and reached a larger portion of the population than most publications. A commentator noted, “I know very well that every Booksellers Stall groans under the burthen of Sermons, . . . [as] commonly cried about the Streets as Ballads; Sermons before the King, before the Judges, before the Right Honorable, Right Worshipful . . . etc.”2 It has been estimated that if only one sermon were given per parish per year for the years 1600–1640, some 360,000 sermons would have been delivered.3 Governments were well aware of the political potential of the pulpit. From 1547 onward, parishioners heard the Homily on Obedience, designed to instill belief in a divinely imposed natural and social hierarchy. “Take away kings, princes, rulers, magistrates, judges, and such states of God’s order, no man shall ride or go by the highway unrobbed, no man shall sleep in his own house or bed unkilled.” “We may not resist, nor in any wise hurt, an anointed king which is God’s lieutenant, vicegerent.” God forbade “insur-



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rection, sedition or tumults, either by force of arms or otherwise, against the anointed of the Lord or any of his appointed officers.”4 It was reported that when Elizabeth, no great fan of preaching, “had any business to bring about amongst the people, she used to tune the Pulpits, . . . that is to say, to have some Preachers . . . ready at command to cry up her design.”5 In 1558 Cecil ordered that preachers at St. Paul’s Cross be monitored to avoid disputes “touching the governance of the realm.”6 In 1559 Lent sermons encouraged passage of the bill for supremacy. The same year clerics were ordered to preach obedience and loyalty to the Queen above “all other powers and potentates on earth,”7 and the homily “Exortacion to Obedience” be repeated four times a year in most churches. From 1570 onward “An Homily against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion” was added. Official prayers for the Queen were added to the list. Notable victories of Elizabeth’s reign were marked by A Psalm and Collect of Thanksgiving . . . to be said or sung in Churches. Sermons in London and elsewhere discussed the implications of a possible marriage of Elizabeth to the Duke of Anjou.8 There was increasing political discussion in the pulpits during the reign of James. In 1610 it was reported that “sermons every day . . . rail upon the fundamental laws of England.” The Bishop of Chichester’s sermon preaching that the king could tax without Parliament’s consent was criticized in Parliament.9 In 1622 a Crown directive forbade preachers to discuss “the power, prerogative, jurisdiction, authority, or duty of sovereign princes or otherwise meddle with affairs of state.”10 Despite the prohibition, the divine right of kings and the necessity of obedience were preached. Sermons also attacked the king’s Spanish policy and the Spanish match. A bill in the House of Commons proposed that clerics preaching against the subject’s liberty should be hanged. In 1627 sermons encouraged payment of the forced loan, and the king ordered bishops to see that the clergy preached in its favor. In 1628 a member of the House of Commons complained of those preaching “that the King hath an unlimited power” and that “subjects have no property in their goods.”11 Just prior to the meeting of the Long Parliament, the Bishop of London issued articles inquiring whether lecturers and parish clergymen were preaching “the doctrine of obedience.”12 At an early meeting of the Long Parliament, John Pym denounced the “preaching for absolute monarchy that the King may doe what he list.”13 The government clearly wished to prevent sermons critical of government policy but just as clearly did not wish to prevent preachers from preaching obedience, the divine right of kings and an expansive view of royal authority. In 1642 the House of Commons took measures against a sermon preached in Canter-

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bury Cathedral in which the preacher had declared that “the people were departed from the King. That they must come as Benhadad’s servants did with halters about their necks.”14 The political impact of preaching was widely recognized. Thomas Fuller indicated that “those who hold the helm of the pulpit” possessed the capacity to “steer the people’s Hearts as they please,”15 and Charles I thought, “People are governed by the pulpit, more than the sword in time of peace.”16 The pulpit, which reached an extraordinarily large audience, was such an important channel for the distribution of news that Clarendon believed “that the first publishing of extraordinary news was from the pulpit; and by the preacher’s texts, and his manner of discourse upon it, the auditors might judge, and commonly foresaw, what was like to be next done in the Parliament or Council of State.”17 Gilbert Burnet, who characterized the pulpit of the revolutionary decades as “scene[s] of news and passion,” must have agreed with Clarendon’s assessment, because he reported that “all that passed in the state” with respect to the Scots “was canvassed” in sermons and prayer.18 The newsbook Mercurius Impartialis also coupled the pulpit and press, suggesting that they had been the ruin of both king and people.19 The following year James Howell linked the pulpit and the press when he characterized them as “the most advantageous instruments” of parliamentary rebellion.20 According to John Nalson the pulpit was one of Parliament’s “principal Engines of Battery.”21 Thomas Hobbes pointed to the preachers “in most of the market towns of England” as underminers of the nation.22 The Crown attempted to control the pulpits but was not always able to do so. It repeatedly issued orders to prevent certain kinds of preaching. However, many pulpits were not easy to control. The laity controlled the right to appoint to a considerable number of parish livings, and those of Puritan leanings were able to maintain some Puritan preachers. Parliamentary leaders were often patrons of parish clergy and thus were able to exert some influence on preachers and their sermons. Lecturers, who provided many additional sermons, were also selected by laymen. By 1629 some 72 percent of Londoners could hear lecturers preach on Sunday afternoons.23 Royal and episcopal efforts to control sermon content continued as the civil war began. Efforts were made to exclude those of undesirable views from the pulpit, and many clerics were ejected from their livings and thus from opportunities to preach. James I’s regulations concerning preaching were reissued in 1642, and the directive, which referred to Parliament’s “lately usurped power,” required that copies be read to grand juries in open court.24 The Long Parliament too attempted to control the pulpit, relying



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on ministers to read its declarations in their churches so as “to possess the people with the truth and justice of Parliament’s cause in taking up defensive arms.”25 Clerics were ordered to tender oaths such as the Covenant. Sermons given before Parliament were printed, often at parliamentary request. Preachers were not reluctant to comment on political affairs. One declared 1641 a mirabilus annus, having seen the execution of Strafford, Laud in the Tower, Star Chamber and High Commission vanished and the Triennial Act passed.26 Another spoke of legal reform and reform of the professions along with the plea for reform of the church.27 A newsbook in 1645 reported that there was now a close relationship between the government-supported newsbook, Britanicus, and the pulpit.28 Although few sermons given in the provinces were likely to be printed, it is clear that provincial preaching was important in transmitting political debates just prior to the outbreak of fighting. Sermons dealt with topics such as the lawfulness of taking up arms and for justifying war against prelates and papists. They were preached before county committees and during recruiter elections. Parliamentary purges of the ministry resulted in the ejection of “scandalous ministers,” some of whom were accused of speaking out against Parliament. In Royalist controlled areas Royalist preachers preached that rebellion and resistance to the king were rebellion against God, frequently employing references to the revolts of Absalom against King David or Corah’s against Aaron and David. In areas controlled by Parliament, a rival preaching campaign justified armed rebellion. Army chaplains delivered sermons favoring the king’s execution. Both the Crown and Parliament, before and after the Purge, recognized the power of the pulpit and attempted to channel its messages to favor themselves.29 Differences that emerged between Presbyterian and Independent, with their implications for changing relationships between church and state, could be followed in parliamentary sermons. Restoration governments continued to “tune” the pulpits to instill reverence for rulers and the necessity of obedience. A preamble to the first act of Charles II’s reign attributed a good part of the “late Troubles and Disorders” to “seditious Sermons.”30 In 1662 the government issued a Directive Concerning Preachers which indicated that “unquiet and factious spirits” were seasoning sermons with “unsound and dangerous principles, as may lead them into disobedience, schism and rebellion.”31 Like earlier governments, those of the Restoration recognized the political potency of what issued from the pulpit. Individual clerics may not have been politically powerful, but collectively they controlled one of the most important media

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for dissemination of political values. It was thus not surprising that in 1662 government propagandist Roger L’Estrange was worried about the “near Thirty Thousand Copies of Farewell Sermons” of dissenting ministers who were being removed from their pulpits.32 In 1678 a public fast day for delivery from the Popish Plotters required sermons to be read in the nation’s churches. The government also recognized that the pulpit could be used effectively to reach the public on issues that did not directly relate to religion. After the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament in 1681, all churches and chapels were ordered to read the royal declaration explaining the dissolution. The declaration also attempted to associate the Crown with Protestantism, the constitution and the liberties of the subject,33 values that might be embraced by all. Although most printed sermons of the Restoration era that were political in character supported obedience and loyalty to the Crown, many in government circles thought that sermons given in conventicles were preaching disobedience and resistance.34 The reign of James II proved difficult for Anglican clerics who were dismayed at the new Crown policies. Churchmen now lost livings for preaching against popery. The king created the Commission for Ecclesiastical Causes to regulate and punish preachers who preached too violently against Roman Catholicism and suspended the anti-Catholic Bishop of London. Seven impeccably Anglican bishops were charged with seditious libel for refusing to read the Declaration of Indulgence in their churches, while William Penn, the Quaker leader who helped draft the Declaration of Indulgence, preached to large crowds on behalf of the king’s policy of liberty of conscience. English governments consistently attempted to ensure that the pulpits provided political messages and instructions that supported their visions of church and state, but in this instance the king managed to alienate large portions of the clergy and laity.

Sermon Genres and Sermon Audiences All sermons were not alike. Sermons were shaped by the doctrinal predilections of the preacher as well as by venue and occasion. Sermons preached before the court, before Parliament and at Paul’s Cross in London were often openly designed to influence political opinion, as were November 5 sermons commemorating the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, and those of January 30 in remembrance of the death of Charles I. The much less studied assize sermon was used to instill political ideology on occasions when communities gathered to consider and implement the law.



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Sermons at Court Although most sermons delivered at court did not deal directly with political topics, court sermons sometimes touched on sensitive political topics.35 The Spanish ambassador reported that the sermons preached before Queen Anne “speak very violently” against a possible French marriage alliance, one preacher proclaiming that “marriage with foreigners would only result in ruin to the country.”36 In 1627, at the time of the unpopular forced loan, Roger Mainwaring’s inflammatory sermon alleged that parliamentary approval was not needed for taxation. Sermons preaching the doctrine of the divine right of kings and the sinfulness of rebellion were part of the preaching repertoire. Far less is known about Restoration-era sermons preached before the king.37 Although sermons advocating high church views and nonresistance theories were fairly common, latitudinarians with a more comprehensive vision of the church also preached before the king when latitudinarian views were being voiced in court circles.38 Restoration sermons, like those of the pre–civil war era, occasionally touched on political topics. A sermon preached before Charles II depicted the restored king as a Christ-like figure and suggested that monarchy was the “best and onely Form of Government for all nations.” Such a sermon might be expected to have been positively received, but was, in fact, criticized because the preacher had “medled with matter of state.”39 Those preached before the king on November 5 or January 30 predictably discussed the failure of the Gunpowder Plot and execution of Charles I. Few sermons preached before James II were printed. The coronation sermon preached before the king and queen in Westminster Abbey emphasized divine right, hereditary monarchy and the doctrine of passive obedience.40 Given the large number of sermons delivered before the court, however, we should not think of this venue as being a primary channel for the enunciation of political messaging.

Paul’s Cross Sermons Paul’s Cross was sometimes used as a venue to communicate political ideology and to comment on political affairs. From the middle of the fourteenth century there was at Paul’s Cross in London an enormous outdoor pulpit adjacent to a tall wooden cross. Paul’s Cross was the largest preach-

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ing site in England. It attracted crowds of hundreds and perhaps thousands during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, with London crowds augmented by visitors during term times and when Parliament met. Its specialties were the providential care of England, dire warnings about England’s sins, calls for England’s repentance and inveighings against Roman Catholic idolatry. A considerable number of the weekly Sunday sermons were published, some of which in a form that deviated from the original, which typically was delivered with the assistance of notes.41 Members of the audience often took notes, later discussing the content of the sermons with family and friends. Paul’s Cross preachers were selected and controlled by several groups, the Privy Council, the lord mayor and alderman of the City of London and the Bishop of London. The Bishop of London in times of crisis made his selection of ministers after advice and direction from the Privy Council, and these were expected to express views congenial to the government and the established church. In 1558 at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, it was ordered that Paul’s Cross sermons were to be monitored to prevent “any dispute touching the governance of the realm.”42 The pulpit was harnessed first to show the superiority of Protestantism and then to defend the new church establishment. During the reigns of Elizabeth and James I sermons were given by well-respected preachers and bishops. Bishops such as John Jewel used Paul’s Cross to campaign against Roman Catholicism. Antipapal and anti-Puritan themes were common. Paul’s Cross audiences heard that princes were ordained by God and subject to no one under God. John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, preached, “Where there is no government, there is no order: where many govern, there is sedition: and where no order is, a gap is opened to all desolation.” The desired submissiveness was menaced by papists, Anabaptists and “our wayward and conceited persons.”43 The preachers of Paul’s Cross were “surgeons of souls” who were to lance the “festered sores” of the body politic and administer the “medicines” that would return it to health. Prophetic sermons drew parallels between Old Testament Israel and contemporary England, treating them as “exact contemporaries, close cousins, even identical twins.”44 Parallels between biblical figures and contemporary rulers were a commonplace. Elizabeth was King David, the Queen of Sheba, or Deborah in God’s service. James I was greater than Saul and Solomon. The rebellion of Absalom was a parallel to the Babington Plot. Providential themes were prominent. Elizabeth’s accession was a “Providential moment” which brought the blessings of Protestantism and peace.45



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The perilous situation of French Huguenots and later Bohemian Protestants was sometimes a topic. In 1561 the Bishop of London informed William Cecil that he intended to preach about the political condition of the Huguenots. In 1564 a sermon gave thanks for peace with France. In 1577 the French ambassador complained to the queen that a Paul’s Cross sermon had declared that the French Protestants “had great cause to take arms against their king.” The preacher, who was required to explain himself, would not be the only one to find himself in difficulties. A sermon on the subject of succession, a topic anathema to Elizabeth, also led to such a summons.46 Anti-Spanish themes appeared more frequently over time. The venue was used to justify the war against Spain and give thanks for victory over the Armada. The latter was the single occasion on which Elizabeth appeared at Paul’s Cross. Anti-Spanish themes continued in the 1590s with the English, like the Israelites, called upon to defend their country and its religion.47 A sermon praised Essex’s Cadiz victory in 1596, but in 1601, on instructions from Bancroft and Cecil, several sermons attacked Essex, now a traitor rather than a hero. A Star Chamber resolution required that Paul’s Cross and other London churches portray Essex as a hypocrite, a papist and a confederate of the pope and the King of Spain.48 Anti-Catholic sermons were frequent. John Jewel’s “Challenge” sermon, preached twice at the Paul’s Cross and once again at court, featured the same arguments as his 1562 publication, Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, a central document in the anti–Roman Catholic polemic. Jewel’s sermon resulted in an exchange with Catholic polemicist Thomas Harding. Their exchange suggests how sermons, tracts and treatises might interact with one another. The Jesuit mission to England resulted in additional anti-Catholic sermons during the 1580s. One sermon exhorted the English to “cut off the trytrous heads of Priests and Jesuits.”49 Anti-Puritan sermons were also preached, often by bishops such as Rich Cox and John Jewel. Although Puritans sometimes preached at the Cross, there were increasing efforts to defend the established church. The Admonition to Parliament (1572) and the effort in the House of Commons to establish a Presbyterian church polity were rejected by bishops Jewel and Whitgift from the Paul’s Cross pulpit. A 1588 sermon by Richard Bancroft provided a harsh condemnation of Puritan divisiveness. Anti-Puritan and anti–Roman Catholic sermons exhibit the interaction between sermons delivered from the pulpit and the lively pamphlet discussion on these topics. During James I’s reign the Paul’s Cross pulpit continued to attract large crowds, though fewer bishops now preached there. Sermons given on the

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king’s accession day offered occasions for expressions of divine right monarchy. “Not onely the King himselfe is of God, but all the eminency and distinction of authority that is under him . . . are all of god . . . and it is but a savage and popular humour to backbite or despite him this eminency in whomsoever.” The audience also heard that “the practice of Libelling against Magistrates and great persons” could not be justified.50 Another audience heard that “A King though he be free from co-action to keep the law, yet must he voluntarily submit his will to the direction of the Law.51 Puritan Robert Harris provided a thoroughly conventional “exhortation to good order.” “Happy that State,” he preached, “wherein the Cobler meddles with his Last, the Tradesman with his shop, . . . the Prince with the Scepter.” “When that body that will be all head, members misplaced are neither for use nor ease.”52 Some sermons directly addressed government policy. When a sermon of 1617 complained of impositions, its author was called in for questioning, suggesting that the authorities were unable to exercise all the control they wished. Bishop Montagu delivered a sermon favoring an unpopular benevolence seen by many as an unparliamentary form of taxation. Robert Sibthorpe, famous as a spokesmen for the divine right of kings, also preached at the Cross. In 1621 there were sermons hostile to Spanish activities in the West Indies and the Spanish match. When John Everard preached against the Spanish match and the “craft and crueltie” of Spain, he was committed to the Gatehouse.53 There were sermons advocating aid for Protestants in France and Bohemia whose pitiful condition was contrasted to that of “Happy Britaines” who “sit under our owne vines, and our own Figtrees.”54 In 1626 a sermon again compared the English, who lived in peace, with Germany and Holland, currently “overwhelmed with the Deluge and inundation of Warre.”55 Paul’s Cross sermons continued to attack Roman Catholicism, not surprising given the controversy over the Oath of Allegiance and the hysteria elicited by the Gunpowder Plot, and frequently noted the role of God’s providence in saving England from disaster. During this period, however, we begin to hear more criticism of Puritans who refused to conform to the establishment. If the emphasis on God’s providential care of England envisioned a unified nation under the eye of Providence, anti-Puritan and anti-Catholic themes depicted a divided and threatened polity. One could hear the decline of a Protestant consensus in the Cross sermons of the Jacobean era. Considerable change occurred at Paul’s Cross during the reign of Charles I. Preachers were more tightly controlled and were required to submit cop-



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ies of their sermons prior to delivery. Less prestigious clerics preached and anti-Puritan themes increased. William Laud preached, “Kings were ordained of God for the good of the people,” and people should not sin by murmuring against the king. He warned that “the King’s judgment which God has given him may pull out the stings of these waspish persons that can employ their tongues in nothing but to wound him and his government.”56 A substantial reduction in the size of the audience took place in 1634 when the cross was removed and the weekly sermons were moved indoors to the Cathedral choir.57 Although sermons ceased to be given in the churchyard, jeremiads continued to demand national repentance. Early in 1640 an accession day sermon at Paul’s Cross reminded listeners that princes received their scepters from God, not from either pope or people. Monarchy was “the Archetype, the first and best patterne of all others” and was diminished by both popery and presbytery. Without kings, another declared, England would be all “hudled up in an unjust parity, and the Land over-runne with inflexible generations.” Nevertheless “the king should not extend his prerogative immoderately nor be exempt from the rule of law.”58 Soon, however, London would be in the hands of Parliament, and clerical pronouncements from the most public of pulpits would no longer be controlled by the Crown or the bishops. It was now the London political elite that was active in supporting and controlling the Paul’s Cross sermons. The sermons continued during the 1640s and 1650s. Stephen Marshall, Richard Baxter and Edmund Calamy were conservative Presbyterians favored by the largely Presbyterian City fathers. Audiences, seated indoors, were now relatively small. When old St. Paul’s burned down, sermons were transferred from the cathedral to other City venues.59 Paul’s Cross sermons were politically influential despite the fact that most did not deal with explicitly political topics. They were instrumental early in Elizabeth’s reign in instilling Protestant beliefs. Later in her reign and throughout the Jacobean era they trumpeted the anti-Catholicism that had become central to English political ideology. England’s vision of itself as a nation guided by providence was equally important. The frequent comparisons of England and Israel meant that it was a nation, a people, that experienced both God’s punishments as well as His mercies and care. It was the nation as a whole that was directed to repent in the Paul’s Cross jeremiads. England’s status as a providential Protestant nation did much to extend the notion of nationhood beyond identification with its rulers. This concept of nationhood was reinforced by many of the sermons preached before Parliament.

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Sermons before Parliament Although there had been an attempt to introduce sermons before Parliament during Elizabeth’s reign, the queen rejected the plan. The first sermon before Parliament took place during the last Parliament of James I. Most between 1625 and 1629 were delivered by well-known Puritan ministers, the best known being John Preston, a client of the Duke of Buckingham, though Archbishop Laud preached there on several occasions.60 Sermons emphasized the coming wrath of God if England did not undertake immediate reformation, and frequently referred to the conditions of Protestants in Bohemia, the Palatinate and Denmark. Fast day sermons were designed to energize Parliament’s commitment to reform. A 1628 example addressed the House of Commons as “You . . . the great Senate of the land, upon whom our eyes and hopes next under God and the King are.”61 There were, of course, no sermons between 1629 and 1640 when Parliament did not meet. But Alexandra Walsham’s study of providential themes in the English sermon literature has shown that the jeremiads emanating from Paul’s Cross, delivered in close proximity to Parliament, frequently voiced the themes of the need for national repentance that would later be heard in the fast sermons given before Parliament between 1642 and 1649.62 Sermons delivered before Parliament during the civil war years have long been recognized as having considerable political impact.63 Those delivered before the House of Commons were preached at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, adjacent to Parliament, while those given before the House of Lords were typically given in Westminster Abbey. Most, though not all, preachers selected by Parliament were Puritans. Cornelius Burgess and Stephen Marshall preached more frequently than others. Clarendon suggested that Marshall and Burgess had a greater influence on the Parliament than Archbishop Laud had at court. Clarendon, who characterized the parliamentary preachers as “trumpets of war and incendiaries toward rebellion,” thought Marshall’s Meroz Cursed sermon to have been the most seditious of the entire rebellion.64 Parliamentary sermons of the 1640s, which were usually open to the public, featured themes of national repentance, the victory of parliamentary armies, reconciliation with the king and the resolution of religious differences. England, like Israel, was frequently treated as a chosen nation under God. The pulpit prepared for the deaths of Strafford and Laud and the opening of the civil war, celebrated victories and announced



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the execution of the king. To ensure wider circulation, the Parliament ordered many sermons printed. Most sermons were fast sermons or sermons of Thanksgiving that expressed a sense of urgency that would energize parliamentary or national action. Sermons urged Parliament to purify the church and “seek out those who had made England a Babylon.” “Never did England see a Parliament more fitted for the service and work of God, then this now is.”65 Thomas Goodwin in 1642 urged the House of Commons “to do the great work of the Lord,” warning that if they failed to do it, “God will do it without you.”66 Some expressed hostility to Arminian theology and bishops; others called for the punishment and death of Strafford and Laud. Samuel Fairclough, who cast Strafford as an Achitophel, conspiring treasonously against King David, preached that “All Achitophels . . . in England must be killed.” Edmund Calamy, speaking about Laud, reminded the House of Commons of “the guilty blood that God requires you in justice to shed.”67 Millenarian themes were frequently heard, pushing for further reformation. Preachers who spoke on the deliverances that England had received from God included “our 88 and our Gunpowder deliverances,” and “the mercies of these last two years” which “do farre exceed all the mercies that ever this nation did receive since the first Reformation.” Such mercies included the “Happy Pacification between England and Scotland,” the “Protestation against all Popery and Popish Innovations,” hope of reformation of church and state and the removal of the “grevious yoakes” of Star Chamber, High Commission and the ex officio and other oaths.68 Edmund Calamy called on Parliament as the “representative body of the nation” to reform the sins of the kingdom.69 Providential themes were common, as was comment on the changes it had brought to governments. Providential changes could serve as a “weapon of the Saint’s warfare.”70 The year 1642 brought national days of fasting and humiliation marked by sermons before both houses. Preachers suggested that if the nation would fast and repent, the parliamentary armies would be victorious, the king would be reconciled, religious differences resolved and a lasting reformation of the church achieved. Edward Reynolds emphasized God’s anger at the sins of England and pressured Parliament to play a healing role in the divisions between king and country. John Gauden spoke of the disaffection that was “flaming to open contention and hostility,” as well as his hope for unity and the councils of peace.71 Sermon themes were modified when Charles raised his standard at Nottingham. When the influence of the Scots increased, Calamy preached that

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the new peace between England and Scotland would mean that England would be free from popery.72 A Scots preacher attempted to pressure Parliament to put a Scottish-style Presbyterian model church in place.73 When the Assembly of Divines convened in 1643 and Puritan clergymen flocked to London, religious differences emerged that soon heightened political differences among the legislators. Independent ministers such as John Owen were now asked to preach, as were the more radical Peter Sterry, Thomas Goodwin, William Dell and Hugh Peter. Thomas Coleman, who in 1645 indicated that a “Praying Army” was necessary to “subdue Nations” and “loosen the loins of kings,” reminded Parliament of the notorious Cabinet Opened that revealed the king’s dissimulations, violations of the Petition of Right and High Commission’s high-handedness. He castigated the Scots as well as both the Presbyterians and Independents for attempting to establish a new jure divino religious establishment. He attacked the Royalists who were currently negotiating with Denmark and Holland and pointed to plots “to awe this great assembly,” as well as the designs against the City and the army.74 Cornelius Burges in 1645 emphasized that Parliament, as the “representative of the Nation,” must assume responsibility for England’s sins, first by reforming itself, and by purging the sins of others.75 Some sermons warned of coming social and political changes. Francis Cheynell’s sermon before the House of Lords defended social division, noting, “Private men must know their place and keep their bounds.”76 William Strong, also preaching to the peers, took note of the current and possible future upheavals. The times were “full of turnings and changes.” He warned that that which is highest would become lowest. God changed “times and seasons.” He “removeth kings and setteth up kings.” He may “exalt him that is low and abase him that is high.”77 Francis Woodcock warned that Parliament would dishonor God if they became so enamored of peace and “our forms of Quiet.” They were failing to pursue “the execution of justice upon the capital Delinquents of the kingdom,” and must honor God “by their swords.”78 William Marshall expressed his faith in Parliament, noting “what strong Castles have been demolished by preaching . . . how many kindoms have been subdued by preaching.”79 As political and religious divisions increased and Pride’s Purge eliminated the more moderate members of Parliament, moderate Puritan preachers became rarer and there was greater reluctance to print sermons. Several sermons opposed proposals for peace with the king. There were sermons favoring and condemning proposals for religious toleration, as well as those justifying Prides Purge.80 The death of the king in 1649 altered matters



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again. Although many clergymen were repelled by the execution, several parliamentary sermons congratulated the Rump for its act of justice. John Owen called the Rump “God’s Instrument of Justice.”81 The Engagement produced many sermons, some favoring, some disapproving acceptance of the new government. The last fast sermon preached before the Restoration was given in 1653. Little is known of the sermons of the Restoration era. There were, however, fast sermons given before Parliament at the time of the Popish Plot that featured predictable anti-Catholic themes. John Tillotson’s 1678 sermon, delivered to the House of Commons, for example, linked the Popish Plot with the earlier Gunpowder Plot.82

Gunpowder Day Sermons In 1606 an annual special day of Prayer and Thanksgiving was instituted to commemorate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot. The day, which predictably heightened public antipapist fervor, included bell ringing, bonfires and sermons. Sermons delivered on November 5, which typically expressed hostility to Roman Catholicism and to the papacy, served to associate Protestantism with nationalism and Roman Catholicism with subversion. Celebrations of Gunpowder Day and the sermons that accompanied them performed a unifying function against a common enemy for over two decades. That unifying feature, however, diminished during the 1630s with the growing suspicions of papists at court. Nevertheless, Puritans such as John Goodwin continued to see November 5 as “the anniversary remembrance of that great battle fought between Hell and Heaven . . . wherein Hell was overthrown.”83 The meeting of the Long Parliament revitalized November 5 sermons and provided a platform to excoriate papists. The traditional bell ringing could be heard in most London parishes. Shortly after receiving news of the Irish rebellion, Cornelius Burgess preached reminding his audience that Roman Catholics had always treasonously conspired against government and that “their very Religion” led to their treasonous practices. He attacked the papists and particularly Jesuits, as “Instruments of Assassination and Treason” but supported the view that the people could deprive kings of their sovereignty.84 Several November 5 sermons were preached before the Long Parliament. Numerous sermons commemorating the failure of the plot were printed between 1660 and 1688. Although all focused on the reprehensible doc-

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trines and actions of Roman Catholics, some also condemned Presbyterians and sectaries. Robert South used the occasion to praise the benefits of the divine institution of monarchy.85 When the Popish Plot and its aftermath gave rise to new fears of popish efforts to destroy the English monarchy, Gunpowder Day sermons again allowed Protestants of all persuasions to inveigh against popish machinations. Whigs organized pope burning processions to heighten anti-Catholic sentiment, but Tory preachers often accused Protestant dissenters as well as papists of treasonous views. Although some Restoration-era Gunpowder Day sermons were divisive rather than unifying, all underlined the belief that England’s nationhood was tied to Protestantism.

January 30 Sermons Sermons preached on the anniversary of the “Execrable Murder” of Charles I provided another channel for the dissemination of political ideas. It has been estimated that three thousand sermons on the subject were given during the reign of Charles II alone. A sermon on Charles the Martyr was added to the Book of Common Prayer, remaining there until 1859. January 30 sermons were given in a wide range of venues, before the king, before Parliament and in parish churches across the land. The sermons were polarizing, and dissenters complained that they often were inappropriately blamed for the death of the king.86 Although most were unpublished, a sufficient number of the often black-bordered sermons were printed to provide a sense of their purpose and character. Their tone varied from lamentation at the country’s loss to anger at those deemed responsible for it. The phrase “the best of kings” was often voiced as was the martyred Charles’s desire for peace. Under Charles, England had experienced “a prosperous and long Peace,” good laws and “as much of Liberty as was consistent with Obedience.” The king had been unfairly accused of endangering liberty and resorting to arbitrary power.87 The abolition of illegal taxes, Star Chamber and High Commission and the establishment of triennial parliaments had been accomplished, and that there would have been even more beneficial legislation if the king’s life had been spared.88 Sermons uniformly praised the king’s character and the beneficence of his rule and condemned the behavior of his enemies, especially those responsible for his trial and execution. Parallels were frequently drawn between the martyrdom of Charles I and that of Christ.89 Many characterized



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the trial as a travesty of justice and his judges as murderers. One associated the High Court of Justice with the army commanders, the House of Commons and the dregs of the City of London.90 Another referred to “our Republican assassins” and the “Hellish Court of Mock Justice.”91 According to still another, the king’s death had been devised and hatched “by a Sectarian Anabaptistical fanatic party.”92 Another preacher blamed Puritans for having pressured Parliament into the trial.93 Occasionally Milton, John Goodwin and others who had defended the trial were denounced.94 The royal chaplain, Thomas Sprat, warned Parliament that “the same Schismatical Designs, and Antimonarchical Principles, which then Inspir’d so many ill Men . . . and cost our Good King so Dear, may not once more revive, and Insinuate themselves again, under the same, or Newer, and Craftier Disguises.”95 Reference to kings, both past and present, as the “lord’s anointed” was a commonplace. Monarchy was the best of form of government, having been ordained by God and confirmed by the experience of all ages.96 Kings were the best protectors of the people’s rights and liberties.97 The blessings of a “Regular, well model’d Monarchy” were treated as obvious.98 Some preachers expressed the more contentious view that kings possessed the powers of sovereignty.99 One expressed the view that every prince “ought to be sacred, supream and consequently inviolable.”100 A sermon given before the judges in Westminster Abbey stressed that, while princes might set limits for themselves, the practice was “Impolitick and Unsafe.”101 Another preacher insisted that the divine right of kings was consistently maintained by the Church of England, the homilies, the Book of Common Prayer and a host of reformation luminaries including Cranmer, Ridley and Jewel.102 Regal government, another insisted, was based on inheritance and not a contract such as was suggested by Hobbes.103 Old Testament parallels were a staple of the genre. England was Israel or sometimes Judea. The most frequent parallel drawn was between English monarchical strife and that of Saul and David. David, though treated badly by Saul, the “lord’s anointed” king, is consistently lauded for his reluctance to kill Saul, in contrast to the eagerness of Charles’s enemies to kill him.104 Charles I was not only a “second David” but also the “British Josiah,” “our Josiah” or “a true Josiah.”105 Absalom and Achitophel made frequent appearances as sinful architects of rebellion against David.106 Cain’s murder of Abel was also an analogue to the murder of Charles.107 Corah, whom God punished for his sins against Moses and Aaron, was easily adapted for adverse comment on the civil war and on Restoration dissenters, those

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“pretended Sons of Corah in our Age.”108 Corah had gained the people’s affection by playing on “unreasonable fears,” inventing “lyes against the Government” and using pretences to justify “asserting the Rights and Liberties of the People” in opposition to the government of Moses. The evil Corah asserted that power was inherent in the people and could not be taken from them.109 Political lessons drawn from the New Testament were fewer, although texts from Romans were employed to insist that obedience to established authority was required or that the principles of Christianity forbade rebellion. Parallels were drawn between the trials of Jesus and Charles I. January 30 sermons frequently featured views later to be found in Filmer’s Patriarcha. One claimed that the supremacy and honor due to parents, and particularly fathers, were transferred by “free and voluntary Act of the People” when families united to form kingdoms. The preacher insisted that the authority of kings who ruled despotically was derived from God, not the people, and that rulers were accountable only to God. Contract theories derived from a state of nature are universally rejected.110 Many January 30 preachers used the occasion to condemn rebellion and reiterate the theme that resistance to the power of princes was resistance to the ordinance of God. The scriptural prohibitions extended to wicked as well as good rulers. Joseph Glanvill, for example, argued that, if subjects could resist, “no Government in the World can stand longer, then till the next opportunity to overthrow it. . . . And thus is a Kingdom laid open to inevitable devastation and ruine.” “By a dear experience we have learnt, that ’tis better to endure any inconveniences in a settled Government, than to endeavour violent alterations.”111 Sermons offered explanations for the recent civil wars. Some blamed the pulpit for having inflamed the nation into rebellion.112 According to Samuel Crossman, the “late Troubles and Disorders, did in great measure proceed from a multitude of Seditions, Sermons, Pamphlets and Speeches” that “daily defamed the person and government of the King.”113 George Hickes blamed the war on “projectors in Religion” arguing that innovation in sacred things commonly presaged trouble in civil matters.114 Faction leaders had “new modeled” religion and made “a meer Machiavellian Politick engine to prop and boulster up . . . usurped power.”115 Thomas Wilson blamed the “grandees” who, while claiming to be defenders of “Law, Liberties and Property,” had been responsible for “grievous taxes, impure oaths and Covenants,” had usurped command of the militia and then had executed the king by “arbitrary” power.116 A sermon of 1662 proclaimed



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that the “principal engine” had been the “illegal League and Covenant” that erroneously claimed that Parliament rightly could take up arms against the sovereign.117 Still another claimed that the rebels had been under the “visors of gifted brethren and Independent souldiers.”118 Many pointed to similarities between the “old incendiaries” who had kindled “the Coals of Sedition and Rebellion” and recent dissent.119 In 1681 when tempers ran high, one preacher warned against “new rebellions Daily upon the very Old Principles.”120 Thomas Sprat cautioned that “the same Schismatical Designs, and Antimonarchical Principles” might again revive.121 Dissenters had unsound views of magistracy; their ministers were “firebrands of Sedition.”122 And their “fanatick Schools” and “Country Academies” were becoming a source of new rebels.123 Another suggested that those currently pressing for religious change should head for New England.124 January 30 audiences did not hear pleas for charity and unity. Democratic theories, contract theories and justifications for rebellion were seen as Roman Catholic in origin. Their doctrine was characterized as holding that the king’s power is derived from the people, that kings might therefore be called to account, and that if a ruler became a tyrant he might be killed and whatever form of government pleased the people instituted. Many thought Roman Catholic and particularly Jesuit doctrine had “infected” the English rebels with these ideas. Jesuits were ultimately responsible for democratic theory and for doctrines of disobedience and resistance, and their pernicious doctrines had been adopted by Presbyterians who then used them to justify rebellion. One sermon coupled the Jesuits with the Independent cleric John Goodwin, labeling both as “Arch-Rebels” and defenders of regicide.125 Such principles, so the sermons taught, led to England’s civil wars and would do so again, if given “a fair opportunity.”126 Many January 30 sermons suggested that Protestant zealots as well as Roman Catholics wished to destroy monarchy. A sermon of 1685 printed at the king’s command not only saw Calvin’s views as leading “directly to the Trial of a King by his Subjects” but also characterized John Knox, George Buchanan and John Milton as patrons of the “good Old Cause” who encouraged others to shed blood prodigally.127 Another thundered against the king-killing doctrines of Cartwright, Milton and others.128 Several attributed these views to Buchanan, Hotman or the author of the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, or compared the Covenant to the Holy League in France.129 English regicides had adopted the doctrine of “the Original Powers of the People” and believed that if power were abused it could be resumed by the

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people.130 A sermon of 1682 condemned the view that kings were elective and should be treated as trustees of the people, or as one of the three estates.131 Democracy was “a Solecisme in Polity,” an anarchy and a “frenzy,” in which all became tyrants.132 Several sermons addressed the supposed distinction between the power and the person of kings.133 A sermon of 1684 rejected the distinction between the natural and political capacities of the king, a view it attributed to the civil war era Parliament. Proponents wrongfully suggested that regal authority was “Virtually in the People” and that the king had been a “traytor against the King.”134 Another warned against the idea that Parliament without the king might have the supreme power.135 Some sermons responded directly to views found in the pamphlet literature and themselves came to function as pamphlets. In 1682 Edward Pelling attacked the History of the Succession and the Raree Show, the broadside that led to the trial and execution of Stephen Colledge.136 Another countered the views expressed in An Appeal from the City to the Country, A Protestant History of the Succession and Plato Redivus. January 30 sermons thus were used to honor the martyred king, to support doctrines of obedience and passive resistance and to condemn those who had supported the civil war and the execution of Charles I. They provided consistent support for a divinely sanctioned monarchy that under no conditions might be disobeyed or rebelled against. Doctrines of active resistance, authored first by Roman Catholics and then taken up by rebellious Protestants, that erroneously viewed the people as the source of revocable political authority, were consistently condemned. Although often voiced in other venues and on other occasions, these messages were reiterated everywhere in England every January 30. These sermons were always polarizing. Even latitudinarians such as Edward Stillingfleet and Joseph Glanvill, who on other occasions preached a doctrine of religious unity among Protestants, on January 30 contributed to the polarizing mood. January 30 sermons distinguished sharply between those who were responsible for the civil war and Charles’s trial and advocated resistance theories, and loyalists who supported the king and asserted the doctrine of only passive resistance. Collectively these sermons were a powerful force in inculcating political doctrine, perpetuating England’s political divisions and highlighting the historical significance of the civil war and the execution of the king.



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The Assize Sermon The assizes were the occasions on which royal judges went out on circuit to hold civil and criminal trials in the countryside. They provided a concrete, readily observable fact of royal authority. They were channels through which messages supporting a political culture of royal authority could be transmitted to the countryside. The judges’ arrival was on the whole welcomed by the locals, who sought the dispute resolution services of the common law. Delivered at the opening of each assize, the assize sermon was a vehicle by which political meanings could be assigned to the spectacle about to unfold. Assizes were also occasions when government views were disseminated. Before leaving London, judges were charged by the king, or more often by the lord chancellor or lord keeper, to deal with matters of pressing government concern. During the 1630s, when Parliament was in abeyance, such charges were an important means of communicating government concerns to the people. Judges were expected to report local grumblings and complaints on returning to Westminster. The assizes were occasions when the country heard from the Crown and the Crown from the country. We know relatively little about the origin of assize sermons that accompanied the twice-yearly arrival of the king’s judges, not even when the practice began nor when they became a regular part of the assizes. The first printed example is from 1571; the second not until the reign of James. By 1610 they had become quite common.137 The sermons were given in parish churches by local clergymen or occasionally in cathedrals. Most preachers were appointed by the sheriff. Publication typically was requested by assize judges, the preacher’s patron or the local sheriff. Only Richard Baxter sought publication himself, publishing for the “Vulgar” in the hope that his assize sermon would be one of those “Bookes that are carried up and downe the Country from door to doore in Peddlers Packs” rather than sold at booksellers’ stalls or for the libraries of learned divines.138 Sermons were directed at those who would shortly participate in the legal proceedings, though city dignitaries, gentleman of the county and occasionally “the people” are also mentioned. The assizes offered the gentry and other local figures an opportunity to meet for conversation, conviviality and political discussion. One sermon characterized the assize proceedings as a “general assembly of the Country,” another as “a little Parliament: a Representative of the whole County.”139

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Assize sermons show little change over time. Often repeated themes were the divine origin of government and its corollary, denial of the human origin of government. Another was the divine authority and obligations of those who exercised governmental offices—judges and magistrates as well as kings. Disobedience and rebellion constituted disobedience and rebellion against God. Another recurring theme was the need for religious unity and the dangers of Roman Catholic recusants and Protestant dissenters. Several of these themes, as we have seen, are also characteristic of sermons given on January 30. Unique to assize sermons, however, was advice to and criticism of judges, lawyers, jurors, grand jurors and witnesses.

The Divine Origin and Authority of Kings and Governments Some sermons spoke of the divine origin and authority of kings, others of judges and still others of magistrates, but a great many referred to all these offices interchangeably, sometimes in the same sentence.140 Magistrates had their authority from God and were called Gods; magistrates and judges were God’s deputies to minister justice.141 Sermons referred to both kings and magistrates as God’s vicegerents.142 Robert Bolton’s sermon declared government to be “a goodly thing” of “Gods owne institution.”143 A similar view could be found in Sir Edward Coke’s charge to a Norfolk grand jury, which insisted that kings, rulers, judges and magistrates are “Gods on earth.” Coke’s charge, however, also underlines the role of the judge. The king at his coronation swears “to do Justice unto all his Subjects, which in his owne Person it is impossible to performe.” It was the judges who carried out the monarch’s oath by trying causes by Writ of nisi prius, trying prisoners for offenses against the king and judging according to settled law. Judges as well as king were “Gods on earth.”144 The same biblical passages used by assize preachers to enhance the authority of kings were utilized by the legal profession to exalt the status of the judiciary. John Selden thus argued that “the Eternal and Sacred Scriptures themselves do more than once call Judges by that most holy name Elohim, that is, Gods.”145 Assize sermons of the Interregnum era were surprisingly similar, though mention of kings was omitted. In 1655, for example, we hear that magistrates ruled by divine right, and that God made them his representatives to keep his courts.146 In 1657 a sermon declared that magistrates were “Jus Divinum,” “vicars of God” and “They are gods.” “Every Magistrate, though



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in never so low a place beares the image of God.”147 Just prior to the Restoration, Presbyterian Thomas Hall, who characterized magistrates as Gods and God’s deputies, indicated that kings had been established by God’s permission but not by his approbation.148 Early in the Restoration magistrates, governors and judges were again characterized as “Ministers of God,” “said to be ordain’d of God” and answerable and accountable to Him.149 Occasionally magistrates are presented as Janus-faced, looking toward God as God’s deputies, and also below to the people “whose trustees and Representatives you are to distribute justice.”150 Divine right kingship was emphasized except during the Interregnum. In one of the few known sermons of the Elizabethan era (1597), we learn that God instituted only monarchical forms of government.151 James’s elevated view of kingship was frequently heard. Kings were often characterized as Gods, bearing the image of that majesty and power which is in heaven.152 Occasionally audiences heard that “The hearing of Causes is proper to the king, and whom he shall depute.” To judge “in its highest significants, imports to Rule, to exercise the supreme power. . . . and give Laws.”153 Rulers must judge right and keep the Law.154 The revised canons issued by Convocation in 1640 further increased public exposure to the theory of the divine right of kings, since every parish minister was required to “audibly read” a statement of its principles. Statements on the divine origin and authority of kings were common after the Restoration and most strident during the period when Whigs attempted to exclude the Duke of York from the succession. Kings were God’s representatives on Earth, “Sacred Persons,” “The Lord’s Anointed.”155 Although government was of divine origin, several sermons suggested that the form or “mould” of government might vary or be left to human choice.156 Monarchy, however, was the best, being “most perfect, most absolute and most excellent.”157 The preacher nevertheless characterized Charles II’s government as a “Monarchy limited by Law.”158 Another who insisted that sovereign power could rest in a king, senate or majority of people, also thought monarchy was the preferred form.159 Monarchical government not only carried “a more evident stamp of Divine Institution than any other” but was also “most likely to avoid or put an end to all Divisions. . . . For where there are many Governours there must needs be Differences, . . . where there is but one, there cannot.” Nevertheless, the preacher continued, the monarch should take the advice and assistance of Parliament, because it was the best judge of public necessity.160

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Human and Patriarchal Origins of Government Doctrines of divine origin of government and the divine right of kings were important in English arguments against Roman Catholicism, given that prominent Catholic theorists took the position that government was a human institution, that kings derived their authority from the people and that a contract between people and secular rulers in some instances justified rebellion. Popes might intervene in secular government and depose heretical rulers. English churchmen traced to these teachings the various papal moves and assassination attempts against Elizabeth and the Gunpowder Plot.161 These doctrines were often refuted in assize sermons. In a 1614 sermon that referred to papal interference and assassination attempts, the preacher explained that while papists did not completely reject the civil magistrates’ authority, they did abridge secular authority.162 Robert Bolton offered a refutation of Bellarmine, Suarez and other Catholic theorists who had justified rebellion and regicide as well as the equivocations and mental reservations that deluded some English magistrates. Roman Catholics, he insisted, were opposed to all imperial, royal and princely power.163 Another assize preacher insisted that “there is no probability” of being “a true Papist and a true subject.”164 Similar views were expressed during the Interregnum. “It is a strange riddle,” said one preacher, “how the Pope should be Jure Divino, and the Emperor who made him so should be but Jure Humano.”165 Government was “not the product of Experience, and an after-invention of mans Wit, upon a Pact and Covenant,” but “the express and primary Institution of God.”166 During the Restoration assertions of the human origin of government and ideas of contract were attributed to those responsible for the civil war.167 The most extensive refutation of these doctrines was preached during the Exclusion controversy, when ideas of human origin and a political contract were again being aired in pamphlets. Preachers insisted that the origin of civil government was not to be found in chance, ambition or usurpation, “nor Pacts and Covenants, nor any happy Occurrence, nor the longest sword.” Though “some flatter the people saying the first ownership is theirs, and where they are pleased to lodge it,” there was never a state of natural freedom nor “an age when people made a deed of gift of their natural freedom.”168 Assize sermons defended the patriarchal origin and authority of government, some sermons referring to these as the product of divine command,



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others as natural developments and some as both. Sermons in 1653 and 1657 taught that the first form of government had been patriarchal and had arisen from the need for self-preservation, self-defense and an impartial judge, later leading to delegation to a king or magistrate.169 Restoration sermons were more strident. A sermon of 1682 fulminated against those who maintained that there was no such thing as paternal or patriarchal monarchy and denounced those who favored a commonwealth or magnified “the power of the People.”170 Nathaniel Alsop provided an extended treatment of Filmerian patriarchalism from the pulpit shortly after the publication of Filmer’s Patriarcha. Civil government, which went back to the beginning of mankind, was founded, “as the most judicious do affirm,” on the natural right of paternal authority. The first kingdom grew from a single family, Adam’s, and sacred Scripture showed that Adam possessed the universal monarchy “by the Patriarchal line unto the first Plantation of the World after the Flood.” Alsop cites Filmer for the proposition that paternal and regal power are the same. Nature and Scripture proved that the natural and divine right of monarchy was superior to all other forms or models.171 John Locke, whose refutation of this argument would form the basis of his First Treatise on Government, recognized that the “pulpit of late years, publically owned his [Filmer’s] doctrines and made it the current divinity of the times.”172 Many assize pulpits echoed the preacher who offered scriptural proof that kings were natural fathers, the “Soul of the Commonwealth” without whom the polity would be a “breathless Carcass.”173 A society without government was described in Augustinian or Hobbesian language. Without sovereign authority men would “become cut-throats and Cannibals”174 or “beasts for prey, slaughter-houses of blood.”175 “Were we in the Leviathan state of nature . . . every man’s hand would be against every Man.”176

Disobedience and Rebellion Assize preachers insisted that disastrous consequences followed from disobedience and rebellion. Romans 13/1, “Let every Soul be subject to the Higher Power; for the Powers that be, are ordained of God,” provided ample scriptural authority. To slight the authority of magistrates was disobedience to God. The worst rulers as well as the best were “The Lord’s Anointed,” and subjects owed obedience to princes as bad as Tiberius and Nero.177 Better the severest prince “where every suspicion is made a Crime

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and every Crime capital, than to have none at all but a lawless Anarchy.”178 For one preacher “the Doctrine of Subjection” was “as demonstrable as any Theorem in Euclid’s Geometry.”179 For another there were “No just grounds for any Man’s Rebellion against his lawful King.” Resistance to princes was responsible for “greater Mischief to the World than all the Cruelties and oppressions of the most barbarous Tyrants.”180 Echoes of the Homily on Obedience were to be found everywhere. The pretense of religion ought not to be used “to make the people disaffected to their Governours and government.”181 “Liberty of speech is the female of Sedition” and “in time the Grandmother of treason.”182 Open contempt of authority might “awaken the Vengeance of Heaven.”183 Restoration assize sermons, like those preached on January 30, had much to say about the late civil war and its causes. Many preached that religion had been a tool for making people disaffected with government and governors. “Preciseness”—that is, Puritanism—had “been made a Cloak” for rebellion.184 Religion had been a cover “for the blackest crimes,” and the murder of the king had been defended as a “pious Act.”185 During the civil wars “spoilers” had branded the established religion as superstitious and profane.186 The English service had been maligned, and the godly party inherited the “fattest portions of the land.”187 It was a time of “lust for war, famine, decay of trade, the gentry wasted, nobility degraded, universities ruined, clergy vilified and silenced,” “our Laws, and Law-givers and Parliaments trampled on,” and God suffered “our best of Princes to be taken from us for our sinnes.”188 Listeners were to recall the barbarous, cruel days when England had been deprived of its king and had experienced slaughter, plundering, sequestration, banishments and enslavement of the common people, who had been forced to take unlawful oaths and covenants.189 Audiences should remember how they had “suffered . . . in their Honours or Estates.”190 The country had experienced a “Protectionship, the most absolute of any,” “until God poured us out of the Melting Pot, to see if we were purified,” and restored us to our old religion and church discipline and “above all, our good King.”191 Some explained “the great revolutions” as a result of Providence. Despite oppressions, disease and injustice, there should be no murmuring against the “strange and various dispensations of God.”192 God, not the people, had restored government in 1660.193 In 1685 an assize preacher characterized England as having rolled through every form of government and experienced endless calamities, “till at last, God took pity on us, and resettled us on our ancient foundation.”194



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Threats to Religious Unity Another common theme was the threats posed by Roman Catholic and Protestant dissenters. From the time of the first printed assize sermon in 1571, listeners heard of “seditious and wicked papists,” popish priests and papal bulls that stirred up subjects to rebel against their lawful magistrates.195 Such views were expressed at the assize sermons for decades. There was a continuing effort to convince and, if necessary, force Puritans and then Dissenters not to destroy the unity of the church by their stubborn refusal to conform. Attacks on Protestant dissenters became harsher after 1660. Edward Boteler referred to the “doting Dogmatists of late, pretending to a Gravity some Centuries higher than the Age they live in,” and admonished dissenting clergymen not to engage in “that dismal wild-fire thrown abroad from the Pulpit which probably kindled, but certainly increased our late flames.”196 Many printed assize sermons lashed out at dissenting conventiclers. In 1672 conventicles were said to have “overflown beyond all bounds of Sober Moderation and Just Liberty.”197 The “transports and heats” and “reproachful Expressions” of “popular auditories” prevented overcoming “our unhappy Differences.”198 During the 1670s and 1680s the vehement attacks increased. “Disorderly Conventiclers . . . gild over” their actions “with the specious name of Religion, and call the Good Old Cause of Rebelling the Cause of God.”199 Dissenters used “Clamorous Pamphlets” to gain toleration and “steal away the hearts of the People from their Sovereign.”200 Anabaptists and others had “withdrawn their neckes from the Yoke of civill government.”201 They were “bad friends to a state” and intended to “ruine Laws, and to destroy a nation.”202 “We have seen of late years . . . how many Rebels” the liberty of conscience “armed and how many drums it beat up for Reformation” until “cursed Regicides pull’d down God’s Deputy.” The laws must be of “Unyielding and Inflexible Temper,” curbing the decisions of individuals to do what is right according to their own ideas.”203 Magistrates must prevent schisms, separations and the “many headed Monster.”204 The word “Whig” was rarely mentioned, but the target was clear. Dissenters were associated with Whigs, and they in turn were associated with rebellion. One preacher characterized government critics “as the great Brayers up of Arbitrary Government” who “Cajole the Multitude.”205 In 1682 a sermon condemned the Whig Association and praised the Tory “Abhorrers.”206 Another attacked occasional conformists, nonconformists and the

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jurors who failed to convict them. Admonitions to “govern according to law” and ensure “that our wholesome Laws be vigorously and impartially executed” typically were accompanied by statements on the need to prosecute dissenters.207 Reading the printed assize sermons can only lead to the conclusion that their authors were, in effect, agents of the established church and government who preached punishment for those who rejected them. The assize pulpit from Elizabeth to the Revolution of 1688 provided vigorous support for obedience to a divinely ordained authority and the established church. During the years of Whig and Tory conflict the printed assize sermon provided uniform support for the Tory cause.

Judges, Lawyers, Jurors and Witnesses Assize sermons also featured advice, and often hectoring advice, to judges, lawyers, jurors and grand jurors, witnesses and occasionally litigants. They characterized judges and magistrates as “shields of the earth” or “shields of God” and sometimes God’s vicegerents, with obligations to both God and man to ensure peace and dispense justice.208 Judges were the “eyes of the state” who were to search deeply into matters with deliberation and without passion.209 They required eyes like eagles to search out transgressions and get to the bottom of the matters at hand, in addition to knowing the laws exactly.210 They must “sift out truth” with “acute and searching reasonings”211 and cast out frivolous, malicious and vexatious actions.212 Justice and mercy were major themes. One sermon referred to mercy as “a foolish pity,” emphasizing the need for judicial severity and “a little blood seasonably shed.”213 Another, however, thought it necessary to punish malefactors but not to “plague them beyond measure.” If “the Stocks or the Whip will do the deed,” there was no need of the gallows.214 The law was abused by “a too severe execution of it,” and judges ought to consider the intent as well as the letter of the law. If the severity of laws was not mitigated at times by the rules of equity, the law could become a “snare . . . to oppress” the innocent.215 A sermon of 1680 insisted on mixing justice with mercy, not according to the “literal strictness and severity of Laws,” because “Natural frailty, the imperfections of men” and “circumstances” should be taken into account.216 Judges could mete out impartial justice to incorrigible offenders while providing “Gentleness and Mercy to those . . . capable of it.”217



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Judges were so frequently reminded of their oaths and lectured on the necessity of impartiality and the need to avoid bribery, covetousness and corruption that it suggests that these faults were considered common.218 Comments of this kind are known to have angered the judges in 1630 and 1632.219 A Protectorate era sermon, for example, characterized bad judges as “ravening and rapacious” wolves and suggested that judicial corruption had been “one of the greatest causes of our late miseries.”220 Some assize preachers directed the justices of the peace to take their duties more seriously, particularly in cases involving blasphemy, drunkenness and vagabondage.221 Occasionally there were suggestions that they engage in arbitration so that “slight offense[s]” would not end in lawsuits.222 Far more attention was given to lawyers who, more often than not, were depicted as greedy and lacking concern for their clients’ interests. There were “cozening Lawyer[s]” whose “sugared words” gave “golden hopes” to clients.223 They made “a bad Cause seem good, and a good Cause seem bad.”224 One sermon noted “how few of them . . . truly plead the causes of their clients without fraud or falsehood.”225 They were “Caterpillars, Flyes and Gnats” whose legal complexities “put out the eye of Justice.”226 They were responsible for unnecessary delays. “Man may sooner travel about the whole globe of the earth, then passe through an English Court.”227 Lawyers were blamed for taking cases from court to court, for overly long proceedings, new motions, writs of error and generally creating and fomenting lawsuits. One of the most common complaints was the lawyer’s abuse of rhetoric. Advocates “have taught their tongues to call evil good and falsehood truth” and could by their “smooth speeches steal away and lead captive the hearts of the simple.”228 Their “nimbleness of wit and volubility of tongue” deceived, and they dressed up bad causes “in the imbroydery of Rhetoric,” allowing their words to pass for truth.229 Many sins that “cry for Vengeance” were not heard or were “gilded over with colours of deceit.”230 Jurors were warned that none must “betray causes and corrupt his brethren, being swayed more by acquaintance, alliance or bribe than by the arguing of the counsel, the decision of the judge or the evidence of those that are sworn.” Only those with “free Hearts, as well as Free-Holds,” should be selected as jurors.231 Jurors must give verdicts according to the evidence and especially to have “sufficient, clear evidence for” sentences “touching human life.”232 There was concern that jurors might be bullied or confused by lawyers. Assize sermons also denounced plaintiffs who made false and unjust ac-

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cusations.233 They were “not to go to law for every Trifle, but be willing to withdraw their Actions upon reasonable offers, and hearken to fair and moderate terms of Accommodation.”234 False testimony by witnesses was a frequent topic. The practice led to “injustice of the Cause, to the injustice of the Evidence, to the injustice of the verdict.”235

Oaths The oaths taken by jurors, witnesses, grand jurors and judges were often the subject of assize preachers. The necessity of oaths was often noted, but there was also recognition that oath-taking did not necessarily produce impartial or uncorrupted judges and jurors.236 Lying witnesses and less than impartial jurors were perennial topics. Already in 1599 we hear “how unreverently many take their oaths, how slightingly they regard them: for the most part it is made but a matter of forme and custome.”237 Oaths given carelessly, another said, have “grown into a meer formality,” and, if given perfunctorily, “they will grow into absolute contempt.”238 It was even suggested that oaths were being sold.239 Jurors were admonished to honor their oaths and not “assume a liberty to admit or reject what they please of the Evidence; to believe what ever is deposed . . . [or] to interpret the Lawes in favour of offenders.”240 One preacher accused jurors of rescuing “the most dangerous Criminals from fair and legal trials; or acquitting the guilty in spite of the Evidence” in violation of their oaths.241 John Allen’s sermon on perjury complained that, contrary to their oaths, grand juries were not finding bills, despite “fair, full and legal evidence.”242 At the same time that the sermon literature pointed to the “growing evil and mischief of breaking Oaths,”243 it also claimed that oaths given in courts of law ensured “a sure testimony in Matter of Fact.”244 John Tillotson insisted that the oath was the “surest ground of Judicial proceedings, and the most firm and sacred bond that can be laid upon all that are concerned in the administration of publick Justice; upon Judge, and Jury and Witnesses.”245 Oath-taking, it was agreed, was necessary to achieve justice, but failure to take oaths seriously was eroding that justice. In some venues and in some contexts England was proclaimed to have the best legal system in the world. In others, such as the assize sermon, its operation was seen as seriously flawed. Also of interest are the topics absent from the assize sermons. Given the fact that jurors were to reach a “satisfied conscience” after hearing the



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evidence in criminal causes, there is surprisingly little in the assize literature devoted to how a “conscience” might be satisfied, a theme one might expect the clergy to discuss on these occasions. Contract theory is there, but only to be condemned. There are no references to the ancient constitution, the common law or Parliament, or even the jurisdictional disputes between common law and other courts. Assize sermons are formulaic. However, their formulaic character is precisely what is important about them, because sermons provide a window into what some early modern audiences heard on a regular basis. From Elizabeth’s reign to the eve of the Revolution of 1688, assize sermon audiences heard obedience, obedience and more obedience to the divinely ordained authority of rulers, magistrates and judges. The venue, of course, had much to do with the message. One would hardly expect to hear comments in favor of disobedience or disrespect for rulers and judges at the outset of proceedings designed to enforce the nation’s civil and criminal law. Venue and occasion lent themselves to particular themes, in this instance the divine origin of government and the divine right and responsibility of kings, magistrates and judges. Yet that setting also naturally generated expressions of uneasiness about the administration of justice. What conclusions can be drawn from this survey of nearly two hundred assize sermons? First, the assize sermon was an important channel for communicating political ideas. Reiteration makes for tedious listening and reading, but it is this very repetition that made the assize sermon part of the ideological life of the times. These sermons also suggest that the doctrines of the divine origin of government and the divine right of rulers, kings, judges and magistrates and their obligation to the deity rather than to the people or Parliament appears to have been more widely disseminated than we might have thought. James I and a few favored clerics were certainly not alone in voicing the divine authority of kings or their responsibility to God alone. The assize pulpit, before, during and after the civil war era spread such ideas throughout the country. The setting, the ceremonial nature of the occasion, the biblical texts that served the genre and the privileged moral position of the speaker were simultaneously an exercise of government power and a ritual of affirmation of that power. This combination generated a particular momentum for the assize sermon as an instrument of political education. Moreover this political education is directed at a critical political audience, a set of upper and middling persons of affairs consisting of the litigators, the witnesses, the jurors, the grand jurors, the sheriff, the local magistrates and a miscellany of

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county gentry and townsmen gathered for sociability, business and political discussion. Most openly and obviously, the repeated, almost ritualistic message of the sermons appears to be celebration of the monarch and monarchy. Just below and sometimes well above the surface of this message, however, is a more nuanced one. First of all, the trope is quite often the king and his magistrates or the judges and the magistrates rather than the king alone. Just as declarations that the king-in-Parliament is sovereign announces that the king is constrained by parliamentary processes, the assize sermons announce that the king, not alone but in his courts, with his judges and magistrates and through judicial processes, is the voice of the law, and that the law rather than mere royal fiat governs. This implication of the rule of law is paralleled by a second message of restraint on royal sovereignty. Sermons draw on the sanctity and authority of biblical texts and enhance the role of the sermon-giver as a religious mentor and censor of public life. Those participating in the king’s assizes are not merely instruments of the king’s power but moral actors under religious obligations to do the right thing. The message is also about the duties of judges, lawyers, jurors and witnesses. If there is sometimes more critical bite to this message than the bench and bar might prefer, nevertheless it is a message of moral autonomy, that all the participants ought to be faithful servants of the law and legal processes, responsible to God, not merely the instruments of personal, local or central political power or special interest. Given their almost ritual repetitiousness, their lack of original political or legal theory and their rather standardized form and style, assize sermons may not garner high literary marks. They are, however, a channel through which a politically active segment of the population received repeated reinforcement of a rather complex political story—one of the legitimacy of central political power and legal authority projected into the countryside, divine in origin, but exercised under moral and religious obligations to truth and impartiality and exercised not by the king alone but by the king and his magistrates acting through established, and religiously sanctioned, legal practices.

Conclusion Indeed sermons of all kinds, given on a variety of occasions and in a range of venues, must be incorporated into our understanding of political



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culture. They contained the political doctrines most frequently voiced emphasizing the divine status of monarchy, the dangers of disobedience and rebellion and the errors of Roman Catholic and dissenting doctrines. With assistance from Scripture, the clergy, with the only partial exception of the revolutionary era, were stalwart defenders of the established government and vigilant in opposing any threats to it.

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Royal events such as coronations, progresses, entries and funerals, and popular activities that included civic pageants, bell ringing, fireworks, pope burning processions and petitioning, enlisted the literate and illiterate alike in political life. Celebrations marking particular events, some unique and others part of the annual calendar, expressed approbation or disapproval of politically significant persons and events. Public whipping or pillorying, trials and executions provided visual experience of the majesty of the law. Paintings, sculpture, architecture and medals, like royal coronations and entries, used a variety of English, biblical and Roman imperial images to underline political values or suggest parallels between present and past political virtues. While these are not genres in any traditional sense, they were channels through which many learned about political life. Some involve personal observation, some personal experience and some both. Pageants and processions were organized by the Crown or civic authorities with the aim of confirming official ideologies. Some were less officially orchestrated and had a substantial popular component. The bell ringing, bonfires, gunshots and fireworks that marked many celebrations can, to some extent, be taken as demonstrations of spontaneous popular opinion and participation. Some events, such as the late-seventeenth-century Whig-orchestrated pope burning processions and the petitioning movements of the mid- and late seventeenth century, combined elite leadership with public participation.



Observation and Participation

Rituals of Royalty: Coronations, Entries and Funerals Like their medieval predecessors, Tudor and Stuart monarchs used ceremony and visual display to enhance their role as head of church and state. The most important of these were the accession and coronation ceremonies that began their reigns. These were amplified by the celebrations of royal birthdays, marriages and births. Rulers also created visual displays of themselves in opulent courts before courtiers and diplomats to express and enhance their separation from ordinary individuals. Some assumed special roles in masques and other court-centered events. The culture of the court, shaped by the personal inclinations, gender and financial condition of particular English monarchs, underlined the perceived power, authority and moral stature of the monarchy. The degree of accessibility of the monarch too had its effect, sometimes working to enhance, sometimes to diminish, perceptions of monarchical authority. As a way of cementing loyalty and displaying power, English monarchs, to a greater or lesser extent, exhibited themselves to the populace during royal entries and through progresses that put them on public view. The royal entry into London was a medieval institution in which the lord mayor and London’s leading citizens greeted the monarch. It was a colorful ceremony with banners and the noise of trumpets and cheering crowds flocking to gain sight of mayor and monarch. The ritual, performed when the monarch approached the city, found the lord mayor, the alderman and other City officials all in ceremonial attire and arranged in hierarchical order, greeting the ruler. The monarch was often presented with a sword or scepter, which was then returned to the mayor, who expressed the loyalty of magistrates and citizenry. There was a good deal of noise: cheering, gun fire and bell ringing, as well as pushing and shoving to get a better view. The better off sat on balconies and in windows to view the ceremony.1 Similar ceremonial events preceded the coronation of a new monarch and were part of the lord mayor’s show, the annual London event honoring the newly elected lord mayor and the monarch. Some rulers took advantage of every opportunity to display themselves, others avoided such contacts. Monarchs also used events such as royal birthdays and marriages to underline the importance of dynastic kingship and to cement allegiance to the Crown. “Touching for the king’s evil,” in which the royal touch was thought to cure certain diseases, attested to the special nature of kingship.

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Always attuned to making the most of opportunities to display herself to the people, Elizabeth made good use of royal ceremonial opportunities and was well aware of their political potential. She said, “We princes are set on stages in the sight and view of all the world.”2 On the day of her coronation the people were said to have assembled with the “prayer, wishes, welcomes, cryies, tender woordes, and other signes, which argue a wonderfull earnest love of the most obedient subjects toward their sovaraygne.”3 During the coronation entry, which took place the day before the coronation, the new queen “did not only show her most gracious love to her people in general, but also privately, if the baser personages had either offered her grace or any flowers or such like, . . . she most gently, to the common rejoicing of all the lookers-on . . . staid her Chariot, and heard their requests.”4 Elizabeth’s first major exposure with the public initiated a practice she would continue to follow, one of making contact with the people and encouraging a reciprocal relationship with her subjects. Precoronation festivities were publicized in The Queen’s Maiesties Passage through the city of London to Westminster the Day before her Coronation to ensure that non-London residents could participate vicariously. Elizabeth’s “Crownation Day,” November 17, would be celebrated annually both during her lifetime and long afterward. Elizabeth made effective use of the entry. In 1585 when she entered London in an open chariot and said to the people, “God save my people,” the people, falling on their knees, answered, “God save her grace.” Shortly after the defeat of the Armada she made a royal entry into London riding in a Roman style chariot. The streets were decorated and stations along her way provided music. St. Paul’s Cathedral was adorned with banners of the defeated Spaniards. The Queen went to St. Paul’s, knelt on the ground before her subjects and offered thanks for the victory. Fifty clergymen accompanied her into St. Paul’s to hear a sermon.5 Elizabeth’s summer and fall progresses also offered opportunities to display herself and make contact with her subjects. Accompanied by a good portion of her court, progresses were fairly lengthy royal tours that visited aristocratic homes, towns, ports and military defenses. Elizabeth made majesty a vivid presence in her over four hundred progresses. The queen used these presentations of royalty with consummate ability. There was “no prince living . . . that was so great a courter of her people, yea of the commons, that stooped and descended lower in presenting her person to the public view as she passed in her perambulations and in the ejaculations of her prayers upon the people.”6 Her returns to London were marked by elaborate formal entries where she would again be greeted by large crowds.7



Observation and Participation

The queen’s funeral arrangements were elaborate. There was a lifelike effigy of Elizabeth arrayed in her parliamentary robes and accompanied by the crown, orb and scepter, the symbols of sovereignty. Her body was accompanied by a large train of nobility, counselors and members of the royal household. Although Elizabeth was not as popular at the end of her reign as at the beginning, there were reports of “general sighing and groning and weeping; and the like hath not been seene or known in the memory of man.”8 James I’s reign began with a magnificent coronation entry and ceremony. Subsequently, however, the new king exposed himself to the public as little as possible and dispensed with the kind of civic ceremonies that marked Elizabeth’s reign. He “did not love to be looked on, and those Formalities of State which set a Lustre upon Princes in the People’s Eyes, were so many Burthens to him”9 His coronation was marked by a new emphasis on antiquity and the ceremony presented him as a “priest king.” Though James earlier had advised his son of the importance of ceremony, neither James nor Charles took advantage of the political possibilities of royal entries.10 James did go into the street at the opening of parliaments, and there were pageants for Prince Henry’s investiture as Prince of Wales. A popular figure, especially with those who favored a more aggressive policy against the Spanish, Henry enjoyed public ceremony. James’s death was marked by an elaborate and extremely costly funeral in which Charles was the chief mourner. The procession included an effigy of James that for the previous month had been on public display in Somerset House. The magnificent, lengthy and somewhat disorderly funeral procession was thought to have been viewed by 50,000. The Laudian ceremony in Westminster Abbey was used to enhance hereditary divine right monarchy and the soon-to-be king, Charles I.11 Charles I’s coronation was marked by the customary bell ringing, gunshots from the Tower and drums and horns in the streets. At least 355 bonfires between Whitehall and Temple Bar were reported. Like his father, Charles was reluctant to appear in public and like him dispensed with the triumphal entry into London at his accession. The City had been more than willing, but the new king gave instructions that the prepared pageants be removed. The coronation ceremony itself was rather private. Charles arrived by water, thus avoiding a street procession. Archbishop Laud drew up the coronation service to emphasize the sacred nature of kingship. The Roman Catholic queen refused to participate in the ceremonies.12 Public royal ceremonies became less frequent. The king remained unre-

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ceptive to City entries. By the 1630s the king had largely withdrawn from people’s view. Charles’s entry into London on his return from Scotland in 1641 was exceptional. On this occasion he was greeted by five hundred citizens and thousands of spectators. But even then his distaste for the populace was clear. “All those former tumults and disorders, have only risen from the meaner sort of people,” not from the better part of the City, whom he said “have ever beene loyall and affectionate to my person and government.”13 Charles preferred the more intimate atmosphere of the court, where the court masque highlighted the king’s conception of divine right monarchy. Malcolm Smuts suggests that Charles’s failure to appear in public weakened the royal charisma.14 The outbreak of the civil war was marked by considerable crowd activity but little orchestrated pageantry. The Commonwealth government did not entirely ignore the political potential of spectacle. It used banquets, state funerals and celebrations of Cromwell’s victories and sought appropriate ceremonies for the reception of foreign embassies.15 The Cromwellian era saw more frequent but still modest display. Cromwell’s installation as lord protector lacked the elaborate pageantry, triumphal arches and tableaus prepared for the coronation of kings but did include the traditional greetings by ceremonially garbed City dignitaries. The occasion was more like Charles’s 1641 entry than a coronation entry. The Recorder’s speech pointedly noted that, unlike other nations, neither the titles Caesar nor emperor or triumphal arches were employed. Cromwell appeared in a coach rather than on horseback. Reaction to the ceremony was mixed. Mercurius Politicus reported “great acclamations and shoutings”; the Venetian ambassador a large crowd but little applause. Another report indicated that the crowd offered curses and threw dirty pieces of cloth and leather; still another that Cromwell had “lost much of the affection of the people, since he tooke the government upon himself,” and that the people “publiquely laughed and derided him.” Republicans and Royalists were hostile.16 There was a second installation ceremony for Cromwell in 1657. This essentially civil ceremony, celebrating the new state as much as the lord protector, dispensed with royal robes, anointing, coronation, sermon and communion and took place in Westminster Hall rather than Westminster Abbey. Cromwell’s funeral, on the other hand, had the pomp and magnificence of a royal funeral. Adapted from the funeral rites for James I, it featured a life-size effigy of Cromwell lying in state for public viewing wearing a robe of state with a scepter, globe and crown.17



Observation and Participation

The first taste of the Restoration’s revival of royal pageantry was Charles II’s progress from Dover to London, which concluded with a grand flowerbedecked processional entry into London. People lined the streets and situated themselves in windows and on balconies along the route. Bell ringing lasted for three nights. John Evelyn reported “shouting of unexpressible joy.”18 The coronation, which took place a few months later, was preceded by a lavish civic entry of the traditional variety in which Charles encountered a series of Roman triumphal arches and speeches alluding to him as Augustus. Pageants portrayed triumph over rebellion, the new sense of peace and pride in the nation’s navy. The four eighty-foot-high triumphal arches were decorated with scenery and living figures. The spectacle, like the now defunct court masque, combined architectural backgrounds, music, dance, sculpture and verse to glorify the recently restored divine right monarchy. Musicians, singers and dancers performed all around London. The militia and trained bands, horsemen and footmen lined the streets.19 Pepys felt that one was “never to see the like again in this world.” Another spectator reported that it was “the gravest, stateliest and most majestic sight that every I saw.” Clarendon thought it was the “most glorious in the Order and Expense, that had ever been seen in England.”20 The coronation ceremony in Westminster Abbey was very different. Charles was consecrated and crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a ceremony almost identical to that of his father. The coronation sermon reminded the audience that it should reflect on “our past sufferings and the causes of them,” mentioning the factious men who had “pretended to serve God.” Monarchy was divinely instituted, the best and most natural form of government as well as “the most just and reasonable.” When sovereignty was usurped and then shared the result was tyranny, it being “monstrous for the body politic to have more than one head.” Now “the Ancient Legal and Essential Constitution” was restored and the nation might return to peace, prosperity and security.21 Pepys, who estimated that 10,000 people stood outside the abbey, emphasized the magnificence of the occasion and remarked on hearing a “great shout” when the crown was placed on the king’s head. Bonfires blazed for two nights, and souvenir coronation mugs were distributed for the first time.22 Clarendon had hoped that royal pageantry would help discredit “the Novelties and new Inventions, with which the Kingdom had been so much intoxicated for so many Years together.”23 There were, however, few such ceremonies during the following years, although Charles provided a spec-

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tacle for the arrival of the queen in 1662. Charles II disliked formalities and generally appeared in public rather casually, being more comfortable at the horse races than in royal ceremony. In any event it would have been difficult to make him an iconic figure of divine right kingship or monarchical dignity and decorum, given his reputation for sexual promiscuity and a dissolute life. Nor would Charles’s self-presentation as the “first gentleman” of the nation provide support for notions of a divinely instituted authority, however much the doctrine would be preached in the pulpit. The mystique of monarchy had been broken, first by a period of nonmonarchical governance, and then by a monarch who was not inclined to preserve or enhance that mystique. From the first moments of Charles’s return there were efforts to restore the visible symbols of royalty. Even before his arrival the statue of Charles I was replaced in Guildhall yard. Symbols of the previous government were to be “taken down in all the courts of justice, and other publick places . . . and all the king’s arms set up in their room.” The king’s arms were again placed over the speaker’s chair in Parliament and throughout the kingdom.24 Although the king did not make much use of ceremony and pageantry, the Duke of Monmouth, his illegitimate son who was treated by the Whigs as a possible successor, made use of the progress to support his political ambitions. Progresses of the “Protestant Duke,” organized by local Whigs, attracted many observers who were said to shout, “Let Monmouth reign.” The king urged Tories “not to show any respect nor have any commerce with him in this ramble.”25 Entries were arranged when Monmouth arrived in provincial towns. His entry into Oxford was greeted with cries of “God bless the Protestant Duke.” Monmouth’s 1680 return to London met with “ringing of Bells and Making Bonfires for Joy,” the festivities probably arranged by Shaftesbury. The Duke of York engaged in a countercampaign, making progresses into Scotland.26 Both Monmouth and York attempted to make use of opportunities for courting public support. Despite fears of what a Roman Catholic monarch might bring, the accession of James II was greeted with widespread celebration. Although in some locales “some people” were reported to have “hung their heads” at the announcement at James’s succession, “most received it with great joy, and all at present are in a quiet temper.”27 The secretaries of state ensured appropriate celebrations, sending proclamations to local authorities instructing them to fire guns. Londoners were provided with wine to toast the new king, and celebrations were sponsored by the now remodeled, Tory-domi-



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nated City government. In Oxford there were bells and bonfires. James was cheered with “great shouts and acclamations”; Whigs were “condemn’d and slighted.”28 Several observers commented on how rapidly public opinion had changed. Anthony Wood contrasted the hostility toward James during the last years of his brother’s reign with the “great applause” when he came to the throne.29 James Welwood similarly remarked that the earlier “Heats and Animosities against him . . . seem’d to be now quite forgot, amidst the loud Acclamations of the People at his accession.”30 James dispensed with the precoronation civic procession but was deeply involved in planning an elaborate and costly coronation ceremony that was celebrated with the traditional bell ringing, bonfires, feasting and music. The coronation was unusual in that a Roman Catholic king was crowned by a Protestant archbishop. The king’s failure to take the sacrament, traditionally part of the coronation ceremony, was reported to cause “great sorrow of the People.” Despite the many expressions of popular support, about half the nobility excused themselves from attending. The coronation was well publicized in the royally commissioned The History of the Coronation of the Most High Most Mighty and Most Excellent Monarch, James II (1687). The coronation sermon featured divine right, hereditary monarchy and passive obedience, a critique of elective monarchy and an allusion to “that abominable Excluding Bill.”31 James was not unaware of the possibilities of courting public opinion. In 1686 he visited the West country, and used royal healing powers during the tour. He also made several progresses after Parliament was dissolved in 1687, hoping to garner support for his policy of religious toleration.

The Lord Mayor’s Shows and Pope Burning Processions The annual civic pageants of medieval origin honoring the newly elected lord mayor of London were politically significant events. These elaborate shows provided an opportunity for Londoners to hear the self-congratulation of the merchant community. Speeches and visually pleasing processions and tableaus announced the unity and harmony between the English commercial community and the monarchy. Paid for by the guild or livery company of the incoming mayor, the pageants consisted of a procession of City officials through several parts of London, along with tableaus vivant, some of which took place on barges on the Thames and at several spe-

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cially built triumphal arches. The reigning monarch often participated in the ceremonies or observed them from a nearby balcony.32 Printed descriptions provided vicarious experience for those who did not witness them; and well established poets and dramatists such as Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and Thomas Middleton were commissioned to write and plan the annual fall shows. These shows provided entertainment for the entire city, the rich observing from balconies, the rest of London from the streets. They provided an occasion for panegyric praising the commercial wealth of London and the reigning monarch. Although the shows of the Stuart era are well known, those of the Elizabethan era are not. We do know that the last extant show of Elizabeth’s reign, George Peele’s Descensus Astraea (1591), reaffirmed the City’s loyalty to the queen and emphasized the mutual benefits of the monarchy and the merchant community. Shows became more elaborate in the early seventeenth century as they borrowed thematic elements and lavishness from the masque. The first show of James’s reign, Triumphes of Re-United Britannia, praised the proposed Union of England and Scotland, the Jacobean peace and concord between the sponsoring company and the Crown. Courtly styles of grandeur characterized Thomas Middleton’s The Triumph of Truth, which increased the focus on London, perhaps because the king was not very interested in displaying himself to his subjects. The 1617 crowd expressed anti-Spanish sentiment.33 The shows of Charles I’s reign continued to underline themes of royal and City harmony. Jus Honorarium of 1631 delivered the message “Every magistrate is a minister under God, appointed by the divine ordinance to that calling, to be a protector of the Church, a preserver of discipline and Peace.” The shows were largely in abeyance during the civil war era, though one in 1643 pointed to the need for political order and obedience to magistrates. They were revived in 1655, and in 1657 London’s Triumph again extolled trade and stressed its advantage to the state.34 Lord mayor’s shows were enthusiastically staged during the Restoration. The Crown became actively concerned in their production and often participated in the festivities. Charles II frequently attended, viewing several of the pageants from a Cheapside balcony and then dining with the newly elected magistrates at the Guildhall. Restoration-era shows were frequently attended by foreign ambassadors, members of the Privy Council, officers of state, the archbishop and bishops present in London, judges and sergeants at law. Like their predecessors, the shows were designed to appeal to both elite and popular audiences. Augustan themes were prominent, and god-



Observation and Participation

dess figures representing justice, temperance, prudence and other virtues were often portrayed, accompanied by speeches appropriate to each. The pageants continued to provide visual displays portraying the prosperity of English trade and manufacture and their contribution to the nation as well as harmony between trade and Crown. Like most Restoration-era genres, the pageants of the Restoration became more overtly political. The 1660 pageant celebrating the return of the monarchy contained a speech that referred to England’s God-like monarchy “Derivative from Heaven” and the “right of succession at the hands of Heaven.”35 The next year, when the lord mayor’s pageant could not be separated from the coronation entry, the king rode in a procession that highlighted the contrast between monarchy and the past confusion and turmoil. The king also participated in the pageants of 1662 and 1664.36 Charles seems at least to have heeded the advice of the Duke of Newcastle, who had urged that the king “to show your Selfe Gloriously, to your people; like a God, for the Holy writt sayes, well have Call’d you Gods.”37 A hiatus of several years resulting from the fire ended in the 1670s, when the pageants again sometimes promoted government propaganda.38 Thomas Jordan, an ardent Royalist, provided the shows between 1671 and 1683. His London’s Resurrection to Joy and Triumph (1671) emphasized the rebuilding of London, the return of prosperity and the importance of “Concord and Consent.” It included a figure, Oliver Faction, who loves “to sow the seeds of Strife” and says of himself, “I put all nations in a Flame” and “a Cov’nant’ I made to further my trade.” The Oliver figure referred to his villainy of 1646, “when writing and fighting” killed many.39 London’s Triumph (1672), attended by the king, the dukes of York and Monmouth and many officers of state, proclaimed, “May no Rebellious seeds men to Discord/ Twixt Whitehall Scepter, and Guildhall Sword/ May Peace, Truth, Trade, Plenty, and Content/ Make all men Bless’d under your Government.” A song referred to “42,” to “Ordinance Laws” that “beat down the kings,” illiterates in the pulpit who scattered the “seeds of division” and to Cromwell and the Protectorate.40 The Triumph of London (1675) ridiculed coffee houses and attacked Shaftesbury for making “Conscience a Cloak for his knavery.”41 During the divisive Popish Plot and Exclusion era and the development of Whig and Tory ideologies, the pageants become increasingly unruly. In 1679 we hear of a “tumultuous Torrent of crowding People” in the streets.42 The increasingly Tory messages of the lord mayor shows were countered by Whig-sponsored burning processions made to coincide with com-

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memorations of Elizabeth’s accession or “Crownation” day on November 17, a day traditionally associated with expression of anti–Roman Catholic sentiment. The purpose of the processions was to emphasize the dangers of Roman Catholicism and to put pressure on court and king to call Parliament. They were carefully planned to excite the London crowd with bell ringing, bonfires and cries of “No Popery.” The Whigs hoped to solidify a connection between the Protestant Elizabeth and their own program. The procession of 1679 featured both a statue of Queen Elizabeth “decked up with a magna carta and the protestant religion” and the devil, accompanied by “four boys in surplices . . . six Jesuits, four bishops, four archbishops . . . besides Franciscans, black and grey friars in all habits” and “a great crucifix, wax candles and a bell.” Spectators were asked to remember Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, widely rumored to have been killed by Catholics, whose figure appeared on horseback. The pageant, which featured effigies of the pope that were burned in spectacular bonfires, drew huge crowds.43 Streets, windows and balconies were filled with noisy spectators. Viewing the spectacle, the French ambassador expressed surprise that “no manner of mischief was done, not so much as a head broke.” “The streets were all quiet” within several hours.44 The Whig playwright Elkanah Settle devised and managed the lavish pope burning procession of 1680 that Roger L’Estrange blamed on the Green Ribbon Club. The Whig processions of 1680 and 1681 ridiculed L’Estrange, who was represented in the form of a little dog sitting in the pope’s lap. The procession, which also included displays of Godfrey and Sir George Wakeman, a recent Catholic plotter, concluded with a huge bonfire at which the crowd cried, “No Popery” and “God bless the King, Protestant Religion, the Church and Dissenting Protestants.” Their cries were said to be rewarded with “Wine and other Liquors.”45 Although the pope burning processions were primarily a London affair, they were also held at Salisbury and Taunton. The festivities were expensive; the procession of 1679 was thought to have cost £2,000. Broadsides were sold during the parades for the enjoyment and edification of spectators and for non-Londoners, much as printed descriptions were circulated of the lord mayor’s shows.46 There were no more pope burning processions or bonfires after Tories gained control over the City corporation. Similar, though less elaborate, public displays were used by the Tories to associate the Whigs with rebellion and dissent. In 1681 they burned an effigy of Jack Presbyter carrying the Solemn League and Covenant and exhibited a display of Shaftesbury’s ignoramus verdict. In 1685 they publicly burned



Observation and Participation

a copy of the Exclusion bill in Oxford and elsewhere, along with the pamphlet The Character of a Popish Successor. The bill of Exclusion was burned in Newcastle-under-Lyme together with other symbols “which smelled of disloyaltie.”47 The Whig-sponsored pope burning processions took place during the period in which the Crown interfered in City elections. The politics of the City, and especially the changing composition of the Common Council and the political affiliation of the mayors, were reflected in the lord mayor’s shows. Court and City factions fought bitterly over the sheriff elections because those officials appointed the jurors and grandjurors that would determine politically divisive cases. London’s Glory, the lord mayor’s show of 1680 honoring the newly elected Whig lord mayor, Sir Patience Ward, reflected Whig concern for French and popish threats. The king refused to attend. Ward, who favored Exclusion and promoted an accord between the Church of England and the dissenters, was attended by the Duke of Monmouth, who dined with him at the Guildhall banquet following the show. London crowds followed Monmouth, shouting and tossing up hats and caps, “crying God bless his Majesty and the Duke of Monmouth.”48 During Ward’s mayoralty dissenters were admitted to the electorate without taking the required oath. The City’s four members of Parliament were Whigs who supported exclusion. Ward, however, would soon be replaced by a series of Tory lord mayors whose views were more in keeping with that of the court. The king intervened in the fiercely contested election in behalf of Sir John Moore and attended the ceremonies that year. Both the election and the 1681 Tory show took place amid a flurry of pamphlets about the disputed election. The 1682 show, also fraught with controversial City politics, resulted in a Whig boycott. There were no pageants, and some guilds refused to march in the procession.49 After London’s charter was revoked, the mayor and other City officials were appointed by the Crown. Judge Jeffreys, now a leading figure in London’s governance, confidently declared, “The King of England is likewise King of London.”50 The City government and the lord mayor’s shows remained Tory for the remainder of the reign. Pageants presented the civil war and Interregnum eras as times of poverty, confusion and tyranny and attacked religious dissent. The shows had become another venue for disseminating Tory ideology. During the brief reign of James II the shows exhibited themes of loyalty and obedience. In 1686 there were anti–Roman Catholic riots that the may-

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or found difficult to subdue. The following year, when the king replaced the Tory Anglicans who had dominated City government with former Whigs and nonconformists, City officials thanked James, the “most Discerning Prince in the World,” for his Declaration of Indulgence. The incoming lord mayor, an Anabaptist, was reminded that he owed his “advancement” to the “Praetorial Chair” “to the favor of the monarch.” A pageant figure, “Liberty Triumphant,” held the king’s banner in one hand and a shield inscribed “Liberty of Conscience” in the other. The London Gazette reported that the king was thanked for “the many Advantages of that liberty which His Majesty has been pleased so Graciously to indulge all His Subjects though of Different Persuasions.” There had nevertheless been sufficient worry about possible disorder to lead to a search of the Guildhall cellar and a prohibition of “the throwing of squibs and serpents.” The presence of the papal nuncio was upsetting and surprising.51 The lord mayor’s show, which had begun as a tribute to the harmony of the City and monarch, became deeply enmeshed in partisan politics after the Restoration. The monarchs were active participants, except on those occasions when Whigs controlled the City government. Shows continued after the Glorious Revolution, although with diminishing enthusiasm, and ended in 1702.

Petitioning In order to understand the full range of political expression and activity, some attention must be given to petitioning, an important legal means of arousing public sentiment as well as influencing government action and parliamentary lawmaking. Petitioning was treated as an indisputable right that allowed individuals and groups a legitimate means of bringing discontents and grievances to an appropriate official or institution. Typically couched in respectful language emphasizing the humility of the petitioners, petitions might originate in local grand juries, Parliament or individuals and were addressed to mayors, the king, the Privy Council or Parliament. Although recognized as legitimate expressions of discontent, petitioning became worrisome to governmental authorities when delivery was tumultuous or when petitions appeared to demand rather than request. Not all petitions were politically significant, but those that were served as an important means of expressing political views in a way that would receive public attention. Many were initiated and support for them orches-



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trated in ways that made it impossible to be certain of a petition’s source or the extent of its support. Samples from successive reigns will suggest the range of ideas expressed and the changing role of petitions in political life. During Elizabeth’s reign the House of Commons petitioned the queen to allow the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, declaring that the petition communicated the universal desire “of the whole people of all degrees.”52 Archbishop Whitgift denounced the petitioning efforts of the Puritans. During the Jacobean era local petitioners were advised to vary their language, “to avoid the suspicion of conspiracy.”53 In 1610 a House of Commons petition sought to affirm its right to “debate freely of all things that shall concern any of the subjects in particular, or the commonwealth in general.” Petitions complained about high commission, the church courts, excessive use of proclamations and impositions. One insisted that taxation required Parliament’s consent and asserted that the “Law of Property” was “virginally and carefully preserved by the common law[s] of this realm, which are as ancient as the kingdom itself.”54 There were Puritan petitions addressed to the House of Commons as well as petitions directed against individuals and particular publications such as Richard Montague’s Appello Caesarem. There were also petitions defending episcopal government and those attacking Puritans, whose petitions were thought to be exciting disobedience to the established form of government. A petition of Parliament reminded the king of its former petitions relating to religion and complained of papal aims at temporal monarchy. Complaints about the Crown’s Spanish policy indicate that the petition format had become a vehicle for attacking royal foreign policy. Indeed, James thought Parliament’s petition on the Spanish match an insolent act. Petitions were clearly a means of communicating and advertising disapproval of current policies. Parliament’s 1628 Petition of Right, though couched in the language of humility, summed up long-standing grievances, including condemnation of benevolences, the royal power to tax, arbitrary imprisonment, the billeting of soldiers and improper use of martial law. It urged that doctrines of “necessity” and “the public good” not be used to undermine law or infringe the liberty of subjects. Though the petition had considerable support, some members thought it infringed upon the royal prerogative. Sir Edward Coke, one of the petition’s composers, countered, “I know that prerogative is part of the law, but ‘sovereign power’ is no parliamentary word. . . . [It] weakens Magna Charta and all our statutes.”55 Petitions played a central role in political life in 1640 and during the years that followed. Hundreds were sent to the Long Parliament from town gov-

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ernments, grand juries and later the army. Many were now printed, an innovation that provided opportunities both for larger numbers of individuals to become involved and for disseminating knowledge of public affairs to a much wider public. Petitions had become a means of shaping public opinion. Some required considerable organization to obtain signatures. Others were presented in such large numbers that they worried even members of Parliament. In 1641 Lord Digby queried apprehensively, “What can there bee of greater presumption, then for Petitioners . . . to prescribe to Parliament, what, and how it shall doe?”56 Petitions to the Short Parliament focused on extra-parliamentary taxation and Arminian innovations. Their dismissal was followed by petitions for a new Parliament. Both king and the Long Parliament faced a barrage of petitions. Among them was the Root and Branch Petition allegedly signed by 150,000 and ostentatiously carried to the House of Commons by well over a thousand. A crowd of perhaps 15,000 petitioned for justice to be executed upon the Earl of Strafford. That petition was said to have 20,000 to 30,000 signatures.57 The Grand Remonstrance, a printed petition from the House of Commons to the king, though retaining the language of “humble and faithful subjects,” lambasted the king’s evil counselors, the bishops, Jesuit-inspired papists and the “malignant and pernicious design of subverting the fundamental laws and principles of government.” Writing many years later Clarendon said: It contained a very bitter representation of all the illegal things which had been done from the first hour of the King’s coming to the crown to that minute, with all those sharp reflections which could be made upon the King . . . the Queen, and Council: and published all the unreasonable jealousies of the present government . . . and all other particulars which might disturb the minds of the people, which were enough discomposed.58

Petitions of all kinds poured in from the countryside. Nehemiah Wallington claimed to have collected 103 petitions.59 Milton reported that “the meanest artisans and labourours, women and young servants assembled with their complaints.”60 Petitions and counter petitions streamed in from Kent and other counties, many of which were printed. Petitions, together with the increasing stream of pamphlets and newsbooks, had become a way of mobilizing those who had rarely if ever before directly entered the political arena. A transformation of the political process had taken place within the space of two years. Often reported in the now burgeoning newsbooks, petitions were discussed and signatures collected in churches, taverns, town councils and at quarter sessions and the assizes. Those directed



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at Parliament were often presented by processions of people or a parade of coaches. Unsurprisingly, the outpouring of petitions displeased the king, but Charles himself was angered by Parliament’s refusal to receive Royalist petitions. Royalists now claimed that petitioning was “the birthright of the subject,” which, once lost, would result in “slavery and tyranny.”61 Though many members of Parliament were active in petitioning campaigns, they were hostile to receiving petitions from Royalists and radicals. Once established as useful political tools, they could be and were employed by anyone. Petitions became so numerous and contentious that Parliament issued an order against “all tumultuous meetings under pretense of petitions.” When the New Model Army and Parliament came into conflict, there was an attack on the right of soldiers to petition Parliament. The Levellers were particularly adept in their use of petitioning. Parliament, however, was reluctant to accept them, and the first Leveller petition was ordered to be burned by the common hangman. Their “Large Petition,” printed to facilitate gathering signatures, was deemed “scandalous and seditious.”62 Their Remonstrance of many thousands of the Freeborn people of England claimed 98,000 signatures. Leveller petitions emphasized the need for law reform, a vastly expanded franchise, elimination of tithes and religious toleration. Petitioning provided an opportunity for some women to express their political views.63 There were fewer petitions during the 1650s. In 1653 The Faithful Post indicated that it was “saddened . . . to see your undoubted Right of Petitioning withheld from us . . . . [It] is the known duty of Parliament to receive Petitions: and it is ours and the nations undoubted right to petition, although an Act of parliament were made against it.”64 The recall of the Rump, nevertheless, was facilitated by a petitioning campaign. Legislation of 1661 again forbade mass petitioning that created “tumults and disorders upon pretence of preparing or present public petitions or other addresses to King or Parliament.” Petitions might be presented by no more than ten persons and contain no more than twenty signatures unless approved by justices of the peace or the county grand jury.65 Petitioning nevertheless played a major role both in the campaign to secure new elections in 1679 and 1680 and in efforts to exclude the Duke of York from the succession. In May 1679 there was a petition designed to convince Parliament that Londoners favored Exclusion and aid for Protestant dissenters. Lord Danby feared that petitioning presaged popular unrest. There were petitions for a new Parliament, including one presented by Shaftesbury and

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fifteen peers while the king was en route to chapel. According to one Whig newspaper a “monster petition,” allegedly signed by 60,000, was a hundred yards long. Newspapers provided progress reports on petitioning in the countryside. The Wilshire petition alone was said to have 30,000 signatures. A Tory paper reported that “Tables, Pen, Ink and Petitions have been placed upon the Royal Exchange at Change time, and People invited to subscribe to them.”66 The king made scathing remarks about several provincial petitions and dismissed officeholders engaged in petitioning. To many it appeared that the mass politics of the 1640s had returned. Petitioning, however, was not exclusively a Whig political tool. In 1681 Tory apprentices in London presented a petition with 18,000 signatures to the king which in turn elicited a Whig counterpetition with 20,000 signatures. The Gazette printed a royal proclamation against tumultuous petitioning and expressed disapproval of the petition forms being sent to the country for signatures. Tory “loyal addresses” expressing “abhorrence” of Whig petitions soon followed, many to be printed in the Gazette. The Tory The Loyal Protestant Intelligence characterized Whig petitions as “misrepresentatives, and not Vox Populi.”67 Civil war–era petitions were reprinted “to precaution the ill-meaning Zealots of this age” and remind readers of the “Libellous Petitions, then secretly set on Foot both against Church and State.”68 A Tory Association objected to the “Printed Forms of Petitions . . . lately dispersed up and down the Kingdom, . . . tending to the raising of Sedition and Treason,” its members subscribing to a document witnessing their “detestation” of the Whig petitions.69 A Hereford petition accused the Whigs of wishing to introduce “their beloved Tyrannick Republick.”70 Petitions and counterpetitions made it clear that Restoration England was a bitterly divided community. Like the newspaper, petitioning declined with the defeat of the Whigs. Tory petitions and popular demonstrations were encouraged by the Crown, which realized that it too could recruit popular support using demonstrations and addresses. By 1681 it would be difficult to separate Tory demonstrations from those sponsored by the government. Petitioning, enshrined as an ancient, constitutional practice, offered a means for large numbers of people to express their views, either through their signatures or their presence when the petitions were delivered. On some occasions this meant that very large numbers of people were mobilized to denounce existing policies and practices and to agitate for new ones. Petitioning was often well planned and well organized. Though the crowds that accompanied delivery were to be found largely in London and Westminster, several campaigns reached into the countryside. Especially



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from 1640 on, petitions offered large numbers of people an opportunity to participate in political life. It offered an opportunity to put pressure on king and Parliament and gave groups like the Levellers an opportunity to publicize their views. Petitions and counterpetitions of the Restoration era sharpened and made obvious the competing Whig and Tory agendas. Mass petitioning also raised fears of riot or other kinds of destructive mob behavior. Like the printed media, crowd activity was difficult to control. Yet Restoration-era governments, as well as those who used petitioning and crowd action to oppose governmental policies, were willing to make use of them when it was in their interest to do so.

National Holidays and Celebrations Although numerous religious holidays disappeared with the Reformation, celebrations remained part of early modern cultural experience. New holidays were created, some of which became part of the annual national calendar. Royal birthdays, births and marriages were celebrated with bell ringing and occasionally with fireworks. Few celebrations of particular monarchs were continued after their death. Among the exceptions were May 29, Royal Oak Day, which celebrated both the Restoration and Charles II’s birthday, and November 17, the date of Elizabeth’s accession. The celebrations of most national political importance were Elizabeth’s “Crownation Day,” Gunpowder Treason Day and January 30, the anniversary of Charles I’s execution. Others commemorative occasions marked events of national importance but were not repeated.

Elizabeth’s Accession Day Elizabeth’s accession day became a day of national rejoicing throughout her lifetime and during those of her Stuart successors. From its inception it testified to the Protestant nature of the English Crown and nation. Accession Day festivities praised Elizabeth’s rule and her many virtues. Celebrations became more elaborate over time, fueled by public sentiment following the Northern Rebellion in 1569, plots against the queen’s life and the papal bull of excommunication. Bell ringing was used for a nonreligious holiday for the first time. Lambeth rang bells as early as 1569, and London and the home counties soon followed. In 1576 Archbishop Grindal ordered

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a special form of prayer, enlarged in 1578, the same year that the city of Norwich instituted torch-lit processions. By the 1580s celebrations had become widespread throughout the country. Accession Day tributes typically mentioned God’s selection of Elizabeth and the blessings of her rule. Many also employed Golden Age and Roman imperial themes.71 Accession Day observance included sermons, many of which were published. These sermons often referred to Elizabeth as the English Deborah, Esther, or Solomon. In 1583 Whitgift preached on the nation’s delivery from “the cruelties and tyranny of the Bishop of Rome” and pointed out the similarity of Elizabeth’s role in the church to those of Constantine and Justinian. When the Bishop of London preached at Paul’s Cross on November 17, 1595, trumpets and cornets sounded from the cathedral roof, its steeple ablaze with lights. Gunfire sounded from the Tower along with bell ringing and bonfires. “Her day,” wrote John Chamberlain in 1602, “passed with . . . [the] solemnity of preaching, singing, shooting, ringing and running.”72 Celebration of Elizabeth’s accession day was not encouraged during the early part of James’s reign but did not cease. In 1612 William Leigh compared Queen Elizabeth to heroic biblical figures, this time David, Joshua and Hezekiah. He characterized the pope as antichrist “who treads on the necks of kings” and “kicks crowns from their heads.”73 Celebration, which revived as enthusiasm for James diminished and anti-Spanish sentiment increased, was enlivened more by popular interest than government pressure. Elizabeth’s “Crownation Day” provided an outlet for anti-Spanish and anti–Roman Catholic expression. In 1620 John Chamberlain declared that November 17 was “the happiest day that ever England had to my remembrance.”74 Celebrations waxed and waned along with periods of anti-Catholic fears and sentiment. Although Laudians disapproved of the celebrations during the 1630s, one anniversary sermon given before Parliament during that decade urged members to “make this another blessed seventeenth of November.”75 Elizabeth’s accession day gained national importance again at the time of the Whig-sponsored pope burning processions scheduled to coincide with November 5 and November 17. It was now associated with efforts to exclude the Duke of York from the succession. The coronation day of that “never to be forgotten Prince, Queen Elizabeth” was described by Elkanah Settle in London’s Defiance to Rome (1679). Celebration receded with the defeat of the Whigs and largely disappeared during the reign of James II, who feared the occasion would be turned “into riots and tumults.”76



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Gunpowder Treason Celebrations, November 5 The longest lasting holiday in the English national calendar was Gunpowder Day, memorializing the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605. The plot’s failure fueled anti-Catholic and antipapal sentiment for generations and was proclaimed as a national holiday celebrating England’s deliverance. Special prayers and sermons as well as bell ringing and bonfires marked the annual observance. Special sermons preached before the king began in 1606 and hailed November 5 as a day when “God delivered this land” from “the popish conspiracy,” “the quintessence of all impiety and confection of all villainy.” Bells rang throughout the country paid for by local parishes without the prompting of government officials. Although conceived as a day of prayer and thanksgiving, the distribution of wine and beer in some locales meant that Gunpowder Day became a festive, boisterous occasion.77 For some years November 5 was a unifying day on which Protestants of all religious persuasions joined together to denounce Roman Catholic and papal villainy. By the 1630s, however, it had lost its unifying character. Puritans put greater emphasis on the dangers of popery and the need for further reformation, churchmen on dangers to the church. The burning of popish effigies became increasingly associated with Puritanism, and there were fewer sermons at court celebrating the occasion. Archbishop Laud ignored it, not surprising given that Puritans used the occasion to denounce what they thought were popish ceremonies in the English church as well as popery itself. Fear of growing Roman Catholic influences at court and Roman Catholic plotting intensified anti-Catholic sentiment. On the first November 5th meeting of the Long Parliament, the speaker of the House of Commons underlined the importance of the date, stressing the current need to root out popery and all things popish. Supporters of the king, on the other hand, used the day to defend the king and the established religion. London parishes continued to pay bell ringers throughout the civil war era for their services on November 5. Celebration became more intense with the parliamentary victories over the king. In 1647 the day was marked by a sermon delivered before Parliament and a spectacular fireworks display at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the presence of Parliament and London’s militia. Celebration was less lively during the 1650s, although anniversary sermons

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and bell ringing continued. In 1651 the sermon preached to Parliament used the occasion to suggest that Presbyterians constituted a more serious danger than papists.78 Restoration commemorations often linked November 5 and May 29, the day honoring the Restoration of the Crown, as days of royal deliverances. Loyalists sometimes used the occasion to link popish and Presbyterian dangers. Bells were rung regularly until the Great Fire destroyed the majority of London’s churches and their bells. It would be many years before the bells pealed out again on November 5. Growing anti-Catholic fears in the 1670s reinvigorated celebrations. Commemorations became more boisterous and aggressive, with less emphasis on past deliverance and more on current dangers. Revelation of a Popish Plot to kill the king and apprehension of a Catholic successor inspired Whig pope burning processions and huge bonfires on November 5 and November 17. There were Exclusion sentiments such as the yelling of “No York” and pro-Monmouth slogans. Papist windows were broken and roving crowds sought out anti-Whig figures such as Roger L’Estrange. Healths were drunk to the Duke of Monmouth as well as the king. Such activities sometimes led to conflict with the trained bands. In 1682 there were both bonfires and efforts to douse their flames. After the Whigs had been vanquished, Gunpowder Day celebrations became quieter.79 Gunpowder Day festivities were discouraged during the reign of James II. The lord mayor was ordered to forbid bonfires and fireworks, though candle-lit parades were still permitted. The fortuitous arrival of William of Orange in England on November 5 meant that his arrival and the failure of the Gunpowder treason could be celebrated simultaneously as great deliverances.

January 30 The Restoration in 1660 made it possible for the nation publicly to mourn the death of Charles I. The date of his death, January 30, soon became part of the national calendar, with sermons preached before the king, before Parliament and in parish churches throughout the country. These sermons typically used the occasion to praise the martyred king, condemn those responsible for his death and warn against future rebellion. They were also used to instill belief in divine right kingship and passive obedience. January 30, like November 5, became a divisive rather than a healing day.



Observation and Participation

Occasional Celebrations There were also celebrations marking important political events that did not become part of the national calendar. Some were government sponsored, some were spontaneous and some combined government and public initiative. The defeat of the Turks at the battle of Lepanto during Elizabeth’s reign was celebrated with bells and bonfires ordered by the Privy Council. Similar festivities took place when the Babington plotters were apprehended and when Mary Queen of Scots was executed. The defeat of the Armada in 1588 was celebrated wildly. A national day of thanksgiving was proclaimed and sermons preached giving thanks for England’s providential rescue. Shortly after the English victory, a procession that included Elizabeth, the Privy Council, the nobility and officials commemorated the occasion. Although the Armada’s defeat did not become a national holiday, it was frequently cited as a “deliverance.” James’s reign was marked by bell ringing and fireworks at the birth of the royal children and the investiture of Henry as Prince of Wales. There was a huge public response and mourning for the death of Prince Henry. The marriage of the king’s daughter Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine was celebrated by London crowds. The occasion, which emphasized Protestant solidarity, was marked with fireworks and a court masque. Anti-Spanish and anti–Roman Catholic sentiment exploded in the joyous public response to the failure of Prince Charles’s Spanish match in 1623. There was a chorus of bell ringing in London, and all its citizens “irrespective of rank” were, according to the Venetian ambassador, “filled with boundlesse joy,” immediately lighting “large and numerous bonfires.” Shops closed, and wine was dispensed in the streets. Again the next night “All London rang with bells and flared with bonfires, and resounded all over with such shouts as it is not well possible to express.”80 One contemporary estimated some 335 bonfires. “Such a concourse of people collected at Buckingham’s house” that “his coach could hardly pass through the street and seemed to be carried on men’s shoulders.” Laud’s diary noted that the collapse of the marriage engendered “the greatest expression of joy by all sorts of people that ever I saw.”81 Several chapels were dedicated to commemorate the failure of the match. Although this celebration did not become an annual holiday, the bells at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, rang on the anniversary until the civil war.82 The English closely followed the fortunes of the Protestant armies on the Continent, celebrating the victories of Gustavus Adolphus and mourning his death.

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King Charles I’s acceptance of the Petition of Right in 1628 was thought by some to have occasioned as much celebration as Charles’s return from Spain. There were also festivities following the release of Burton, Bastwick and Prynne from prison. The freed men, who had been harshly punished for libeling prelacy, were followed and cheered by huge crowds in London. Royal assent to the triennial bill was celebrated with bonfires, as was the day “that the bishops were put down.” Parliamentary victories were marked with bell ringing and bonfires, as was the 1654 victory over the Dutch. The Restoration was celebrated with church bells ringing everywhere, maypoles and a good deal of drinking and feasting at public expense. The downfall of the Rump Parliament was marked by ceremonial roasting of rumps. In 1660 Pepys reported, “Boys do now cry ‘Kiss my Parliament’” instead of “Kiss my arse.”83 Rump burning and bonfires with effigies of Cromwell and other rebels were staged simultaneously with the celebrations of those rejoicing at the return of the Stuarts. The Covenant and pictures of Cromwell were thrown into the fires, and Cromwell’s monument in Westminster Abbey was destroyed. The bodies of Cromwell, Bradshaw and Henry Ireton were disinterred, hanged and their remains left hanging for public viewing. Several years later there were celebrations of England’s 1666 victories over the Dutch. Less pleasing to the king were the bonfires of 1681 celebrating the grand jury’s ignoramus verdict in the case of the Earl of Shaftesbury. James II’s reign saw celebrations commemorating the defeat of Monmouth’s rebellion. Orders for thanksgiving were proclaimed thanking God for “absolute and signal Victories” over the rebels. Not only were there desecrations of the effigies of rebel leaders, but the hanged bodies of many participants were displayed. When the Prince of Wales was born, the Crown orchestrated thanksgivings and special church services, ordered bonfires and gunfire. Waterworks and fireworks over the Thames reportedly were watched by more than 100,000 people. Later in the reign, the acquittal of the Seven Bishops, which occurred shortly before James fled the country, was an occasion of spontaneous public rejoicing.

Local Government Politics can be learned in all kinds of ways. Particularly in an age of less than universal literacy, seeing, hearing and participating in spectacles and parades and signing petitions can both create political thinking and make



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concrete the political sentiments of even the otherwise politically inarticulate. Early modern England was replete with such manifestations of political culture. Earlier we noted the role of jury service in educating both those who served and those who observed jury trials. Jury service, however, was not the only venue for participation in local affairs. A great many persons of middling status were integrated into the political world when they participated in the myriad self-governing organizations that existed all across England. Those who served in corporate bodies, such as town governments, guilds, parish vestries, business and colonial ventures, as well as schools and colleges, experienced elections and self-government, following an established set of rules and requiring a degree of civility. Such participation in corporate life socialized men to a kind of political life on a small scale. We are familiar with the transformation of several American colonial business ventures into forms of self-government. Like most other forms of political expression, however, these modes of self-government were not completely autonomous. Typically the organizations owed their existence to a royal charter. If, and when, such entities came into conflict with the goals of centralized authority, they might be dissolved or reconstituted.84

Paintings and Prints Monarchs attempted to shape their image in paintings as well as in ceremonial events. Royal portraits, which in the early portion of the era were typically accompanied by emblems of monarchical rule, became more informal over time. By the Elizabethan age portraits of monarchs and their families had become common among European courts. Rulers often exchanged portraits, and ambassadors presented pictures of their sovereigns to those they attended. Miniatures, popular from the time of Henry VIII, were frequently exchanged between monarch and courtiers. During the Elizabethan era the government was anxious to project and shape a positive royal image. The queen became personally involved in preventing “errors and deformities,” ordering some of her depictions destroyed and attempting to prevent the destruction of others. In 1596 unofficial images of the queen were collected and destroyed. Portraits of the queen, like literary depictions of her, invoked the goddess Diana or the Virgin Queen.85 Especially when they included representation of monarchs or the symbols of royalty, all sorts of images were subject to government supervision. It

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was forbidden to deface or destroy images of any English king or prince, past or present. Making figures of Elizabeth for nativities, prophesying or conjuration was a serious offense. Defacing the royal arms and destroying symbols of the Crown were interpreted as an attack on monarchy itself. Although there were fewer royal portraits painted during the reign of James I, his conception of divine right kingship was displayed in Rubens’s apotheosis of the king painted on the ceiling of the new banqueting house. The Caroline era was rich in royal imagery. Charles I had a highly developed taste in the arts and commissioned a substantial number of paintings, including the famous Van Dyck painting of the king on horseback. It has been estimated that there were some forty portraits of Charles I and thirty of Henrietta Maria.86 There were paintings of Cromwell and leading parliamentary generals, among them a picture of Cromwell’s victory after the Battle of Nasby. Cromwell preferred to appear in his portraits in plain dress without the symbols of office, authority or power. During the Restoration royal portraits became less emblematic or decorated with the symbols of royalty than those of the Elizabeth age. A portrait of James II “with John Calvin under his feet” was presented to the papacy.87 Obviously portraits commissioned by monarchs conveyed how they wished to be viewed, but these representations were seen by few outside court circles. Although paintings were not readily available for public viewing, there was a lively trade in prints. Prints were technically subject to censorship but few appear to have been registered. There were expensive, high-quality engravings sold to affluent buyers as well as inexpensive woodcuts that could be purchased in the streets or from country peddlers. Royal portraits were popular, especially those of Queen Elizabeth, as were depictions of the Armada defeat. One broadside portraying deliverance from Spain led to objections from the Spanish ambassador. Engravings of rulers and other important personages could be found in the frontispieces of a variety of books. The image of Elizabeth appeared on the frontispiece of an edition of the Bishop’s Bible. A woodcut depicting Elizabeth as the Emperor Constantine carrying the sword of justice with the defeated pope under her feet appeared in the 1563 edition of Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, a work to be found in most parish churches.88 Other images of Elizabeth were to be found in prayer books. A collection of royal portraits appeared in 1618.89 Gunpowder Plot prints were popular, one showing the pope in council flanked by cardinal and devil. There were prints of James I in the Parliament of 1604. Another, calling for Parliament



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in 1621, led the puzzled French ambassador to remark that cartoons and other media exhibited hatred of the king. A double portrait of the king and queen and woodcuts of the Elector Palatine and his wife appeared. More partisan images, such as that of the monopolist Giles Mompesson, began to appear during the 1620s. Sir Edward Coke’s Reports mentions prints hostile to monopolists and the Spanish match. There were prints of the Duke of Buckingham, prints of the king sitting in state in the House of Lords and of Charles I on horseback.90 A sharp increase in the number of prints, especially hostile satirical prints, occurred in 1640. A substantial number depicted High Commission and prelates. In one, a ship labeled High Commission containing Archbishop Laud and Bishop Wren sails toward the mouth of Hell; in another, Laud dreams of a cardinal’s hat. One satirical print depicts Laud vomiting the new canons; another eating the ears of his enemies, no doubt a comment on the mutilation of Burton, Bastwick and Prynne. Laud complained of “base pictures” showing him in a cage, fastened to a post by a chain.91 In another print Judge Berkeley, recently impeached for his role in ship money cases, is shown with Laud and the monopolists. There were woodcuts of Strafford, portrayed as the enemy of justice and the laws. In one he is depicted being welcomed to Hell by Attorney General Noy. Prints of hated bishops and royal ministers provided an effective channel for the presentation of hostile commentary on the royal government. Visual caricatures of other religious and political partisans soon followed, some directed against ranting Puritan preachers, others against popish cavaliers. Stereotypes of Roundheads and Cavaliers became common, as did unflattering images of Presbyterians, Independents and sectaries.92 Similar views were expressed in the hostile prose “characters” appearing during the same years. Royalist prints became less available as the king and his supporters lost access to printing presses, while those supporting the Parliament became more common. Whoever controlled London and its environs, controlled most of the country’s presses. A typical print favoring Parliament portrayed the Royalist commander Prince Rupert as a ravening wolf. Others depicted Royalist atrocities. The execution of the king was portrayed in several visual formats, the best known and the mostly widely copied being the plate in Eikon Basilike, which showed Charles wearing the crown of martyrdom. Visual material, both positive and negative, had become a widely utilized form for the communication of partisan views. Kevin Sharpe, however, has suggested that the Commonwealth government’s failure to commission woodcuts and engravings was damaging to

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the short-lived regime because it failed to provide positive visual representations of the new government.93 During the Restoration there were pictorial invectives directed against the Rump, the regicides and Oliver Cromwell. Mass-produced printed portraits of Charles II adorned with royal symbols were displayed in homes and shops.94 The political broadside, combining textual and pictorial material, also became a common means of political commentary during the Restoration. Anti-Dutch sentiment, for example, was expressed in a broadside characterizing the Dutch as “descended from a Horse T . . . D” and showing the Dutch enclosed in a Butterbox along with Admiral Van Tromp and Pensionary De Witt. During the second Dutch war the frontispiece to an anti-Dutch propaganda piece showed English subjects being tortured by the Dutch at Amboyna. Antipapal sentiment at the time of the Popish Plot and Exclusion was expressed visually as well as in pamphlets, sermons, and ballads. There were pictorial representations of Whig pope burning processions. The Duke of York was depicted as a half-Jesuit, half-papist devil attempting to burn London. News media reported the mutilation of the Duke’s portrait and advertised a reward for the culprit’s discovery. Whig and Tory broadsides, often illustrated, were part and parcel of party polemics. Engravings of Sir Edmundberry Godfrey portrayed him as “the Kingdom’s martyr” in 1679. Roger L’Estrange, the Tory propagandist, was repeatedly portrayed as the dog “Towser” in prints and ballads. Stephen Colledge was executed for the Raree Show, a print depicting the king as an arbitrary half-Protestant, halfpapist monarch. A Tory print of 1683 portrayed the Commonwealth as a dragon excreting monthly assessments, the excise and other monetary exactions and about to devour the laws, episcopacy, the monarchy and Magna Carta.95 From 1640 to 1688, prints were an important channel for the distribution of highly partisan, highly charged political messages.

Sculpture and Architecture Sculpture was not a highly developed art in England and was, like painting, to be found largely in court or wealthy private settings. Just as with paintings, then, it tells us more about the way the monarchs who commissioned them wished to be portrayed than their impact on the public. Though there were relatively few sculptures commissioned, images from imperial Rome were sometimes used to depict English monarchs. Charles



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I commissioned several busts of himself by Hubert Le Sueur and Bernini. Laud commissioned a statue of the king and queen for display at St. Johns College. Such visible images of the Crown were fraught with political meaning. The king’s statue at the Old Exchange was beheaded and removed during the Commonwealth, others removed from St. Paul’s, Covent Garden and Greenwich, and still another demolished and replaced with the statement “Exit tyrannus Regum ultimas.” The royal arms were removed from all public places, London churches and Commonwealth ships.96 Such symbolic gestures were reversed when the monarchy was restored in 1660. Although English aristocrats often commissioned funeral monuments as tributes to themselves and their families, neither Elizabeth nor the Stuarts commissioned grand tombs. There would be no monuments erected to honor James I or Charles I, although the Anglican-loyalists who dominated the House of Commons in 1678 voted a tax for one of Charles I and commissioned Christopher Wren to execute it. Plans for the monument featured Charles as Martyr.97 A monument to commemorate the Great Fire of London was erected by the City government between 1671 and 1677. The fire was attributed to the “horrid plot to extirpate the Protestant Religion and English Liberties” to “the treachery and malice of the popish faction.” Tory Roger L’Estrange rejected this view of the fire and associated the inscription with the “boldest of the Common-Street pamphlets.” The inscription was defaced in 1684 and plastered over at James II’s accession. Well aware of the political potential of such public monuments, L’Estrange suggested the erection of another monument with an inscription denouncing the Rye House Plot.98 Nor were English monarchs devoted to large-scale building projects that would provide visual proof of their power. English kings did little building, especially when compared with the lavish projects of French monarchs or even the opulent homes built by English aristocrats. Several royal palaces were improved during James I’s reign to provide for the queen and the Prince of Wales, and a new queen’s house was built. Whitehall Palace was substantially refurbished, and there were plans for a new Star Chamber building in 1617. When the banqueting house burned in 1619, it was rebuilt in magnificent fashion by Inigo Jones in Roman basilica style. It contained an apse in which the king could sit in godlike majesty. Charles I considered rebuilding parts of Somerset house, but nothing came of the project. There were drawings for an unrealized gate at Temple Bar, the boundary between London and Westminster, in the form of a great triumphal arch of the type honoring Roman emperors. It was to be topped with an equestrian figure

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of Charles similar to that of Marcus Aurelius. Under Cromwell, Whitehall was somewhat refurbished, and became the center of the Protectorate court. Like his royal predecessor, Cromwell used the magnificent Banqueting House to meet foreign ambassadors. Charles II had plans for a new palace at Greenwich, which later became the Royal Hospital, as well as plans for a grandiose palace at Winchester remote from the hustle and bustle of the London crowds that he disliked.99 The relative poverty of English rulers meant that aristocratic building outdistanced that of the Crown. The great prodigy houses of the Elizabethan and Jacobean aristocracy and elite government officials suggest both the desire and the financial ability of the wealthiest Englishmen to proclaim their importance.100

Coins, Seals and Medals Coins, the most common visual reminder of monarchical government, typically had a portrait of the monarch on one side and a monarchical symbol on the reverse. James I issued a new coin showing him as monarch of both England and Scotland, while several issued by Charles I were designed to heighten Roman imperial associations. During the Protectorate Cromwell sometimes appeared on medals and coins as a Roman emperor with laurel wreath or on horseback.101 The Great Seal provided another visual symbol of governmental power and authority. In 1642 the seal, traditionally needed to validate royal orders, was destroyed and a new one struck in which the figure of the monarch was replaced by a depiction of Parliament on one side and the arms of England and Ireland on the other. The Commonwealth seal showed the House of Commons on one side and a map of England on reverse. In 1688 King James II threw the Great Seal into the Thames as he fled the country. Medals were cast both to honor English monarchs and to mark victorious battles, though Continental countries were far more active in casting medals. English medals typically bore the face of the king on one side and an image of a particular event or concept on the other. Medals issued at coronation time were frequently distributed as gifts. Ar the time of his accession James I issued a medal depicting him as “Emperor of the Whole Island of Britain,” an announcement of his ill-fated plan for a union of England and Scotland. He also commissioned medals to celebrate the 1604 peace with Spain. Charles I, both a collector and issuer of medals, commissioned a medal to honor his marriage to Henrietta Maria, and another



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showing the king on one side and English domination of the sea on the reverse. During the civil war he issued a medal showing crossed swords and an olive branch. The king’s execution was marked by numerous medals in the Netherlands and Germany, as well as in England, one of which was inscribed with the words “Divius” and “Pius.” Both Commonwealth and Protectorate governments issued medals. In 1650 a medal commemorating Cromwell’s victory at Dunbar featured Cromwell on one side, Parliament on the reverse. Another marked his installation as lord protector. Several more memorialized the Dutch war.102 Medals were also produced to honor nonroyal and nongovernmental individuals and events. A medal of John Lilburne was struck in 1649. One of the most famous was struck by jubilant Whigs when their leader, Lord Shaftesbury, was released from the Tower. It prompted considerable comment, including John Dryden’s Tory satirical poem “The Medal,” which provided another indication of the interaction between different forms of political expression. Another Whig medal honored Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, “murthered by the Papists”; still another commemorated the acquittal of the Seven Bishops in 1688. John Evelyn complained that the English issued far too few medals or “vocal monuments” that would, he felt, last far longer than paper recorded history. Reflecting a change in English cultural values, Evelyn felt that national pride would be enhanced if medals honored those who “found out New Worlds,” planted colonies and “enlarg’d the British Empire” and those who improved the liberal arts and mechanics.103 Evelyn’s plea suggests that national pride could no longer be satisfied by rulers and successful military exploits alone.

Clothing, Flags, Ribbons and Playing Cards Clothing provided still another way of communicating social and political identity. The elaborate and costly clothing of the courtier was often contrasted with the plainer dress of the yeoman and country gentleman. The Puritan was stereotyped by his enemies as glum, attired in dark, plain clothing, the Cavalier as ostentatiously dressed and languorously posed. During the civil war Roundhead and Cavalier stereotypes were employed in visual as well as written forms, one reinforcing the other. Flags and colored ribbons were employed for political self-identification. Although the military had long employed flags and pennants to iden-

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tify regiments, such identifications became even more important when they distinguished between Royalist and parliamentarian regiments fighting on English soil.104 The wearing of colored ribbons to exhibit political affiliation became common during the Restoration. Green was associated with the Whigs, blue with the Duke of Monmouth and red with the Tories and the Duke of York. In Durham citizens wore red ribbons to celebrate the king’s birthday. When Monmouth toured the Northwest hoping to bolster his political reputation, baskets of blue ribbons were distributed to his supporters. The Whig Green Ribbon Club organized petitions and pope burning processions. In 1682, when Shaftesbury’s effigy was burned by Tories, green ribbons accompanied it in the flames. Both Whigs and Tories sometimes decorated their hats, the former with the Whig slogan “No Popery, No slavery” woven into the ribbons. There are references to wearing of green and scarlet ribbons in Aphra Behn, Prologue to Romulus.105 Political sentiments were also communicated in playing cards. Clad in royal robes and regalia, Elizabeth was the first English ruler to be depicted on playing cards. Political affiliation was frequently represented during the Restoration. Anti-Rump figures were one trend. Some years later a Tory deck of cards depicted the regicide Bagshawe and other members of “Oliver’s Slaughter House,” while a Whig deck displayed a series of popish dangers from the Armada and Gunpowder Plot to the Popish Plot. Tory cards deployed images of the Rye House plotters, Monmouth’s execution and the hanged bodies of his associates.106 Even drinking preferences had political overtones. Parliamentarians associated excessive wine drinking with cavaliers and mocked their toasting the king, while Cromwell’s alleged family background of brewers was ridiculed by his opponents. From about 1680 claret became the drink of prosperous Tories, port the drink of their Whig counterparts.107 Toasts in favor of the Duke of Monmouth, thought of by many as seditious, were made publicly in alehouses.108 The places where individuals ate and drank too might have social and political implications. Alehouses, regulated by the government, were places where lower-class persons congregated; taverns where the more elite gathered to discuss news and other matters. The more sober coffee houses were considered to be places for the gathering of the news-hungry and for Whig plotting.



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Conclusion The venues, practices and objects discussed in this chapter indicate that there were a variety of activities of political import that might be observed or experienced and suggest that while some of these were limited to the small publics such as the court, others were purveyed very broadly. A variety of media were employed by monarchs to communicate their venerated status and their central role in the political structure of the nation. Some English monarchs utilized royal entries, coronations and other opportunities for public display more effectively than others. Elizabeth was most adept in this area. It is also clear that the same media could be adopted by both monarchs and critics to promote the values and goals of particular groups and to underline their importance to the nation. Representations of Queen Elizabeth were politically valuable both during her lifetime and for later generations in highlighting England as a Protestant nation. She could be contrasted with less admired English monarchs and the anniversary of her accession appropriated during the pope burning processions of 1679–80. Petitioning and pope burning processions brought large numbers of the politically aware into the streets, some to participate, others to observe. Visual media, like the nonvisual, displayed the continuing impact of anti-Catholicism. Anti-Catholic feeling was expressed in public response to plots against Elizabeth and the Jacobean Gunpowder Plot. Street demonstrations also were used to brand Laudian innovations as papist and to raise fears about Catholicism in the Caroline court. November was a month in which anti-Catholic sentiment was particularly pronounced. Antipapal themes dominated the celebrations of November 5 and November 17. Popular anti-Catholic sentiment emerged whenever the English felt threatened by foreign or domestic Catholicism. Our discussion of various media has highlighted the role of petitioning especially during the 1640s and again as the intensity of Whig vs. Tory sentiment increased during the latter part of Charles II’s reign. It has also underlined the importance of London as a site of events freighted with political meaning. London and its environs were the sites of coronations, royal entries, lord mayor’s shows, pope burning processions and large crowds accompanying petitioners, as well as the locale of bell ringing and an enormous number of bonfires. While other locales often celebrated the same events, it was London crowds that most often witnessed and engaged in boisterous celebration. The London presses also produced most of the

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prints and engravings of the period, and Londoners purchased an enormous number of prints. Prints and engravings aimed at large audiences, while paintings and sculpture were viewed by much smaller ones. Coins were a more or less mass medium, medals much less so. People identified themselves and others by visual stereotypes and colored ribbons. Visual media and practices that might be experienced and observed were a significant means of disseminating and confirming political values, programs and allegiances. They are part of the ways in which the English learned about and experienced political life.

chapter nine

Law, Politics and the Legal System

The requirements that trials be public and by jury are typically, and quite rightly, presented as safeguards of individual liberty. They are, however, also something else. They entail dramatic presentations of the power of the state and of the limitations on the exercise of that power. This theme of sovereignty, but sovereignty limited by law, has been central to all the genres we are examining. A crucial question of sovereignty, royal succession, was publicly debated in many media in terms of what we would call constitutional law. The English learned about law as a crucial dimension of politics, not only directly through attendance at the drama of public trials and executions but also through printed and oral accounts of trials and parliamentary lawmaking. Some of them actually became participants in the trial drama through service on juries and grand juries. This chapter surveys the genres of the law. Legal culture and political culture are not really separable in early modern England. The language of politics was often expressed in terms of law or the rights of Englishmen protected by the common law of England, and many political conflicts arose over differing views of who legitimately possessed certain legal authority. Every genre of the period conveyed information and argument about law and legalized language about politics. An appreciation of English political culture must, therefore, take account of the many forms of law, the mixture of administrative and legal institutions, different understandings of the royal prerogative and the tensions between the common law and other legal practices. Though the English were convinced that they had the best and fairest legal system in the world, the legal institutions that constituted this highly idealized legal

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regime engendered differences that frequently erupted into the political arena. This chapter outlines the then current conceptions of law and their impact on political thought. It describes the most important legal institutions and the political discourses they engendered. The chapter also deals briefly with elections to the law-making body, Parliament, and discusses a group of highly politicized and highly publicized trials that involved perceived threats to the Crown, Parliament or the common law. The English were reasonably comfortable living under a variety of laws. These included divine law, natural law, the common law, equity, ecclesiastical law, statute law and custom. Reference to any or all of these could be found in genres ranging from the sermon to the political pamphlet, from the professional writing of lawyers and judges to that of poets and dramatists, and from royal pronouncements to parliamentary speeches. All forms of law had claims to legitimacy, though the relationships among them were often unclear. Some, for example, argued that the law contained in Scripture had priority over human law. For others the common law had the highest status, still others that the common law and Christianity were not divergent. Some believed that natural law provided universal principles of reason and justice, others that English common law was a necessary and sufficient embodiment of the natural law. Various kinds of law and legal institutions sometimes were sufficiently in conflict to engender political debate. For some there was a perceived conflict between commands contained in Scripture—that is, the law of God—and the laws of England. English law prescribed the death penalty for theft; Scripture did not. Scripture required two witnesses for conviction; English law did not. The common law courts sometimes clashed with the ecclesiastical courts, with Chancery and with the prerogative courts. Disagreements over principles were often translated into debates over particular legal institutions and their legal claims.

Dynastic Monarchy and the Law Although monarchy was recognized as the predominant governmental institution, there were competing traditions dealing with the monarch’s relationship to the law. Whether, and the extent to which, the monarchy was limited by law was a question that pervaded political and constitutional debate throughout the early modern period. Law-making authority was



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variously claimed to belong to the king in Parliament, the king alone, or for a brief period, to the Parliament alone. Many common lawyers claimed that only they sufficiently understood and, therefore, should be the dominant interpreters of the law of England. The nature and limits of the royal prerogative and the relationship between the prerogative courts and common law courts would embroil the English in controversy so strongly contested that the prerogative courts would be abolished in the middle of the seventeenth century. Constitutionally England was a dynastic monarchy, that is, one based on rules of hereditary descent that roughly followed the legal rules for the descent of property. Unlike strict primogeniture rules, however, these rules allowed female succession, despite societal discomfort when women ascended the throne. The discomfort was part of the misogyny characteristic of the early modern period, which held that women should be subject to their fathers and husbands. The dynastic aspects of monarchy created two related legally and politically significant issues. One involved the legitimate succession to the throne, the other royal marriages. The lack of an obvious or suitable heir to the throne or uncertainty as to the legitimate successor periodically brought with it the danger of political instability or even the prospect of armed conflict. Royal marriages involved succession issues, treaty obligations and the inflammatory issue of the religion of the royal spouse, who, if Roman Catholic, increased the possibility of a future Catholic succession. The succession was highly politicized during the reigns of Elizabeth and Charles II. Elizabeth reached the throne as a result of legislation, legislation that to some implied that Parliament might have a role in determining the succession. Elizabeth’s refusal to name a successor, and the fear that the Roman Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, might succeed, agitated Parliament and the public. Elizabeth insisted that Parliament had no legal authority to discuss the succession. Many in Parliament disagreed and pressured the queen to declare her successor. Elizabeth’s marriage negotiations were equally contentious, raising both the religious issue and possible subordination to the interests of a foreign spouse. The desire of Parliament to participate in discussions of her marriage proved contentious, since the queen forbade such discussion, insisting that such matters also lay entirely within the royal prerogative. Since both James I and Charles I provided legitimate male heirs, succession was not a relevant legal issue during their reigns. However, when James I became simultaneously King of England and King of Scotland, the

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king became the ruler of two kingdoms with separate and distinctive legal systems. The king’s plan for a union of England and Scotland led to fierce debate and foundered over English fears for the common law and national identity. Succession and royal marriages moved in and out of the legal arena. The marriage of James’s daughter to the Protestant Elector Palatine engendered controversy over the extent to which England should become militarily engaged in aiding the Elector. Prince Charles’s proposed Spanish match was extremely contentious. Popular elation over its failure suggests the political potency of the issue of royal marriages and the foreign alliances and entanglements they brought with them. Prince Charles’s later marriage to a French Catholic princess also had important political repercussions. Yet none of these episodes were seen specifically as raising legal issues. The execution of Charles I provoked arguments over the law of succession. For Royalists, Charles II became king immediately upon the death of his predecessor. Those responsible for the king’s trial argued otherwise. The issue of the succession emerged again during the Protectorate. Although Cromwell was succeeded by his son Richard, the absence of a competent successor pleasing to the army contributed to the Restoration. The law of succession became highly politicized again during the reign of Charles II over the issue of whether an heir to the throne might be excluded by an act of Parliament. Hereditary succession became the Tory mantra. When Whigs explored the possibility of replacing the Duke of York, some pointed to the precedent of Henrician statutes regulating the succession, others to medieval deviations from the strictly hereditary line of succession. Still others canvassed the claims of the illegitimate Duke of Monmouth. James II succeeded to the Crown peacefully, but succession issues arose in 1688. His flight fueled controversy over the accession of William and Mary and the competing claims of the Jacobites.1

The Prerogative and the Law Also politically relevant were the legal nature of the English monarchy and its powers. Although feudalism had long passed, the notion of reciprocal rights and obligations that were part of the feudal legal tradition remained part of the English political tradition. Wardship and other remnants of the feudal tradition created political tensions between landholders subject to them and the Crown. The Court of Wards was abolished at the time of the revolution and feudal tenure shortly after the Restoration.



Law, Politics and the Legal System

At least from the time of Sir John Fortescue’s late-fifteenth-century In Praise of the Law of England, the English distinguished between two types of monarchy and argued about which England had or should have. The issue turned on the monarch’s relation to the law. Could the monarch, as in France, make law, or was he/she bound by the law? Did kings receive their authority directly from God, unlimited by human law, or did their authority come directly or indirectly from the people? The latter view tended to be associated with the view that the king was limited by law; law made by king and Parliament and/or the common law. In Fortescue’s view, kingship unbound by human law was associated with France and with the Roman law maxim that the command of the emperor had the force of law. For some the Fortescue classification implied a contrast between tyrant and king; for others it merely suggested different types of kingship.2 The issue became highly politicized during the reign of James I, who, in books and speeches, articulated the divine origin of kingship and kingship unbound by law. James recognized that kings were well advised to frame their actions according to law, but also asserted that he was “not bound thereto but of his good will.”3 The publication of John Cowell’s The Interpreter in 1607, which asserted that the king “is above the Law by his absolute Power,” led to Parliament initiating legal proceedings against Cowell. His book, Parliament asserted, contained “Matter of Scandal and offence” toward Parliament and was “of dangerous Consequence and Example.”4 If Cowell’s view were accepted, it was argued, the king could make law without Parliament. The king, who did not wish the matter debated, issued a proclamation suppressing the book, though the views it expressed were almost identical to his own. The nature and extent of the king’s prerogative and its relationship to law was an endemic issue. While all would admit that there were legitimate prerogatives belonging to the Crown alone, their nature and extent was contested. We have already noticed that Elizabeth claimed that royal marriage and the succession were matters that could not be discussed in Parliament because they were prerogatives of the Crown. There were contentious arguments involving the royal prerogative to grant patents and monopolies. Elizabeth withdrew some monopolies but did not recognize any diminution of her right to grant them. Their legal status therefore continued to be contested. Although there was agreement that taxation required the approval of Parliament, there were other imposts, such as customs duties, that might or might not be considered taxes. The issue was particularly contentious during the reign of James I, when Bates’s Case (1606) brought matters to a

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head, and during Charles I’s reign when the Crown extended ship money, a payment initially required only of coastal communities, to the whole country. For many, both in and out of Parliament, ship money was an illegal nonparliamentary tax; for the Crown, a necessary discretionary charge allowing the king to perform his duty of protecting the country. Arguments from “necessity,” “the public good” and “reason of state,” which became prominent during the dispute, continued to be debated in several venues and genres. The prerogative that allowed the king to override the law in cases of emergency did not mesh easily with the view that the law was supreme. There was no clear line distinguishing the law and the prerogative. The king and many others insisted that the prerogative was an independent part of the law. For many lawyers the royal prerogative consisted of the rights the king had at law, suggesting that the prerogative was part of the common law. John Selden thought that the prerogative was what the law allowed the king to do. It did not consist of the king’s will.5 The king could only command lawful things and, therefore, could not invade or infringe property rights. Others saw the matter somewhat differently. Robert Cecil spoke of the inseparable “marriage between law and prerogative.” To separate them would ruin both. Charles I told Parliament in 1628 that “the people’s liberties strengthen the King’s prerogative, and the King’s prerogative is to defend the people’s liberties.”6 For John Pym, “The Law is the Boundarie, the Measure betwixt the Kings prerogative and the People’s Liberty: Whilst these move in their owne Orbe, they are a support and security to one another.” “If the Prerogative of the King overwhelm the liberty of the people, it will be turned into Tyranny; if liberty undermine the Prerogative, it will grow into Anarchy.”7 The issue of the nature and extent of the royal prerogative emerged in somewhat different form during the Restoration. Charles II issued a Declaration of Indulgence that vitiated parliamentary legislation concerning Roman Catholic and Protestant Dissenters. The king was forced to withdraw his declaration, and the angry Parliament passed the Test Act. The issue arose again when James II issued another Declaration of Indulgence that undercut the punitive laws directed at Roman Catholics and dissenters. Many worried that if the Crown could dispense with or suspend provisions of law there could be no rule of law. The king’s prerogative to call, prorogue and dissolve Parliaments also became a politically freighted issue of constitutional law. Jacobean and Caroline parliaments became frustrated when they were dismissed before



Law, Politics and the Legal System

grievances could be adequately addressed or legislation completed. Thus there were efforts to ensure that Parliament would meet at stated intervals. Many in England worried that England’s representative body would disappear. Other contentious prerogative issues related to the appointment and dismissal of royal ministers and judges and imprisonment without a cause being shown.

The King’s Government and the King’s Courts The royal government consisted of an agglomeration of institutions, many of which combined administrative and judicial functions. The Privy Council, made up of the king’s trusted advisors, sometimes performed judicial functions, either in council or in Star Chamber. The combination of administrative and judicial functions was also characteristic of the Council of the North and the Council of Wales, both abolished at the time of the revolution. Star Chamber remained a popular court until the eve of its demise but rapidly lost popularity after meting out harsh physical punishments for seditious libel. The prerogative courts were not revived in 1660.

The Common Law Courts and the Common Law The common law courts and the law that they adjudicated and interpreted were the oldest and most venerable of England’s legal institutions. The common law, most of which dealt with the law of property, was viewed as the protector of the “rights of Englishmen” and, therefore, central to English political ideology. The language of inheritance and birthright was associated with the common law, English liberties and the Magna Carta in which the Crown had promised that “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or the law of the land.”8 The language of both law and politics was suffused with the language of property—property in one’s life, liberty and estate. It would have been difficult for the English to distinguish the protections of the common law from those of the polity more generally.

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Given the overlap and intertwining of the legal and the political, it should not be surprising to find that lawyers played a prominent role in articulating political values in Parliament and elsewhere. The English associated the common laws great competitor, civil or Roman law, with torture and an absence of juries. Then as now it was difficult to say precisely what the common law was. It was not a written code, and no one could point to specific documents to determine what was and was not the common law. We have already noted the uneasy relationship between common law and royal prerogative. Judicial precedent was believed to illustrate the law but was not the law itself. Principles of the common law emerged out of adjudicated cases. Among these principles were those that declared that the law was supreme and that the common law procedures provided “due process” of law. Judges determined the law, juries decided on the facts. The common law courts seated at Westminster combined centralizing features to ensure uniformity of law with determination of cases by local juries. The debate over whether the common law should be seen as having its origin in pre–Norman Saxon law or in the Norman Conquest was fraught with political and legal significance. For some the common law referred to the laws of Edward the Confessor, who had selected the best laws and “made them one body certain.”9 For others the common law followed from the Conquest. Still others viewed the common law as a mixture of pre- and post-Conquest law. The first view emphasized custom, continuity and a contributory role for the king. The second, which made the Norman kings the author of the common law, enhanced the role of the Crown in the creation of law. For many lawyers, custom was the supreme form of law. “The Common Law of England is nothing else but the Common Custome of the Realm.” Practice became custom and “obtaineth the force of a law.” Because not enacted by king or even the king in Parliament, custom was the best suited law for the English people. It was above any human claimant to sovereign authority.10 This view left the relationship between statute and common law somewhat murky. Although most common lawyers probably held that statutes controlled the common law, some felt that in some sense the common law was superior.11 From time to time there were rather open jurisdictional conflicts between the common law and the prerogative courts, Chancery and the ecclesiastical courts. As a judge, Sir Edward Coke was active in issuing “prohibitions” designed to prevent litigants from transferring cases from the common law to other courts. Sitting in Westminster Hall, the common law courts were held in an



Law, Politics and the Legal System

unforbidding, fairly public environment, open to law students, the stalls filled with scriveners and tradesmen, a place where members of Parliament and others met to conduct business and gossip. Young men learned the law by hearing lectures and arguing mock cases in the Inns of Court and by listening to the proceedings in Westminster Hall.12 Increasingly there were printed reports and other printed legal material to guide them. Coke’s Reports and then his Institutes, which became available in print after 1642–44 with parliamentary support, quickly assumed a special status. When King James asserted the right to render judgments in his courts because kings were “Judges over all their subjects, and in all causes,” Coke replied that the royal power of justice was exclusively in the judges, who were the exclusive conduits of the common law. “Reason is the life of the Law, nay the Common Law it self is nothing else but reason, which is to be understood of an artificiall perfection of reason gotten by long studie, observation and experience and not every mans naturall reason.” Through many ages the common law “hath beene fined and refined by an infinite number of learned men, and by long experience grown to such a perfection for the government of this Realme.”13 The practice and lore of the common law came to the attention of the broader public through many channels. Intercourt conflicts and those between courts and the Crown were widely noted. The service of many on juries, the open proceedings at Westminster and the assizes and the widely shared duty among the gentry of service as justices of the peace brought direct exposure to the law and instruction about it. Gentlemen, especially those who wished to participate in local government, were expected to have a passing knowledge of the law. This at least rudimentary knowledge of the common law provided a framework for thinking about political and constitutional issues. Common law notions of property, contract and liberties were part of both the political and legal cultures. Although both king and Parliament claimed to be protectors of the common law during the civil war, several judges refused to serve what they considered to be Parliament’s illegitimate authority. Could the king’s courts function without a king? The issue of the relationship among judges, the law and the sovereign reemerged in Hobbes’s Leviathan (1654), which insisted that law was the command of the sovereign and judges were no more than subordinate officers carrying out the sovereign’s commands. Sir Mathew Hale, the most respected judge of the Interregnum and Restoration era, rejected Hobbes’s view, expressing the belief that knowledgeable judges were the appropriate interpreters of the common law, a law central

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to what made England, England.14 During the Restoration era both Whigs and Tories claimed to be protectors of the law. Adulation and admiration of the common law was central to England’s self-image as a nation.

Parliament Although Parliament was not regularly in session and was not part of the normal functioning of government during much of the early modern era, it too had a special role in political and legal ideology. There was, however, considerable anxiety about the continued existence of Parliament during the reign of the early Stuarts, a period when representative bodies on the Continent were being suppressed. Even when called into being, parliamentary sessions were frequently short or Parliament dismissed before legislation was completed. There were no parliaments between 1629 and 1640. The House of Commons was dominated by the gentry and usually contained a substantial contingent of lawyers who contributed to the legalization of parliamentary discourse. In 1563 about one-fourth of its members were lawyers. The figure rose to about one-third between 1584 and 1614. Over 50 percent and perhaps even 60 percent of the members of Parliament were lawyers in 1640, the highest proportion ever.15 Rhetorically skilled lawyers often framed issues in legal terms and were prominent in drafting legislation. The House of Lords contained titled aristocrats, whose numbers were increased from time to time by new creations, and bishops, who on most nonecclesiastical issues were a reliable source of votes for the Crown. During the Commonwealth, when the House of Lords was eliminated, Parliament and its committees combined executive and legislative functions. Many members of Parliament left voluntarily. The army forcefully removed a substantial number in Pride’s Purge. As its numbers declined, the legitimacy and prestige of Parliament waned, leading many to derogatorily label it “the Rump.” The traditional form of Parliament was reinstated at the Restoration, and the Crown, despite the demands for new elections, found it convenient to keep the Cavalier Parliament in session for many years. Fears about the disappearance of Parliament waned, only to be replaced by worries about Crown influence and patronage and the Crown’s inclination to suspend laws. The nature of early modern parliamentary elections is contested. Writing about the pre–civil war era, Derek Hirst emphasizes candidate and voter awareness of national issues. Mark Kishlansky, examining the same period,



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points to the large number of uncontested elections and argues that elections were based on deference and that candidate choice was largely determined by local elites.16 Another study, however, suggests that the number of contested elections tripled between 1604 and 1624 and then doubled again by 1640.17 The numbers of eligible voters expanded over time as inflation increased the numbers meeting the traditional 40 shilling freehold qualification. Elections to the Short and Long Parliaments were marked by enthusiasm and in some locales by tumultuous, popular participation. This excitement was thought to be a new phenomenon.18 Expansion of the franchise was central to the Leveller’s platform, but even they wished to continue the exclusion of women, servants and the economically dependent. Others wished to contract the number of voters by increasing the property requirement. While there was no agreement on the appropriate property qualification, there was a consensus that some property qualification was essential. The longevity of Charles II’s Cavalier Parliament meant that many mature adult males never had the opportunity to participate in parliamentary elections. When the Parliament was finally dissolved and new elections called, there was vigorous campaigning by those who would shortly be designated Whigs and Tories. Tory Roger North reported that “lying, threatening, flattering, promising . . . [and] violence . . . issued regularly by order of superior to inferiors” in “cabals, clubs and coffee houses . . . to influence elections.”19 The Whigs were initially successful, but their parliamentary successes were short-lived. The Crown exerted considerable effort to ensure compliant parliaments during the reigns of both Charles II and James II. Not only were borough charters altered by quo warranto proceedings but in 1685 “all arts were used to manage the elections” to give the king a compliant Parliament. It was reported that greater “injustice and violence” in all parts of the country were used, “beyond what had been practiced in former times.”20 There was active electioneering by the government in 1685 and 1687. In 1687 royal instructions were designed to ensure that candidates supported the king’s declaration of “liberty of conscience.”21 The Crown might have been ambivalent about Parliament, but the people were not. Although grievances might be expressed in a number of venues and genres, Parliament was seen as the primary locus for removing the grievances of the people. In spite of the limited electorate, elections and disputes about the law-making body, Parliament, and parliamentary elections were a major vehicle of political education in at least some of the years of the early modern period. When Parliament was in session, it was

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the primary forum of the nation, but whether or not it was in session, Parliament was viewed as a fundamental part of England’s legal and political heritage. Kings might view it as troublesome and recalcitrant, but for most Englishmen it was central to political life.

The Justice of the Peace The English system of law and government relied on unpaid justices of the peace to carry out a mix of administrative and judicial functions. Typically members of the gentry who garnered local prestige from their office, justices of the peace were vetted, appointed and dismissed from their commissions by the Crown. They carried out their duties with varying degrees of diligence. Justices exercised a considerable amount of discretion and did not always harry their neighbors as much as the laws required, especially in cases involving Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters. Although there were occasional complaints about lazy and ill-informed justices, they were often sought out to arbitrate local disputes and generally keep the peace. They held petty sessions in which two justices handled minor offenses as well as quarter sessions in which several justices handled somewhat more serious cases. Their charges at quarter sessions provided an opportunity to instruct the local populace about the law and sometimes to instill political doctrines. Justices were occasionally removed. Purges occurred at the inception of the Commonwealth government and after the Restoration.22 Laymen rather than legal professionals, justices of the peace were aided by handbooks that were important sources of legal information and acculturation for the justices and other laymen. For instance, Dalton’s widely read handbook for justices of the peace reported that the common law “received their grounds principally from the Laws of God and Nature (sometimes called the Law of Reason).” “No humane law within the circuit of the World . . . [was] so apt and profitable, for the honourable, peaceable, and prosperous government of this Kingdome, and so necessary for all estates and for all causes . . . as these Lawes be.”23

Grand Juries and Juries Sometimes characterized as local parliaments, grand juries were a central part of England’s legal and political system. Composed of local gentlemen



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and substantial freeholders, grand juries played a central role in the administration of justice, deciding whether those accused of crimes were to be tried. From time to time they also communicated grievances to the central authorities. Grand juries were “our Eyes and Ears, and the Countries Mouth” or “political Chirurgions” who should lance the “public Sores” of the county.24 Assize judges on their arrival charged grand juries. Charges to quarter session delivered by justices of the peace and those delivered at the assizes by circuit judges instructed grand and petit jurors in their duties, outlined the crimes and fineable offenses they were to present and alerted the populace to the dangers the government wished to stress. Charges provided opportunities to inculcate political doctrine to the large numbers who flocked to assize and quarter session as well as serving as a channel of communication from the center to local elites. This platform has rarely been considered as a major venue for political education, though it was an important one for teaching both the literate and illiterate about the law and informing them of pressing political issues of the day. The significance of this legal channel of political communication has been neglected because of the scarcity of its material remains. This venue again reminds us that the absence of print and scribal materials has obscured the continued importance of oral communication. William Lambarde’s sixteenth-century grand jury charges emphasized that wise laws would become “dumb letters and dead elements” if the jurors did not perform their duties.25 Sir Edward Coke’s charge at the Norwich Assizes pointed out the “growing and groaning evils” that “disturb & hurt our Publique Weale.”26 One of the few extant charges from the revolutionary era indicated that while all power and authority was divine in origin, political power had been transmitted to the people, not to the monarch. Monarchies, even those governed by laws, while excellent in theory, in practice damaged the people’s rights and liberties. This charge, which referred to the beneficent laws of Saint Edward, the tyranny of William the Conqueror, and Magna Carta, concluded that as the power of the people increased that of the king must decrease. England, according to the judge, was a “Political Monarchy or Monarchy governed by Lawes” and had never been a pure monarchy, a form he associates with tyranny.27 After the execution of Charles I, another charge urged listeners not to desert the government even if dissatisfied with its current form.28 Throughout the whole period charges made to grand juries served as platforms for the enunciation of political theories and policies. The more numerous extant charges of the Restoration expounded the superiority of

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monarchical government, the divine right of kings and the need for obedience. A Tory justice of the peace, Sir Peter Leicester, insisted that kings had their authority from God and were responsible solely to God. He rejected the notion that the people were the origin of political authority as well as the view that the law was superior to kings. Kings were the “efficient cause” of law and the prerogative powers were the “flowers” inherent in the Crown of England. Leicester’s account of the “late rebellion” attacked the “giddy headed part of our clergy” and blamed the “great men” who had claimed that the Parliament “had ensnared the common People by an unlawful covenant.” “Bloody Papists” and sectaries were continuing to break the unity of the church, and nonconformist clergy continued to instill seditious principles from the pulpit. Leicester used the charge not only to defend the “lawful succession of the next heyre” but also to attack the Whig’s “grand design” of dissolving Parliament and promoting new elections that would again “ensnare and insense the People” against the king. He took note of the “multitude of seditious pamphlets now dayly printed and scattered amongst the people containinge many dangerous and false principles,” the most dangerous of them advocating a “bounded” or “mixed” monarchy, doctrines “invented in the late warre by the Rebells.”29 The author of another Restoration era charge informed auditors that England was an “absolute Monarchy” and the monarch free from all coercion and restraint.30 In 1681, Sir William Smith, addressing Middlesex grand jurors, characterized England as a “divided nation,” fractured into church and antichurch parties. Conventicles, he insisted, must be suppressed because liberty of conscience was a cover for “Domination over the Laws and Liberties of their fellow subjects.” Like his fellow Tory Leicester, Smith insists that royal authority was given by God and kings accountable only to God. Also, like Leicester, he referred angrily to the “seditious Preaching and Printing” and “Defamatory Pamphlets and Libels . . . sold about the Streets.” He also rejected Exclusion of the Duke of York, pointing to wars that resulted from the Lancastrian-Yorkist succession disputes.31 The fact that Smith’s charge was answered in print suggests the intersection of the courts and the world of pamphlets. Although relatively few charges are available to modern scholars, those that remain illustrate the way in which legal channels were used to disseminate political ideas, particularly those favored by government figures. Although we cannot be sure that the charges we have discussed were typical, those we do possess suggest that they could be an effective means of



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instilling Royalist or Tory political values, including the divinely ordained institution of monarchy and the need for a single church. If there were Whig charges, they have not surfaced. Grand juries, particularly as they became more polarized during the reigns of Charles II and James II, themselves produced addresses for public consumption, claiming to express the views of the county. One grand jury, for example, thanked the king for dismissing the Oxford Parliament and for preserving hereditary monarchy. Many grand jury addresses of the Restoration, especially after 1679, can without difficulty be called Whig or Tory and, as Norma Landau suggests, be considered editorials on the state of the nation.32 Grand juries themselves became the subject of controversy during the Restoration when judges wished to pursue policies that local officials were reluctant to enforce or were critical of the standard of evidence grand juries employed in making indictment decisions.33 In 1667 Chief Justice Kelying was accused of usurping “a lordly dictatorial power” when commanding the jury to find a bill for which they had no evidence. Had he been successful, the critic indicated, the grand jury would have become “the basest Vassals of the judge.”34 Impeachment proceedings were initiated against Kelying for illegally fining and imprisoning grand and petty juries. The issue became highly politicized because some grand and petty juries were undermining legislation directed at dissenters. Sir Matthew Hale believed that the fining of juries for their verdicts was “an arbitrary practice” of recent origin.35 Similar issues arose a few years later when Whigs and Tories disputed the meaning and validity of oaths taken by grand jurors and prosecution witnesses. If government witnesses who testified on oath must be believed, then grand juries would, it was argued, be required to indict in all cases brought before them, making them superfluous. Whig pamphleteers turned what might be thought to be rather technical issues into matters of public debate.36 Because sheriffs were the key to the selection of grand and petty jurors, the party affiliation of sheriffs, particular the sheriffs of London, influenced the outcome of politically sensitive cases. Soon after a “packed” Whig grand jury refused to indict the Earl of Shaftesbury for treason, the Crown interfered with shrieval elections in order to get more tractable jurors. Once again the public learned about how the legal system worked because its workings became a matter of political controversy.

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Juries The right to a jury trial was treated as one of the most basic “rights and liberties” of Englishmen. The jury was always mentioned when discussing the superiority of the English law, and its celebration was part of the national political culture. Widespread participation in jury service gave participants a direct exposure to the workings of the legal system and a sense of responsibility for the nation’s administration of justice. However, there was also worry that juries might be partial or bullied. Despite pride in the institution, jury service was often shirked. Service often required absence from work as well as making decisions about friends and neighbors. Jury avoidance meant that those who did not meet the required property qualification were sometimes selected. The jury system ensured that the justice system, rather than being a distant government function run by legal technicians, became quite literally a neighborhood affair and sometimes a contentious one.

The Legal Profession: Judges and Lawyers The common law courts were manned by a hierarchy of legal professionals and semiprofessionals. At the top were the twelve or so common law judges, who were selected from the sergeants at law, who in turn were selected from the barristers, who argued cases at the bar. Below these learned groups were the less-respected attorneys and conveyancers. Simultaneously guardians of the law and servants of the Crown, the judges of the common law courts were responsible for declaring and interpreting the laws. They were appointed by the Crown and dismissible without cause. Few judges were likely to risk decisions disliked by the Crown. Those who did so were likely to be dismissed, the best known being Sir Edward Coke, who, after his dismissal from the bench, became a leading figure in Parliament. Judges who were thought to be overly subservient to the Crown drew sharp criticism, and a few became subject to impeachment proceedings. Twice a year the judges were sent out to the countryside to adjudicate criminal and civil cases before local juries. The assizes, which were heralded with great fanfare and accompanied by the special sermons discussed in an earlier chapter, brought a vivid awareness to the countryside of central royal authority. In addition to conducting trials, the judges were expected to inform the populace of the desires of the Crown and serve as the “Kings’s



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Eyes and Eares in the Country,” reporting back the state of the counties they visited. They were to report not only on the loyalty of the local magistrates but also on whether they were “idle Slowbellies, that abide alwaies at home, given to a life of ease and delight” or “busie-bodies” and “proud spirits” who assisted their kindred and allies.37 Judges were simultaneously expected to be impartial upholders of the law and the Crown’s “subalterne Magistrates,”38 who pressured for enforcement of legislation of particular concern to the Crown. Assize judges frequently defended the royal prerogative, taking their responsibilities as spokesmen for the Crown seriously. They sometimes pressured grand juries to indict or browbeat trial juries into giving desired verdicts. Judges generally were respected as “oracles of the law” but were sometimes reviled for legal decisions thought to be too favorable to the Crown or insufficiently protective of the subject’s rights. The political salience of the judiciary varied over time. During Elizabeth’s reign it was not seen as playing a substantial political role, though it was involved in implementing the government’s religious policies and reporting on the religious climate in the shires. There was a purge of Roman Catholic magistrates. Judges became more politicized during the Jacobean era when the Crown became more explicit about its relationship to the law and the frequency of jurisdictional clashes and use of prohibitions increased. Judicial supervision of the justices of the peace became more partisan. Key judicial decisions came to be viewed as constitutionally dangerous. James I articulated a theory of judicial subordination to the Crown and expected to receive judicial reports on those hostile to monarchy, among whom he included Puritans and those overly active in the House of Commons. Judges were not to encroach on the royal prerogative and were instructed to “blunt the sharpe edge and vaine popular humour” of those lawyers who “meddle with the Kings prerogative.”39 In 1617 Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon reminded the assize judges that it was their duty “to represent to the people the graces and care of the king; and again, upon your return to present to the king the distastes and griefs of the people.”40 Sir Edward Coke was removed during James’s reign. The judiciary became even more politically visible during Charles’s reign when circuit judges were directed to promote ship money. One judge instructed a grand jury to indict a defendant who had spoken against ship money.41 Judges who ruled in favor of the legality of ship money were publicly denounced and the sole dissenting opinion widely circulated. Judicial deference to the Crown in Hampden’s Case underlined belief that judges

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had become creatures of the Crown. The decision did much to destroy deference to the judiciary. The Long Parliament not only declared ship money illegal but also moved to impeach several judges responsible for the decision. Judge Berkeley was charged with subverting England’s fundamental laws and introducing an arbitrary and tyrannical government. The Parliament in 1641 continued to use the judges for nonjudicial functions, ordering them to publicize the resolution of the House of Commons that the king’s commission of array was against the liberty and property of the subject. As the fighting began, judges had to decide whether or not to continue in office. Several refused to serve the republican regime, a regime that commanded them “to help settle the people’s mind” to the “present government.” The assizes did not meet for three years and, when revived, the judges sometimes required military escorts. Open rule by the military in 1655 led to the resignation of several more judges and the dismissal of others. In 1659 several were dismissed for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Rump.42 A few Royalist judges returned with the Restoration, and some Interregnum judges continued to serve. In 1663 the judges going on circuit were instructed to punish “seditious meetings of sectaries and to convict papists.” Although not as subservient to the Crown as sometimes portrayed, several judges were dismissed.43 Accusations of judges unjustly fining and intimidating juries and intimidating grand juries led the House of Commons to debate the terms of judicial tenure. Although fining of juries for their decisions ended with Judge Vaughan’s decision in Bushel’s case (1670), the House attacked the judiciary again in 1677. Judicial behavior during the Popish Plot trials was carefully scrutinized both by those who believed in the plot and by those who did not. There were scurrilous attacks on Justice Scroggs, who had been the judge in the acquittal of an alleged plotter.44 Whigs often denounced the judiciary as government toadies willing to do whatever the Crown demanded. One tract of 1682 claimed that if juries were not independent of judges, the judges would “ingross to themselves the whole Power in the Tryal.”45 Under James II assize judges were instructed to warn counties of an immediate dissolution of Parliament if it failed to provide revenues. The judiciary was also recruited to assist in the production of “loyal addresses” and in promoting Tory parliamentary candidates. In 1685 they were pressured to declare the legality of the dispensing power; those who refused were dismissed. In 1687 judges were instructed to sound out opinion on the repeal of the Test Act and the penal laws against Roman Catholics. Given their



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political engagement, it is not surprising to hear of a 1687 report that judges on circuit were being treated with less respect than formerly. Shortly before James II fled the country, judges were ordered to seek support for the king’s controversial Declaration of Indulgence. Charles II had dismissed twelve judges during his fifteen-year reign; James II dismissed the same number in three years.46 From the Elizabethan period to the Revolution of 1688 judges were seen as making decisions having important political impact. How those decisions were viewed depended on one’s political preference. Judges were placed in a difficult position, expected to act impartially in the cases before them and at the same time expected to function as agents of the Crown asked to further unpopular government policies. The judiciary changed after 1688. Its administrative functions declined and by the end of the century had largely disappeared. Many judgments of 1681–88 were nullified. Legislation changed the terms of judicial tenure, making judges immune from dismissal except for violations of “good behavior.” As judges became more independent of Crown control, they ceased to be seen as political actors pursuing political agendas. England was a litigious society that required the services of a substantial number of barristers, attorneys and conveyancers. Yet the English had an ambivalent attitude toward the legal profession. Lawyers were necessary to protect one’s interests and property, but at the same time, as we saw in examining assize sermons, they were blamed for fomenting unnecessary lawsuits, charging excessive fees and employing deceitful and obfuscating language. The common law may have been the best in the world, but the legal professionals left much to be desired. The avaricious lawyer who encouraged lawsuits and attempted to win them by legal chicanery was a frequent figure in the drama and other literary forms. On the other hand lawyers were also respected for their learning, and the House of Commons often relied on the legal learning of its numerous lawyer members. Despite its variety of courts the legal system offered a common law that combined centrally appointed learned judges who declared what the law was with local decision making by juries and grand juries. It was an inexpensive system to operate, relying heavily on unpaid jurors, grand jurors and justices of the peace, unlike most Continental legal systems that required large numbers of legal professionals and allowed only minimum participation by the citizenry. The experience of serving on grand juries and juries and as justices of the peace gave a substantial number of English subjects opportunities to learn about and to feel that they had a particular stake

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in the system and that they could, at least on some occasions, thwart the imposition of unwanted government policies. The relationship between the Crown and its judges was ambiguous and often contentious. So was that between judges and grand and petty juries. As a result the judiciary frequently was brought to public attention. Through legal processes and controversies citizens of “middling” status, and particularly citizens in urban settings, were actively engaged in and became knowledgeable about government, performing a wide range of governmental and legal functions.47

Oaths Oaths were a pervasive feature of the English legal and political environment. A large proportion of English men were required to take an oath at some time during their lifetimes. There were two basic types. The first involved swearing to properly perform an office or legal function. Kings took coronation oaths. Judges, justices of the peace, constables and a whole host of minor officials took oaths, as did grand jurors, jurors and most witnesses.48 Although such oaths were often violated, violation was thought to incur divine retribution. Oaths of office were thought essential “to give our Neighbor the highest security imaginable of our truth and Faithfulness,”49 but were also troubling because of complaints that oaths were not taken seriously. “Pious perjuries” were common as jurors, in spite of their oaths, knowingly undervalued stolen goods to avoid the death penalty. There were also oaths swearing of allegiance to the Crown, disavowal of the principle of resistance to lawful governments, adherence to the Crown rather than Parliament and/or rejection of a nonmonarchical form of government. Such oaths also might include religious tests swearing belief in the doctrines of the Church of England or disavowal of Roman Catholic doctrines. Some oaths were required of the male population at large, others of particular groups such as clergymen or officeholders.50 During Elizabeth’s reign there was the Bond of Association in which political elites swore to pursue to the death those who plotted against the queen. The 1606 Oath of Allegiance required the oath-taker to declare that James I was the lawful and rightful king and that the pope had no power or authority to depose kings.51 A more divisive oath was the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, in which oath-takers declared their belief that the forces raised by Parliament were for the just defense of the realm, the Protestant religion and liberty of the subject.52 The Commonwealth



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government required allegiance to a nonmonarchical form of government without a House of Lords in an oath administered first to officeholders and barristers and then to the entire male population. The Engagement, as the new oath was called, proved morally difficult because it involved the repudiation of earlier oaths. There was debate about whether or not one oath could legitimately replace another and about obligations to de facto governments.53 During the Restoration the 1660 Act of Uniformity required adherence to the established church, and the Five Mile Act ordered ministers to swear the unlawfulness of taking up arms against the king. The 1673 Test Act required that all those who held offices or places of trust take the Oath of Supremacy and Allegiance repudiating Roman Catholic beliefs and practices. The Duke of York was among those required to relinquish their posts. The Whig Protestant Association oath, found in possession of the Earl of Shaftesbury, involved swearing to “mount and defend . . . with my Person and Estate, the True Protestant Religion against Popery and all Popish Superstition” and to defend the king, “the power and privilege of Parliament” and the “Lawful Rights and Liberties of the Subject against” arbitrary power and the popish succession.54 Oaths were used as tests of loyalty to a regime, to force repudiation of political doctrines and to exclude various categories of people from public life or from practice of the ministry. They also served, however, simply as channels through which subjects learned of governmental policies and the vigor of its commitment to them. Some oaths were unifying, others divisive. Oaths were defended and condemned in pamphlets, treatises and sermons. Oaths were ubiquitous, often generated controversy, and quite literally turned abstract political questions into personal soul-searching matters.

Criticism and Law Reform Idealization of the law played a significant role in English political culture. The superiority of the English legal system, the common law and the jury were articles of faith. Invocation of the rights of Englishmen and the protections given to liberty and property by the common law were commonplaces to be heard in many venues and genres. During the civil war years both parliamentarians and Royalists confidently claimed that they best ensured the protections of the laws. When looking across the Channel

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the English felt satisfied, even smug, about their legal system. When looking inward, however, they often expressed dissatisfaction. Although historians have been aware of the explosion of law reform pamphlets in the revolutionary era, pre- and postrevolutionary expressions of dissatisfaction are less well known.55 Already in 1589 government officials became interested in removing obsolete statutes from the books. The best-known efforts of the pre–civil war era are those of Sir Francis Bacon. Bacon’s first effort took the form of a masque in which the ruler is advised to purge the multiplicity of laws, clear up their uncertainties, repeal those that are snaring and press the execution of those that are wholesome and necessary. A figure in the masque advises the sovereign to “define the jurisdiction of your courts, repress all suits and vexation, all causeless delays and fraudulent shifts and devices, and reform all such abuses of right and justice, . . . punish severally all extortions and exactions of offices, all corruptions in trials and sentences of judgment.”56 Although Elizabeth did not prove sympathetic to Bacon’s proposals, James I took up law reform in his 1609 speech to Parliament, promising that such reform would alter neither the substance of the law nor the government. Lord Brooke thought rulers should reform the “length and strange variety of processes and trials,” and condemned the sale of justice, the avariciousness of lawyers and the vagaries of judicial interpretation.57 Prior to the civil war law reform sentiment expressed within government circles was not seen as an attack on the legal system itself. Most complaints focused on the legal profession. As we have seen, lawyers, and especially attorneys, were lambasted for greed, legal chicanery and vexatious suits. Criticism of abuses in the granting of patents and monopolies was also frequent. One member of Parliament in 1621 characterized monopolists as “blood suckers of the Kingdom” and “vipers of the King.”58 In that year Parliament appointed a committee to consider legal abuses. The absence of parliaments between 1629 and 1640 cut off a significant voice for law reform. The Long Parliament quickly eliminated Star Chamber, the conciliar courts, High Commission and the Court of Wards. The high degree of agreement on their abolition testifies to the extent to which they had become politicized. A more radical movement for reform of the law soon developed outside parliamentary circles. Some critics pressed for simplifying and/or codifying the law, others for bringing English law closer to Scripture. Still others hoped to eliminate Chancery and the legal profession. Levellers demanded autonomous local courts in which litigants would



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plead their own causes as well as codification of the law into a single easily accessible volume. In 1652, the Rump created a law reform commission whose moderate proposals foundered in the political turmoil.59 Although there were numerous reform pamphlets, we remain uncertain about how the radical proposals were received. Some, although not a great deal of, attention was given to law reform during the Restoration. One contemporary expressed the view that although reform had been initiated by a “lawless, illegitimate, and bastard power,” it now might be attempted by “lawful Authority.” In 1665 bills were presented “to prune some exuberant Branches, and to pull away the Ivy that robbed this Tree of her just Nourishment.”60 Some reform legislation was contentious. The Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 was said to have been “pressed by the country party” and vehemently opposed by the Court.61 Throughout the early modern period a great many English men and women learned about law and its relation to politics through wide-ranging debates about law reform.

Political Trials Lastly we turn to political trials. Although the trials discussed here are well known, political trials have not been much discussed as focal points of English political culture. Such trials were well publicized public events that created substantial discussion and debate beyond the courtroom and highlighted the intersection of political and legal issues. They involved perceived threats to the regime or to rights thought to be of constitutional importance contested or asserted by the Crown, the Parliament or individual subjects. Trials focused public attention on particular issues that might have been discussed earlier but in a more amorphous way. Most trials discussed here were jury trials, little different from the ordinary criminal trial.62 A few were tried before Crown-appointed commissions and still others before Star Chamber, which did not employ juries. The most politically charged case, the trial of Charles I, required the creation of an extralegal trial court. Criminal trials in England were public events, and highly politicized trials were publicized in print and sometimes defended in officially sanctioned accounts. Trials were also theater where judges dressed in formal, traditional garb often verbally assaulted accused traitors before large, attentive audiences. Executions, which drew large crowds, were theatrical events in which the behavior of the condemned was admired or criticized. The

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“last dying speech” typically involved admitting guilt and asking pardon before God. When delivered by a figure of political prominence, the occasion provided an opportunity for political martyrdom. Last dying speeches often were printed.63 Politically charged trials were reported, with varying degrees of accuracy, in manuscripts and ballads as well as printed news media. Those involving the competing rights of Crown and subject exposed the ambiguous role of judges. In the aftermath of such trials, judges were sometimes vilified in ballad and verse. In a few instances judicial decisions resulted in impeachment proceedings. Treason trials of Elizabeth’s reign both reflected and helped to establish anti-Catholicism as a key element of English political culture. Such trials reinforced belief that England was a Protestant nation and led some to question whether it was possible to distinguish belief in Roman Catholicism from treason. Treason was formally treated as a crime directed against the person of the monarch and his family rather than against a more abstractly conceived notion of the state or the nation. Yet any attempt to harm a Protestant monarch was regarded as a threat to the nation itself. One of the key trials of the Elizabethan era was that of Mary Queen of Scots, the Roman Catholic rival claimant to the throne of England who had engaged in several plots against the life of Elizabeth. Although Elizabeth was reluctant to prosecute a fellow monarch, Mary was eventually tried and executed with the connivance of several of Elizabeth’s ministers. Popish priests and Jesuits were also tried and executed, the latter being viewed as soldiers of popery and sometimes the minions of the King of Spain. The trial of the Earl of Essex, charged with rebellion against the Crown, was quite different. A popular Protestant military figure and courtier with a large entourage of supporters, Essex insisted that he had not intended rebellion and had only tried to gain access to the queen. There were printed accounts of the trial as well as poems, ballads and broadsides commemorating his fate.64 William Barlow’s Paul’s Cross sermon, which characterized Essex as having “a mind inclined to rebellion,” was designed by the government to discredit Essex. The sermon, however, backfired and was “offensively taken . . . [by] the common sort.”65 Although Essex’s farewell speech contritely condemned himself and his followers, Elizabeth, worried about adverse public comment, commissioned Francis Bacon to provide a justification of the trial. The trial and Bacon’s Apology were reprinted several times.66 Politically significant trials during James I’s reign continued to cement the sense of nationhood through appeals to anti-Catholicism. The Gunpowder Plot and the trials that followed in its wake, which reinforced anti-



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popery as part of English political ideology, would be indelibly imprinted on public memory in pamphlet, song, sermon and perhaps most important, in the annual November 5 celebrations marking the defeat of the conspirators. The scaffold speech of Henry Garnett, confessing his treason and exhorting Roman Catholics not to engage in “any Treasons, Rebellions, or insurrections,” was printed by the government. A True Relation of all things that passed in the whole proceedings against the late most barbarous traitors appeared shortly afterward.67 The trials of Sir Walter Raleigh, like that of Essex, reverberated long after his death. A vocal exponent of war against Spain, Raleigh was accused of concealing knowledge of a treasonous attempt to seize the king and put Arabella Stuart on the throne. During the trial the king’s attorney, Sir Edward Coke, denounced Raleigh as having “a Spanish heart in an English body,” being “a Spider of Hell,” and “the most vile and execrable traitor that ever lived.” Though sentenced to death, Raleigh was confined to the Tower. He persuaded James to allow him to voyage to Guiana in search of gold, but his failure to find gold triggered a second trial. Worried that a public trial of a figure so closely associated with anti-Spanish sentiment might engage popular support for Raleigh, James appointed a special commission to try him.68 Bacon was again called upon to justify the government’s position.69 Newsletters spread the news of Raleigh’s death as well as the view that he had been sacrificed to a pro-Spanish policy. At least fifteen publications were printed in connection with his trials and, Raleigh, like Essex, became a symbol for hostility to Spain and popery.70

Impeachment Initially a criminal procedure of the medieval era used to bring down corrupt officials, impeachment reemerged in the 1620s as a political weapon used by Parliament to charge royal officials and others with criminal acts. The procedure, roughly paralleling indictment by grand jury and trial by petty jury, involved accusation by the House of Commons and trial by the House of Lords. Under parliamentary pressure Elizabeth had rescinded some monopolies, while insisting on the royal prerogative to issue them. James I was less yielding, and the Parliament began proceedings against the monopolist Sir Giles Mompesson. Roger Maynwaring, a clerical exponent of the divine right of kings, was also subjected to impeachment proceedings. Lord

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Chancellor Francis Bacon was impeached for corruption in 1621. Bacon’s trial caused much comment, one observer noting, “Nothing like it hath ever been seen in any other Parliament.”71 The impeachment of the Lord Treasurer Lionel Cranfield soon followed. Factional infighting within Parliament was responsible for bringing down Bacon and Cranfield. Impeachment proceedings initiated against the Duke of Buckingham, the king’s unpopular favorite, were averted by the king’s dissolution of Parliament. Impeachment later would be used by Parliament to strike at unpopular ministers of the Crown. It had become a lethal political weapon, to be employed in 1640 with even greater ferocity. It had also become a vehicle for focusing public attention on official misdeeds and unpopular royal advisors. Impeachments, however, were not the only closely watched trials. Several cases involving royal authority in matters of finance contributed to heated debates about the respective roles of king and Parliament in matters of taxation, the appropriate use of the concept of “salus populi,” and the role of the judiciary. Bates’s Case (1606) turned on the question of whether the revision of customs duties was a legitimate exercise of the royal prerogative or an improper and illegal action because taxation required parliamentary consent. Invoking the doctrine of “salus populi,” Judge Fleming ruled that the Crown could levy the duties. While the king’s ordinary power dealt with the people’s private rights, his absolute power might be used “according to the wisdom of the King for the common good.” Customs duties fell into the latter category.72 While a victory for the Crown, the decision sharpened controversy and drew attention to the political role of the judiciary. The ship money cases during the reign of Charles I again raised the issue of royal authority to impose taxlike levies. Some argued that if the king were successful in levying a nonparliamentary tax, there would be little reason to call Parliament. Such fears were exacerbated because parliamentary-like bodies in Europe were in a state of decline, and royal authority to tax at will was on the rise in Continental Europe. The judiciary became implicated in the controversy even before the trials were underway because the judges had been ordered to encourage the payment of ship money. Much was at stake then when several prominent subjects were tried for their refusal to pay. The decision in Hampden’s Case (1638) was a victory for the Crown. According to the ruling opinion the levies were made to meet emergencies, and the king was the sole judge of when an emergency existed. The doctrine of “necessity” and “salus populi” invoked by the judges in this case would later be used by civil war parliamentarians seeking justification for



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actions thought to lie outside normal legal practice. The trial was printed as were real and fabricated parliamentary speeches and many pamphlets, satires and verse libels in both printed and scribal format. Judges were increasingly viewed as overly compliant to royal direction and insufficiently active in protecting the rights of the subject. As a result, the judiciary was becoming a political issue. Another case fueling anxiety about the survival of Parliament was the Five Knights Case (1627), in which several members of Parliament were fined and imprisoned for refusal to pay forced loans. Sir John Eliot, who had already aroused the king’s ire for seeking the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham, was temporarily imprisoned for refusing to pay the forced loan. He was fined and imprisoned in 1629 when he and several other members of Parliament held the speaker of the House of Commons in his chair while Eliot’s resolutions against illegal taxation and religion were read. He was accused of saying that the Council, the king and his judges had “conspired to trample under foot the liberties of the subjects.”73 Like Hampden, Eliot became a hero to defenders of Parliament’s role in taxation, free speech in Parliament and the rights and liberties of the subject. Once a popular court, Star Chamber became an object of vilification. The harsh physical penalties meted out in 1637 to Burton, Bastwick and Prynne for anti-Laudian campaigning made the defendants martyrs for their cause. Trials and the publicity surrounding them helped make Londoners cognizant of and critical of the prerogative courts. The Crown itself was so aware of public response to sensitive trials that it often felt the need to justify its positions to the public. Shortly after the Burton, Bastwick and Prynne trials, Laud’s Star Chamber speech was printed and distributed by the government. The Long Parliament initiated impeachment proceedings against the judges responsible for the ship money decision, accusing them of having “traitorously and wickedly endeavored to subvert the fundamental laws and established government.” Speeches attacked judges for misinterpreting legal texts to speak “another language and another sense than ever our ancestors . . . intended.” They had “despoiled our estates,” prosecuted for “pretended crimes” and refused habeas corpus.74 The proceedings condemning the king’s judges were closely followed. Not surprisingly, several judges thought it best to flee the country. Even more dramatic were the proceedings against the Earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud. Strafford, the king’s most trusted advisor, was charged with aiming to overthrow the law and government of England and

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Ireland, seeking to bring in arbitrary and tyrannical rule, stirring up war between England and Scotland, advising the king to bring his army in Ireland back to England to subdue the English and creating enmity between the king and his people. A petition allegedly signed by 20,000 claimed that religion, lives, liberties and estates would not be secure until Strafford was executed. Strafford was tried and convicted in Westminster Hall before a crowd estimated at over a thousand. When concern about the legality of the charge arose, impeachment was replaced by an act of attainder that simply declared him guilty.75 The articles against Strafford were printed and his speeches published in one of the many newsbooks that sprang up at this time. Speeches attacking Strafford were printed by order of the House, an innovation that ignored the traditional confidentiality of parliamentary speeches.76 The most widely discussed speech was that of Lord Digby, who argued that Strafford could not be guilty of offenses not included in the law of treason. Digby’s speech, “the talk of the nation,” so angered Parliament that it ordered it to be torn and burned.77 Audiences attended Strafford’s trial armed with ink and paper. The votes of members of parliament were posted in London and Westminster. News of the trial was eagerly awaited in the countryside. It was reported that some people began “to be a little divided in opinion” because “his misdemeanors, though ever so many and so great, could not be put together to make one Treason.”78 Strafford’s denial of the charge of cumulative treason was printed several times and elicited an answer that printed Strafford’s speech along with rebuttals in marginal notes.79 His execution, which attracted large crowds, including some people who had traveled to London especially to witness it, was accompanied by public celebration. It was reported that “everything sells that comes in print under his name; . . . either in favour of him or against him.”80 Strafford’s scaffold speech, printed in at least seven editions, emphasized his innocence and warned of a reformation that began with the shedding of innocent blood. Feeling the need to refute the claim that it had engaged in judicial murder, Parliament responded. The trial was long remembered. Over one hundred publications in 1641 alone dealt with the Strafford trial. In 1680 the House of Commons reprinted “the greatest Tryal, whereof we have any Account in our English Story.”81 The trial served as an icon to mark the political division between those who saw it as a defeat of monarchical tyranny and its invasion of “Englishmen’s rights” and those who viewed it as a parliamentary usurpation. Another landmark trial was that of Archbishop Laud, charged with unlawful exercise of sovereign power and altering the Royal Supremacy. The



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articles against him as well as his scaffold speech were printed, and the latter answered in a parliamentary publication. Laud’s trial, like Strafford’s, elicited widespread interest and media coverage. The greatest trial of the century, of course, was that of Charles I, the first and only king of England to be put on trial for his life. Although English kings had been deposed, formal trial of a monarch for alleged crimes was an innovation charged with constitutional importance. The trial required creation of a new institution, the High Court of Justice, because the king’s judges refused to participate in the proceedings. The court was packed with soldiers and spectators, and the streets were thronged. One reporter described the onlookers as well behaved and wrote that the crowd acted “without the least violence, injury or affront publicly done or offered.”82 For some the court was an illegal tribunal and the death sentence it delivered a horrendous, illegal act. The trial was widely publicized in England, in Scotland and abroad. Accounts were printed in 1649 and 1650, the first based on pamphlets printed while the trial was still in progress. Unofficial accounts and newsbooks provided the public with what it wished to know.83 The king repeatedly insisted that the tribunal lacked legal authority. Charles’s response to the court’s decision was a statement of moderate constitutional principles. He drew a parallel between his trial and the trial of Christ and referred to himself as “the Martyr to his people.” His scaffold speech was taken in shorthand and various versions collated to produce a standard version. Charles I’s execution elicited a number of responses. Mercurius Politicus, for example, defended the government’s decision not to conduct a jury trial, while assuring its readers that there was no threat to jury trials in ordinary cases.84 One witness reported “weeping Eyes, with Hands wringing each other to express the anguish of their hearts.”85 Some Royalists took the occasion to flee the country. Contrasting views of the trial affected politics for generations. One held that the king had been justly executed as the “man of blood,” responsible for the civil war and all the ills that followed. The other cast him as a royal martyr. The trial also produced a concept of kingship in which the occupant of the throne, like other officeholders, was answerable for his actions. It became possible to think of a kingless state, to envision the body politic disassociated from the king’s natural body and to conceive of the nation as a community of people that had a continuous life of its own with or without a king. There were several politically significant trials under the Interregnum governments, the most newsworthy being the trials of John Lilburne, whose

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many publications helped to spread knowledge of Leveller principles.86 The early years of the Restoration were punctuated by a series of political trials, though prosecution was limited to the handful of individuals actually involved in the death of Charles I. The Act of Oblivion (1660) ensured that there would not be major reprisals against those who had fought against the Crown or supported the governments that followed the war. Immense crowds watched the regicides convicted of treason dragged on sledges to Tyburn, where they were hanged, drawn and quartered. The symbolic act of exhuming and hanging the bodies of Bradshaw, Cromwell and Ireton and then impaling their heads at Westminster was designed to remind the country of their infamy.87 Impeachment was again unsheathed to bring down Crown ministers. Articles against the Earl of Clarendon, chief minister of the Crown, were widely publicized, as were two versions of his “Petition and Address” to the House of Lords. A poem, “The Downfall of the Chancellor,” characterized Clarendon as the “ruin of the state” and “the author of Dunkirk’s sad loss.” The people, it claimed, rejoiced at his fall as much as they had enjoyed “roasting Rump or beating of the Dutch.”88 The Lord Treasurer, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby, an advocate of the prerogative power and a persecuting Anglican establishment, was charged with “traitorously encroaching on the royal power,” introducing arbitrary government by raising a standing army and negotiating a disadvantageous peace. The king intervened, dissolved Parliament and granted Danby a pardon, though the next Parliament sent Danby to the Tower. Only later would Parliament develop methods of removing ministers that did not require charging them with crimes. Thirteen persons were tried and executed as a result of the Popish Plot frenzy of 1678–79. Taken down in shorthand and then printed with the approval of the presiding judges, the trial records circulated widely.89 These stimulated a flood of pamphlets, poems and ballads. Political affiliation shaped attitudes toward both the plot and the trials. The country party, soon to be labeled Whig, whipped up anti-Catholic sentiment in pope burning processions. The plot and the trials it engendered contributed substantially to the development of party ideology and organization. The acquittal of Sir George Wakeman proved to be the turning point in the plot hysteria. A Whig campaign to impeach the presiding Justice Scroggs for speaking slightingly of the evidence given by Crown witnesses followed the trial. Although Scroggs escaped legal judgment because of the dissolution of Parliament, the House of Commons committee report outlining the charges against him was printed. An anti-Scroggs campaign con-



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sisting of popular broadsides, ballads and poems soon followed. Scroggs was blamed for “traitorously” attempting to “subvert the Fundamental laws and Established Religion and Government” with the aim of introducing “Popery and Arbitrary and tyrannical Government against Law.”90 The feverish excitement of the Popish Plot trials was soon eclipsed by Whig efforts to exclude the Duke of York from the succession. The expiration of the Licensing Act in 1679 resulted in a deluge of pamphlets, some favoring Exclusion, others excoriating efforts to deprive the legitimate heir of his rights. There were several trials for seditious libel against those writing and printing aggressive Protestant and anti-Catholic views. “Great multitudes” attended the trial of Benjamin Harris, an account of which appeared in print within two days. Henry Care’s trial also attracted large crowds.91 Although the government discouraged reporting of these trials, there were a substantial number of published accounts. These in turn produced a flood of pamphlets and satirical poems directed against Justice Scroggs. Government efforts to prosecute leading exclusionists met with varying degrees of success. Its prosecution of Shaftesbury was stymied when the London grand jury, impaneled by a Whig sheriff, issued an Ignoramus verdict that resulted in an avalanche of laudatory and antagonist publications in every imaginable genre, many of which have been noted in earlier chapters. The verdict was greeted with “a very great shout that made even the court shake.”92 Although there was a great deal of genuine rejoicing, the Tory Observator claimed that people were knocked down and reviled unless they joined in.93 Shaftesbury found it prudent to flee the country, soon to be followed by his physician and secretary, John Locke. The expression of Whig sentiments had become dangerous. When a London grand jury returned an ignoramus verdict in the proceedings against Stephen Colledge, the government responded by arranging for a second grand jury proceeding in Oxfordshire, where Colledge would face a Tory grand jury. After a lengthy trial attended by large crowds, Colledge was found guilty of high treason and executed. Anxious to “prevent a misinformation and scandalous reports,” the government arranged for a shorthand report of the trial to be printed. Roger L’Estrange used his Observator to emphasize the perversion of justice caused by ignoramus juries and published a lengthy pamphlet on behalf of the government. Whigs thought the trial unfair; the Tory North that “there was not ever a fairer trial.” Colledge’s last speech was printed in both Whig and Tory versions.94 The trials of Shaftesbury and Colledge were soon followed by the trials of Whigs charged with treason for involvement in the Rye House Plot. The

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trials decimated the Whig leadership and made Lord Russell a Whig martyr. Accounts of his trial ranged from a single-page broadside to a lengthy narrative. Again, the government ordered that the trial be printed so “that the truth of the proceedings might not be detracted by lying.”95 There were accounts of Russell’s life, descriptions of his death, positive and negative accounts of his last speech, as well as poems and ballads relating to his life and trial.96 Russell’s widely disseminated scaffold speech, which appeared in print within an hour of his death, emphasized that killing “with the forms and subtleties of the law is the worst sort of murder.” A groan was said to have emerged from the crowd when he died, and several spectators dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood.97 Algernon Sidney was convicted and executed for authorship of an allegedly treasonous manuscript found in his room. Directed against Filmer’s Patriarcha, the papers were used to show that Sidney wished to persuade the people that rebellion was lawful. His trial commanded public attention and produced detailed trial accounts, poems, ballads and pamphlets, most of which condemned the ideas expressed in his allegedly treasonous manuscript. Evidently sensitive to public opinion, the government produced several printed accounts. Sidney’s dying speech reiterated his republicanism and his belief that governments were of human origin. His death, like that of Russell and Colledge, was followed by a barrage of pamphlets, ballads and poems.98 The Monmouth rebellion and the trials that followed in its wake were of major political import. Even before the rebellion there were reports of individuals being taken before the justices of the peace for drinking healths to the Duke of Monmouth, for wishing ill to the king and the Duke of York or for singing a ballad that included the words “Let Monmouth Reign, Let Monmouth Reign.” Those most attracted to Monmouth’s cause were not members of the Whig political elite, now subdued by the recent deaths of Russell and Sidney, but tradesmen, artisans and the other “middling people,” many of whom were dissenters. The illegitimate son of Charles II, Monmouth had become the hope of those who feared the accession of the Duke of York. The failed rebellion of 1685 was followed by the “bloody assizes” resulting in beheadings, transportations, physical punishments, imprisonments and/or fining over one thousand persons. Some of the executed were dismembered and their remains left in public view to be “Monuments of Cruelty and Inhumanity, for the terror of others.”99 These massive reprisals were intended to achieve, and succeeded at achieving, a major impact on public consciousness.



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The last trial of the period to have substantial political repercussions occurred just prior to the Revolution of 1688. Archbishop Sancroft and six fellow bishops were tried for seditious libel for refusing to read James II’s Declaration of Indulgence in church. The declaration, which suspended the penal laws for Roman Catholics and exempted them from the oaths required of office holders, superseded parliamentary legislation by royal fiat. The bishops petitioned the king for permission not to read the declaration, arguing that the royal order was both contrary to law and to their ecclesiastical functions. One of the issues before the court was whether the publication of their petition was itself a libel, that is, whether it included false or malicious material tending to sedition. The judges were sharply divided. Crowds lined the streets when the bishops were sent to the Tower. News of their trial appeared in newspapers, newsletters and private correspondence, one reporting that “many hundred thousands” were “perpetually” thinking or talking about the case. Bonfires were lit throughout the country when the bishops were bailed. “Great Shouts in the Court, and throughout the Hall” were reported when the jury rendered a not guilty verdict. The trial proceedings were printed and ballads and songs commemorating the occasion printed and sung. Bells and bonfires in London celebrated the acquittal.100 An Account of the Proceedings, the Tryal and Discharge of the Archbishop referred to the “malicious and Illegal Prosecution,” which would have extinguished “the Brightest Luminaries of the English Church.”101 In 1689 the Bill of Rights abolished the royal suspending power. During the decade or so after 1688, several issues that had caused political and legal altercation for over a century either declined in importance or were put to rest. The necessity of parliamentary approval for taxation was reaffirmed. The dispensing and suspending powers were declared illegal. The possibility of a Roman Catholic monarch ended, though hostility to and fear of popery faded only slowly. The Toleration Act permitted Protestant dissenters to worship outside the established church but left them second-class subjects unable to hold political office. Roman Catholics were not included in the Act of Toleration and continued to be excluded from the political arena. In 1696 Parliament provided greater clarity on what constituted treason and ensured that in the future two witnesses would be required to convict. Throughout the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries the courts were institutions of considerable political importance. Trials presented issues in a concentrated form and provoked public debate. Publication and publicity surrounding important trials made it possible for individuals

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throughout the country to participate vicariously in great controversies. Trials from the 1640s onward helped to shape the political ideology of Royalists and parliamentarians, and those following the Restoration were important in defining divisions between Whigs and Tories. Political trials and the barrage of publications generated by them were the occasions of and vehicles for a highly dramatized form of political discourse on both the central issues of the day and the appropriate conduct of legal proceedings. The political trials of the seventeenth century that focused political issues and fueled intense political division had become part of England’s political memory.102

Conclusion This chapter has provided a brief survey of things legal in shaping early modern English political culture. Although the institutions of monarchy, Parliament, and the multiplicity of courts were in some respects political and legal givens, each raised issues resulting in political disagreement and debate. Of particular importance were issues surrounding the law of succession and the relationship between the law and the prerogative. We have noted how the common law in the early modern era was seen as a protector of English rights and liberties, and have examined the efforts of its practitioners to underline its preeminent status among the several varieties of English law and courts. Service as jurors, grand jurors and justices of the peace provided widespread experience with these institutions and made the English particularly cognizant of the role of their legal institutions in shaping their political system. Additionally we have noted the role of these institutions in ensuring that the English political and legal system retained a balance between centralizing and localizing tendencies. We have examined the way in which the dual judicial and administrative functions of the judiciary enmeshed the judiciary in the political arena. Judicial pronouncements in politically sensitive cases involving taxation, the prerogative and the concept of salus populi made the judiciary important political actors. Despite their emphasis on their role as guardians of the law, from time to time the judges would be perceived more as agents of the Crown than as upholders of the law. Although judges in all political systems have a political role, the judiciary during the period studied here were more politically relevant than in the periods that preceded and followed it. English men and women came to know a great deal about their law and



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courts, and especially about the political role of their courts, because law and courts were central to the political controversies of the day. Oaths, both those embedded in the legal apparatus and those requiring expressions of loyalty to the regime, were a prominent feature of English political life. Loyalty oaths engendered discussion about the legitimacy of sequential oaths and about allegiance to governments based on de facto power. They brought political and legal issues into the most intimate areas of individual concern over salvation. Petitioning, a legal right claimed by the English as part of their heritage, was used to present grievances to appropriate authorities. The practice brought complaints of a political nature into public view and sometimes mobilized very large numbers of people. A series of political trials also brought legal issues and legal procedures into the public forum. The trials, and the many publications, circulated manuscripts and ballads that followed in their wake, drew public attention to the interaction between law and politics. Major trials often led government to explain and justify prosecutions to an interested public. Trials highlighted real and pretended dangers to the state and the disputed roles of Crown and Parliament in providing the government’s financial resources. They drew attention to the role of the judiciary and its relation to juries and grand juries, publicized the criteria of proof for treason and led to discussions about appropriate criteria for judicial tenure. Legal ideas, procedures and institutions were among the common coins of the period’s political thought and public controversy. Its political culture cannot be understood without taking them into account.

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My effort to present a comprehensive picture of English political culture has focused on the wide range of available venues and forms of expression. Because the subject is not the substance of that culture but the complex network of channels through which the culture was conveyed, I have proceeded genre by genre. Because the mix of those channels and the penetration of each varied over time within the period, it seemed best, for the most part, to proceed roughly chronologically within the examination of each of these genres. Each of them has been charted from the reign of Elizabeth to the eve of the Revolution of 1688. From this multigenre approach emerges a picture of a complex political culture of many channels, interacting in complex ways and varying over time in their contents and relationships to one another. Both the overall availability and the content of the various genres sometimes converged and sometimes diverged. For instance both the news media and polemical pamphleteering were at their height during the civil war and Interregnum, the decades that the drama and historical writing were at a low point. In the period 1678–82, Whig and Tory responses to issues related to popery, arbitrary government and Exclusion appeared across most media from poetry to sermons, books, printed prologues to plays and the dramatic performances themselves, all of which elicited pamphlet responses. The treatment of historical figures in traditional historiography often differed from their presentation in poetry and the drama. Channels for the sending and receipt of political messages are many and interactive. Poets often preferred manuscript circulation to print. The popular ballad is related to more formal poetry on the one hand and the



Conclusion

news media on the other. News and historical accounts sometimes treat the same events. Some knowledge of politically relevant facts and opinions was conveyed by the events themselves and by the very presence and function of political institutions. This knowledge might develop through direct observation or participation, common knowledge, coffee house gossip or in combination with media reports. Some trials, for instance, were part of the political arena and generated support for, and sometimes opposition to, government prosecutors. They were experienced by direct participation and observation, reports in printed and manuscript media, street ballads and coffee house gossip. News publications surrounding the trials often were linked to comment in sermon or drama. Historical studies were implicated in debates about the nature of Parliament. The long established jury system stimulated political awareness and a sense of local participation in national affairs. A comprehensive approach to the channels of political culture also highlights the centrality of the classical tradition to English intellectual life. The Roman past was used in a number of genres to support or critique imperial and republican forms of government and value systems. Grammar school and university education presented Roman historical events and personages as heuristics for contemporary political analysis. Classical dramatic and poetic forms often shaped the modes in which political issues were explored in contemporary drama and poetry. Attraction to the epic form along with struggles over adapting it to English experience runs through much of the early modern era. Humanist emphasis on the application of knowledge to everyday affairs inspired concern for useful learning in poetry, the drama and historical writing, and encouraged the emergence of empirical, descriptive forms of political discourse. Moving genre to genre points us toward an appreciation of what kinds of political writing focused on individual actors, real and fictional, and which lent themselves to the discussion of institutions. We have observed that some genres and subgenres lent themselves to criticism, others to compliment and praise, and that opportunities for and restraints on various modes of publication meant that some views were likely to receive a wider audience than others. For instance, the most politicized sermons, especially those supporting the divine right of kings and obedience to rulers, were more likely to be printed than others. Yet thousands of sermons were never licensed or published. Collectively, they were likely to have had a greater impact than those that were published. Some genres were conducive to polite language and exchange, others

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were most often abusive, scurrilous and derogatory. The ghost dialogue and the character were employed to criticize. The printed play prologue often mocked political opponents. Historical writing, on the other hand, followed a different set of linguistic norms and conventions because historians were supposed to be impartial men of good judgment with considerable political experience. Dramatic tragedies were expected to use elevated images and language, conventions that were inappropriate for the satirical poem. Some genres changed over time. The character, which began as a short literary essay, became a format for derogatory portrayals of political and religious opponents. Scriptural references and parallels were to be found in many genres. They were sometimes used to laud monarchs as Davids and Solomons, sometimes to denounce them as Herods and Nimrods. Familiar biblical stories from both the Old and New Testaments were readily adapted to current needs. Absalom and Achitophel were easily identified with current political figures and the sufferings of Christ with those of the martyred Charles I. Sermons may have been the chief vehicle for biblical texts, but they were not the only one. Poets too made good use of biblical characters and images. Some radical reformers sought law reforms in keeping with biblical norms, thus favoring a two witness rule for criminal convictions or ending the death penalty for theft but adding it for adultery. One advantage of examining political communication in terms of genres and their variation over time is that periods of greater and lesser public debate can be differentiated. The civil war and Interregnum era witnessed an explosion of printed material in a wide range of formats. During this period the newsbook, the pamphlet and the sermon stand out. This period is marked by an incredible range of thinking on political and religious topics, and witnessed the creation of many new religious groups. Law reformers were vocal in pamphlet and petition formats. Yet it was a period in which the drama was almost entirely absent and when dramatists turned to nondramatic forms. Trials became focal points, first those of Strafford, Laud and the judges, then the shocking trial of the king himself. It was also remarkably innovative. It is during this period that Harrington, Hobbes, Milton, Nedham and Lilburne emerge as powerful voices, voices that continue to shape the way we think about politics, government and law today. Of course Harrington, Hobbes and Milton were authors of famous and long-lasting books. I have not treated books as a separate genre for a number of reasons. Most of the celebrated books on politics of the period are most conveniently noted in my discussion of the various,



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particular, political controversies that gave rise to them. Many publications in book format are collections of sermons, poems or the like that are most conveniently treated in the chapters on those genres. Finally lumping together relatively long works of history, travel, political theory and so on as a separate genre, “the book,” seems less useful than integrating them into the treatments provided of those particular subject matters. The second period of most active communication and debate, the years from 1678 to 1682, was quite different. It is characterized by two dominant voices rather than a multiplicity of views. Whigs and Tories held quite identifiable views on politics and the church and expressed those views in every genre and venue that was available to them. It would have been easy to identify a Whig play, poem or pamphlet from one written by a Tory. Whig and Tory voices were repetitive and less innovative than the writers during the earlier period of lively debate. Tories had the advantage. Their publications were more easily licensed, their plays more easily performed and their newspapers less likely to be closed down. They made use of the drama, the play prologue, the character and poetry as well as the newsbook, sermon, pamphlet and grand jury charges to communicate loyalty to the Crown and to the established church as it was then constituted and to warn of the dangers of dissent and renewed civil war. Because dissenting clergymen could not easily preach, Tory domination of the pulpit meant that Tory clerics could communicate the doctrines of divine right kingship and obedience to a large proportion of the English population. Although voices of religious dissent might be available in pamphlets and dissenting conventicles, they were often silenced. Whig communication was available in newsbooks and pamphlets, but Whig writers were more likely to write anonymously or pseudonymously, and were more subject to problems of licensing and prosecutions for seditious libel. Nevertheless, Whig slogans warning of “popery and arbitrary government” could be heard in many formats. Whigs were able to make use of the “out of doors” quite effectively. They organized petitioning drives and pope burning processions and occasionally were able to make use of the lord mayor’s shows. Gunpowder Day celebrations and memorials to Queen Elizabeth’s accession gave voice to their views on matters relating to church and state, though Tories effectively controlled the January 30 commemorations. Tories might have not been as effective as Whigs “out of doors,” but they too used petitions and addresses. Both Whigs and Tories had their poets and dramatists. There was no doubt about the political affiliations of literary men such as Marvell and Dryden. Both sides used trials

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as occasions to communicate their messages. On the whole, however, the debates between Whigs and Tories were not as innovative as the polemics of the 1640–60 era. In both periods Parliaments were often in session and their heated dialogues widely reported.

The Genre Approach: Limitations Moving comprehensively through the genres and modes of expression has some disadvantages. Because the satisfied and complacent are less likely to express themselves openly than are the discontented, the emphasis on genres, especially the printed genres, may present a somewhat more divisive picture of political life than many contemporaries experienced. This problem, however, is one encountered in non–genre centered studies as well. It is further aggravated because about the only observable record we have of the sentiments of the illiterate is not generated by their moments of contentment or lack of interest but in such expressions of discontent as mass petitioning, rioting and serving in civil war armies. On the other hand the emphasis on printed material probably conceals a certain amount of dissatisfaction. Many who wished to express their critical views in print were reluctant to do so because of the hurdles of licensing and the possibility of prosecution. Others were simply uninterested in sharing their grievances and discontents outside their circle of family and friends. When discontent was expressed orally, few traces remained. Perhaps the greatest difficulty stems from the fact that we have a great deal of information about what was produced and circulated but relatively little about how it was received. Even now, with the advantage of polling and survey research, we know little of how people of different types, classes and political preferences respond to particular political cartoons, portraits of current and past presidents, newspapers or news blogs, participation on a jury or a national day of celebration. In our own day, public opinion as to the success or failure of a president fluctuates wildly. How are we to assess whether and when Charles I or Charles II gained or lost popularity? It is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to learn how audiences responded to an Elizabethan or Restoration play, or what readers thought after reading an Engagement or Exclusion pamphlet or after hearing an assize sermon enunciating patriarchal or divine right theory. Although the political message of a given ballad, poem, royal proclamation or assize sermon may be quite clear, we can only speculate about the audience impact of that bal-



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lad, poem or pamphlet, proclamation or sermon. We must, for the most part, make do with the occasional diary, letter or government informant comment as to how a given progress or petition was received. We know that plays, poems and newsbooks were sometimes read aloud, but we do not know a great deal about who was being read to or what might have been the response to what was heard. We gain some information from the accounts of cheering on certain occasions, the occasional comment on a play or poem and reports to the authorities by judges and paid informers. Print runs and multiple editions of a particular pamphlet or book tell us a good deal about circulation. But they provide little information about the purchasers, how the materials they purchased were read, or how often they were lent to other readers. We can be more confident about what was circulated and the forms in which it was communicated than the response to what was read, heard and seen. An emphasis on genres almost necessarily becomes an emphasis on genres that leave a written record. This means that important features of political and cultural life receive less attention than they deserve. Emphasis on written channels of information and debate largely excludes information that flowed to government officials, that is, the reports of domestic informants, justices of the peace and assize judges as well as information and comment communicated by diplomats and foreign-based merchants. What was sometimes called the arcana imperii of government was an aspect of political life unavailable to most English subjects then and to us now. The taken for granted and the experienced but not written about also tend to be marginalized. The assumption of female exclusion from the political arena, for example, is an important feature of English political culture but is not often mentioned in the forms of expression we have surveyed. Women did not participate in easily detectable ways, but were clearly part of the audience for plays, poetry, sermons, pamphlets, progresses and processions. While they did not serve on juries or as justices of the peace, women heard assize sermons and assize and quarter session charges. Trials were open to the public and attended by women as well as men. Women participated in some petitioning and were part of the audience for lord mayor’s shows, pope burning processions, royal entries, coronations and funerals. Court ladies were active participants in court masques. Women were sometimes involved in the commercial aspects of political culture, in the printing and publishing businesses and in the hawking of pamphlets and the singing of ballads.1 Familial and patronage networks that included many women were

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a fundamental part of the political culture but are slighted because there are relatively few written references to them. It is for this reason that some emphasis has been placed on nonliterary ways of learning such as the ubiquitous use of bonfires and bells, even though evidence of these things is fragmentary and typically derived from passing references in a diary or letter.2 The experience of serving on a jury, being a member of Parliament or a justice of the peace, hearing a Gunpowder Day sermon or gossiping about politics in an alehouse or coffee house are as much a part of the formation of political culture as publication of a pamphlet, a poem or a newsbook. Concentration on written communication, whether printed or manuscript, also obscures the importance of institutions such as Parliament, the Privy Council, justices of the peace and town governments. Yet even the bare consciousness of these institutions, as well as direct participation in them, were part of the way the English experienced and learned about their political culture.

A Communicative Culture Admitting its limitations, a march through the various genres and ways of communicating political knowledge does, I believe, yield a fairly clear picture of early modern English political culture. Despite the episodic and never very efficient exercise of government control, the period taken as a whole exhibits a vibrant political culture in which there were many avenues available for the expression of political opinion. Such expression reached a considerable proportion, if by no means the totality, of English society. Many literate, evenly moderately literate, Englishmen, if not Englishwomen, expressed their views in a substantial number of genres to be read or heard by an even larger number of people. The avidity for news that circulated orally, in manuscript and in print was much remarked by contemporaries throughout the entire period. Corantos, pamphlets presenting news of a particular event, news-related ballads and serial newsbooks were eagerly sought whenever they were available. Literate and nonliterate alike heard sermons, some tailored to particular politically relevant occasions and some circulated in printed form. Members of Parliament heard and sometimes responded to the grievances they received from constituents and those who had supported their candidacy, as well as from grand juries. Their speeches were circulated mostly by word of mouth and newsletter and, on some occasions, in print.



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By the 1620s speeches were often copied by London scriveners and quickly sent to the country. Though a violation of parliamentary privilege, much of what went on in Parliament became known. Periods of greatest political expression coincided with the Parliaments of the 1620s, the 1640s and the era of the Popish Plot and Exclusion. Meetings of Parliament stimulated expectations and expression. The theater provided plays with political content and invited viewers and later readers of play texts to make judgments on past and fictitious rulers and their advisors and the consequences of their decisions with but a quick jump of the mind to current events. Poets and literary men often produced poems and other literary works that engaged current political issues. Many of the most admired poets allied themselves to political factions, to political regimes or later to political parties. Others provided masques for the court or shows for London’s mayoral events. If some preferred to circulate their efforts among coterie audiences, others took avidly to the printed media either anonymously or with their names proudly announced. Still others took to print only when political danger was perceived to have passed. Different forms of poetry lent themselves to different kinds of political messages. The Bible provided parallels and examples for poets, preachers and pamphleteers, as did the history of Rome. Historians and dramatists addressing the English past participated in and contributed to the current political field whether they wished to or not as they characterized the practices and characters of early English monarchs. Historians who dealt with the Norman Conquest and Magna Carta willy-nilly made the past available for current political use. Lawyers too used this material to support ideas about the past and present role of the common law in English national life. Interest in and experience with juries, grand juries and judges meant that the law vividly entered the political life stream. Pride in the jury system and its protections of the “free born rights of Englishmen” was part of the political environment and from time to time became an element in political discourse, as did the problematic role of the judiciary. The common law courts provided a framework that continued to operate throughout the entire period, giving the English a sense of continuity despite the political upheavals of the mid-seventeenth century. Respect for law was a part of the culture, and all participants in political struggles attempted to capture the claim of legality and legal tradition. Legal institutions that substantial portions of the populations feared or distrusted were jettisoned.

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The trial was, of course, only one of a wide range of institutions, conventions, events, ceremonies, demonstrations and, indeed, acts of violence that informed English political life and must be taken into account along with the many genres of words. Ultimately a great many early modern Englishmen expressed themselves in a great many ways about political life and a great many more knew a considerable amount about that life. The survey of the genres and channels used for political communication testifies to the need for those interested in political culture to take account of the work of political historians, political theorists, historians of the book and newspaper, art historians, literary historians, legal historians, sociologists, political scientists and students of communication, as well as those who have concentrated on court culture, the sermon, the masque or days of national celebration. I have drawn on the work of many specialists from a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies to create a panoramic view of English political culture from the accession of Elizabeth to the Revolution of 1688. This work does so with the knowledge that additional work on subcultures and publics, on particular poets, and dramatists will add to and, no doubt, in some instances modify the picture I have drawn. What is clear is that a complete picture of the political culture of this and other eras and locales will draw on the joint efforts of many scholars working in a variety of disciplines and subdisciplines.

Scholarly Debate and Political Culture Having toured the channels and genres available for the communication and distribution of political information and discussion that helped to shape England’s political culture from 1558 to 1688, it is time to consider how this material bears on the issues that have engaged scholars dealing with this period. Several of the most contested issues are related to, or segue into, one another. The first is the extent to which the English polity should be characterized as one of conflict and divisiveness over religion and politics or one of relative consensus. A second is the degree to which governmental censorship and control shaped and limited political expression. Still another is the usefulness of Habermas’s concept of a public sphere for understanding the political culture of the period 1558–1688.



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Conflict or Harmony Scholars have largely abandoned the view that early modern England is best characterized by the traditional Whig narrative that emphasized political divisions ultimately resulting in the outbreak of civil war. Historians holding this view not only saw far more conflict than consensus over religious and political matters but also tended to identify two groups, only one of which they associated with progress and a more enlightened and just English political life. Revisionists, particularly those dealing with the pre–civil war period, led by such historians as Conrad Russell and Kevin Sharpe, emphasize consensus over division and reject the Whig future-oriented perspective. Revisionist influence shifted attention away from investigation of longterm causes of the civil war and revolution. Because emphasis on consensus and rejection of the inevitability of conflict made it difficult to account for the breakdown of English government and the outbreak of civil war, some revisionists, looking for short-term triggers, focused on the rebellions in Scotland and Ireland and what has come to be called the three kingdom approach. However, there has been renewed attention to the continuing debates over religion and the constitution of the pre–civil war period by scholars who are sometimes labeled or self-labeled as postrevisionists, many of whom focus on the news media or make use of the public sphere concept. Unlike the prerevisionist Whig historians, these scholars do not identify with any group or ideology. Nor are they sympathetic to the older practice of seeking signs of political progress and its opposite. Even admitting that the written record is likely to over-represent conflict, our investigation of the genres of political expression prior to the outbreak of the civil war suggests that harmony and unity, though a frequently expressed goal, was largely absent. Religious and political debates are to be found throughout the prewar period, with the 1620s being the most contentious. Historians and literary historians working on the Restoration era polity are not easily categorized as Whig, revisionist or postrevisionist. This long neglected period is now being pursued energetically by a substantial group of scholars who have emphasized the vigorous partisanship of the Restoration political scene. The work of Tim Harris, Mark Knights, Alan Houston and Jonathan Scott among the historians, and Steve Zwicker, Susan Owen, Susan Staves and Paulina Kewes among the literary scholars, characterizes

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Restoration politics as fraught with political debate and conflict over religion and politics. Restoration historians have been very attentive to the role of the media. Their work intersects and interacts with literary historians who have been engaged in examining the political aspects of Restoration drama and poetry. Only a few historians, such as Jonathan Clark, treat the Restoration and what followed as a conservative ancient regime dominated by Anglicanism, aristocracy and monarchy.3 Others view the period from 1660 onward as the first phase of the “long eighteenth century” that was removed from the issues of the earlier period. Whether one views the period from 1660 onward as part of the seventeenth century or as the beginning of the eighteenth has conditioned treatment of political life. The survey of the various types and venues for political expression in the Restoration era as presented here is consistent with those historians and literary scholars who point to the conflictual nature of Restoration religious and political expression and the political engagement of Restoration literary men. Some revisionists, as we have noted, employ a three kingdom or “British” approach. Because this shift in focus raises questions about the creation of a British state and the origins of a British culture,4 it also touches on the characterization of England’s political culture. Despite the very considerable sympathy for Scottish Protestants expressed during the Elizabethan era, none of the channels for political expression we have examined exhibit a sense of belonging to something larger than England. There was virtually no support for James I’s plan for an Anglo-Scottish union, a plan that was widely viewed as a threat to the English common law. Whatever sense of kinship with their Scots ally was expressed during the early years of the civil war rapidly diminished when the Scots pressured for the establishment of a Presbyterian system along Scottish lines. Nor did the proposed union of 1654 resulting from Cromwell’s military victories in Scotland attract much favorable commentary on a closer connection with the Scots.5 The legal genres constantly portrayed the common law as a peculiarly English institution that had grown out of English custom and tradition, and the legal profession provided little encouragement to alter that view. English historical writing, which featured enmity and constant warfare with Scotland, also would have made it difficult to construct a common “British” past. Despite a common Protestantism and common anti-Catholicism, the English media continued to emphasize the uniqueness of English law and institutions.6 Our survey of the forms of political expression does not suggest an era of harmony and consensus but one in which political ideas were intensely



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debated in a substantial number of formats. Although there are some periods in which political differences were not as evident as in others, religious and political tensions were frequently expressed in whatever forms were available. There were few years that can be said to have been without substantial differences of opinion on matters relating to religion and politics, and several that were characterized by vociferous debate.

Censorship and Control Questions relating to censorship and control have occupied scholars for many decades. The chapters dealing with particular genres have noted varying levels of government censorship and other control. Throughout the period English governments attempted to control printed material designed for public consumption, as well as oral and manuscript communication thought to be critical of individual members of the government or the government as a whole. A number of largely uncoordinated measures and institutions were involved. These include the Stationers Company, the Master of the Revels, the Lord Chamberlain, the Bishop of London and his deputies, Star Chamber, High Commission, the Surveyor of the Press, the common law courts, licensing acts, royal declarations and informers. Some dealt only with dramatic productions, others with individual or seditious libels or the content of newspapers or sermons. Writers and speakers were occasionally called before the Privy Council or faced charges in Star Chamber. As a result some writers turned to anonymous or pseudonymous publication or circulated written material, often poetry or “libels,” in manuscript to a circumscribed circle of friends and acquaintances. Manuscript newsletters, though produced in multiple form, were less bothered than printed news because not subject to the provisions of the licensing act. When what was to be printed was too controversial or unlikely to be licensed, there was sometimes recourse to unlicensed printing or publications with a real or fictional foreign place and date of publication. Evasions of government institutions of control were not infrequent, though presses were sometimes destroyed and their production confiscated. Authorial difficulties often depended more on the particular political circumstances than what was actually written. This is particularly true because of the habit of thinking in terms of parallels, which might be obvious in some circumstances and irrelevant in others. We have seen that Hayward’s treatment of the history of Henry IV landed him in the Tower because of

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the perceived parallel with Elizabeth and Richard II and his alleged association with the Earl of Essex. Hayward was released when James I came to the throne. The offending history no longer offended and was often reprinted. Censorship and punishment were real but were triggered by particular circumstances at particular moments. The common practice of parallels could be used by authors to say what couldn’t be said directly, but they also allowed censors and others to see parallels where none had been intended. While it is difficult to say with confidence how much control actually existed, we do know that the quantity of published material and the range of topics relating to politics increased enormously whenever government control was weakened or disappeared. The two periods of greatest quantity of publication and the most vociferous public debate were the 1640s, when both government and the licensing system collapsed, and the period in the late 1670s, when the licensing act temporarily lapsed.7 During the period of its abeyance, the government employed prosecutions for seditious libel to harry the Whig press. Neither the publication frenzy of the 1640s nor that of 1678–82 should be viewed as evidence of conscious movements in behalf of free speech or a free press. Looking at the totality of what was printed over the whole period, we find a moderately effective but intermittent control regime that nevertheless permitted a huge quantity of both licensed and unlicensed material to circulate. The question of repression and control of expression, however, cannot be answered entirely in terms of control of printed material. Political culture was not shaped entirely by what was printed. Some forms of writing were more likely to be distributed to relatively small circles of people, often in manuscript form, or what has been called “scribal” publication. There were also privately distributed subscription newsletters that were not regulated by the licensing system and private letters exchanged with family members and friends. Much of what circulated in nonprinted form has disappeared or has yet to come to light. Given that some forms of printed material currently exist in a single copy, available only as a result of the collecting habits of a few individuals, we can only assume that most of what circulated in nonprinted forms has been lost. Gossip, rumor and private discussion relating to political events and personalities were also part of the political culture. Oral communication involved news and was a source of both political information and disinformation. It purveyed political messages that often escaped public control. Group singing of ballads or groups offering toasts were common. Eco-



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nomic and political matters were topics of discussion at the Exchange and later in coffee houses. The pulpits poured forth hundreds of sermons, only a small proportion of which have been preserved. Most were no doubt devoid of political matter, but some sermons freighted with politics resulted in preachers losing their posts. Some controversial clerics were required to answer for their sermons by their bishops, by High Commission, or later by parliamentary commissions. Some were protected by lay patrons and were, therefore, less controlled by governmental or ecclesiastical authorities. The government no doubt would have preferred sermons emphasizing the duty of obedience rather than claims of conscience, yet both were heard by English audiences. Authorities also no doubt would have preferred discussion to take place using the terminology of the organic body politic rather than the more individualistic oriented discussions of contract, or conscience, but both rhetorics circulated. While individual writers and printers were forbidden to publish certain kinds of material and might be punished for doing so, control was never great enough to shut off voices that differed from governmental or ecclesiastical authorities. The threat of punishment was usually present, but relatively few were actually punished. On the issue of censorship and control, this study suggests that there was a substantial but intermittent level of government exercise of control that was only modestly effective.

The Public Sphere Historians and literary scholars of early modern England have been attracted by Jürgen Habermas’s notion of a “public sphere of rational-critical debate.” Several have attempted to apply the concept to various periods of English political life. Habermas, who developed the concept to depict a style of political life associated with an emerging bourgeois phase of capitalism, suggested that this condition first appeared in eighteenth-century England and owed a great deal to the development of journalism and the coffee house. His concept distinguished the bourgeois public sphere from popular culture and from mass culture.8 The Habermasian public sphere, also distinguished from the sphere of the state, is characterized by rational debate and discussion of public issues.9 Given the large number of venues and genres available for political expression before the eighteenth century, historians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries turned quite naturally to the question of whether the

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Habermasian concept of the public sphere was applicable to earlier periods of English political life.10 There are now dozens and perhaps even hundreds of books and articles that make use of the concept. For the most part, those who have adopted or adapted the concept of the public sphere for pre–eighteenth-century England have dropped the identification with bourgeois culture or a bourgeois stage of society. When that element is eliminated it becomes easier to apply the concept to pre– eighteenth-century England, for few scholars currently would characterize the period 1558–1688 as one exhibiting a bourgeois polity. Viewing a more general polity has also made it possible to consider popular politics and socioeconomic groups excluded from the narrower Habermas concept. Many proponents of the public sphere concept thus include popular demonstrations and mass petitioning, largely ignoring questions of economic class. By and large those attracted to the public sphere concept have been sympathetic to postrevisionist approaches that view early modern English political life as more conflictual than harmonious. Yet relatively few have concerned themselves with the question of whether the communication and debate can be described as rational, or discussed how one should view debate and argument that grew sufficiently heated to verge on physical violence or sufficiently dangerous to result in prosecutions for seditious libel or treason. Should mass petitioning and other crowd activity that lead some to fear violence be treated as evidence for the emergence or existence of a rational public sphere, or evidence for its disintegration into physical confrontation and civil war? For the most part those interested in the emergence of a public sphere do not treat the government itself as a significant participant in the debates, though the government licensing system is often mentioned as a constraint on debate. They have not typically seen the government as simultaneously an active participant in public debate and as deploying a variety of institutional and legal procedures to control what at a particular moment was considered politically sensitive material. Yet the government did speak by word and deed and by its very existence, as well as sporadically by control. The public sphere concept has been applied to the controversies in the Elizabethan and early Jacobean era between Roman Catholics and Protestants and those surrounding the Earl of Essex and the scandalous Overbury affair. The lively debates of the 1620s and the emergence of the news media have also been suggested as marking its emergence.11 Not surprisingly, several of those studying the lively news culture and energetic pamphleteering of the civil war era have found the concept of the



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public sphere appealing. The 1640s stand out as a time of intense political and religious controversy, much of it carried out in print. David Zaret argues that the public sphere emerged in the mid-seventeenth century with a revolutionary transformation of communicative practices. He points to the proliferation of innovative print media, especially news, polemical pamphlets and printed petitions and suggests that they were a font of democratic ideas. Zaret also points to the role of commerce in creating the public sphere and argues for its permanence after the Restoration.12 Alexandra Haclaz and Joad Raymond have also considered the notion of the public sphere in relation to printed news media. Raymond has been quite critical of Habermas’s ideas about the role of newspapers in the emerging public sphere.13 Jason Peacey’s investigation of the use of propaganda to mobilize public opinion and justify public actions has led him to reject the notion of a revolutionary-era public sphere because of Royalist opposition to public debate, parliamentary efforts to regain strict control of the press and because so much of what was published was deliberate distortion.14 The explosion of pamphlets and other controversial genres as well as mass petitioning and pope burning processions in the period 1678 to 1681 has also been offered as marking the time of emergence of the public sphere. There is emphasis on the greater ease of publication made possible by the temporary lapse in the Licensing Act. However, in examining the period, Mark Knights is critical of the application of the Habermasian concept because of widespread aims of misinformation and other deviations from the norm of rationality.15 Although Brian Cowan is critical of those who have “relentlessly sought to push back the point at which one can trace the emergence of a distinct sort of public sphere,” he nevertheless recognizes the existence of a communicative sphere that was public, popular, and critical, public because it directed arguments to an anonymous audience of readers; popular in terms of authorial presumptions about the social composition of readers, critical because the imposition of dialogic order on political conflict supplied readers with reasons and textual evidence for adjudicating rival political claims.16

The question of the public sphere has also stimulated interest in the concept “public” as a “national imagined community,”17 as well as the concept of multiple publics rather than a general public.18 Examples of one public among many might be a coffee house public with its emphasis on news, or the court, though courtiers were less likely to express themselves in print than other subcultures. Peter Lake and Steven Pincus have offered a wide-ranging reinterpreta-

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tion of the public sphere that rejects the revisionist, court-centered, nonconflictual vision of the pre–civil war English polity. They introduce the idea of a century-long post–Reformation era public sphere spanning the roughly one hundred years between the 1530s and the 1630s and characterized by religious conflict. They emphasize the argument and propaganda surrounding the refutation of Catholicism and the transformation of local private complaints to Parliament into more general ones. They characterize the period as one of multiple public spheres, or as a “sort of public sphere.” The civil war era, central to the argument of Zaret and others, is treated as a transitional moment characterized by new entries into the political arena and the far greater quantity of polemical propaganda and petitioning than the pre–civil war period. Now, they suggest, it is possible to speak of a “single unified public sphere.” They characterize the Restoration era as one in which the public sphere would “ebb and flow” and differentiate it from earlier public spheres because it featured greater emphasis on “political economy.” These were the years of the Popish Plot hysteria and the hotly contested issues of Exclusion and Protestant dissent, when the political discourse between Whigs and Tories was intense. The Tory slogan “41 is come again” is seen as at least partly responsible for the “ebb” that occurred in 1683. The public spheres considered by Lake and Pincus are considered short-lived and unstable. According to Pincus a “fully fledged” public sphere became a permanent feature of English public life only with the Glorious Revolution.19 An examination of the various channels or modes of political expression bears on a number of questions raised by the public sphere analysis. How much of the political culture is expressed in the media emphasized by those who have located public spheres in England? How much of that political culture involves other forms of expression and experience? Does use of the concept reveal something new about the nature of early modern English political life, or does it make understanding that political life more difficult? Although the formula of the public sphere has obvious attractions, it also presents some difficulties. The volume of publication during the 1620s, the 1640s and 1678–81 certainly merits emphasis, though the variation in the quantity of printed material was well known prior to the introduction of the language of the public sphere. Taken as a whole, the period under study here certainly contained an enormous amount of communication about public affairs. Some of that communication was aimed at and received by both the stalls and the pit, the very literate, the somewhat literate and even



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sometimes the nonliterate. There was an emerging sense of a general English public. The emphasis of public sphere proponents on publication rates as the key signal of heightened public concern, however, tends to obscure central aspects of the period. For instance, religious controversy suffused the entire period, not just the decades marked by extremely high rates of published religious material. The 1630s, for example, recorded relatively few publications, but public concern with religious and ecclesiastical issues ran very high. If there had not been such concern, why would there have been such intense religious debates preceding and during the civil war era? The period 1683–88 represents a low point with respect to numbers of printed publications but was nevertheless a time of heightened concern about the fate of the established church and Protestant dissent and the intrusion of Catholicism into important aspects of public life. Publication rates are important but can be somewhat misleading as an index of public interest in politics. Habermas’s public sphere is not only public, but also one of relatively rational, tolerant discourse. The political culture of England that we have examined centered on bitterly disputed questions of what the fundamental political and religious establishment of the nation should be. Much of the Protestant-Catholic polemical exchange and the intra-Protestant debate cannot easily be characterized as rational debate and discussion. These disputes were highly polemical, frequently pursued in abusive, even hysterical language and often motivated by and engendering fear: fear of revolution, treason, regicide, papist and Jesuitical plots; fear of intervention by Spain and then France, fear of the demise of Parliament, rebellion in Ireland or the dominance of one religious practice to the exclusion of all others. Much of the discussion was aimed not at accommodation but at the extirpation of the opposition. Criticism of the Duke of Buckingham, Archbishop Laud, Strafford, Charles I, the Earl of Shaftesbury and other prominent political figures was more often than not expressed in vitriolic and vituperative language. Laud, Strafford and Charles I were executed as well as criticized, and Shaftesbury, Russell and Sidney were charged with treason. The literary “character” and ghost dialogues were not fair, nor were they meant to be. Nor was discussion surrounding the trials of Essex, Raleigh, Charles I, the Popish Plotters or Lord Russell. Ridicule and hyperbole characterized much of the Restoration exchange of views with frequent accusations of traitor, papist, hypocrite, rebel or regicide. The periods when public debate peaked and were least controlled by government were those of the most accusations of misinformation and lack of credibility. Increased communi-

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cation and circulation provided increased information and debate but also with increased suspicion of misinformation and heightened suspicion of those who engaged in debate. The periods when public debate was fiercest and least controlled, the 1640s and 1678–82, can be characterized as ones of rational discussion only with great difficulty.20 During the 1640s political differences resulted in the forceful expulsion of a large number of members of Parliament, the execution of the head of state and his chief ministers, prosecution of the king’s judges, the ejection of a substantial number of clergymen from their livings, appropriation of Royalist property and exile for many of the king’s followers. It is questionable whether a debate over issues so intense as to result in regime change by military means is best viewed as one of rational discussion. Rather it was one conducted by both pen and sword and one in which the victor was determined by military force. It was an incredibly lively period accompanied by hundreds, if not thousands, of items pouring from pens, presses and throats, but these lively and vigorous debates were pursued too combatively to be considered quite rational. The debates were intense, so intense that the success of one position was often accompanied with the desire for the punishment or even the obliteration of one’s opponents. It is interesting in this context that Lake and Pincus identify the first French public spheres not only with times of greatly increased controversy over religion and politics but also with times of civil war, the breakdown of the French polity and considerable loss of life.21 The 1678–82 period in England is a similar period of publishing opportunity identified with the public sphere. It too was characterized by debate so intense that it can only with difficulty be labeled rational. Participants on one side were subject to charges of seditious libel and even treason. Some, like the Whig leader Shaftesbury, felt it necessary to flee the country. It is no wonder that many participants preferred anonymous publication. Fear that the intensity of debate might again lead to the end of political peace helped to produce the complacency with which the public accepted the succession of James II. During the periods that have most often been treated as exhibiting the public sphere, we are confronted with very high levels of discussion, debate and publication but high levels accompanied by violence or the expectation of violence. Those who employ the concept of the public sphere focus primarily on printed material. Even among published works, however, they tend to ignore historical and travel writings that had significant political content. A



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more complete survey of political genres also shows the importance of the private letter, manuscript newsletters, the circulation of manuscript poems and libels and other nonprinted formats. Sermons and trials seen, heard and reported in print must be added to this mix. Coffee houses are often mentioned in connection with the public sphere, but other venues of verbal communication are neglected. Given Habermas’s emphasis on the role of the coffee house in creating the public sphere, it is hardly surprising that Steve Pincus and Brian Cowan, the most prominent historians of coffee house culture, have become engaged in examining the public sphere concept.22 Although the development of the coffee house was of obvious importance, there is no reason to believe that talk and the exchange of information at Paul’s Walk, the Exchange and the assizes or in inns, taverns and ale houses was less important. We simply have a great deal more information about coffee houses, much of it derived from hostile sources. Emphasis on published materials naturally leads to a vision of a general, rather homogenized “reading public.” Once the full range of paper-based and non-paper-based venues is taken into account, audiences can be seen as relatively fragmented and often stratified, many different publics rather than a single one in a single sphere. Nonverbal forms of communication were also significant forms of public expression that mark England’s political culture. The celebration of Gunpowder Day and Elizabeth’s coronation anniversary and visible symbols of affiliation such as the wearing of ribbons or the possession of prints of Elizabeth or Charles II testify to political interest in political matters. Some of these occurred during periods of particularly active partisan debate, others did not. The dismissal of dissenting preachers, the outlawing of dissenting congregations and the exclusion of Roman Catholics from office holding, certainly sent clear messages. While many army recruits of the civil war era may not have been deeply politically committed, the officers of both sides were, and their political views and commitments were expressed by actions as well as words. The political involvement of the parliamentary army, which itself became a venue for political debate, does not easily fit into a conceptualization of a single public sphere in England. Nor does the public sphere vision easily accommodate political behaviors such as the self-exile or retreat from public life experienced by considerable numbers of politically concerned persons. Focus on the concept of a public sphere that features a high level of printed news and pamphlet controversy also directs attention away from England’s institutional framework. Parliament is not often featured in discussion of the

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public sphere. Meetings of Parliament themselves generated political interest, often raising hopes for some kind of political result. They were occasions when local grievances collectively made a dramatic impact on a wider public. More channels, more senders, more audiences, indeed there were, but the England we have examined appears to be far from the Habermasian ideal of a relatively unified public sphere of rational political discourse. Indeed if what concerns us is a public sphere in the sense of a sphere of peaceful discourse as an alternative to civil strife, we are left with a puzzling situation. The two periods which, in terms of the quantity of communication experienced, might most appropriately be labeled as experiencing public spheres are the very periods in which high levels of communication either led to a breakdown of civil society or to great fears that it would break down. The first period resulted in the destruction of the institutional forms of government, armed conflict and an eruption of dissident religious and political activities from groups that had not formerly participated in political life. The second period, while not as destructive to the institutional fabric, exhibited high levels of uncivil, irrational political discourse and hysterical accusations of treasonous plots.

The Government, Political Culture and the Public Sphere Casting a wide net for genres also sheds much light on an aspect of political culture that has not been the subject of much scholarly analysis, the role of government in creating and constraining that culture. In nearly every form of expression we have surveyed, government officials and institutions were central players. The Crown, Parliament, the common law and prerogative courts, justices of the peace and lord lieutenants were major participates in shaping the political culture both through their own actions and through the commentary generated by those actions. The government provided information about the law and other forms of permissible and impermissible behavior through statutes, proclamations, homilies and news books. Information was channeled through assize judges who visited the countryside and justices of the peace who administered and adjudicated much daily activity. The power and authority of the state might also be displayed when individuals were prosecuted for treason or seditious libel. Governmental authority, royal and parliamentary, initiated national fasts and celebrations. The state’s majesty was displayed in ceremonies, progress-



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es and on coins. Most of the time the coin’s face was that of the monarch, but Parliament’s power and authority might also be displayed. Government officials were recruited to explain and justify government policies to the public. Government also entered the political arena as a partisan. It defended itself from critics of political trials. It sponsored publications dealing with the French civil wars as a means of creating support for French Protestants. The Crown’s view of parliamentary action and inaction was communicated when royal speeches to Parliament were printed for public consumption. On numerous occasions, and in an array of genres, the Crown sought to explain and publicize its actions, such as dismissing Parliament. Government or members of government patronized the drama, and little of what was presented on the stage was likely to be offensive to it. Many poets, dramatists, historians and polemicists were co-opted to promote government policies. From the civil war onward governments sponsored news media and pamphlets. The newsbooks that emerged at the time of the civil war, often treated as markers for the emergence of a public sphere, frequently were produced by the government itself or by government-sponsored or government-patronized writers. The newsbooks and pamphlets of this era as well as those of the Restoration supported a considerable range of views. Some of those views were the government’s. If there was a public sphere, the government was part of it. English governments were not monolithic. Not infrequently some portions of the government were in conflict with others. The monarch and the Privy Council were not always in agreement. Privy Council members were often themselves at loggerheads and sometimes placed their respective views on foreign policy and other issues before a larger public. When once favored government officials were out of office or favor, they too used the available media. Royal favorites, such as the Duke of Buckingham, also sometimes reached out to the public promoting current policies or justifying past actions. Discussion over what authority the common law and prerogative courts might legitimately exercise appeared both within and without government circles. Given revolution and Restoration the Crown and Parliament alternated as government and antigovernment voices. During the Restoration governmental authority issued both the Declaration of Indulgence and the harsh legislative measures that nullified it. The Declaration was issued by the Crown, the countermeasures, to which the Crown reluctantly agreed, enacted by Parliament. Parliament was both an essential part of the state ap-

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paratus and a venue for critique. Its ambiguous role becomes clear in 1640, when Parliament, using the impeachment process, destroyed the most prominent governmental figures and eventually the Crown itself. Parliament soon became the government and took over the institutions for control of the press. A portion of Parliament was excluded as a result of Pride’s Purge and in a sense moved from government to nongovernment. Royalists, once part of the government, became writers and speakers against the regime. The Habermasian notion of a public sphere distinguishes clearly between government or state power and the nongovernmental, public sphere. In early modern England it is hardly possible to draw clear lines between governmental and nongovernmental participants in the wide array of political genres. The government was simultaneously the primary agency for controlling and censoring what might be distributed to the public and a major contributor to the publications and other genres that engendered public debate. Of course, like the governmental, the nongovernmental participants in public discourse were hardly monolithic. The clergy, who were among the most comfortable with the written and spoken word, provided countless sermons and numerous pamphlets and treatises on nearly all sides of nearly all issues. Their command of Scripture and control of the pulpit meant that their messages constituted a powerful and pervasive voice in the political communications of the day. Only a small proportion of their communications, whether in the form of sermons or private conversation, however, has left a material trace. Another professional group particularly active in the communication network that permeated English politics, lawyers, contributed to the legal language and legal issues that were so prominent in the polemical literature. Lawyers were more active than nonlawyers as speakers in Parliament. They drafted petitions, statements of grievances and legislation, and were prominent in discussions relating to the rights of Englishmen and the appropriate role of Parliament. Lawyers contributed to the politicization of England’s past, especially those portions that dealt with the ancient constitution, Magna Carta, the Norman Conquest and the origins of Parliament. There were also a growing number of communicators who might be said to write for the marketplace. Among them were the writers of commercial newsletters and newsmen, some of whom wrote for whatever government paid them. And there were the printers, booksellers and hawkers who distributed the printed word. The world of news, pamphlet and ballad required a complex commercial network as well as an intellectual one. Most



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writers still relied primarily on the patronage of the wealthy and powerful, but some could now look, at least occasionally, to the marketplace. Dramatists and poets wrote for patrons, including the Crown, for the market place, for party and for themselves. They produced laudatory poetry, masques and other entertainments for the court, and lord mayor’s shows, as well as privately circulated works. It is often difficult to distinguish the literary man from the government spokesman.

English Political Culture 1558–1688 This study has focused on the period between 1558 and 1688. The period prior to Elizabeth’s accession was preoccupied to a far greater extent with the question of whether England would become Protestant and less on what form of Protestantism should dominate. Only after the accession of Elizabeth did tensions between the royal prerogative and other concepts of law and the role of the judiciary become central issues in public debate. After 1688 the long anxiety about a Roman Catholic succession was removed. Foreign alliances with Roman Catholic states became less feared. Protestant dissenters were guaranteed the right to practice their religion. Parliament was called frequently, ending fears for its continued existence. Crown prerogatives were no longer hotly contested. Conciliar courts and ecclesiastical commission were a thing of the past. Changes in judicial tenure reduced the Crown’s ability to control the judiciary. New treason legislation provided greater protections to the accused. Patronage emerged as a central political issue. Norms of politeness became the standard for speech and writing.23 The Licensing Act lapsed permanently in 1695, ending prepublication censorship. Merchants and commerce played a greater role in public life. Government finance was altered so that borrowing on a large scale became possible, reducing Crown tensions with Parliament over taxation. Political parties became a normal part of the politics. Dismissal of chief ministers was less likely to result in accusations of criminal acts, impeachment proceedings or flight. Partisans continued to debate intensely, but differences were unlikely to result in civil war or radical change in religious arrangements. The tone of post-1688 political culture, which continued to exhibit a high level of news and information purveyed in a variety of genres, could not be mistaken for the more fraught decades of the civil war and Interregnum or that of 1678–82.

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The culture we have been examining by a tour through many genres and channels of political expression was one dominated by monarchy. For much of the period the English assumed they would be governed by some form of monarchy and debated what kind of monarchy best suited them. Even during the brief nonmonarchical governments of the civil war and Interregnum, support for republicanism was little in evidence. The creation of the Protectorate was itself a return to a polity that conformed to a monarchical model. Kingship was discussed in both theoretical and practical terms. Some favored theories of divine right, others a monarchy limited by law, contract, trust or coronation oath. The reach of the ruler’s prerogative powers and his relation to the law and to Parliament were persistently debated. Individual monarch’s personality and policy choices played a key role. The monarch’s personal abilities, marital status and marital choice, choice of advisors, vision of monarchical power, religious views, relations with Parliament and the judiciary, foreign policy goals, and willingness to deal directly with the public and greater or lesser employment of prosecutions for seditious libel and treason were principal issues. If monarchy was the main theme of the culture, religion ran a close second. The entire period is characterized both by a desire for religious unity and the inability to achieve it. Efforts to define, redefine and alter the legislatively established church shaped parliamentary politics, royal policy and a huge body of writing central to political life. Negative characterizations of lordly bishops, hypocritical Puritans, seditious dissenters and plotting papists are to be found throughout the period in a wide range of genres. Polemical writing on the most desirable forms of church polity, religious doctrine and religious practice was a constant. This was a religiously divided, fearful and contentious society. Protestantism was a central feature of English national identity despite the inability of Protestants to find common ground. The identification of England with Protestantism, and Roman Catholicism with both internal and external danger, was reinforced by revelations of real or imagined assassination plots, loyalty oaths, pope burning processions, sermons and national celebrations such as Elizabeth’s Accession Day and Gunpowder Day. Protestant commitment was kept vivid in national consciousness by the memory of the Protestant martyrs of Mary’s reign and in the intermittent treason trials of Roman Catholics throughout the period. It can be seen in the intense midcentury fears of an Irish uprising, the 1673 Test Act and in the Exclusion efforts of the Restoration era. There were major political concerns throughout the era about ensuring a Protestant succession, con-



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cerns that also resulted in controversy over the choice of appropriate marriage partners for rulers and their offspring. Both popular and elite media vilified the papacy. In the first half of the period Spain was identified as the most dangerous Roman Catholic polity, whose tentacles reached from the New World to the Netherlands and Germany. Later France was associated with “popery and arbitrary government” and feared in much the same way. Anti-Catholicism, both in terms of religion and geopolitics, was a pervasive theme in English political expression. The national culture was clearly a religious one. Concern with individual salvation was a constant feature of the entire period. The Old and New Testaments provided guides to both this life and the next. Events were often labeled mercies or judgments. Sermons were a ubiquitous feature of everyone’s life. Oath-taking under the threat of divine punishment was pervasive. Political life was suffused with religious issues. Toleration for Protestant dissenters was often discussed but rarely attempted. Even though proponents of toleration were vocal during the civil war years, Anglicans were then not permitted to worship freely. During the Restoration, when these ideas again were discussed, new legislation made the life of Protestant dissenters difficult. Toleration for Roman Catholics was anathema. The English were ambivalent about other Protestant countries, especially the Netherlands, which was admired by some for its religious toleration, trading successes and republicanism and vilified by others for the same reasons. At times the English aid to the Palatinate was often discussed. During the Thirty Years’ War the English were distressed when Protestant armies were defeated and delighted at their successes. Sympathy was expressed toward French Protestants during their religious wars of the sixteenth century and again when the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685. Should we think of England as having a national culture, a set of shared beliefs that Englishmen believed distinguished them from others?24 Can nationalism be said to have existed in the early modern era? Certainly Englishmen saw themselves as English and often expressed their sense of difference and superiority to other nationalities. The common law was held to be far superior to civil law. However difficult it might be to define English national feeling and self-image, neither the Scots nor the Irish could be fitted into the imagined community of English men and women. Being English involved a sense of having a shared past that involved a long line of kings, a parliament and the common law. Though the nature of that past was contested, there was a shared belief in the “rights of free born Englishmen,” derived from custom and long-standing legal tradition,

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national rather than universal in character, and protected by Magna Carta, the common law and at times by Parliament. Historical writing about England attracted large audiences, and at least an abbreviated version of the English past was widely known. Dramatists and poets made good use of the widespread interest in England’s history and contributed to the English sense of the national past. English audiences expected works to be printed in English or translated into English. English poets and other literary men increasingly treated their literary productions as equal to if not higher than other contemporary literatures. Poets used their gifts to praise, condemn and mourn their rulers, to support one or another concept of monarchy, and to favor one or another vision of England’s religion and England’s past. Many of the most admired poets combined poetry with political employment or political activism. Was this culture national in the sense of pervading all of England? Certainly local feeling remained strong. More Englishmen participated in town or parish government and had other experience with local legal institutions than sat in Parliament or the Privy Council. Yet many who never participated in elite politics or visited London were reasonably well informed about political issues being debated and discussed at the center. Parliamentary elections, petition drives, the assizes and royal visitations carried national concerns into the countryside, as obviously did the campaigns of the civil war. The culture we have been describing was for the most part London or metropolitan centered. Most printed and manuscript genres were produced in London and its environs. Printed newsbooks and manuscript newsletters had their origin in London and were distributed from there. Much discourse emanated from the court and Privy Council and the factions within it. Parliament and the law courts were to be found in nearby Westminster. Most printers, book sellers and licensers were located in London and its environs. St. Paul’s Walk and the Exchange and later the London coffee houses were centers of news and communication. London was the site of mass petitioning, numerous pope burning processions and the annual lord mayor’s shows. Sermons by England’s best known preachers came forth from London’s numerous churches, from Parliament and the court. Provincial sermons were far less likely to be printed. Ballads, broadsides and newsbooks were hawked in London and its environs before being distributed more broadly. Pamphlets, printed sermons, books of all kinds and other printed materials did move into the countryside through peddlers, the post and private transmission. All this communication was less available as the distance from London or the difficulty of travel increased. But



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England was a small country. London was a magnet for visitors who carried the London discourse home with them. Although much of what was produced in London circulated to the rest of the country, some cultural phenomena did not leave the metropolitan center. Court culture was largely confined to the court itself, though courtcentered poetry might be disseminated to a somewhat larger group. Much of the Royalist poetry of the civil war and Interregnum years was produced by former courtiers and those in exile. The masque, a cultural form associated with the court, did not travel and was produced and consumed by and for a small segment of the population. Yet when the royal court was revived during the Restoration, its greater informality reduced its separation from at least the surrounding metropolitan culture. Theater production was largely confined to the metropolitan area and reached a substantial portion of London’s population before the theaters were closed in 1642. Even London performances, however, had some impact beyond London because their audiences included many of the countless visitors who flocked to London for business and entertainment. Dramatic texts were often printed and reached an audience far more extensive than those who actually viewed the theatrical productions of the metropolis. Dramatic texts were read all over the country decades after their first metropolitan performances. Some institutions were simultaneously London-based and local in character. The meetings of Parliament at Westminster were a focal point of national culture, but parliamentary elections were local. Most members of Parliament were local gentry or others especially attuned to local interests and audiences. Local grievances often became the grievances of the nation. Although for much of the period parliamentary debates and deliberations were not available in printed form, knowledge of parliamentary activities was spread fairly broadly by private and commercial newsletters and word of mouth. The legal system too was both centralized and local in character. The law courts met in Westminster, but the use of local juries meant that decisions were reached in the countryside. Local grand jurors brought complaints and concerns to the attention of the traveling assize judges. Assize judges brought news and government policy to the countryside from the capital. Justices of the peace received directives from the center, which they carried out locally with varying degrees of energy and effectiveness. The whole system served as a two-way transmission belt of issues and norms between London and the countryside.

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The church too was both national and local, centralized and decentralized. National legislation determined official doctrine and practice, but sermons and religious practice varied quite considerably from place to place and time to time. The clergy were in theory regulated by the bishops, but local lay patronage often thwarted episcopal preferences. Clerical writing and preaching displeasing to the bishops was often available. Sermons by parish ministers, bishops, lecturers and dissenting ministers provided a varied fare across the country. In this London-based but nationally radiating culture, gossip, ballad singing and other forms of oral communication plus manuscript circulation, parliamentary debates, letter writing and other informal communication were important between Elizabeth’s reign and the end of James II’s. Although the quantity of printed matter circulating in England varied from decade to decade, there were none in which political material was entirely unavailable. The fairly high levels of literacy and the practice of reading aloud in family and other settings meant that printed works circulated quite broadly. Because literacy rates were higher in urban environments, and a considerable number of townsmen participated in local government and local politics, towns were likely to be politicized along a broader social and economic spectrum than were rural areas. One cannot help but be struck by the enormous quantity of material that was produced by those with fairly minimal education, especially during the revolutionary years. Given the opportunity, the English took up their pens and often sent what they had written to be printed. Ballads and broadsides throughout the period, and pamphlets and news accounts during the revolutionary period, indicate that pens were indeed as important as swords. There were an increasing number of printing presses and publications, although there were peaks and valleys in the production of printed material in part depending on the waxing and waning effectiveness of government licensing. As we have seen, governments themselves, as well as their attackers and defenders, were responsible for a good deal of the printed material. There was also a significant production of politically charged visual and aural events and objects, such as processions, portraits and prints, the reading of proclamations, attendance at celebratory bonfires, watching royal progresses and other ceremonies, the taking of oaths, the wearing of ribbons and the drinking of toasts. Ceremonial events such as coronations, which resulted in outpourings of congratulatory poetry, were part of the political culture, as were the annual changes of mayors in London and elsewhere. At the other extreme came publicly attended executions and the



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speeches of those to be executed. There were also visible signs of differing wealth and status in clothing, housing, material possessions and behavior that both reinforced hierarchical assumptions and demonstrated the very real changes in social and economic status. The English, and especially the literate English, became increasingly well informed about major political actors, events and polemic in other countries as well as their own. They not only had news of foreign countries but also possessed a number of frameworks into which to fit that news. One was the gridlike analysis developed in the widely popular travel literature of the day. This conceptual framework led stay-at-home readers to think in terms of geopolitics and natural resources, “strengths,” “weaknesses” and national “interest.” Another was the familiar categorization of monarchy, aristocracy, democracy and mixed government presented in the Greek and Roman heritage that was the common culture of the educated. The humanist education that so heavily emphasized the contributions of the Greco-Roman past was also an important feature of the political culture more generally. Translations and abridgements of classical works meant that even those without competence in Latin could share in its legacy. That legacy included an emphasis on service to the state. The classical tradition also transmitted many of the forms of poetry and drama used to express political ideas. The epic form remained the most valued kind of poetry and one that ideally was directed at honoring a national political tradition. This was also a law-oriented culture. Political expression was often couched in legal terms. Many genres featured references to or discussions of the royal prerogative, the rights of Englishmen and the importance of the common law. We have noted the politically ambiguous and often controversial status of the judiciary, as well as the use of impeachment to bring down judges and other prominent political figures. The period is punctuated by well-publicized treason trials. Trials that determined the legality of ship money and other impositions brought the decisions and the arguments of those cases to public attention and the judges who tried them onto the political stage. Offenders from the king downward were punished in public legal settings. The trials of Strafford and Laud and later those of Clarendon and Danby publicized the downfall of powerful political figures. Burton, Bastwick and Prynne became politically prominent as a result of libel proceedings in Star Chamber. Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney became heroes in the Whig pantheon after being tried and executed for treason. The demise of the monarchy in 1649, the most dramatic political event of the whole period, took the form of a trial.

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Although there was widespread admiration of the English legal system when compared with that of other nations, aspects of that legal system were periodically the focus of political debate. Legal issues relating to the Crown’s prerogative powers were fiercely debated. There were modest attempts to reform the law throughout the period and an explosion of law reform sentiment, often from radical political and religious groups, during the civil war and Interregnum. The most dramatic legal changes were the temporary abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords and the permanent abolition of the prerogative courts and the incidents of feudal tenures. This was a culture characterized by considerable division. Differences were expressed in a wide range of venues and genres. Given the deeply held views on many issues, unity and harmony remained elusive goals. Unity was the watchword, but debate and difference were the reality. During this era the English did not find the means of combining religious and political divisiveness with a confidence that the unity of the whole would remain. Early modern English men and, to a lesser extent, women knew a great deal about politics. They knew most if they lived in and around London, but a number of genres penetrated the countryside. They knew most if they could read, but readers and nonreaders alike were exposed to an array of verbal genres and learned through direct participation and/or observation of events, ceremonies and celebrations. The higher up they were in the socioeconomic scale the more knowledge was available to them in venues ranging from their own private houses to coffee houses. Nevertheless, the streets provided even the poorest with ballads and royal entries, and everyone who could read with handbills and posted materials. Manuscript circulation provided a relatively narrow audience with a great deal of news and opinion. The new media of the news letter, the news book, and empirical descriptive genres poured out information about events and institutions at home and abroad onto eager and relatively wide audiences. Just as there were a lot of genres, there was a lot of information about a lot of things, but a basic agenda of political concerns announces itself very clearly. First and foremost is the monarchy, which is at the center of political consciousness and genre content. Second, intimately connected and easily equal to the first, is religion. Third, and in a sense the product of the first two, is revolution or civil war, their dangers and attractions. Beyond these three, but typically closely related to them, are a welter of secondary themes ranging from foreign political and military news to the latest notorious Tiburn execution.



Conclusion

In short, the political culture of early modern England was not only rich in great ideas, something we have long known, but extraordinarily rich and varied in political communication, communication not only about ideas but also overwhelmingly about politically relevant events, conflicts, allegiances and institutions. And this communication was carried by a remarkably numerous and varied array of political genres, the central subject matter of this book.

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Notes

Chapter One 1. Given the Habermas emphasis on coffee houses, it is not surprising that the two most recent scholars of coffee houses have been concerned with the concept of the public sphere. See Steven Pincus, “‘Coffee Politicians Does Create’: Coffee Houses and Restoration Political Culture,” Journal of Modern History 67 (1995): 807–34; Brian Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). 2. David Randall, “Epistolary Rhetoric, the Newspaper and the Public Sphere,” Past and Present 198 (2008): 2–32. 3. Quoted in Ronald P. Formisano, “The Concept of Political Culture,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31 (2001): 399. 4. Like Geertz, James Clifford has moved in the direction of a more interpretive approach to culture. Clifford has drawn attention to the way in which individual anthropologists and anthropological schools have approached writing about and interpreting cultures removed from them in space and time. See James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). 5. For use by historians of the United States, see Formisano, “The Concept of Political Culture.” For Jack Greene the term “applies to that intellectual and institutional inheritance, which invariably conditions . . . all, even the most revolutionary and impulsive political behavior.” He contrasted it with the formal concepts of political theory and institutional development, suggesting that it involved the “shadowy cluster of assumptions, traditions, conventions, values, modes of expression, and habits of thought and belief that underlay those visible elements.” Quoted in ibid., 411. 6. See Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 7. See Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 8. See J. P. D. Cooper, Propaganda and the Tudor State: Political Culture in the Westcountry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003).

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Notes to Chapter One 9. See, for example, Thomas Fulton, Historical Milton, Manuscript, Print and Political Culture in Revolutionary England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010). 10. Steven Zwicker and Kevin Sharpe have been leaders in this development. See Steven Zwicker, Lines of Authority: Politics and English Literary Culture, 1649–1689 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker, Refiguring Revolution: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), Introduction; Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 11. See, for example, R. Malcolm Smuts, The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays in Politics and Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); Kevin Sharpe, “Political Culture and Cultural Politics,” Journal of Early Modern History 1 (1998): 344–68. 12. See Michael Hicks, English Political Culture in the Fifteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2002). 13. See, for example, Susan D. Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky, eds., Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to David Underdown (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). 14. Dale Hoak, ed., Tudor Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). “The difference between politics and political culture is essentially the difference between political action and the codes of conduct, formal and informal, governing their actions. . . . Ideally the two histories should be written as one political ‘reality.’” Ibid., 1. 15. See Conrad Russell, Parliament and Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); Conrad Russell, Unrevolutionary England, 1603–1642 (London: Hambledon Press, 1990); Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment; Peter Lake, “Retrospective: Wentworth’s Political World in Revisionist and Post-Revisionist Perspective,” in The Political World of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, 1621–1641, ed. J. F. Merritt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 16. Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 17. See Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton, “‘Studied for Actions’: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy,” Past and Present 129 (1990): 30–78; Kevin Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); Daniel Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). See also Fulton, Historical Milton; William H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995). 18. See, for example, David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 19. The lowest social group, composed of servants and poor husbandmen, it was believed had “neither voice nor authoritie in the common wealthe, but are to be ruled and not to rule.” William Harrison, The Description of England, ed. George Edelen (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 118.



Notes to Chapters One and Two

20. Women were largely illiterate, except for those living in London. See David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 129. Literacy rose from approximately 20 percent to 40 percent between 1600 and 1700. Cressy’s literacy figure was based on the capacity to sign one’s name, but many could read who could not sign their names. 21. Sir Thomas Elyot, The Boke Named the Governor (1531) (London: J. M. Dent, 1962), 1. 22. Harrison, Description of England, 149. 23. See Sir John Fortescue, In Praise of the Laws of England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 21; Sir Edward Coke, The Selected Writings and Speeches of Sir Edward Coke, ed. Steve Sheppard, 3 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2003), Calvin’s Case, 4b. 24. Gordon J. Schochet, Patriarchalism in Political Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1975); James Daly, Sir Robert Filmer and English Political Thought (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979).

Chapter Two 1. Michael Frearson, “The Distribution and Readership of London Corantos in the 1620’s,” in Serials and Their Readers, 1620–29, ed. Robin Myers and Michael Harris (Winchester: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1993), 17; Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 341–44. 2. Quoted in Joad Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks 1641–1649 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 1. 3. Fox, Oral and Literate Culture, 302–3, 348. See also Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 4. Ian Atherton, “‘The Itch Grown a Disease’: Manuscript Transmission of News in the Seventeenth Century,” in News, Newspapers, and Society in Early Modern England, ed. Joad Raymond (London: Frank Cass, 1999); C. John Sommerville, The News Revolution in England: Cultural Dynamics of Daily Information (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 5. Matthias Adam Shaaber, “Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England 1476–1622” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1929), 310–11. 6. Government control was formalized in 1538. See D. M. Loades, “Illicit Presses and Clandestine Printing in England, 1520–1590,” in Too Mighty to Be Free: Censorship and the Press in Britain and the Netherlands, ed. A. D. Duke and C. A. Tamse (Zutphen: De Walburg Press, 1987), 9–27. 7. F. S. Siebert, Freedom of the Press: The Rise and Decline of Government Controls (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1952); D. M. Loades, “The Theory and Practice of Censorship in Sixteenth Century England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 24 (1974): 141–57; Miriam Usher Chrisman, “From Polemic to Propaganda: The Development of Mass Persuasion in the Late Sixteenth Century,” Archiv fur Reformationgeschichte 73 (1982): 175–95; Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England

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Notes to Chapter Two (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984); Cyndia Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Cyndia Clegg, Press Censorship in Jacobean England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Blair Worden, “Literature and Political Censorship in Early Modern England,” in Too Mighty to Be Free, ed. Duke and Tamse, 45–62; Jason McElligott, “A Couple of Hundred Squabbling Small Tradesmen: Censorship, the Stationers’ Company, and the State in Early Modern England,” in News Networks in Seventeenth Century Britain and Europe, ed. Joad Raymond (London: Routledge, 2006), 85–102; Janet Clare, “Censorship and Negotiation,” in Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England, ed. Andrew Hadfield (London: Palgrave, 2001), 17–30; Cyndia Clegg, “Burning Books as Propaganda in Jacobean England,” in Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England, ed. Hadfield, 165–88; Debora Shuger, Censorship and Cultural Sensibility: The Regulation of Language in Tudor-Stuart England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 8. Libels were prosecutable if “by scoffing at the person of another in rhyme or prose, or by personating them thereby to make him ridiculous.” William Hudson, A Treatise of the Court of Star Chamber, in Collectania Juridicae, ed. Francis Hargrave, 2 vols. (London, 1771–72), 100. See Philip Hamburger, “The Development of the Law of Seditious Libel and the Control of the Press,” Stanford Law Review 37 (1984–85): 661–76; Pauline Croft, “Libels, Popular Literacy and Public Opinion in Early Modern England,” Historical Research 68 (1995): 266–85. Star Chamber heard almost six hundred libel cases during James’s reign. Debora Shuger suggests that libels that damaged personal honor were the government’s primary concern and that there was little censorship of ideas. Shuger, Censorship and Cultural Sensibility. 9. Fox, Oral and Literate Culture, 325, quoting a 1608 Star Chamber case. 10. See David Randall, “Epistolary Rhetoric, the Newspaper and the Public Sphere,” Past and Present 198 (2008): 3–32. 11. See Barbara J. Shapiro, A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 86–104. John Sommerville found twenty-seven newsbooks containing the word “true.” Sommerville, The News Revolution in England, 124. Nigel Smith distinguishes two kinds of journalism, one plainly expressing matters of fact; the other was a bantering, ridiculing and polemic variety. Literature and Revolution in England, 1640–1660 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 54–69. See also B. Dooley, “News and Doubt in Early Modern Culture, or, Are We Having a Public Sphere Yet?” in The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, ed. B. Dooley and S. A. Baron (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 275–90. 12. Shaaber located twenty-seven items on the Northern rebellion. Shaaber, “Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England,” 114–16. See also Peter Lake, “The Politics of ‘Popularity’ and the Public Sphere: The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth Defends Itself,” in The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, ed. Peter Lake and Steven Pincus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 70, 72, 74. 13. A Declaration of the Just Causes Mooving her Majesties to Send a Navie, and Armie to the Seas, and Toward Spain (London, 1597); Henry Savile, A Libell of Spanish Lies (London, 1596). 14. Shaaber, “Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England,” 123–25, 169–72;



Notes to Chapter Two

Lisa Ferraro Parmelee, Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1996). Paul Voss estimates seven to eight hundred copies printed, yielding over forty thousand in circulation. Elizabethan News Pamphlets: Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe and the Birth of Journalism (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2001), 1, 18, 38, 43. French resistance pamphlets such as Franco-Gallia or the Vindiciae contra tyrannos were not circulated. See J. P. Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots: Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640 (London: Longman, 1999). 15. Croft, “Libels, Popular Literacy and Public Opinion in Early Modern England,” 265–74. 16. David Dean, “Public Space, Private Affairs: Committees, Petitions and Lobbies in the Early Modern English Parliament,” in Parliament at Work: Parliamentary Committees, Political Power, and Public Access in Early Modern England, ed. Chris Kyle and Jason Peacey (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2002), 169–78. 17. Quoted in Fox, Oral and Literate Culture, 340. 18. King James VI and I, Triplici Nodo, Triplex Cuneus. Or an Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance (London, 1607); King James I and VII, Premonition of his Maiesties, to all most Mightie Monarches (London, 1609). 19. Johann P. Sommerville, ed., King James VI and I: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 21–24, 181, 183, 184. 20. See Pauline Croft, “The Reputation of Robert Cecil: Libels, Political Opinion and Popular Awareness in the Early Seventeenth Century,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 1 (1991): 43–69; Croft, “Libels, Popular Literacy and Public Opinion in Early Modern England,” 275–85; Adam Fox, “Ballads, Libels and Popular Ridicule in Jacobean England,” Past and Present 145 (1994): 47–83; Alastair Bellany, The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 77–78, 80, 83. 21. Francis Bacon, “Essay on Sedition,” in The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding (London: Longman, 1861–74), vi, 407. 22. Francis Osborne, Works (London, 1673), 449–50. 23. Sir Thomas Overbury, His Wife with Additions of New Characters (London, 1615). 24. Elizabeth Read Foster, “The Procedure of the House of Commons Against Patents and Monopolies, 1621–1624,” in Law, Liberty, and Parliament: Selected Essays on the Writings of Sir Edward Coke, ed. Allen D. Boyer (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2004), 306. 25. Shaaber, “Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England,” 142–43. 26. At least six publications dealt with the assassination. D. C. Collins located 271 news pamphlets between 1590 and 1610. A Handlist of News Pamphlets 1590–1610 (London: South-west Essex Technical College, 1943). 27. Certain Letters . . . the passages of affaires in the Palatinate; Certain and True Newes from all the parts of Germany (1621); News of the present Miseries of Rushia (London, 1614). 28. For corantos, see Shaaber, “Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England”; Sheila Lambert, “Coranto Printing in England: The First Newsbook,” Journal of Newspaper and Periodical History 8 (1992): 3–13; Joseph Frank, The Beginnings

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Notes to Chapter Two of the English Newspaper, 1620–1640 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961); F. J. Levy, “How Information Spread among the Gentry, 1550–1640,” Journal of British Studies 21 (1982): 11–34; Frearson, “The Distribution and Readership of London Corantos in the 1620’s,” in Serials and Their Readers, ed. Myers and Harris, 17; Folke Dahl, A Bibliography of English Corantos and Periodical Newsbooks 1620–1642 (London: Bibliographical Society, 1952); Laurence Hanson, “English Newsbooks, 1620–41,” Library, 4th ser., 18 (1938): 355–84; Nicholas Brownlee, “Narrating Contemporaneity: Text and Structure in English News,” in The Dissemination of the News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe, ed. Brendon Dooley (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 225–50. 29. Abraham Holland, A Continu’d Just Inquisition of Paper-Persecutors (1615), in Frank, The Beginnings of the English Newspaper, 275; see also 276–77. 30. See Thomas Cogswell, “‘Published by Authoritie’: Newsbooks and the Duke of Buckingham’s Expedition to the Ile of Re,” Huntington Library Quarterly 67 (2004): 1–25. 31. Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), ed. Holbrook Jackson, 3 vols. (London: Everyman, 1932), 329. 32. James Francis Larkin and Paul L. Hughes, ed., Stuart Royal Proclamations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), I, 243. 33. Ibid., I, vi, 495–96, 519–21, 583–85, 599–600. See also His Maiesties Declaring, Touching his Proceedings in the Late Assemblie (1622), in James VI and I: Political Writings, 250, 262–63; Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 20; Cogswell, “Published by Authoritie,” 1–26. 34. Richard Cust, “News and Politics in Early Seventeenth-Century England,” Past and Present 112 (1985): 60–90. See also Harold Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); Sabrina A. Baron, “Manuscript News/Printed News: The Two Faces of Dissemination in Early Seventeenth Century England,” in The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, ed. Dooley and Baron, 41–56. 35. Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 676. See Tim Hagen, “Stop the Press! News, Politics and Popular Opinion in England, 1630–32,” unpublished paper presented at the 2002 Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies, 1. 36. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, ed. W. D. Macray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), I, 145–46. See Lamentations of Germany (London, 1638), with pictures “the more to affect the Reader”; Lacrymae Germaniae (London, 1638). Title page. 37. Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper, 93; Baron, “Manuscript News/ Printed News,” 43. 38. See Chris R. Kyle and Jason Peacey, “‘Under Cover of So Much Coming and Going’; Public Access to Parliament and the Political Process in Early Modern England,” in Parliament at Work, ed. Kyle and Peacey, 1–23; A Proclamation prohibiting the publishing, dispersing and reading of a declaration of remonstrance (London, 1626), 1; A Declaration of the Causes which moved his Majestie to assemble, and after inforced him to dissolve the last two meetings of Parliament (London, 1626), 4, 20, 26, 27.



Notes to Chapter Two

39. John Earle, Micro-Cosmographie (London, 1628), sig. 111K. 40. Elizabeth Read Foster, “Printing the Petition of Right,” Huntington Library Quarterly 38 (1974): 81–83. 41. His Majestie’s Declaration . . . of the causes which moved him to dissolve the last Parliament (London, 1628), 2, 3, 10, 12, 14, 18, 21, 23, 30, 32. 42. John Taylor, Wit and Mirth (London, 1626), title page. Others too commented on the “matters of consequence” and the “pro and conning” to be heard in bakehouses, barbershops and ale-houses. Common people were disputing about the “whole estate of the kingdom.” 43. J. P. Kenyon, ed., The Stuart Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 85–86. 44. Noah Millstone, “Evil Counsel: The Propositions to Bridge the Impertinancy of Parliament and the Critique of Caroline Government in the Late 1620’s,” Journal of British Studies 50 (2011): 813–39. 45. Arnold Hunt, “Licensing and Religious Censorship in Early Modern England,” in Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England, ed. Hadfield, 127–48. 46. A Remonstrance of Londons Occurrences (London, 1642), title page, A2–A4v. 47. Dahl, A Bibliography of English Corantos and Periodical Newsbooks, 223. Butter produced corantos until September 1641. It has been estimated that 250–850 copies of corantos were sold every week, or between 12,500 and 42,440 of each series of fifty issues. During the 1620s there was weekly postal service along London’s highways. James Raven, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade 1450–1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 59–60. 48. For Civil War and Interregnum news and newsbooks, see Shaaber, “Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England”; Frank, The Beginnings of the English Newspaper; Carolyn Nelson and Matthew Seccombe, British Newspapers and Periodicals 1641–1700: A Short Title Catalogue of Serials (New York: Modern Language Association, 1987); Sharon Achinstein, “The Politics of Babel in the English Revolution,” in Pamphlet Wars: Prose in the English Revolution, ed. James Holstun (London: Cass, 1992); Love, Scribal Publication; Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper; Dagmar Freist, Government by Opinion: Politics, Religion and the Dynamics of Communication in Stuart London, 1637–1645 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997); Joad Raymond, Making the News: An Anthology of the Newsbooks of Revolutionary England, 1641–1660 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993); Michael Mendle, “Grub Street and Parliament at the Beginning of the English Revolution,” in Media and Revolution: Comparative Perspectives, ed. Jeremy D. Popkin (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), 31–47; Michael Mendle, “De facto Freedom, De facto Authority: Press and Parliament, 1640–1643,” Historical Journal 38 (1995): 307–32; Michael Mendle, “News and the Pamphlet Culture of Mid-Seventeenth Century England,” in The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, ed. Dooley and Baron, 57–79; David Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Jason Peacey, “The Management of Civil War Newspapers: Auteurs, Entrepreneurs, and Editorial Control,” Seventeenth Century 21 (2006): 99–127; Raymond, News Networks in Seventeenth Century Britain and Europe; McElligott, “A Couple of Hundred Squabbling Small Tradesmen,” in News Networks in Seventeenth Century Britain and Europe, ed. Raymond, 85–102.

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Notes to Chapter Two Some scholars trace the origin of the Civil War serial newsbook to the manuscript newsletter, others to the corantos of the 1620s or to manuscript reports of Parliament proceedings. See Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper, 82–85, 102–6. 49. Peter Hinds, The Horrid Popish Plot: Roger L’Estrange and the Circulation of Political Discourse in Late Seventeenth-Century London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 9. 50. Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1641–43, 206, quoted in David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution, 1640–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 324. 51. The Poet’s Recantation (London, 1642), 1. 52. Quoted in Jason Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 326. See also Cressy, England on Edge, 110–20, 310–16. 53. For literacy, see David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 54. The Perfect Weekley Account (January 17–25, 1648). 55. Howard Robinson, The British Post Office: A History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948). 56. The practice was limited to the period 1640–42. See Sheila Lambert, “The Beginning of Printing for the House of Commons, 1640–42,” Library, 6th ser., 3 (1981): 43–61, 44, 57; A. D. T. Cromartie, “The Printing of Parliamentary Speeches Nov. 1640–July 1642,” Historical Journal 33 (1990): 23–44. 57. Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, I, 417; The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon (Oxford, 1827), I, 98. 58. See Kathleen Noonan, “‘The Cruell Pressure of an Enraged, Barbarous People’: Irish and English Identity in Seventeenth-century Policy and Propaganda,” Historical Journal 41 (1998): 151–77. 59. Michelle Anne White, Henrietta Maria and the English Civil Wars (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 97–98, 102–4, 122. 60. Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers, 48–49. A committee of the House of Commons considered the “best way of putting the public order and votes of the House in execution . . . publishing the said orders, votes and also the declarations of the House throughout the kingdome.” Ibid., 49. 61. Mendle, “News and the Pamphlet Culture,” 61. 62. See P. W. Thomas, Sir John Berkenhead 1617–1679: A Royalist Career in Politics and Polemics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); Sommerville, The News Revolution in England, 49; Lois Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature, 1641–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 63. Antidotum Culmerianum: or, Animadversions upon a late Pamphlet (Oxford, 1644), To the Reader. 64. The Kings Cabinet Opened (London, 1645). See also Cabala, Scrinia sacra Mysteries of State and Government (London, 1654). 65. Peacey, “The Management of Civil War Newspapers,” 107. 66. Frank, The Beginnings of the English Newspaper, 31, 43; Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper, 39, 196–200, 248.



Notes to Chapter Two

67. Moderate Intelligencer, March 6, 1645, 1; competitor quoted in Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper, 41. 68. The Great Assizes Holden in Parnassus (London, 1645). See Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper, 52, 522. 69. John Cleveland, “The Character of a Diurnal-maker,” in The Works of Mr. John Cleveland (London, 1687), 78–82; John Cleveland, A Character of a London Diurnall (London, 1644), 1, 2, 4. Mercurius Politicus was called “a Raviliak of the Pen.” The Character of Mercurius Politicus (London?, 1650). See also The Second Character of Mercurius Politicus (London, 1650). 70. Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper, 54, 60, 64. 71. Quoted in ibid., 69. 72. Amos Tubb, “Mixed Messages: Royalist Newsbook Reports of Charles I’s Execution and of the Leveller Uprising,” Huntington Library Quarterly 67 (2004): 59–74. 73. See Blair Worden, “Wit in a Roundhead: The Dilemma of Marchamont Nedham,” in Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to David Underdown, ed. Susan D. Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 301–37. 74. Mercurius Politicus, June 27, 1650, 49; ibid., July 4, 1650, 65; ibid., August 22, 1650, 183–85; ibid., November 21, 1650, 407. John Wallace identified seventy-two pamphlets. See John Wallace, “The Engagement Controversy 1649–1652: An Annotated List of Pamphlets,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library 68 (1964): 384–405. 75. Jason Peacey suggests that Nedham was so closely supervised by Secretary of State Thurloe that attribution of “authorship” to Nedham is problematic. Peacey, “The Management of Civil War Newspapers,” 113–14, 115, 117. 76. A Rope for Pol, Or, A Hue and Cry after Marchamont Nedham, the late Scurrilous News-Writer (London, 1660), sig. A2. 77. J. C. Muddiman, The King’s Journalist, 1659–1689: Studies in the Reign of Charles II (London: John Lane, 1923), 83, 84–87, 103–4. 78. G. I. Anzilotti, An English Prince: Newcastle’s Machiavellian Political Guide to Charles II (Pisa: Giardini, 1988), 156–57. For Nicholas, see Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers, 41 quoting CSPD, 1659–60, 275–76. For the king’s statement, see Nancy Klein Maguire, Regicide and Restoration: English Tragicomedy, 1660–1671 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 29–30. 79. Muddiman, The King’s Journalist, 30–31, 150. 80. Quoted in James Sutherland, The Restoration Newspaper and Its Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 2. 81. Quoted in Muddiman, The King’s Journalist, 163–64. Although L’Estrange reduced the size of newsbooks, complaints compelled him to increase it again. See also Harold Weber, Paper Bullets: Print and Kingship under Charles II (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996). 82. Joad Raymond, “The Newspapers, Public Opinion and the Public Sphere,” in News, Newspapers and Society in Early Modern Britain, ed. Joad Raymond (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1999), 119, citing CSPD, 1667–68, 102. See also Peter Fraser, Intelligence of the Secretaries of State and Their Monopoly of Licensed News, 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956).

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Notes to Chapter Two 83. Raymond, “The Newspapers, Public Opinion, and the Public Sphere,” 110, quoting CSPD, 1667, 415. 84. Quoted in John Spurr, England in the 1670s: “This Masquerading Age” (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 171. 85. Sutherland, The Restoration Newspaper, 18. 86. Quoted in Spurr, England in the 1670s, 164. 87. See The French Intrigues Discovered (London, 1681); Choice Remarks, on the most Observable Actions Performed by Lewis the XIV (London, 1681). See also Steven Pincus, “From Butter Boxes to Wooden Shoes: The Shift in English Popular Sentiment from Anti-Dutch to Anti-French in the 1670s,” Historical Journal 38 (1995): 333–61. 88. See A Relation of the most Material Matters Handled in Parliament Relating to the Religion, Property and Liberty of the Subject (1673). See also Votes and addresses to the Honourable House of Commons . . . made this present year 1673, concerning popery and other grievances (London, 1673). 89. See A Letter from a Parliament man . . . concerning the Proceedings of the House of Commons (London, 1674); Reasons for a New Parliament (London, 1676); A Seasonable Question, and An Usefull Answer (London, 1676); Some Considerations Upon the Question whether the Parliament is Dissolved by its Prorogation (London?, 1676); The Long Parliament Dissolved (London, 1676); Two Seasonable Discourses concerning the Present Parliament (Oxford, 1676); A Seasonable Argument to Perswade All the Grand Juries in England, to Petition for a New Parliament (Amsterdam, 1677). 90. Quoted in Hinds, The Horrid Popish Plot, 134. 91. See Two Speeches: I The Earl of Shaftsbury’s Speech . . . II The Duke of Buckingham’s Speech . . . (Amsterdam, 1675); The Duke of Buckingham’s Speech: . . . Proving that the Parliament is Dissolved (Amsterdam, 1677). 92. A Narrative of the Cause and Manner of the Imprisonment of the Lords (Amsterdam, 1677), 6–8, 18–19. 93. Votes of the House of Commons also included resolutions, petitions and committee reports. See Lois G. Schwoerer, “Liberty of the Press and Public Opinion: 1660–1695,” in Liberty Secured? Britain before and after 1688, ed. J. R. Jones (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 214. Winnington is quoted in Sutherland, The Restoration Newspaper, 21. 94. His Majesties Declaration . . . Touching the Causes and Reasons that Moved him to Dissolve the Two Last Parliaments (London, 1681); His Majesties Declaration . . . June the Second, 1680 (London, 1680), 8. 95. The bill was dropped. 96. A Pacquet of Advices and Animadversions . . . to the Men of Shaftsbury (London, 1676); A Second Pacquet of Advices and Animadversions (London, 1677). 97. An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England (Amsterdam, 1677), 3, 4, 14, 33, 35, 44–45. See Conal Condren, “Andrew Marvell as Polemicist: His Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government,” in The Political Identity of Andrew Marvell, ed. Conal Condren and A. D. Cousins (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1990), 157–87. 98. An Account of the Growth of Knavery (London, 1678). The tract appeared under several titles. See also Roger L’Estrange, Tyranny and Popery . . . a further account



Notes to Chapter Two

of the growth of knavery (London, 1678); C. B., An Address to the Honorable City of London . . . together with the True Character of Popery and Arbitrary Government (London, 1681). 99. A Collection of Speeches and Debates in the Honourable House of Commons relating to the Horrid Popish Plot (London, 1681). 100. Quoted in Raven, The Business of Books, 96. 101. Hinds, The Horrid Popish Plot, 9. 102. Roger L’Estrange, The Character of a Papist in Masquerade (London, 1681). 103. A Few Words among Many About the touch point of Succession (London, 1681); Some Observations upon the Tickling Queries, Whether the admitting of a Popish Successor, be the best way to preserve the Protestant Religion (London, 1681). Newsbooks labeled Protestant “expressed seditious principles,” used “specious Baits of Precedents and History, and desired rebellion and elective monarchs.” Some Observations upon the Tickling Queries, 12, 2. See Mark Knights, Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678–81 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); J. R. Jones, The First Whigs: The Politics of the Exclusion Crisis (London: Oxford University Press, 1961); O. W. Furley, “The Whig Exclusionists: Pamphlet Literature in the Exclusion Campaign,” Cambridge Historical Journal 13 (1957): 19–36; Tim Harris, Politics under the Later Stuarts: Party Conflict in a Divided Society, 1660–1715 (London: Longman, 1993), 81–82. 104. Tim Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration to the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 28–29. 105. Francis Smith, Clod-Pates Ghost (London, 1679), 5. 106. Quoted in Hinds, The Horrid Popish Plot, 14. 107. Roger L’Estrange, Narrative of the Plot (London, 1680), 4. 108. Henry Care, A Pacquet of Advice from Rome (London, 1679), 2–3. Care was tried in 1680. 109. The True Protestant Mercury (London, 1681), Preface to the Reader. See also The Royal Impartial Mercury (the first issue was June 9, 1682); The Domestick Intelligence: or News both from City and Country Impartially Related (1681–82). 110. Jane Curtis was the wife of Langley Curtis, publisher of Care’s Pacquet. Women were less likely to be prosecuted than their husbands because of their status as femmes covertes. See Paula McDowell, The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678–1730 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); Maureen Bell, “Women and the Opposition Press after the Restoration,” in Writing and Radicalism, ed. John Lucas (London: Longman, 1996), 39–60. It has been estimated that about 70 percent of the hawkers of London mercuries were women. 111. Quoted in Sutherland, The Restoration Newspaper, 165; see also 156–63. 112. The Observator, no. 152, June 10, 1682. See Geoff Kemp, “L’Estrange and the Publishing Sphere,” in Fear, Exclusion and Revolution: Roger Morrice and the Britain of the 1680’s, ed. Jason McElligott (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 67–90. Richard Baxter wrote that “the Observator, and such others, do with so great Confidence publish the most Notorious Falsehoods.” Reliquiae Baxterianae (London, 1697), III, 187. 113. Heraclitus Ridens, February 1, 1681, Issue no. 1. 114. R. B. Walker, “The Newspaper Press in the Reign of William III,” Historical Journal 17 (1974): 691–709, 692.

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Notes to Chapter Two 115. Ursa Major and Minor: Or, A Sober and Impartial Enquiry into those Pretend Fears and Jealousies of Popery and Arbitrary Power (London, 1681), 37. 116. Quoted in Spurr, England in the 1670s, 165. 117. Thomas Bayly, The Royal Charter Granted unto Kings by God himself (London, 1682), To the Reader. Bayly defends the divine right of kings and condemns the theory of deposing kings. 118. The Tears of the Press, with Reflections on the Present State of England (London, 1681), 3–4. 119. Knights, Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 156–92. 120. Muddiman, The King’s Journalist, 243. 121. E. Bohun, The Third and last Part of the Address to the Freemen and Freeholders of the Nation (London, 1683), 10–11, 21. 122. Quoted in Steve Pincus, 1688, The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 124. 123. A true and particular relation of the victory obtained . . . against the Turks at Barkam (London, 1683); Count Taafe’s letter from the Imperial Camp (London, 1684); An historical description of the glorious conquest of the city of Buda (London, 1686); A true and exact relation of the imperial expedition in Hungaria (London, 1685). News about imperial-Turkish conflict was also prominent in 1663–64. 124. See An Account of the Proceedings to Judgment against the Charter of the City of London (London, 1683); The Last Will and Testament of the Charter of London (London, 1683); The Judgement upon the Arguments, for and against the Charter of London Delivered at Westminster (London, 1683); A Defence of the Charter and Municipal Rights of the City of London (London, 1683); The Whigs Lamentation, or, The Tears of a True-Blue Protestant Dropp’d for the loss of their unforfeitable Charter (London, 1683); London’s Lamentation For the Loss of their Charter (London, 1683); The Case of the Charter of London Stated (London, 1683); The Proceedings upon the Debates, Relating to the late Charter of the City of London (London, 1684); London’s Lamentation: or, An Excellent New Song on the Loss of London’s Charter (n.p., n.d.). 125. Thomas Sprat, A True Account and Declaration of the Horrid conspiracy against the Late King (London, 1685). 126. A History of the New Plot (London, 1684), 3, 7, 14, 24–25. It characterized the bond of association as the “rankest Treason,” condemned “Ignoramus Juries,” the crimes of the Achitophel, Shaftesbury, and the London charter. See also The True Protestant Catechism, Explaining the Grounds of Methods of the True Protestant Plot (London, 1683); John Zeale, A Narrative of the Phanatical Plot (London, 1683). 127. Quoted in Pincus, 1688, 150–51, 153. 128. Sutherland, The Restoration Newspaper, 22; Pincus, 1688, 284. 129. Schwoerer, “Liberty of the Press and Public Opinion,” 192–231; Walker, “The Newspaper Press in the Reign of William III,” 691–709. 130. Brian William Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Steven Pincus, “Coffee Politicians Does Create: Coffee Houses and Restoration Political Culture,” Journal of Modern History 67 (1995): 812–14; Laurence Klein, “Coffeehouse Civility, 1660– 1640: An Aspect of Post-courtly Culture in England,” Huntington Library Quarterly 59 (1997): 31–51; Edward Forbes Robinson, The Early English Coffee House (Christchurch, Hants: Dolphin Press, 1972). For the public sphere, see Peter Lake and



Notes to Chapter Two

Steven Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 45 (2006): 270–92. 131. Quoted in Sommerville, The News Revolution in England, 77. 132. Roger North, General Preface and Life of Dr. John North, ed. Peter Millard (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 115. 133. Andrew Clarke, ed., The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary, of Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891), I, 423. 134. Quoted in Jonathan Barry, “The Press and the Politics of Culture in Bristol, 1660–1775,” in Culture, Politics and Society in Britain, ed. Jeremy Black and Jeremy Gregory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 53. 135. Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714, 6 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1857), I, 76. 136. The Character of a Coffee-House (London, 1665), 6. “Characters” exaggerated negative “characteristics.” 137. M. P., A Character of Coffee and Coffee-houses (London, 1661), 5–6. See also The Character of a Coffee-House (London, 1665), 2. 138. Robinson, The Early English Coffee House, 110, 126; see also 194, 225; A Character of Coffee and Coffee-houses, 1, 5–6. 139. Quoted in Robinson, The Early English Coffee House, 126, 110; see also 194, 225. See also Marksman Ellis, The Coffee House: A Cultural History (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 2004), 43; Samuel Butler, “A Coffee Man,” in Characters and Passages from Note-books, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), 208. Tarugo’s Wiles (London, 1668), a Restoration play, depicted the coffee houses as a mixture of merchants, gentlemen, and students, where even a baker and barber might mix. Sommerville, The News Revolution in England, 77, 79. See also Valerie Pearl, “Change and Stability in 17th Century London,” London Journal 5 (1979): 5–6, 13–20. Cowan and Ellis view the coffee house largely as a male preserve. Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee, 228–29, 247–54; Ellis, The Coffee House, 66–67. But see Pincus, “Coffee Politicians Does Create,” 815, 834. 140. Thomas Jordan, The Triumphs of London (London, 1675), 23. 141. John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Richard Barber (London: Folio Society, 1975), 15; Coffee-houses Vindicated (London, 1673). 142. Mercurius Infernus (1680). 143. Quoted in William Harrison Ukers, All about Coffee (New York: Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company, 1922), 59. 144. Ellis, The Coffee House, 65; see also 68–72. 145. The Character of a Coffee-House (London, 1673). 146. The Coffee Scuffle (London, 1662). 147. “The Dream of the Cabal,” in Poems on Affairs of State (London, 1697), I, 197. 148. White Kennet, A Complete History of England (London, 1706), III, 335, cited in Pincus, “Coffee Politicians Does Create,” 829. 149. Sommerville, The News Revolution in England, 79. 150. “The Dream of the Cabal,” 197. 151. News from the Coffee-House (London, 1667). 152. Jordan, The Triumphs of London, 22–23. 153. News from the Coffee-House.

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Notes to Chapter Two 154. A Satyr against Coffee (London, 1679), 1. 155. The Character of a Coffee House (London, 1673). Coffee houses, frequently the scene of public sales and auctions, were parodied in An Amsterdamnable Coffee House, where one could find for public sale “One Hobbs Leviathan . . . much studied by the late E. of S. in his Retirements, Teaching the reasonableness of Separation, and laying the foundation of Government in the People, valued above all the Fathers, to advance Atheists and Republicans” (n.p., 1684), 1. Also a “large Invisible Ring of Sir Tho. Armstrongs Engraved with Crownes and Scepters, with a large Chain of the Mobile to lead a fool by the Nose,” “Three Loyal Votes piping hot from the house of Commons, . . . One to exclude the lawful Heir, . . . [another] to make the King great by giving him no money, The third for Establishing the Church and Monarchy, by setting up Presbytery, . . . to advance the Good Old Cause.” Ibid., 1. 156. Quoted in Robinson, The Early English Coffee House, 159, 180. 157. Aubrey notes that Harrington’s Oceana was much discussed in coffee houses and “made many Proselytes.” John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. John Buchanan-Brown (London: Penguin, 2001), 146–47. 158. The Character of a Coffee House (1673). 159. The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon (Oxford: Clarendon Printing House, 1759), III, 675–78. 160. Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Barber, 131. 161. Ellis, The Coffee House, 91. 162. Roger L’Estrange, A Further Discovery of the Plot (London, 1681), 16; Roger L’Estrange, Observator, December 14, 1681. Cowan does not view coffee houses as centers of political opposition. Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee, 193. 163. The Loyal Protestants Vindication (London, 1680), 3. See also “The Case is Alter’d Now,” in Poems on Affairs of State, III, 378. 164. Quoted in Robinson, The Early English Coffee House, 174, 176. 165. Heraclitus Ridens, April 19, 1681. 166. Roger L’Estrange, A Word Concerning Libels and Libellers (London, 1681), 12. 167. The Character of a Coffee House (1665), 6. 168. Coffee-houses Vindicated (London, 1675). 169. Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Barber, 131. 170. Quoted in Pincus, “Coffee Politicians Does Create,” 832. 171. Robinson, The Early English Coffee House, 161; Pincus, “Coffee Politicians Does Create,” 821–22. 172. A Dialogue Between Two Horses in Poems on Affairs of State, I, 238. 173. The Coffee-house Vindicated (London, 1667); Sommerville, The News Revolution in England, 89; Ellis, The Coffee House, 86–89, 91–92, 94, 97–99. 174. Schwoerer, “Liberty of the Press and Public Opinion,” 212, citing the London Gazette. 175. Robinson, The Early English Coffee House, 178. 176. The Revolution of 1688 did not end government efforts to control coffee house discourse. 177. The Craftsman, October 4, 1729.



Notes to Chapter Three

Chapter Three 1. Chorographies included natural and civil information. The term “history” referred to past or present events and phenomena. 2. There is no mention of this tradition in J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie, eds., The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). But see W. H. Greenleaf, Order, Empiricism and Politics: Two Traditions of English Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964). 3. See Barbara J. Shapiro, A Culture of Fact: England 1550–1720 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999). 4. See Katherine Clarke, Between History and Geography: Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999); Cristiaan Van Paassen, The Classical Tradition of Geography (Groeningen: J. B. Wolters, 1957); Robert J. Mayhew, Enlightenment Geography: The Political Languages of British Geography 1650–1850 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). “Geographers” often dealt with “the Laws, Manners, and Customs of Nations, their Advantages and Disadvantages.” Ibid., 35. 5. Pliny, Natural History, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, 10 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979). 6. Strabo, The Geography, trans. H. D. Hamilton and W. Falconer, 3 vols. (London, 1854), I, 15–17, 18; II, chs. 2, 7. 7. See John Walter Stoye, English Travellers Abroad 1604–1667 (New York: Octagon Press, 1968); Charles L. Batten, Pleasurable Instruction: Form and Convention in Eighteenth Century Travel Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Justin Stagl, A History of Curiosity: The Theory of Travel 1550–1800 (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995); Sara Warneke, Images of the Educational Traveller in Early Modern England (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995); Joan-Pau Rubies, “Instructions for Travellers, Teaching the Eye to See,” History and Anthropology 9 (1996): 139–90. 8. “Memorial of instructions by William Cecil to the Earl of Rutland,” in Warneke, Images of the Educational Traveller, app. B, 295–98. See also David Potter, ed., Foreign Intelligence and Information in Elizabethan England: Two English Treatises on the State of France 1580–1584 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 5. Thomas Bodley also emphasized travel as a means of becoming employed “in the public service of the State.” Warneke, Images of the Educational Traveller, 46. Thomas Blundeville in 1574 suggested that information on trade, the public revenue, military forces and manner of government should be included in the histories of all states. See also Jonathan Haynes, The Humanist as Traveler: George Sandy’s Relation of a Journey (London, 1986); Anna Suranyi, The Genius of the English Nation: Travel Writing and National Identity in Early Modern England (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008); Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitanism in an Age of Expansion, 1560–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 16–46. 9. Francis Bacon, The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding (London: Routledge, 1905), IX, 17. 10. Francis Bacon, “Of Travel,” in The Essays, ed. John Pitcher (London: Penguin Books, 1985), 114. 11. Robert Dallington, A Method of Travel shewed by taking the view of France

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Notes to Chapter Three (London, 1604), unpaginated. See also Pierre d’Avity, The Estates, Empires and Principalities of the World, trans. Edward Grimstone (London, 1615). 12. Profitable Instructions (London, 1633), 82–85, 91–92, 95–96. See also Thomas Palmer, An Essay of the Meanes how to make our travilles, into forraine countries the more profitable and honorable (London, 1606). For government and law, see ibid., 99–103. See also Learned and Elegant Works of the Right Honorable Fulke, Lord Brooke (London, 1633), 296–97. 13. James Howell, Instructions and Directions for Forren Travell; Shewing [how] one may take an Exact Survey of the Kingdoms and States of Christendom (London, 1650), 2–5, 14, 66, 112, 117. One of the ten categories was “State and Government.” P. J. Marshall and Glyndwr Williams, The Great Map of Mankind: British Perceptions of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 45. See also John Evelyn, The State of France (London, 1652). 14. Edward Waterhouse, The Gentleman’s Monitor (London, 1665), 346–48. 15. William Ramesey, The Gentleman’s Companion (London, 1672), 55–56. 16. Jean Gailhard, The Compleat Gentleman (In the Savoy, 1678), 25, 26, 38, 57, 138–39. 17. Jean Gailhard, The Present State of the Princes and Republics of Italy (London, 1668), 2–3. 18. Stephen Rigaud, Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1841), II, 293. 19. John Locke, “Some Thoughts Concerning Education,” in The Educational Writings of John Locke, ed. James Axtell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 321–22; see also 402. See also Ann Talbot, “The Great Ocean of Knowledge,” The Influence of Travel Literature on the Work of John Locke ( Leiden, Boston, Brill, 2010). According to Robert Molesworth, “exact Accounts of the constitutions, Manners, and Conditions of other nations” were needed so their “good Customs” could “serve as Models” for England.” An Account of Denmark [1694] (London, 1738), Preface, 252–53, 258. 20. William Harrison, The Description of England, ed. George Edelen (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 149, 152–62, 169, 170–71, 180–94. See Stan A. Mendyk, Speculum Britanniae (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989). 21. Sir Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum, ed. Mary Dewar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 144. By 1643 there were eleven English editions. 22. Edward Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia (London, 1669). It was modeled on L’Estat Nouveau de France (Paris, 1661). Daniel Defoe characterized his Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain as “A Description of the present state of England.” 23. William Petty, The Political Anatomy of Ireland (London, 1691), “Advertisement.” 24. William Petty, The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, ed. Charles Hull, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899), I, 170–76. 25. A. M. Philopatris, Scotiae Indiculum: or the Present State of Scotland (London, 1682), Epistle Dedicatory. 26. Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955), 111–12, 258.



Notes to Chapter Three

27. Monsieur de Calliers, The Practice of Diplomacy (London: Constable and Company, 1919), 18, 39–45. See also Foreign Intelligence and Information in Elizabethan England; Phyllis Lachs, The Diplomatic Corps under Charles II and James II (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965), 42–43, 45; Peter Fraser, The Intelligence of the Secretaries of State and the Monopoly of Licensed News 1660–1668 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956); D. B. Horn, The British Diplomatic Service 1689–1789 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961). 28. Overbury, “Observations,” in An English Garner, Stuart Tracts 1603–1693, intro. C. H. Firth (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1964). Overbury discussed the reasons for Dutch success against Spain, the framework of Dutch government, the political influence of the towns and the administration of justice and finance. See also A Description of the Prosperitie Strength and wise Government of the United Provinces (London, 1625). 29. Sir William Temple, “A Survey of the Constitutions and Interests of the Empire, Sueden, Denmark . . . in 1671,” in Miscellanea (London, 1680), 3. 30. Sir William Temple, Observations upon the United Provinces (London, 1673), Preface. 31. Lachs, The Diplomatic Corps under Charles II and James II, 152. Temple’s Survey of the Constitutions and Interests of the Empire, Sweden (1671) was presented to the secretary of state. 32. William Aglionby, The Present State of the United Provinces (London, 1669) Preface, 153, 174–75. The Netherlands are characterized as having the most “Liberty” and “Equality” in the world. Ibid., 222–25, 246–48, 250, 252–54. See also Richard Peers, “Description of the Seventeen Provinces,” in The English Atlas (Oxford, 1680– 1683). 33. “Observations on the State of France, 1609, under Henry IV,” in An English Garner, 221–32. France’s strength is attributed to physical resources, the multitude of towns and places of strength, financial treasure, arsenals, the size of its army and the “best Generals of Christendom.” Ibid., 221–32. The French government kept the people under “an oppressing servitude” in the manner of Italian tyrants. Sir George Carew, Relation of the State of France, quoted in Noah Millstone, “Evil Counsel: The Proposition to Bridle the Impertinency of Parliament and the Critique of Caroline Government in the Late 1620’s,” Journal of British Studies 50 (2011): 813–39, 827. See also An Excellent Discourse upon the Now Present State of France, tranl. 1592. Dallington’s Survey of the State of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany (London, 1605) referred to the lamentable state of the populace and the rule of the grand dukes as “Despoticall.” The populace, however, remembered their “former libertie.” Ibid., 39–66. 34. Evelyn, The State of France, 12–16, 20–27, 38–42, 76–77, 83–85. See also John Lough, France Observed in the Seventeenth Century by British Travelers (Boston: Oriel Press, 1986). 35. Heylyn emphasized French tyranny, lack of liberty, decline of the Estates, and the misery of the peasantry. France Painted to the Life (London, 1656), 136–43, 214–19, 215, 217, 221–29, 231. 36. Martin Lister, A Journey to Paris . . . in 1693 (London, 1699), 2. Additions were made “conformable” to Chamberlayne’s Angliae Notitia. For Germany see William Phiston, The Estate of the Germaine Empire (London, 1595); Samuel Clarke,

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Notes to Chapter Three A Brief and yet Exact Description of the present state of the great and mightly Empire of Germany (London, 1664); Louis Dumay, An Estate of the Empire, or An Abridgement of the laws and government of Germany (London, 1676); Samuel Pufendorf, The Present State of Germany (London, 1690). James Howell’s A Discourse of the Empire of Germany (London, 1659) does not follow the grid. 37. Molesworth, Account of Denmark, 2. Molesworth describes Denmark as it was in 1672. 38. Ibid., 266, 268–69. See Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 358–61. 39. Molesworth, Account of Denmark, 233–38. 40. The Danish government attempted to have the publication suppressed. William King and Joducus Crull attacked Molesworth in Animadversions on a Pretended Account of Denmark (London, 1694) and Denmark Vindicated (London, 1694). Molesworth was a radical Whig. 41. Guy Miege, The Present State of Denmark (London, 1682); Gideon Pierreville, The Present State of Denmark (London, 1683). Sir William Temple thought the change from elective to hereditary monarchy was typical of most Christian kingdoms. Sir William Temple, Works, 4 vols. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), II, 218. 42. John Robinson, An Account of Sweden (London, 1683). Robinson was chaplain to the resident in Sweden. See also Bure Anders, A Short Survey of the Kingdom of Sweden (London, 1632). 43. Bernard Connor, The History of Poland . . . giving an Account of the Antient and Present State of that Kingdom (London, 1698), 2, 44, 212. 44. See Brandon Beck, From the Rising of the Sun: English Images of the Ottoman Empire to 1715 (New York: P. Lang, 1987), 35–38, 78, 79; Daniel Goffman, Britons in the Ottoman Empire, 1642–1660 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998). 45. There were eight editions by 1700. See Sonia Anderson, Consul in Smyrna: Paul Rycaut at Smyrna 1667–1678 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Daniel Goffman, Britons in the Ottoman Empire. 46. Giles Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth (London, 1591), 62. See also Sir Thomas Smithes voyage and entertainment in Russia (London, 1605). 47. See also A Relation of Three Embassies . . . to Muscovie . . . Sweden and . . . Denmark (London, 1660), a “survey” that treated “Under what Policy they live, and what of Government they had.” See also The Present state of Russia (London, 1671). A Brief History of Moscovia (London, 1682) contained “a relation of Manners, Religion and Government.” See also M. S. Anderson, Britain’s Discovery of Russia 1553–1815 (London: Macmillan, 1958), 14, 22–25, 28–30, 34–36, 39. 48. Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, 21–24, 87. See also Alvaro Semedo, The History of the Great and Renowned Monarchy of China (London, 1655); Francois Caron, A True Description of . . . Japan and Siam, trans. Capt. Roger Manley (London, 1663). 49. George Psalmanazor, An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa (London, 1704). 50. Laurence Echard, A Most Compleat Compendium of Geography . . . Describing all the Empires, Kingdoms and Dominions in the Whole World (London, 1691), 59, 205, 210–11, 222.



Notes to Chapter Three

51. See, for example, Pierre D’Avity, The Estates, Empires and Principalities of the World, which dealt “only with politicke and civile matters,” See also Bernard Varens, Geographica Generalis (Amsterdam, 1650); Peter Heylyn, Cosmographie in Four Books (London, 1652); Richard Blome, Geographical Description of the Four Parts of the World (London, 1680); Sieur Du Val, Geographia Universalis: The present state of the World; Giving an account of . . . The Strength and Government of each Polity and State enlarged (London, 1685); Samuel Clarke, A New Description of the World or a Compendious Treatise of the Empires, Kingdomes, States (London, 1689); Robert Morden, Geography Rectified: or a Description of the World, in all its Kingdoms, Principalities . . . Situations, Histories, Customes, Governments (London, 1680). See also Mayhew, Enlightenment Geography, 19, 26–29, 49–65; Lesley B. Cormack, Charting an Empire: Geography at the English Universities, 1580–1620 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 52. See D. Carey, “Compiling Nature’s History: Travellers and Travel Narratives in the Early Royal Society,” Annals of Science 54 (1997): 269–92. 53. Thomas Sprat, Some Observations on Monsieur de Sorbier’s Voyage into England (London, 1665), 60. 54. Oldenburg was ambivalent about whether “Moral and Political” information merited the attention of the Society. Carey, “Locke, Travel Literature, and the Natural History of Man,” Seventeenth Century 11 (1996): 268. 55. Robert Knox, A Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon [1681], ed. James Ryan (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1911), Preface by Robert Hooke, lxiv. Knox acquaints the reader with the “King’s way of Governing, Revenues, Military Strength, Wars.” Ibid., 33–60. Boyle’s General Heads for the Natural History of a Country (London, 1692) did not feature sociopolitical headings. But see John Woodward’s Brief Instructions for Making Observations in all Parts of the World . . . Natural and Civil, prepared at the request of the Royal Society (1696), 1, 9. Awnsham Churchill’s Collection of Voyages and Travels (London, 1704), I, lxxi, recommended observation of governments, princely courts, places of strength, trade, manufacturing and “power.” 56. Petty’s Political Anatomy of Ireland (London, 1691) included information on many of these topics. 57. William Petty, The Petty Papers: Some Unpublished Writings of Sir William Petty, 2 vols. (London: Constable and Co., 1927), I, 144, 175ff; Petty, The Economic Writings, I, 249. See Verbum Sapienti (appended to The Political Anatomy of Ireland); Henry Spiegel, The Growth of Economic Thought (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1971), 124–35. 58. John Graunt, Natural and Political Observations (London, 1662), 18, 35. He was uncertain “whether the information thereof be necessary to many, or fit for others, then the Sovereign, and his chief Ministers.” Ibid., 78–79. 59. (London, 1680). 60. For Defoe, see Ilse Vickers, Defoe and the New Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 61. Issues were dedicated to the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Henry Howard of Norfolk, Lord Arlington, Lord Ranleigh and Sir Joseph Williamson. 62. Howell, Instructions and Directions for Forren Travell, 2–4. See also Theophi-

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Notes to Chapter Three lis Lavender, The Travels of certain Englishmen (London, 1609), To the Reader; Warneke, Images of the Educational Traveller, 272; Obadiah Walker, Of Education Especially for Young Genlemen (Oxford, 1673), 192, 194. 63. Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia, To the Reader. 64. Calliers, The Practice of Diplomacy, 136. 65. Edmund Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne (London: Macmillan and Co., 1875–76), 158. 66. Bacon, The Essays, 146–55. See also “Of Empire,” in ibid., 116–17. See also Markku Peltonen, “Politics and Science: Francis Bacon and the True Greatness of States,” Historical Journal 35 (1992): 279–306. 67. Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, 16. 68. Petty, Economic Writings, I, 258–61, 263–313; William Petty, Political Arithmetick (London, 1690), 19–23; Petty, Petty Papers, I, 171–74. His “The Weight of the Crown” (1687), which discusses how to compute “the greatness, Force and Wealth of States,” emphasizes demography, agricultural production, money supply, the value of exported and imported goods and public revenue. Petty Papers, I, 264–65. 69. See also The State of France (London 1652). For the “greatness” of Venice, see Jean Gailhard, The Present State of the Republick of Venice (London, 1669), 5, 69; see also 19–71, 90, 168–69. 70. Included with Fulke Greville, The Life of the renouned Philip Sidney (London, 1652). See also William Constantine, The Interest of England how it consists in the Unity of the Protestant Religion (London, 1642); Marchamont Nedham, The Case of the Kingdom Stated (London, 1647); John Dury, The Interest of England in the Protestant Cause (London, 1659); Simon Ford, The Great interest of States and Kingdoms (London, 1646); Slingsby Bethel, Observations on the letter (London, 1673), reprinted 1689. See also Slingsby Bethel, The Interest of the princes and States of Europe (London, 1681); Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977); Steve Pincus, “From Holy Cause to Economic Interest: The Study of Population and the Invention of the State,” in A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration, ed. Alan Houston and Steve Pincus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 222–98. 71. Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, ed. J. Cope and H. W. Jones (St. Louis, MO: Washington University Studies, 1958), 419. 72. Aglionby, United Provinces, Preface, 7–10; Robinson, An Account of Sweden, 159–61, 165. 73. Calliers, The Practice of Diplomacy, 45–47. See also Sir William Temple, “Survey of the Constitutions and Interests,” in Miscellany; A View of the True Interest of the several States of Europe since the Accession of William III (London, 1689); Joseph Hill, The Interest of these United Provinces (Middleburg, 1673); William de Britaine, The Interest of England in the Present War with Holland (London, 1672). 74. Gulliver’s Travels also used present state and travel writing conventions.



Notes to Chapter Four

Chapter Four 1. Thomas Wilson, The Three Orations of Demosthenes (London, 1570), sig. BIv, quoted in Blair Worden, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 161. 2. Hugh G. Dick, “Thomas Blundeville’s ‘The True Order and Methode of Wryting and Reading Hystories’ (1574),” Huntington Library Quarterly 3 (1940): 155. 3. Phillip Styles, “Politics and Historical Research in the Early Seventeenth Century,” in English Historical Scholarship in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Levi Fox (Oxford: Dugdale Society, Oxford University Press, 1956), 49–72. Stow believed historical knowledge discouraged “unnaturall subjects from wicked treasons, pernicious rebellions, & damnable doctrines.” Summarie of the Chronicles of England (London, 1604), Dedication. 4. Sir Thomas North, trans., Plutarch’s Lives (1579) (London: J. M. Dent, 1898), Dedication, 2, 4, 11–12, 16, 19, 21, 22. 5. Pearsall Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1907), II, 494. 6. Quoted in Rebecca Lemon, Treason by Words: Literature, Law, and Rebellion in Shakespeare’s England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 39. 7. Richard Brathwaite, The English Gentleman (London, 1630), 228. Humphrey Gilbert thought it was necessary to apply historical knowledge “to the present estate and government of this realm.” Markku Peltonen, “Citizenship and Republicanism in Elizabethan England,” in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, ed. Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), I, 98. 8. Thomas Hobbes, trans., Eight Books of the Peloponnesians Warre (London, 1634), To the Reader. In the Leviathan Hobbes emphasized scientific principles over prudence gained by personal and historical experience. 9. J. G. A. Pocock, ed., The Political Works of James Harrington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 310. 10. Letter, Evelyn to Nicolson, in Letters to and from William Nicolson, ed. J. Nicols, 2 vols. (London, 1809), I, 145–47; Sir Robert Howard, The History of the Reigns of Edward and Richard (London, 1690; written in 1683), 2, 25–26; Sir Robert Howard, Historical Observations upon the reigns of Edward I, II, III and Richard II (London, 1689); John Locke, “Some Thoughts Concerning Education,” in The Educational Writings of John Locke, ed. James Axtell (London: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 233; see also 292–93; Henry Neville, Plato Redivivus (London, 1681), 89; William Howell, Medulla Anglicanae (London, 1681), Preface. Historiographer Royal, James Howell, appointed in 1661, wished England to emulate France in producing government-produced history. “The prudentest and best policy’d states . . . have Ministers of state appointed and qualified with the title historiographer general . . . to transmit to posterity the actions and counsels of that state as also to vindicate them.” Quoted in Denys Hay, “The Historiographers Royal in England and Scotland,” Scottish Historical Review 30 (1951): 15–19. See also Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, ed. Jackson Cope and Harold Whitmore Jones (St. Louis,

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Notes to Chapter Four MO: Washington University Press, 1958), 17; John Rushworth, Historical Collections of Private Passages of State (London, 1659), Preface, ix–xv. 11. Basilikon Doron, 44, 46, quoted in Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life (New York: Longman, 2005), 40. 12. George Morley, A Sermon Preached at the Magnificent Coronation of the Most High and Might King Charles the II (London, 1661), 54–55. 13. Fulke Greville, Life of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Nowell Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), 174–75. 14. William Camden, The History of the Most Renouned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth [1625], ed. Wallace T. MacCaffrey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), Preface. 15. Walter Raleigh, The History of the World (London, 1614). 16. See Richard Dutton, “Buggeswordes: The Case of Sir John Hayward’s Life of Henry IV,” in Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England (Palgrave 2000), 162–91. See also Margaret Dowling, “Sir John Hayward’s Troubles over His Life of Henry IV,” Library, 4th ser., 11 (1931): 212–40; Robert Zaller, The Discourse of Legitimacy in Early Modern England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 4. 17. See Louis B. Wright, “The Elizabethan Middle Class Taste for History,” Journal of Modern History III (1931): 175–97; Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986); D. R. Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Kevin Sharpe: Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 18. William Haller, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London: J. Cape, 1963); David Loades, “John Foxe and the Godly Commonwealth, 1563, 1563–1641,” in Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England, ed. Andrew Hadfield (London: Palgrave, 2001), 112–26; Thomas S. Freeman and Elizabeth Evenden, “Print, Profit and Propaganda: The Elizabethan Privy Council and the 1570 Edition of Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs,’” English Historical Review 119 (2004): 1288–1307; David Scott Kasten, “Little Foxes,” in John Foxe and His World, ed. Christopher Highley and John N. King (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 117–29; Jesse M. Lander, Inventing Polemic: Religion, Print and Literary Culture in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 56–79. 19. Richard Grafton, An Abridgement of the Chronicles of England (London, 1562); Richard Grafton, A Manuell of the Chronicles of England. . . . to this yere . . . 1565 (London, 1565); Richard Grafton, Chronicle at large and mere History of the affayres of Englande and Kinges of the same (London, 1569); John Stow, A Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles (London, 1566); Chronicles of England from Brute unto this present yeare 1580 (London, 1580); John Stow, Survey of London (London, 1598–1633), 181. See also Annabel Patterson, Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 20. William Fulbecke, An Abridgement, . . . of Roman Histories (London, 1601), A2. 21. See Paul Budra, A Mirror for Magistrates and the “de causabus” Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000).



Notes to Chapter Four

22. Sir Richard Baker, A Chronicle of the Kings of England. From the Time of the Romans Government, unto the Death of King James (London, 1660). See Martine Brownley, “Sir Richard Baker’s Chronicle and Later Seventeenth-Century English Historiography,” Huntington Library Quarterly 52 (1989): 481–500. 23. Robert Mayer, “Nathaniel Crouch, Bookseller and Historian: Popular Historiography and Cultural Power in Late Seventeenth Century England,” Eighteenth Century Studies 278 (1994): 391–420. 24. Kevin Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 1586–1631: History and Politics in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 77–79. 25. (London, 1642), title page, 3. 26. Nicholas K. Kiessling, The Library of Anthony Wood (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 2002), xx–xxi. 27. Carolyn A. Edie, “Reading Political Pamphlets: A Question of Meanings,” in Restoration, Ideology, and Revolution, ed. Gordon J. Schochet, vol. 4 of Proceedings of the Folger Institute Center for the History of British Political Thought (Washington, DC: Folger Institute, 1990), 301. 28. See Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England (London, 1662); John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (London: Secker and Warburg, 1949); Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (London, 1691); John Evelyn, Numismata: A Discourse of Medals, Antient and Modern (London, 1697). 29. Dick, “Thomas Blundeville’s ‘The True Order and Methode,’” 155, 159. 30. See L. F. Dean, “Sir Francis Bacon’s Theory of Civil History Writing,” English Literary History 8 (1941): 161–65. 31. Dick, “Thomas Blundeville’s ‘The True Order and Methode,’” 164. 32. D. S. Berkowitz, John Selden’s Formative Years: Politics and Society in Early Seventeenth-century England (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1988), 46–47. 33. John Nalson, Impartial Collections of the Great Affairs of State, 2 vols. (London, 1682–83), I, i. 34. North, Plutarch’s Lives, Dedication. 35. Sir Phillip Sidney, Apology for Poetry (London, 1595). 36. Nor was the relationship between historiography and rhetoric clear. Both historians and rhetoricians might praise and/or blame persons and actions. Yet the historian was expected to be impartial; the rhetorician or orator, partisan. Some contrasted the plain style of the historian with the overblown style of the rhetoricians; others insisted that historical writing required eloquence and was, therefore, a branch of rhetoric. 37. Quoted in Macgillivray, Restoration Historians and the English Civil War (The Hague: N. Nijhoff, 1974), 12. 38. John Dryden, The Works of John Dryden, ed. H. T. Swedenberg et al. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956–2000), XVII, 235. 39. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, II, ii, 5–12, in Oxford Francis Bacon, ed. Graham Rees and Lisa Jardine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), IV, 66–70. 40. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed. S. R. Cattley (London, 1834–37, reprinted New York, 1986), I, viii. 41. Edmund Bolton, Hypercritica (1622), printed in Nicolas Trivet, Nicolai Trive-

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Notes to Chapter Four ti Annalium Continuatio (Oxford, 1722), 241. Sir Walter Raleigh’s 1614 History of the World emphasized both Providence and secondary causes. 42. J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century: A Reissue with a Retrospect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Christopher W. Brooks and Kevin Sharpe, “History, English Law and the Renaissance,” Past and Present 72 (1976): 133–34; Corinne Comstock Weston, “Holy Edward’s Laws: The Cult of the Confessor and the Ancient Constitution,” in Restoration, Ideology, and Revolution, ed. Schochet, 307–26; Corrine Comstock Weston, “Diverse Viewpoints on Ancient Constitutionalism,” in The Roots of Liberty: Magna Carta, Ancient Constitution, and the Anglo-American Tradition of Rule of Law, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 232–53; Glen Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992); Glenn Burgess, “Petcock’s History of Political Thought, the Ancient Constitution, and Early Stuart England,” in The Political Imagination in History, ed. D. N. Delaunay (Baltimore, MD: Owl Words, 2006), 175–210; Janelle Greenberg, The Radical Face of the Ancient Constitution: St. Edward’s ‘Laws’ in Early Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); J. P. Sommerville, “The Ancient Constitution Reassessed: The Common Law, the Court and the Languages of Politics in Early Modern England,” in The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays in Politics and Political Culture, ed. R. Malcolm Smuts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 39–64. 43. Edward Coke, The Reports of Sir Edward Coke (London, 1658), II, v–vi; Paul Christianson, “Ancient Constitutions in the Age of Sir Edward Coke and John Selden,” in The Roots of Liberty, ed. Sandoz, 89–146. 44. Johann P. Sommerville, ed., King James VI and I: Political Writings (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1995), 212. 45. D. R. Woolf, Idea of History in Early Stuart England: Erudition, Ideology, and ‘The light of truth’ from the Accession of James I to the Civil War (Toronto: Buffalo University Press, 1990), 97, 114, citing The Lives of the III Normans (London, 1613); see also 98. 46. John Selden, Jani Anglorium Facies Altera (London, 1610). See also Faith Thompson, Magna Carta: Its Role in the Making of the English Constitution (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1948), 7, 11–12, 21, 27; Paul Christianson, “Ancient Constitutions in the Age of Sir Edward Coke and John Selden,” 89–146. 47. Quoted in Christopher Hill, “The Norman Yoke,” in Hill, Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the 17th Century (London: Mercury Books, 1962), 65. 48. Greenberg, The Radical Face of the Ancient Constitution, 11. 49. Peter Heylyn, The Stumbling Block of Disobedience and Rebellion (London, 1658), 26. 50. Mercurius Politicus, 407. 51. Quoted in John Phillip Reid, “The Jurisprudence of Liberty: The Ancient Constitution in the Legal Historiography of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in The Roots of Liberty, ed. Sandoz, 190–91. See also The Continuation of the Historical and Political Discourse (London, 1682).



Notes to Chapter Four

52. Argumentum Anti-Normanicum (London, 1682), Explanation of the Frontispiece. 53. (London, 1647), 13–22; Hill, “The Norman Yoke,” 32–49. See also England’s Proper and only Way to an Establishment in Honor, Freedom, Peace and Happiness; Or, the Norman Yoke once more uncased; . . . by the author of Anti Normanism (London, 1648); John Warr, Corruption and Deficiency of the lawes of England (London, 1649). See also Stuart E. Prall, The Agitation for Law Reform during the Puritan Revolution, 1640–1660 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), 33–39, 44. 54. A Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizen (1646), in Haller, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation, III, 19. 55. Donald Veall, The Popular Movement for Law Reform 1640–60 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 75–77; Barbara Shapiro, “Law Reform in Seventeenth Century England,” American Journal of Legal History 19 (1975): 280–312; Prall, The Agitation for Law Reform during the Puritan Revolution, 11–13. 56. Sir Matthew Hale, History of the Common Law of England, ed. Charles Gray (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). See also Alan Cromartie, Sir Matthew Hale, 1609–1676: Law, Religion, and Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 57. Quoted in Howard Nenner, By Colour of Law: Legal Culture and Constitutional Politics in England, 1660–1689 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 104. 58. Reid, “The Jurisprudence of Liberty,” 147–232. 59. Modus Tenendi Parliamentum (1641). 60. The Forme of Government of the Kingdome of England (London, 1642). 61. William Prynne, A Plea for the Lords, and House of Peers (London, 1658), To the Reader, 5; Sir Robert Atkyns, The Power, Jurisdiction and Privilege of Parliaments and the Antiquity of the House of Commons Assured (London, 1689); William Atwood, Jus Anglorum ab Antiquo: or a Confutation of an Impotent Libel Against the Government by Kings, Lords and Commons (London, 1681); William Atwood, Jani Anglorum Facies Nova (London, 1680). 62. Robert Brady, who insisted that the Commons had not been represented in Parliament before 1265, wrote “to undeceive the People, and to shew them” that they did not posses “Sovereignty and Empire antiently” and that they did not have a “share in the Government” as “Unquiet, Tumultuous Men endeavour to make them believe they had, and still ought to have.” Introduction to the Old English History (London, 1684), Epistle. See also The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, 222–28. 63. See Christopher W. Brooks, “The Place of Magna Carta and the Ancient Constitution in Sixteenth-Century English Legal Thought,” in The Roots of Liberty, ed. Sandoz, 74–75, 78–79, 85. See also Thompson, Magna Charta. 64. Sommerville, “The Ancient Constitution Reassessed,” 60. 65. Weston, “Diverse Viewpoints on Ancient Constitutionalism,” 232–54. 66. For the use of Magna Carta to buttress republican argument, see Brief Collections out of Magna Charta (London, 1643); John Lilburne, The People’s prerogative and privileges, . . . being a collection of the body and soul of Magna Charta (London, 1648); Henry Nicols, A Letter sent . . . wherein the antient government of England

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Notes to Chapter Four founded on Magna Charta and the Petition of Right is vindicated and proved to be a popular and free commonwealth (London, 1660). Abraham Cowley referred to the “thowsand stubborne Barons” who compelled the king to sign Magna Charta. Robert Wilcher, The Writing of Royalism 1628–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 189. 67. Arthur Wilson, The History of Britain (London, 1652), 155. Cotton escaped punishment arguing that he had written the history over a decade earlier. Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 182–83, 259. 68. The Danger Wherein the Kingdom Now Standeth (London, 1628). 69. Royalists found the turmoil of the 1640s comparable to the disturbances of Henry III’s reign. The Troublesome Life and Raigne of King Henry the Third (1642). However, Edward Chamberlayne’s The Present Warre Parall’d, Or a brief relation of the five yeares civil warre of Henry the Third supported actions taken against the king (n.p. 1647; republished with a postscript in 1660). See also George Walker’s AngloTyrannus: or the Idea of a Norman Monarch represented in the Parallel Reignes of Henrie the Third and Charles King of England (London, 1650). Charles’s trial proceedings were printed in 1654 together with “a parallel of the late wars” of Henry III and the “events of that unnatural war.” The Proceedings of Charles I’s Trial (London, 1654), title page. See also William Prynne, History of King John, King Henry III and the Most Illustrious King Edward the I. Henry III’s reign was contested again in 1680–81 when there was renewed fear of civil war. A Short View of the late Troubles in England (Oxford, 1681) offered parallels with the baronial wars during Henry III’s reign. 70. Thomas Fannant’s An Historical narrative of the memorable Parliament . . . [1386] criticized the parliament as “derogatory to the Kings Dignity and Kingly Prerogative.” Title page, 10. See also Thomas Merke, A Pieous and learned speech delivered in the High Court of Parliament, I H. 4 (1642); The bloody Parliament in the raigne of an unhappy prince (London, 1643). 71. Quoted in Dutton, Licensing, Censorship and Authorship, 172, from CSPD. Coke charged that Hayward pretended to “Wright a history past but entended to point to this very time,” quoted in ibid., 174. References to Richard II were removed from the 1587 edition of Holingshed’s Chronicles. 72. A mis-led King, and a memorable Parliament (London, 1643) ends with the reconciliation of Richard and Parliament and does not discuss his deposition. See also The People Informed of their Oppressors and Oppressions . . . Unto which is added the sentence of Deposition against King Richard the Second and Edward the Second (London, 1648), 3, 6. See also Sir Robert Howard, The Life and reign of King Richard the Second (London, 1681). 73. (London, 1642). There were also accounts of the rebellion of Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. One historical tract “paralleled” the rebellions of Wat Tyler and Jack Straw with “the late rebellion against King Charles of ever blessed memory.” John Cleveland, The Rebellion of the Rude Multitude under Wat Tayler (1660). See also Cleveland, The Rustick Rampant (London, 1658); The Just reward of Rebels, Or the Life and Death of Jack Straw and Wat the Tyler (London, 1642); The Idol of the Clownes, or, Insurrection of Wat Tayler (London, 1654). 74. See Sir Robert Howard, The History of the Reigns of Edward and Richard II . . . written in 1685 (London, 1690), Preface, 41. See also The Relation of the manner of



Notes to Chapter Four

the deposing of King Edward II [and] the proceedings and articles against King Richard II (London, 1689). 75. See Robert Zaller, “The Figure of the Tyrant in English Revolutionary Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 54 (1993): 585–610. 76. For a more favorable view, see George Buck, The History and Reigne of Richard the Third (1646). See also The Ghost of Richard the Third (London, 1614); The Tyrant Cromwell (1660). 77. Edward Hall, Union of the two Noble and Illustrius Families of Lancaster and York (London, 1548, and later editions); Raphael Holinshed, The First Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande (London, 1577, again 1587 with additions and changes); Samuel Daniel, The Civil Wars Between the Two Houses of Lancaster and York (London, 1598); John Stow, Summarie of the Chronicles of England (London, 1565; ten editions by 1611). Daniel’s work was “to shew the deformities of civill dissensions, and the miserable events of Rebellion, conspiracies . . . that followed breach in succession” by the usurpation of Henry IV. Quoted in Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 199. See also Michael Drayton, The Barons Wars in the raigne of Edward the second (London, 1603). 78. Henry had been “subject to more obloquies” than any ruler “since the worst Roman Emperours times.” Lord Herbert of Cherbury, The Life and Raigne of Henry the Eighth (London, 1649), Epistle Dedicatory, 1. 79. A Brief History of the Life of Mary Queen of Scots . . . Shewing the hopes the Papists then had of a Popish Successor (London, 1681); T. S., An Account of Queen Mary’s Method for Introducing Popery . . . Seasonable to be published in the Time of Imminent Danger (London, 1681). 80. Camden, The History of the Most Renouned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth. See also Francis Osborne, Historical Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James (London, 1658); Alexandra Walsham, “‘A Very Deborah,’ The Myth of Elizabeth as a Providential Monarch,” in The Myth of Elizabeth, ed. Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), 143–68; Paulina Kewes, “Two Queens, One Inventory: The Lives of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor,” in Writing Lives: Biography and Textuality, Identity and Representation in Earl Modern England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven Zwicker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 187–207. 81. Francis Bacon, The Felicity of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1651). This had earlier circulated in manuscript. 82. Thomas May, History of the Parliament of England, ed. Francis Maseres (London, 1812), 4, 6, 15. James I, however, capitalized on Elizabethan imagery. See Curtis Perry, The Making of Jacobean Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 155–64. For Prince Henry and Elizabeth, see ibid., 166–72. 83. London, 1658. John Watkins, Representing Elizabeth in Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 89–93, 98, 100–101, 110–12. 84. Ibid., 109, 117–21, 121–27. 85. Sprat, History of the Royal Society, 151. 86. See Samuel Clarke, History of the Glorious Life, Reign and Death of the Illustrious Queen Elizabeth (London, 1683); Watkins, Representing Elizabeth in Stuart England, 128–30, 132–33; David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: Protestant Memory and

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Notes to Chapter Four the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 171–89. 87. See Arthur Wilson’s The History of Great Britain, Being the Life and Reign of King James the First (London, 1653); Francis Osborne, Traditional Memoirs on the Reign of King James (London, 1658); Anthony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James (London, 1650). A republican tract of 1652 characterized James as “the Fountain of all our late Afflictions and miseries,” who had laid the “foundation of tyranny and arbitrary government.” A Cat May look upon a King (London, 1652), 2, 38, 39. Michael Sparke depicted James I as responsible for great “invasions upon the Freedom and privileges of parliament” and got “judges to make Laws to his humour, when Parliaments would not.” Truth Brought to Light: or the History of the First 14 Years of King James I (London, 1651), Preface to the Reader. See also Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, The Five Yeares of King James (London, 1643). 88. Sprat, History of the Royal Society, 151. 89. See also Peter Heylyn, A Short View of the Life and Reign of King Charles (London, 1658); Peter Heylyn, Observations on the Reign of King Charles (London, 1656). See also Hamon L’Estrange, The Reign of King Charles. An History, Disposed into Annals (London, 1656); William Sanderson, A Compleat History of the Life and Raigne of King Charles (London, 1658). 90. Thomas Fuller, An Appeal of Injured Innocence (London, 1659), 1. 91. See Macgillivray, Restoration Historians and the English Civil War; Daniel Woolf, “Narrative Historical Writing in Restoration England: A Preliminary Survey,” in The Restoration Mind, ed. W. G. Marshall (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997), 207–51; Mark Knights, “The Tory Interpretation of History in the Rage of Parties,” in The Uses of History in Early Modern England, ed. Paulina Kewes (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library Press, 2006), 347–66; Paulina Kewes, “Acts of Remembrance, Acts of Oblivion: Rhetoric, Law, and National Memory in Early Restoration England,” in Realities of Representation: State Building in Early Modern Europe and European America, ed. Maija Jansson (New York: Palgrave, 2007), 118–24. 92. John Vicars, England’s Parliamentary Chronicle, 1644–46 (London, 1646), 31–32. Thomas May began with “the faults of the higher powers, and their illegall oppression of the people,” during the hiatus in meetings of Parliament. The History of the Parliament of England (London, 1647), I, 15–16. 93. Sir William Dugdale, A Short View of the Late Troubles in England (Oxford, 1681), Preface. 94. William Lilly, Monarchy or No Monarchy in England (London, 1651), 53. 95. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, ed. W. D. Macray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), I, 1; II, 319. See also H. R. Trevor-Roper, Clarendon and the Practice of History (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1965); B. H. G. Wormald, Clarendon: Politics, Historiography, and Religion, 1640–60 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964); Martine Brownley, Clarendon and the Rhetoric of Historical Form (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985). 96. Sprat, History of the Royal Society, 33–44. 97. The Political Works of James Harrington, 198, 201–3.



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98. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London, 1651), II, ch. 29. 99. Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth or the Long Parliament (London, 1682). 100. Nancy Klein Maguire, Regicide and Restoration: English Tragicomedy, 1660– 1671 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 29–30; Nalson, Impartial Collections of the Great Affairs of State, II, 806–9. 101. See Conal Condren, “Andrew Marvell as Polemicist, his Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government,” in The Political Identity of Andrew Marvell, ed. Conal Condren and A. D. Cousins (Aldershot, Hants: Scolar Press, 1990), 157–87. 102. Rushworth, Historical Collections of Private Passages of State, Preface. The first volume covered 1618 to 1629. A collection covering 1629 to 1640 appeared in 1686. See also Frances Henderson, “‘Posterity to judge’: John Rushworth and His ‘Historical Collections,’” Bodleian Library Record 15 (1996): 247–68. 103. Nalson, Impartial Collections of the Great Affairs of State, Preface, i–iv, vi, xxi, xxv, lxxvii, lxxviii. See also R. C. Richardson, “Refighting the English Revolution: John Nalson, 1637–1686 and the Frustration of Late Seventeenth century English Historiography,” European Review of History 14 (2007): 1–20. 104. Nalson, Impartial Collections of the Great Affairs of State, II, 806–9. 105. See J. Preston, “English Ecclesiastical Historians and the Problem of Bias, 1550–1742,” Journal of the History of Ideas 32 (1971): 203–20; David C. Douglas, English Scholars, 1660–1730 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1951); Felicity Heal, “Appropriating History: Catholic and Protestant Polemics and the National Past,” in The Uses of History in Early Modern England, ed. Kewes, 105–28; J. A. L. Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and Its Enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 106. G. R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 353. 107. (London, 1563), I. See David Loades, “John Fox and the Godly Commonwealth, 1563–1641,” in Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England, ed. Hadfield, 112–27. 108. Quoted in F. J. Levy, Tudor Historical Thought (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1967), 118. 109. (London, 1661); later editions 1670 and 1674. 110. Andrew Starkie, “Gilbert Burnet’s Reformation and the Semiotics of Popery,” in Fear, Exclusion and Revolution: Roger Morrice and the Britain of the 1680’s, ed. Jason McElligott (Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2006), 148–53. 111. William Lloyd, Historical Account of Church-Government (London, 1684); Edward Stillingfleet, Origines Britannicae (London, 1685). 112. John Selden, History of Tithes (London, 1618), sig. A2r–A2v; Woolf, Idea of History, 230–35. 113. Degory Wheare, The Method and Order of Reading both Civil and Ecclesiastical History (London, 1685). See also Kevin Sharpe, “The Foundation of the Chairs of History at Oxford and Cambridge: An Episode in Jacobean Politics,” History of Universities 2 (1982): 128, 131, 133, 135, 140–41, 144; Fergus Miller, The Roman Republic in Political Thought (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002), 50–52. 114. A Cat May look upon a King, 32–33.

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Notes to Chapter Four 115. Quoted in Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton, “‘Studied for Action’: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy,” Past and Present 129 (1990): 30, 38, 48, 72. Machiavelli’s Discourses were translated into English in 1636. 116. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, in The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding (London: Routledge, 1905), VI, 359; The Educational Writings of John Locke, 393–94. 117. Sir Henry Savile, The End of Nero and Beginning of Galba (Oxford, 1591), 3. 118. Blair Worden, “Ben Jonson among the Historians,” in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1993), 82. See Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); K. G. Schellhase, Tacitism in Renaissance Political Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972); Alan T. Bradford, “Stuart Absolutism and the Utility of Tacitus,” Huntington Library Quarterly 46 (1983): 127–55; J. H. M. Salmon, “Stoicism and Roman Example: Seneca and Tacitus in Jacobean England,” Journal of the History of Ideas 50 (1989): 199–255; Malcolm R. Smuts, “Court Centred Politics and the Uses of Roman Historians c. 1590–1630,” in Culture and Politics in Early Modern England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), 210–43. 119. Edmund Bolton, Nero Caesar, or Monarchie Depraved (London, 1624), Dedication, 128, 240–42. I owe this reference to Paulina Kewes. 120. Tristan Marshall, Theater and Empire: Great Britain on the London Stages under James VI and I (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 35–39, 90–91; Paulina Kewes, “Julius Caesar in Jacobean England,” Seventeenth Century 17 (2002): 155–86. 121. [Sir John Spelman], Certain Considerations upon the Duties both of Princes and People (Oxford, 1642), 23. 122. James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 8. 123. Laura L. Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait and Print, 1645–1665 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 88. 124. Quoted in Joseph M. Levine, Between the Ancients and the Moderns: Baroque Culture in Renaissance England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 343. 125. Fulbecke, An Historical Collection; Augustus: Or an Essay of those Means and Counsel, whereby the Commonwealth of Rome was Reduced into a Monarchy (London, 1632). 126. David Armitage, “The Cromwellian Protectorate and the Language of Empire,” Historical Journal 35 (1992): 351–55; Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell, 103–4. 127. See Sprat, History of the Royal Society, 44. 128. Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell, 191, citing James Heath, Flagellum (London, 1663); Grant Tapsell, The Personal Rule of Charles II, 1681–85 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), 148–49. 129. Bolton, Nero Caesar, or Monarchie Depraved, Dedication. 130. Areas of disagreement include whether or not there are traces of republicanism prior to the Civil War and whether these traces are best thought of as part of Renaissance civic humanism. Also debated is the degree to which particular thinkers



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were classical republicans or eclectic thinkers. See J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Sean Kelsey, Inventing a Republic: The Political Culture of the English Commonwealth (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); Blair Worden, “Classical Republicanism and the Puritan Revolution,” in History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper, ed. Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Valerie Pearl, and Blair Worden (London: Duckworth, 1981), 182–200; Blair Worden, “Republicanism, Regicide and Republic: The English Experience,” in Republicanism, ed. Gelderen and Skinner, I, 307–27; Blair Worden, “English Republicanism,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700, ed. J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 443–75; Martin Dzelainis, “Antimonarchism in English Republicanism,” in Republicanism, ed. Gelderen and Skinner, I, 17–41; Peltonen, “Citizenship and Republicanism in Elizabethan England,” I, 85– 106; Quentin Skinner, “Classical Liberty and the Coming of the English Civil War,” in Republicanism, ed. Gelderen and Skinner, II, 9–28; David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); David Wootton, “Introduction: The Republican Tradition from Commonwealth to Common Sense,” in Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society, 1649–1776, ed. David Wootton (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 1–41. See also J. F. McDiarmid, ed., The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 131. Blair Worden, “James Harrington and the Commonwealth of Oceana, 1656,” in Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society, ed. Wootton, 45–81. 132. Blair Worden, “John Milton and Oliver Cromwell,” in Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution, ed. Ian Gentles, John Morrill and Blair Worden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 252, 254. Victoria Kahn views Milton’s Tenure of Kings and Magistrates as exemplifying the intersection of scriptural prophecy, sacred covenant and political contract. “The Metaphorical Contract in Milton’s Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,” in Milton and Republicanism, ed. David Armitage, Armand Himy and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 105. See also Victoria Kahn, Machiavellian Rhetoric: From the CounterReformation to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 169; Nicholas von Maltzahn, “From Pillar to Post: Milton and the Attack on Republican Humanism at the Restoration,” in Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen, ed. Gentles, Morrill and Worden, 265–85; Margaret Judson, From Tradition to Political Reality: A Study of the Ideas Set Forth in Support of the Commonwealth Government in England, 1649–1653 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1980). 133. Marchamont Nedham, The Excellency of a Free State (London, 1656), 13, 15, 17; Blair Worden, “Marchamont Nedham and the Beginnings of English Republicanism,” in Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society, ed. Wootton, 45–48. 134. Blair Worden, “Republicanism and the Restoration, 1660–1683,” in ibid., 140, 146, 150, 151. Neville translated Machiavelli in 1675. 135. Jonathan Scott, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623–77 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Alan Houston, Algernon Sidney and the Republican Heritage in England and America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).

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Notes to Chapters Four and Five 136. Francis Bacon, The Essays, ed. John Pitcher (London: Penguin, 1958), 146– 55; see also 116–17; Bacon, Works, VII, 47–46; Markku Peltonen, “Politics and Science: Francis Bacon and the True Greatness of States,” Historical Journal 35 (1992): 279–306. 137. Sprat, History of the Royal Society, 10, 41. 138. Armitage, “The Cromwellian Protectorate and the Language of Empire,” 332–33. 139. Sprat, History of the Royal Society, 104. 140. Nehemiah Wallington, Historical Notices of Events, ed. R. Webb, 2 vols. (London, 1869), I, xi; Robert Johnson, Nova Britannia (London, 1609), C2. 141. Nimrod was the first who “completed a new and arbitrary way of Government, backing it with power by a party of his own.” Marchamont Nedham, The Case of the Commonwealth Stated (London, 1650), 15.

Chapter Five 1. “The Defence of Poesy,” in Sir Philip Sidney: Selected Prose and Poetry, ed. Robert Kimbrough (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 102–28. 2. George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, ed. G. D. Willcock and A. Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), 49. 3. Sir Thomas Overbury, His Wife with Additions of New Characters (London, 1638, 16th impression), 215. 4. Thomas Heywood, An Apology for Actors (London, 1612), III, F3v. 5. Thomas Scot, Vox Regis (London, 1624), 34. See also Richard Brathwaite, The English Gentleman (London, 1630), 185, 187, 191–92, 194. 6. John Dryden, Heads of an Answer to Rymer (London, 1677), in The Works of John Dryden, ed. H. T. Swedenberg et al. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956–2000), XVII, 186. See also Dryden, Essay of Dramatick Poesie (London, 1668). Thomas Rymer believed tragedy functioned as a school for princes. Robert D. Hume, The Development of English Drama in the Late Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 162. 7. David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968); Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984); Jonathan Goldberg, James I and the Politics of Literature (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); Leonard Tennenhouse, Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare’s Genres (New York and London: Methuen, 1986); Rowland Wymer, “Jacobean Pageant or Elizabethan Fin-de-siècle? The Political Context of Early Seventeenth Century Tragedy,” in Neo-Historicism: Studies in Renaissance Literature, History and Politics, ed. Robin Headlam Wells, Glenn Burgess and Rowland Wymer (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 138–51; Albert Tricomi, Anticourt Drama in England, 1603–1642 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1989); Fritz Levy, “The Theatre and the Court in the 1590’s,” in The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade, ed. John Guy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in association with the Folger Shakespeare Institute, 1995), 274–300; Diana E. Henderson, “Theatre and Controversy, 1572–1603,” in The Cambridge History of British



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Theatre, ed. Jane Milling and Peter Thomson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), I, 243; Margot Heinemann, “Political Drama,” in The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama, ed. A. R. Braunmuller and Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 161–87. 8. Quoted in Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 217; Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 59. 9. E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 4, 198–99; Jonas Barish, The Anti-theatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 10. Blair Worden, “Literature and Censorship of the Press in Early Modern England,” in Too Mighty to Be Free: Censorship and the Press in Britain and the Netherlands, ed. A. C. Duke and C. A. Tamse (Zutphen, Netherlands: De Walburg Press, 1987). Worden concluded that the Crown was more tolerant than the City authorities or the church. Ibid., 45–62. Cyndia Clegg and Janet Clare also found lack of uniform surveillance and censorship. Cyndia Clegg, Press Censorship in Jacobean England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Janet Clare, “Theatre and Commonwealth,” in The Cambridge History of British Theatre, ed. Milling and Thomson, 1, 470–71. Christopher Hill and Margot Heinemann view the censorship regime as repressive and pervasive. Christopher Hill, “Censorship and English Literature,” in The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 32–71; Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and the Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). See also Philip J. Finkelperl, “The Comedians’ Liberty: Censorship of the Jacobean Stage Reconsidered,” English Literary Renaissance 16 (1986): 123–38; Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984); Richard Dutton, Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991); Richard Dutton, Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England (London: Palgrave, 2000). 11. Doris Adler, “Pericles: Jacobean Whistling in the Dark,” in Law, Literature and the Settlement of Regimes: Papers Presented at the Folger Institute Seminar, “Political Thought in the Elizabethan Age, 1558–1603,” ed. Gordon J. Schochet, Patricia E. Tatspaugh and Carol Brobeck (Washington, DC: Folger Institute, 1990), ii, 50–51. 12. Linda Peck, “John Marston’s The Fawn: Ambivalence and Jacobean Courts,” in The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576–1649, ed. David L. Smith, Richard Strier and David Bevington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 117–36. 13. These included Marston’s Malcontent (1604), Middleton’s The Phoenix (1604), Sharpham’s The Fleer (1606) and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1603/4). 14. See Paul Hammer, “Shakespeare’s Richard II, the Play of 7 February 1601, and the Essex Rising,” Shakespeare Quarterly 59 (2008): 1–35. 15. See Thomas Cogswell, “Thomas Middleton and the Court: A Game at Chess in Context,” Huntington Library Quarterly 47 (1984): 273, 281, 284, 285n; Margot Heinemann, “Middleton’s ‘A Game at Chess’: Parliamentary Puritans and Opposition Drama,” English Literary Renaissance 2 (1975): 232–50; Tricomi, Anticourt Dra-

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Notes to Chapter Five ma in England, 142–52; Jerzy Limon, Dangerous Matter: English Drama and Politics in 1623/24 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 98–133; Richard Dutton, “Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess: A Case Study,” in The Cambridge History of British Theatre, ed. Milling and Thomson, 1, 424–38; Richard Dutton, “Receiving Offence: ‘A Game at Chess’ Again,” in Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England, ed. Andrew Hadfield (London: Palgrave, 2001), 50–74. 16. The English Gentleman (London, 1650), 194. 17. Quoted in Alexandra Halasz, The Marketplace of Print, Pamphlets and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 184. 18. Quoted in Janette Dillon, “Theatre and Controversy, 1603–1642,” in The Cambridge History of British Theatre, ed. Milling and Thomson, 1, 364–82. 19. See Martin Butler, “Entertaining the Palatine Prince: Plays on Foreign Affairs, 1635–1637,” English Literary Renaissance 13 (1983): 319–44. Some fifty-five plays, masques and entertainments between 1620 and 1642 allude to the Thirty Years’ War and ten were devoted to it. The Hector of Germanie (1614) was seen by nearly three thousand. Hans Werner, “‘The Hector of Germanie, or the Palsgrave, Prime Elector’ and Anglo-German Relations of Early Stuart England: The View from the Popular Stage,” in The Stuart Court and Europe, Essays in Politics and Political Culture, ed. R. Malcolm Smuts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 113, 117–18. 20. Stephen Orgel, The Jonsonian Masque (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965); Stephen Orgel, The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); Roy Strong, Splendour at Court: Renaissance Spectacle and Illusion (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973); Jennifer Chiball, “The Function of the Caroline Masque Form,” in The Court Masque, ed. David Lindley (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 78–93; Martin Butler, “The Politics of the Caroline Masque,” in Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts, ed. J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 119–51; Graham Parry, The Golden Age Restor’d: The Culture of the Stuart Court, 1603–42 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1981); Graham Parry, “The Politics of the Jacobean Masque,” in Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts, ed. Mulryne and Shewring, 87–117; Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987); Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Butler examines masques in the context of the changing political climate. He argues that political strains such as the fall of Somerset, the differing political orientations of James and Prince Henry, can be found in Jacobean masques. 21. For Caroline masques offering counsel as well as praise, see Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 239; see also 179–264. 22. Scot, Vox Regis, 34. 23. Skiles Howard, The Politics of Courtly Dancing in Early Modern England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), 19, 33. 24. Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture, 12, 128, 352. 25. James Spedding, ed., The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon (London:



Notes to Chapter Five

Routledge, 1905), I, 339–40. Bacon’s masque offers an extensive law reform program. For masques and the Inns of Court, see Paul Raffield, Images and Cultures of Law in Early Modern Law: Justice and Political Power 1550–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). See also Martin Butler, “Politics and the Masque: ‘The Triumph of Peace,’” The Seventeenth Century 2 (1987): 117–41. 26. For pro-Union masques, see Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture, 99–124. 27. Tristen Marshall, Theatre and Empire: Great Britain on the London Stages under James VI and I (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 122–25, 130– 32. For masques emphasizing foreign policy, see Sara Peal, “Sounding to Present Occasions; Jonson’s Masques of 1620–5,” in The Court Masque, ed. Lindley, 60–77. 28. Karen Britland, Drama at the Courts of Queen Henrietta Maria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 4, 66, 105–6. 29. Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture, 350–51. 30. Paul Hammond, “Dryden’s Albion and Albanius: The Apotheosis of Charles II,” in The Court Masque, ed. Lindley, 169–83; Robert D. Hume, “The Politics of Opera in Late Seventeenth Century London,” Cambridge Opera Journal 10 (1998): 15–43; Joanne Altieri, The Theater of Praise: The Panegyric Tradition in Seventeenth Century Drama (London: Associated University Presses, 1986), 12, 13, 25, 26, 29, 31–34, 37, 74, 102, 127. 31. Martin Butler, Theatre and Crisis, 1632–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 134. 32. Charles Firth and R. S. Rait, Acts and Ordinances (London: HMSO, 1911), i, 26–27. For the 1640 bill against “lascivious, idle, and unprofitable books and pamphlets, play-books and ballads,” see S. R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), 9, 139. 33. Dale B. J. Randall, Winter Fruit: English Drama 1642–1660 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1995), 45–47; Susan Wiseman, Drama and Politics in the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 37; Martin Butler, “The Condition of the Theaters in 1642,” in The Cambridge History of British Theatre, ed. Milling and Thomson, I, 398–457; Clare, “Theatre and Commonwealth,” 461–42. 34. See Louis B. Wright, “The Reading of Plays during the Puritan Revolution,” Huntington Library Bulletin 6 (1934): 73–108. James Shirley quoted in Randall, Winter Fruit, 11, 45–47; Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, 234; Susan Wiseman, “Pamphlet Plays in the Civil War News Market: Genre, Politics, and ‘Context,’” in News, Newspapers, and Society in Early Modern Britain, ed. Joad Raymond (London: Cass, 1999), 66–83; Butler, Theatre and Crisis, 233, 237, 247–48, 458–76. 35. Mercurius Britanicus, Or the English Intelligencer (n.p., 1641), A4, B3, D2, D3. 36. Quoted in Randall, Winter Fruit, 96. 37. Proposition for the Advancement of Morality by a New Way of Entertainment of the People (1653), 1. 38. Quoted in Susan J. Wiseman, “History Digested: Opera and Colonialism in the 1650’s,” in Literature and the Civil War, ed. Thomas Healy and Jonathan Sawday (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 190.

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Notes to Chapter Five 39. John Denham, The Prologue to his Majesty at the first Play presented at the Cockpit at Whitehall (London, 1660), 1. 40. See George Whiting, “The Condition of the London Theatres, 1679–89: A Reflection of the Political Situation,” Studies in Philology 82 (1927): 195–206; George Whiting, “Political Satire in London Stage Plays, 1680–83,” Modern Philology 28 (1930): 29–43; Harold Love, “State Affairs on the Restoration Stage, 1660–1675,” Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research 19 (1975): 1–9; John Loftis, The Politics of Drama in Augustan England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963); Susan Staves, Players’ Scepters: Fictions of Authority in the Restoration (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979); J. Douglas Canfield, “Royalism’s Last Dramatic Stand: English Political Tragedy, 1679–89,” Studies in Philology 82 (1985): 234–63; Susan Owen, Restoration Theatre and Crisis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Susan Owen, “Interpreting the Politics of Restoration Drama,” The Seventeenth Century 8 (1993): 67–97; Paulina Kewes, “Dryden and the Staging of Popular Politics,” in John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays, ed. Paul Hammond and David Hopkins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 57–91; J. Douglas Canfield, “Dramatic Shifts: Writing an Ideological History of Late Stuart Drama,” Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research, 2nd ser., 6 (1991): 1–9; Dorothy Turner, “Restoration Drama in the Public Sphere: Propaganda, the Playhouse and Published Drama,” Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research, 2nd ser., 8 (1997): 18–39; Laura Brown, English Dramatic Form 1660–1700: An Essay in Generic History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991); Bridget Orr, “Poetic PlateFleets and Universal Monarchy: The Heroic Plays and Empire in the Restoration,” Huntington Library Quarterly 63 (2000): 71–97. 41. For Dryden, see Owen, Restoration Theatre and Crisis, 15. For Killigrew, see Nancy Klein Maguire, Regicide and Restoration: English Tragicomedy, 1660–1671 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 105. 42. Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds., The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970–83), III, 295–296; IX, 2; VIII, 55–56. See also Emmett L. Avery, “The Restoration Audience,” Philological Quarterly 45 (1966): 55–58. 43. Maguire, Regicide and Restoration, 104. 44. Before the Civil War acting companies were reluctant to have scripts printed. Paulina Kewes, Authorship and Appropriations: Writing for the Stage in England, 1660–1710 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 3. 45. Lee’s Massacre of Paris was suppressed at the request of the French ambassador. Matthew J. Kinservik, “Theatrical Regulation during the Restoration Period,” in A Companion to Restoration Drama, ed. Susan J. Owen (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 36–52. 46. Cambyses King of Persia: A Tragedy (London, 1671), Preface. 47. Davenant, Siege of Rhodes (1663), Dedicatory Letter. 48. Among them were John Tatham, The Rump, or the Mirrour of the Late Times (1660); Cromwell’s Conspiracy: A Tragy-Comedy (1660); Edward Howard, The Usurper (1668); The Unfortunate Usurper (1662–63); The Presbyterian Lash (1661); Hells Higher Court of Justice: or, the Triall of the Three Politick Ghosts (1661); The Conspiracy (1680); Sir Robert Howard, The Committee (1662); Aphra Behn, The Roundheads or the Good Old Cause (1681).



Notes to Chapter Five

49. Maguire, Regicide and Restoration, 49–50. See also Nicoll Allardyce, “Political Plays of the Restoration,” Modern Language Review 16 (1921): 226–28. 50. Thomas Shadwell, A Lenten Prologue Refus’d by the Players (n.d., n.p.), 1. 51. Although the cleric Smerk hates parliaments and favors the divine right of kings, his patron, Sir Edward Hartfort, informs him that clerics should not meddle in governing because they are ignorant of the laws and customs of England. Clergymen, especially those who “call in Jus Divinium to their aid” and who favored “prerogative unlimited,” had “Turn’d Kings to tyrants.” Hartfort is presented as loving both the prince’s rights and the people’s liberties. Steven Pincus, “Shadwell’s Dramatic Trimming,” in Religion, Literature, and Politics in Post-Reformation England, 1540–1688, ed. Donna B. Hamilton and Richard Strier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 256–57, 264. 52. Thomas Shadwell, The Scowrers (London, 1691), Prologue. 53. Autrey Nell Wiley, Rare Prologues and Epilogues, 1642–1700 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1940), 61–63. See also Pierre Anchin, Prologues and Epilogues of the Restoration (Nancy, France: Publications de l’Universite de Nancy, 1978). 54. Aphra Behn, Prologue to Romulus (London, 1682), 1–2. She denounced the Whig newsman Henry Care, “Heartless Whigs,” the Association, and London jurors. The Prologue to Father Like Son (London, 1682), 1. The prologue to The Reign’d Curtizans, refers to “Suspicions, New Elections, Jealousies,/ Fresh Informations, New discoveries” that “so employ the busy fearful Town,” sig. A 4. 55. A Prologue to a New Play called the Royallist (1682), in Wiley, Rare Prologues and Epilogues, 47, 50, 51. The hero, Charles Kinglove, targets London’s “Factious Juries and Associations” and the decades when “the ancient Laws are turn’d topsyturvy.” Butler, Theatre and Crisis, 96, 120. 56. John Banks, Prologue to a new Play called Ann Bullen (London, 1682), 1. 57. (London, 1683), in Wiley, Rare Prologues and Epilogues, 166, 167, 169. See also Crowne, The Ambitious Statesman (1679), Prologue. 58. A Prologue Written by Mr. Dryden, to a New Play, call’d the Loyal Brother (1682). 59. James Anderson Winn, John Dryden and His World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 343–45. 60. John Dryden, The Indian Emperour, Preface. 61. Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966), 8–9. 62. There were eighty chronicle plays between 1590 and 1600. Felix Schelling, The English Chronicle Play: A Study in the Popular Historical Literature Environing Shakespeare (New York: Macmillan, 1902), 51. See also Paulina Kewes, “The Elizabethan History Play: A True Genre?,” in A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works, ed. Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), II, 170–93. 63. Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London, 115; Benjamin Griffin, Playing the Past: Approaches to English Historical Drama, 1385–1600 (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), 75, 142–44. 64. Heywood, An Apology for Actors, III, F3r. 65. Elizabeth is supposed to have said that the play had been staged forty times “in open streets and houses.” John Nichols, Progresses and Public Processions of Queen

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Notes to Chapter Five Elizabeth (London: J. Nicholls, 1823), III, 552. See also Allen D. Boyer, Sir Edward Coke and the Elizabethan Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 286–87. It is not entirely clear which play dealing with Richard II she referred to. 66. The Loyall King and the Loyall Subject (London, 1637), Prologue. 67. (Sig. D5r). 68. The play, printed three times during Elizabeth’s reign, drew on The Chronycles of Englonde and Sir Thomas Smith’s De Republica Anglorum. 69. James I, The Works (London, 1616), 179. Shakespeare drew on The True Chronicle History of King Leir (1598). See also The True Chronicle Historie of King Leir (1605). See also Graham Parry, “Ancient Briton and Early Stuarts,” in Neo-Historicism, ed. Wells, Burgess and Wymer, 155–79; Constance Jordan, “King Lear and the ‘Effectual Truth’ of Machiavellian Politics,” in Law, Literature and the Settlement of Regimes, ed. Schochet, Tatspaugh and Brobeck, 2, 87. 70. Griffin, Playing the Past, 142–43. 71. Henry N. Paul, The Royal Play of Macbeth (New York: Macmillan, 1950); David Norbrook, “Macbeth and the Politics of Historiography,” in Politics of Discourse: The Literature and History of Seventeenth-century England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 78–116. 72. See Schelling, The English Chronicle Play; L. B. Campbell, Shakespeare’s Histories: Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1947); E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare’s History Plays (London: Chatto and Windus, 1959); M. M. Reese,­ The Cease of Majesty (New York: St. Martin’s, 1961); Irving Ribner, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1965); Edna Zwick Boris, Shakespeare’s English Kings, the People, and the Law: A Study in the Relationship between the Tudor Constitution and the English History Plays (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1978); Michael Manheim, The Weak King Dilemma in the Shakespearean History Plays (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1973); Donald Watson, Shakespeare’s Early History Plays (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990); Phyllis Racklin, Stages of History: Shakespeare’s English Chronicles (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990); Griffin, Playing the Past; Constance Jordan, Shakespeare’s Monarchies: Ruler and Subject in the Renaissance (Ithaca, NY; Cornell University Press, 1997); Peter Succio, Shakespeare’s English Kings: History, Chronicle and Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Robin H. Wells, Shakespeare, Politics and the State (London: Macmillan, 1986); Marie Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977); Ivo Kamps, Historiography and Ideology in Stuart Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Louis Montrose, The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theater (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Tim Spiekerman, Shakespeare’s Political Realism: The English History Plays (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001). There were six plays dealing with King John. Edward III, Henry IV and Richard had seven each, some no longer extant, Henry VI had ten. Four dealt with events in the reign of Henry VIII. Schelling, The English Chronicle Play, 53–56. 73. Quoted in Kamps, Historiography and Ideology in Stuart Drama, 60. 74. Quoted in Owen, Restoration Theatre and Crisis, 221; see also 220–22. 75. Durfey, Sir Barnaby Whigg, quoted in Maguire, Regicide and Restoration, 76.



Notes to Chapter Five

76. Sig. K2v, quoted in Maguire, Regicide and Restoration, 76, also M sig. 41, quoted in ibid., 77. 77. Canfield, “Royalism’s Last Dramatic Stand,” 245. 78. The True Tragedy of Richard III (1594) was performed by the Queens Players. See also Thomas Legge, Richardus Tertius (manuscript 1580?); Giles Fletcher, The Rising to the Crowne of Richard III; Richard Crookback (1602; a lost play); Samuel Rowley, A Tragedy of Richard Third (licensed 1623; a lost play); John Caryll, The English Princes, or the Death of Richard III (1667; reprinted 1673, 1674). 79. Shakespeare, Henry VIII (first published 1623); Samuel Rowley, When you See Me You Know Me or the Famous Chronicle History of Henry VIII (1599; printed 1605). See Kamps, Historiography and Ideology in Stuart Drama, 170–71, 181. 80. John Banks, Vertue Betray’d: or, Anna Bullen (1682); John Banks, The Innocent Usurper: or, the Death of Lady Jane Grey (1694). 81. Thomas Heywood, England’s Elizabeth: Her Life and Troubles, During Minorities, From the Cradle to the Crown (London, 1631). 82. Quoted in Curtis Perry, The Making of Jacobean Culture: James I and the Renegotiation of Elizabethan Literary Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 179. 83. See Limon, Dangerous Matter. 84. See Lisa Ferraro Parmelee, Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1996), 51; Paul J. Voss, Elizabethan News Pamphlets: Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, and the Birth of Journalism (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2001), 115, 123; Paul H. Kocher, “Contemporary Pamphlet Backgrounds for Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris,” Modern Language Quarterly 8 (1947): 151–73, 309–18; Julia Briggs, “Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris: A Reconsideration,” Review of English Studies, new ser., 34 (1983): 257–78. 85. Thomas Shipman’s Henry the Third of France (London, 1682), emphasized the French king’s assassination. Shipman claimed to have followed historians Davila and Gerard, and insisted that he “alter’d not the Story, nor made the Guises speak, or act” other “than they really did.” “To Roger L’Estrange.” Written at the time of the popish plot, John Crowe’s The Ambitious Statesman used French materials to laud loyalty and condemn rebellion. Nathaniel Lee’s banned The Massacre of Paris featured a weak Charles IX and heroic Protestant admiral. The admiral stood for “liberty of Conscience and Religion” and took up arms against the king because of “the ghastly flaws/ of that Religion, that would rend the World/ that sticks not at the slaughter of whole States/ Blowing up Senates, nor at murdering Kings.” See Owen, “Interpreting the Politics of Restoration Drama,” 75–76; Canfield, “Royalism’s Last Dramatic Stand,” 247–48; Staves, Players’ Scepters, 79. See also A Relation of the Barbarous and Bloody Massacre . . . in the year 1572 Collected out of Mezeray, Thuanus, and other approved authors (London, 1678). 86. The Duke of Monmouth and his Whig allies have “given us all our Belly-full of Treason.” Whigs “Cry Freedom up with Popular noisy Votes;/ And get enough to cut each others Throats.” “Lop all the Rights that fence your Monarch’s Throne;/ for fear of too much pow’r, pray leave him none.” Whigs “Twice in one Age expel the lawfull Heir.” They wish to make London independent of the Crown, a realm

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Notes to Chapter Five apart, “the Kingdom of the Town.” Whigs, like the French Guise party, employ “Saintship and Zeal” to make Scripture “speak Rebellion, Schism and Murder.” Prologue to the Duke of Guise (London, 1682–83), 1–3. See also Kewes, “Dryden and the Staging of Popular Politics,” 57–68. 87. He also attacked the “Poet and his party,” noting, “’Tis a fine Age, when Mercenary Poets shall become Politicians, and their Plays business of State.” Thomas Shadwell, Some Reflections upon the pretended parallels in the play, the Duke of Guise (London, 1683), 8–10, 22, 25. See also The True History of the Duke of Guise . . . Published for the undeceiving such as may perhaps be imposed upon by Mr Dryden’s late Tragedy of the Duke of Guise (London, 1683). 88. Dryden, Dramatic Works, I, 308; John Dryden, Vindication, or, the Parallel of the French Holy-League and the English League and Covenant turn’d into a seditious libel against the King by Thomas Hunt and the authors of the Reflections upon the pretended parallel in the play called the Duke of Guise (London, 1683). 89. Quoted in Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, 157. 90. See Wiseman, “History Digested,” 182–204; Bridget Orr, Empire on the English Stage, 1660–1714 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 135–38. 91. Quoted in Tricomi, Anticourt Drama in England, 155. 92. Limon, Dangerous Matter, 6. There were printed news reports on Barnevelt in 1619. 93. (II, I, 12–19). Webster’s The White Devil (1612) also centered on the corruptions of an Italian court and was based on a newsletter account of a real event that had taken place in Italy several decades earlier. Shakespeare’s The Tempest featured usurpation by a wicked ruler that resulted from the rightful ruler’s inattention to princely duties. Massinger’s The Maid of Honour portrays the undesirable consequence of favorites. The play, printed in 1632 but performed several years earlier, referred to the troubles of the Elector Palatine and the Protestant cause and highlighted foreign issues similar to those facing England c. 1621–22. See Linda Peck, “Ambivalence and Jacobean Courts,” in Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama, ed. Braunmuller and Hattaway, 117–36. 94. The Rebellion in Naples (London, 1649), F6v. Masaniello’s rebellion was also the subject of John Tatham’s The Distracted State (1651). 95. Orr, Empire on the English Stage, 72–73, 77. But see Maguire, Regicide and Restoration, 177–79. 96. See Tricomi, Anticourt Drama in England, 178–81, 186; John Wallace, “‘Examples are the Best Precepts,’ Readers and Meanings in Seventeenth Century Poetry,” Critical Inquiry 1 (1974): 272, 272n, 274, 287. 97. (London, 1688), 50, 65, 35. Elkanah Settle’s Cambyses (1671) deals with rival tyrants attempting to gain control of Persia. Settle’s The Empress of Morocco (1673), based on Lancelot Addison’s West Barbary (1671), was written during tension over Tangier, the port acquired with Charles II’s marriage to Catherine of Braganza. The play was criticized for failing to accurately present the historical, geographical and cultural materials. 98. See Derek Traversi, Shakespeare: The Roman Plays (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963); Coppelia Kahn, Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds and Women (London: Routledge, 1997); Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare’s Rome (Cam-



Notes to Chapters Five and Six

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Katherine Maus, Jonson and the Roman Frames of Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). 99. See Susan Owen, “Partial Tyrants” and “Freeborn People,” in Lucius Junius Brutus, Studies in English Literature 51 (1991): 463–82, 297; Richard E. Brown, “Nathaniel Lee’s Political Dramas, 1679–1683,” Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700 10 (1986): 41–52. Most scholars view the play as pro-Whig and even prorepublican. But see Victoria Haynes “‘All Language then is Vile’: The Theatrical Critique of Political Rhetoric in Nathaniel Lee’s Lucius Junius Brutus,” English Literary History 63 (1969): 337–65. 100. See Buchanan Sharp, “Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and the Crisis of the 1590’s,” in Law and Authority in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to Thomas Garden Barnes, ed. Buchanan Sharp and Mark Charles Fissel (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007), 53–55; Michael Bristol, “Lenten Butchery: Legitimating Crises in Coriolanus,” in Shakespeare Reproduced, ed. Jean E. Howard and Marion O’Connor (1987; reprint New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 207–24; Traversi, Shakespeare: The Roman Plays, 208–40. 101. Nahum Tate, The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth (1681), A2. 102. Paulina Kewes, “Julius Caesar in Jacobean England,” The Seventeenth Century 17 (2002): 155–86. See also Robert Miola, “Julius Caesar and the Tryannick Debate,” Renaissance Quarterly 38 (1985): 271–89. 103. (London, 1651), B1, B3, C3, D3. 104. See Traversi, Shakespeare: The Roman Plays, 79–190. Thomas May’s The Tragedy of Cleopatra Queen of Egypt was acted in 1626. 105. See Robert C. Evans, “Sejanus and Politics in the Early Reign of James,” in Refashioning Ben Jonson: Gender, Politics, and the Jonsonian Canon, ed. J. Sanders, K. Chedgzoy, and Susan Wiseman (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988), 71–93; Katherine E. Maus, Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Malcolm Smuts, “Court-Centered Politics and the Uses of Roman Historians, c. 1590–1630,” in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1994), 21. 106. Canfield, “Royalism’s Last Dramatic Stand,” 251–53.

Chapter Six 1. Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, ed. Forrest G. Robinson (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), 84–85. For Jonson, see Michael Murrin, The Veil of Allegory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 174; Brian Vicars, Classical Rhetoric in English Poetry (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970). 2. George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, ed. G. D. Willcock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), 1, 4, 8–9, 21, 30, 33. See also William Webbe, A Discourse of English Poetrie (1596), in Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. Gregory Smith, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904), I, 262. 3. Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, 14–15, 17–18, 22. 4. Ralph S. Walker, ed., Ben Jonson’s Timber: or, Discoveries (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1953), 5, 9, 28, 49. 5. David Loewenstein, “Milton and the Poetic of Defense,” in Politics, Poetics and

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Notes to Chapter Six Hermeneutics in Milton’s Prose, ed. David Lowenstein and James Grantham Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 191–92. 6. H. T. Swedenberg et al., eds., The Works of John Dryden, 20 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956–2000), XIII, 3 (lines 14–15). 7. Richard Baxter, Practical Works of Richard Baxter, 4 vols. (London, 1707), III, 377. Baxter was not opposed to religious poetry. 8. Robert B. Hinman, Abraham Cowley’s World of Order (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960). Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society (St. Louis, MO: Washington University Studies, 1958), 413, 414, 415, 416. 9. Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, 19–21, 41–49. 10. Ben Jonson’s Timber, 51; Thomas Hobbes, The Answer of Mr Hobbes to Sir William d’Avenant’s Preface to Gondibert in Literary Criticism of Seventeenth-century England, ed. E. W. Tayler (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 280. 11. Rosalie L. Colie, The Resources of Kind: Genre-Theory in the Renaissance (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973); David Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Some critics argue that epic and romance are antithetical; others that they were often combined. See Colin Burrow, Epic and Romance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). 12. John Dryden, Apology for Heroic Poetry and Poetic License, Preface. 13. James D. Garrison, Dryden and the Tradition of Panegyric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975). See also Paul Hammond, “The King’s Two Bodies: Representations of Charles II,” in Culture, Politics and Society in Britain, 1660–1800, ed. Jeremy Black and Jeremy Gregory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 31, 32. Charles was the “Augustus of our world.” Sir Richard Fanshawe: Shorter Poems and Translations, ed. N. W. Bawcutt (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1964), 7. 14. Edward Holberton, Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 41. Milton’s To the Lord General Cromwell was effusive in his praise of Cromwell’s military victory. Complete Poems and Prose (New York, 1957), 160–61. George Wither’s The Protector (1655) was characterized as “A Poem Briefly Illustrating the Supereminency of that Dignity; and, Rationally demonstrating, that the Title of Protector, providentially conferred upon the Supreme Governour of the British Republic, is the most Honorable of all Titles, and that which probably, promiseth most Propitiousness to these Nations; if our Sins and Divisions prevent it not.” Edmund Waller’s Panegyric to the Lord Protector (1655) compares Cromwell to Augustus. Rome would find “repose, at last” when “Itself into Augustus’ arms did cast:/ So England now does, with like toil oppressed,/ Her weary head upon your bosom rest.” Quoted in Howard Erkine-Hill, The Augustan Idea in Literature (London: Arnold, 1983), 201. See also Laura Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait, and Print 1645–1661 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Cromwell was vilified in Thomas Hoy’s poem “Agathocles the Sicilian Usurper” (1683). 15. John Locke, Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 201. 16. Ibid., 203–4.



Notes to Chapter Six

17. Gerald M. MacLean, Time’s Witness: Historical Representation in English Poetry 1603–1660 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 256. MacLean notes over one hundred printed poems celebrating the Restoration. 18. Abraham Cowley’s “Upon His Majesties Restoration” looked forward to times that would “calm the stormy World, and still the rage of Warrs” and to a king who would restore England to “felicity and innocence” and rebuild “his ruined country.” Abraham Cowley, Poems, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905), 420. See also John Evelyn’s “A Panegyric to Charles the Second” (1660). Dryden’s Astraea Redux (1660) recorded the joy and unanimity of Charles’s return and blamed those who had “ruin’d crowns.” Works of John Dryden, I, 22–23 (lines 24–34). 19. See Michelle O’Callaghan, The ‘Shepheard’s Nation’: Jacobean Spenserians and Early Stuart Political Culture 1612–1625 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 13, 14, 19. See, for example, George Wither’s Prince Henries Obsequies (London, 1612). 20. Quoted in Graham Parry, “A Troubled Arcadia,” in Literature and the English Civil War, ed. Thomas Healy and Jonathan Sawday (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 43. See also John Cleveland, “Epitaph on the Earl of Strafford,” in The Writing of Royalism, 1628–1660, Robert Wilcher, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 310–17. 21. Works of John Dryden, I, 12 (lines 37–38). 22. Ibid., III, 104 (lines 395–96). 23. An Elegy on the right honourable Anthony Earl of Shaftsbury (London, 1683), 1. 24. An Elegy on the Death of Algernon Sidney (London, 1683), 1. 25. See Gerald MacLean, Time’s Witness; Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, 38, 39, 40. 26. Samuel Daniel, The First Four Books of the Civil Wars between the Two Houses of Lancaster and York (London, 1595); The Civil Wars, ed. Laurence Michel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), I, stanza 6, quoted in MacLean, Time’s Witness, 43. 27. Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion (London, 1613), 264–65. 28. Romes Monarchy (London, 1596), Title page and dedicatory letter. 29. MacLean, Time’s Witness, 34–37, 38–41. 30. See Michelle O’Callaghan, “Talking Politics: Tyranny, Parliament and Christopher Brooke’s The Ghost of Richard the Third, 1614,” Historical Journal 41 (1998): 97–120. 31. J. G. A. Pocock, “Medieval Kings at the Court of Charles I: Thomas May’s Verse Histories,” in Perspectives in Early Modern and Modern Intellectual History: Essays in Honor of Nancy S. Struever, ed. Joseph Marino and Melinda W. Schlitt (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2001), 450, 453. See also MacLean, Time’s Witness, 35–36; Francis Hubert’s The Historie of Edward the Second (London, 1599), which included criticism of a monarch and corrupt favorites, resulted in Hubert’s being summoned by the Privy Council. 32. Fulke Greville, The Remains; being Poems of Monarchy and Religion, ed. G. A. Wilkes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 70. 33. MacLean, Time’s Witness, 180, 181, 185, 189, 190–91, 194–95, 205–8.

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Notes to Chapter Six 34. Rebecca Lemon, Treason by Words: Literature, Law and Rebellion in Shakespeare’s England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 107–36. 35. See The Two Famous Pitch Battels of Lypsich, and Lutzen (1634). 36. Parry, “A Troubled Arcadia,” 38, 40. 37. H. M. Margoliouth, ed., Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), I, 295. Marvell’s private sentiments are less clear. See Blair Worden, “The Politics of Marvell’s Horatian Ode,” Historical Journal 27 (1984): 525–47; John M. Wallace, “Marvell’s Horatian Ode,” PMLA 77 (1962): 33–45; Annabel M. Patterson, Marvell and the Civic Crown (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). 38. Quoted in Worden, “The Politics of Marvell’s Horatian Ode,” 536; Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvel, II, 67–68 (lines 89–90); l, 387–90. 39. Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvel, II, 13–18; Christopher Wortham, “Marvell’s Cromwell Poems: An Accidental Triptych,” in The Political Identity of Andrew Marvell, ed. Conal Condren and A. D. Cousins (Aldershot, Hants: Scholar Press, 1990), 16–52. 40. Works of John Dryden, I, 48–105. See Philip Harth, Pen for a Party: Dryden’s Poetry Propaganda in Its Contexts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); James Anderson Winn, John Dryden and His World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). 41. Vox & Lacrimae Anglorum: or, The True English-mans Complaints, To their Representatives in Parliament (London, 1668). 42. John Day, The Parliament of Bees (London, 1641), D4. 43. Quoted in Michael Seidel, “Satire, Lampoon, Libel, Slander,” in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1650–1740, ed. Steven N. Zwicker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 34. 44. John Dryden, The Origin and Progress of Satire (London, 1693), Preface. See also Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (London, 1681), Preface to the Reader. 45. Thomas Cogswell, “England and the Spanish Match,” in Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603–1642, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (Harlow: Longman, 1989), 124–25; Richard Cust, “Politics and the Electorate in the 1620s,” in Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. Cust and Hughes, 142. 46. For satiric verses and libels between 1640 and 1642, see David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution, 1640–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 331–46. 47. George de F. Lord, Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse 1660– 1714 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963–1975). 48. Paul Hammond, The Making of Restoration Poetry (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 2006), 12, 13, 29–30, 49–72. 49. Lord, Poems on Affairs of State, I, xxxiv–xxxv, 56. 50. Ibid., I, 22, 179, 181, 182; II, 328. 51. Richard Bulstrode, Memoirs and reflections upon the reign and government of King Charles the Second (London, 1721), 299. 52. Quoted in Lord, Poems on Affairs of State, I, xxxvi. 53. Whigs and Tories made good use of this genre. “The Genius of True Eng-



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lish-men” notes, “The Free-born English Generous and Wise, Hate Chains, but do not Government despise./ Rights of the Crown, Tributes and Taxes they, (When Lawfully demanded) freely pay:/ Force they abhor, and Wrongs they scorn to bear,/ More guided by the Judgment than their Fear,/ Justice with them is never call’d Severe.” “Kings were least safe in their Unbounded Will/ Joyn’d with the wretched Power of doing ill.” Poems on Affairs of State from the time of Oliver Cromwell to the Abdication of K. James the Second (London, 1699), 131. 54. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, in Works of John Dryden, II, 15 (lines 317–19), 22 (lines 545–47). See Steven Zwicker, Dryden’s Political Poetry: The Typology of King and Nation (Providence: Brown University Press, 1972); Steven Zwicker and Derek Hirst, “Rhetoric and Disguise: Political Language and Political Argument in Absalom and Achitophel,” Journal of British Studies 21 (1981): 39–56. 55. Quoted in Alan Roper, “Who’s Who in Absalom and Achitophel,” Huntington Library Quarterly 63 (2000): 99–138. 56. Thomas Shadwell, The Medal of John Bayes (London, 1682), 7. 57. Some eight thousand copies were sold in the year following publication. Paul Hammond, “The Circulation of Dryden’s Poetry,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 86 (1992): 379–409, 390. Tate collaborated with Dryden on a second part of Absalom and Achitophel. Elkanah Settle and Thomas Shadwell provided Whig responses. 58. Works of John Dryden, II (lines 256–59), 45 (lines 86–87). 59. Poems on Affairs of State from Oliver Cromwell to this present time (London, 1698); The second part of the collection of poems on affairs of state (London, 1689). See also A Third Collection of the Newest and most Ingenious poems, satyrs, songs against Popery and Tyranny Relating to the Times (London, 1689); The Muses Farewell to Popery and Slavery (London, 1689). 60. MacLean, Time’s Witness, 7, 46, 159. See also Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Leah S. Marcus, “Politics and Pastoral: Writing the Court on the Countryside,” in Problems in Focus: Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 139–59; Alistair Fox, The English Renaissance: Identity and Representation in Elizabethan England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 93–180; Paul Alpers, What Is Pastoral? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 61. Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, 38. 62. Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, 42. 63. Quoted in Daniel Javitch, Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 79. 64. King James I protested Spenser’s treatment of his mother, Mary Stuart. Donald Cheney, “Narrative, Romance and Epic,” in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1500–1600, ed. Arthur F. Kinney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 215. 65. See William Dinsmore Briggs, “Political Ideas in Sidney’s Arcadia,” Studies in Philology 28 (1931): 137–61; Maureen Quilligan, “Sidney and His Queen,” in The Historical Renaissance, ed. Heather Dubrow and Richard Strier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 171–97; Blair Worden, The Sound of Virtue, Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 7.

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Notes to Chapter Six 66. Fulke Greville, The Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Nowell Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), 15–16. 67. Worden, The Sound of Virtue, 146–47, 156–58, 160–63. 68. MacLean, Time’s Witness, 7. 69. A. D. B., The Court of the Most Illustrious and Most Magnificent James the First (London, 1619), Dedicatory letter to the Duke of Buckingham. 70. Obadiah Walker’s Of Education Especially for Young Genlemen (Oxford, 1673) referred to romances as “castles in the aire.” Ibid., 42. 71. See Victoria Kahn, Wayward Contracts: The Crisis of Political Obligation in England 1640–1674 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 72. See Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973); James Turner, The Politics of Landscape: Rural Scenery and Society in English Poetry, 1630–1660 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), 12, 48; William Alexander McClung, The Country House in English Renaissance Poetry (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977); Alastair Fowler, “Country House Poems: The Politics of a Genre,” The Seventeenth Century 1 (1986): 1–14. 73. “To Penshurst,” lines 1–6. See Don E. Wayne, Penshurst: The Semiotics of Place and the Poetics of History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984). For Denham’s “Cooper’s Hill,” see Turner, The Politics of Landscape, 39, 49–50, 58, 61. 74. See Gary Hamilton, “Marvell, Sacrilege and Protestant Historiography: Contextualizing ‘Upon Appleton House,’” in Religion, Literature and Politics in Post Reformation England, 1590–1688, ed. D. B. Hamilton and Richard Strier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 161–86. 75. Wilcher, Writing of Royalism, 310–17. 76. “The Lie,” in The Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh, ed. Agnes Latham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), 45. 77. Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser reviled ballads as bad literature. Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 243–45. See also Natascha Wuerzbach, The Rise of the English Street Ballad, 1550–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Patricia Fumerton, Anita Guerrini and Kars McAbee, eds., Ballads and Broadsides in Britain, 1500–1800 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010). 78. Angela McShane Jones, “Roaring Royalists and Ranting Brewers: The Politicization of Drink and Drunkenness in Political Broadside Ballads from 1640– 1689,” in A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth Century England, ed. Adam Smyth (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 2004), 70. Pepys labeled 315 of his 1775 ballads as being on “State and Times.” Ibid. See also Nicholas K. Kiessling, The Library of Anthony Wood (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 2002), xxi–xxii. 79. Five-sixths of the ballads printed between 1600 and 1640 had woodcut illustrations. James Raven, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade 1450–1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 80. Isaac Walton, The Compleat Angler, quoted in Wuerzbach, The Rise of the English Street Ballad, 279. 81. Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 267; McShane Jones, “Roaring Royalists and Ranting Brewers,” 71.



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82. Matthias Adam Shaaber, “Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England 1476–1622” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1929), 120, 122–25, 130–31, 169–74, 179, 180–81, 230. Ballads were posted on the Exchange and at the Old Bailey after Essex’s execution. 83. There were at least fifteen printed items dealing with Raleigh. Shaaber, “Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England,” 142–43. See Charles H. Firth, “The Ballad History of the Reign of James I,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 3rd ser., vol. 6, 22–23, 26–29, 33, 38–41, 43, 45, 55–56; Thomas Scott, The Second Part of Vox Populi (London, 1624), 5. 84. N. E. McClure, ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939), I, 352, 362; Pauline Croft, “The Reputation of Robert Cecil: Libels, Political Opinion and Popular Awareness in the Early Seventeenth Century,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 1 (1991): 43–69; Alastair Bellany, The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 104, 114. See also Alastair Bellany, “Raylinge Rymes and Vaunting verse,” Libelous Politics in Early Stuart England, 1603–1628,” in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (London: Macmillan, 1994), 285–310; F. W. Fairholt, ed., Poems and Songs Relating to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and His Assassination (London: Percy Society, 1850). 85. Sir Frederick Pollock, ed., Table Talk (London: Quaritch, 1927), 72. 86. Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 391; Dagmar Freist, Governed by Opinion: Politics, Religion, and the Dynamics of Communication in Stuart London 1637–1645 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997), 94, 248–49. Laud complained of libels and ballads “against” him. The Works of . . . William Laud, ed. W. Scott and J. Bliss, 7 vols. (Oxford, 1847–60), VI, 597. 87. Hyder E. Rollins, ed., Cavalier and Puritan, Ballads and Broadsides Illustrating the Period of the Great Rebellion, 1640–1660 (New York: New York University Press, 1923), 9, 12, 14. 88. See C. H. Firth, “Ballads on the Bishops’ Wars, 1638–1640,” Scottish Historical Review 3 (1906): 257–73. 89. McShane Jones, “Roaring Royalists and Ranting Brewers,” 73. 90. W. W. Wilkins, ed., Political Ballads of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, 1860), I, 29–31, 40, 48–50. See The Members’ Justification (London, 1647); The Cryes of Westminster: or a Whole Pack of Parliamentary Knavery Opened and Set to Sale (London, 1648). 91. Hyder E. Rollins, “Martin Parker, Ballad-Monger,” Modern Philology 16 (1919): 113–38, 123–24, 129–30. 92. Charles Mackey, The Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 (London: G. Bohn, 1863), 4–5, 7–8, 9–10. 93. Wilkins, Political Ballads of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, I, 100, 105. Rollins suggests that a considerable number of ballads are extant from 1653. Cavalier and Puritan, 54, 56. 94. Angela McShane Jones has located at least fifty-two ballads. “Debate: The Roasting of the Rump: Scatology and the Body Politic in Restoration England,” Past and Present 196 (2007): 253–72, 261. See also Mark S. R. Jenner, “The Roasting of the Rump: Scatology and the Body Politic in Restoration England,” Past and

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Notes to Chapter Six Present 196 (2002): 273–86; Michelle O’Callaghan, “Performing Politics: The Circulation of the ‘Parliament Fart,’” Huntington Library Quarterly 69 (2006): 121–38. See Rump Rampant (London, 1660); The Rump serv’d in a Grand Sallet (London, 1660); Colonel John Okies lamentation, or Rumper Cashiered (London, 1660); The Rump roughly but righteously handled (London, 1660); The Breech Wash’d by a friend (Oxford, 1660); Bum-Fodder, or Wast-Paper, proper to wipe the Nation’s Rump (London, 1660); The Resurrection of the Rump; or, Rebellion and Tyranny revived (London, 1659); Alexander Brome, Ratts rhimed to death, or, The Rump-Parliament hang’ed up to the Shambles (London, 1659); A Collection of Ballads on the late Rump who Called themselves a Parliament (London, 1660); Alexander Brome, The Rump (1660), a collection of Royalist ballads, was printed several times. 95. The Second Part of St. George for England (London, 1660). 96. A Ballad Called the Haymarket Hectors commented on his lechery and criticized his French and naval policies. Lord, Poems on Affairs of State, I, 169–70. 97. A New Ballad, to an old Tune (1679) in ibid., II, 176–79. 98. See The Valiant-hearted Sea-men; The Royal Victory obtained . . . against the Dutch Fleet; England’s Royall Conquest; England’s Valor, and Hollands Terrour; The Dutch damnified, or the Butter-Boxes Bob’d or Hollands turn’d to Tinder. 99. See A Ballad upon the Popish Plot (1678); A Song upon Titus (1680); A new Ballad upon the present Conspiracy of the Papists (1679); Tell-lyes, or an Answer to Titus Tell-troth (1682). 100. Lord, Poems on Affairs of State, II, 122–26. Perkin Warbeck was a claimant to the throne during the reign of Henry VII. See also A Ballad upon the Duke of Monmouth’s Reception at Oxford (1680). 101. Ned Ward, A Collection of Historical and State Poems, Satyrs, Songs and Epigrams (London, 1717), IV, 271–72. See also Jemmy return’d, or, the Nations Joy (1682); A new ballad to the Praise of James, Duke of Monmouth (n.p. 1682); A New Ballad from Whigg-land (1682). 102. The Wiltshire Ballad and the Essex Ballad commented on the petitioning movement. Lord, Poems on Affairs of State, II, 312–26. 103. See The Ignoramus Ballad (London, 1681); Ignoramus-justice or, The Englishlaws turn’d into a gin, an excellent new song (London, 1682); A New Ignoramus being the second new song (London, 1681); The Whiggs lamentation, for the Tap of Sedition (London, 1683); Tony’s Lamentation or Potapski’s Case (London, 1682); The Whig’s Lamentation for the Death of Anthony, King of Poland (London, 1683). 104. The Ignoramus Ballad (London, 1681), 1. See also A New Ballad of the Protestant Joyner (London, 1681). 105. See The Whig Ballad, Or Summons to be a fresh Association (1680); A New Song: being a Dialogue between a Tory Concerning the Election of Sheriffs (London, 1682); Loyalty Triumphant, on the confirmation of Mr North and Mr Rich, Sheriffs of London and Middlesex. As it was Sung at the Sheriff’s Feast at Guildhall (London, 1682); A New Ballad of London’s Loyalty (1681), in Lord, Poems of Affairs of State, II, 432–34. 106. The Old New True Blew Protestant Plot (London, 1683). See also A New Song of the Times, or The Whiggish Plot (1683); A New Narrative of the Plot, being a new ballad (1683); The Whigs Laid open, or, An honest ballad (London, 1683); Whig upon



Notes to Chapter Six

Whig, or, a pleasant dismal ballad on the old Plotters (n.p., 1683); A looking glass for the Whig so, Down with Common-Wealths, Men; The Lying Whig drawn in his own Colours (London, 1685); Loyalty Triumphant, or Phanaticism displayed in a Song (London, 1684). For the decline in ballad production during the latter part of Charles II’s reign and during the reign of James II, see Angela McShane, “Subjects and Objects: Material Expressions of Love and Loyalty in Seventeenth Century England,” Journal of British Studies 48 (2009): 871–86, 883. 107. A lamentable new ballad upon the Earle of Essex his death (London, 1685); see also A New Ballad, in Coll Sidneys lamentation and last Farwel. (London, 1685). 108. G. M. Crump, ed., A new catch in Praise of the Reverand Bishops in Poems on Affairs of State, ed. G. M. Crump (New Haven, 1968), IV, 256, 229–30. 109. Overbury also described them as “Witty descriptions of the properties of sundry persons.” His Wife with Additions of New Characters, 16th ed. (London, 1638), Q4-Q5. See also Nicholas Breton, The Good and the badde, or Descriptions of the Worthies and Unworthies of this Age (London, 1616); Nicholas Breton, England’s Selected characters, describing the good and bad worthies of this age (London, 1643). 110. Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penniless (London, 1592); Samuel Rowley, Looke to it: for, Ile Stabbe ye (London 1602); Joseph Hall, Characters of Vertues and Vices (London, 1608); Geffray Mynshul, Essays and Characters (London, 1618); Nicholas Breton, Characters upon Essaies Moral and Divine (London, 1615); John Earle, MicroCosmographie. Or, A peece of the World Discovered in Essayes and Characters (London, 1628); Richard Brathwaite, Whimzies, or a New Cast of Characters (London, 1631); Wye Saltonstall, Picturae Loquentes Or Pictures Drawn forth in Characters (London, 1631). See Gwendolen Murphy, A Cabinet of Characters (London: H. Milford, 1925); Gwendolen Murphy, A Bibliography of English Character-books 1608–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925); Henry Morley, ed., Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge, 1891); Benjamin Boyce, The Polemical Character 1640–1661 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1955). 111. For religious characters, see Christopher Haigh, The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven: Kinds of Christianity in Post-Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 112. Thomas Fuller, The Holy State (Cambridge, 1642), 349, 350, 351, 353–54. 113. Boyce, The Polemical Character, 4. 114. See Lucifers lacky, or . . . the true Character of a dissembling Brownist (London, 1641); The True Character of an Untrue Bishop (London, 1641); The Jesuits character (London, 1642); The Puritane Set forth in his Lively Colours (London, 1642); The Character of a Puritan, and his gallimaufrey of the antichristian clergie (London, 1643); John Geree, The Character of an old English Puritane, or NonConformist (London, 1643); Independency stript and whipt. Together with the Character of an Independent (1648). See also John Fry, The Clergy in their Colours: or, a brief Character of them (London, 1650); The True and lively Character of a right communicating Church Member (London, 1650); Lionel Lockyer, The Character of a Time-serving Saint (London, 1652). 115. Character of an Oxford Incendiary (London, 1645), 2. 116. Times Anatomiz’d in several Characters (London, 1647). 117. Morley, Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century, 297–98.

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Notes to Chapter Six 118. The True Character of Mercurius Aulicus (London, 1645), 1, 2, 4, 6, 7. 119. John Cleveland, “The Character of a Diurnal-maker,” in The Works of Mr. John Cleveland (London, 1687), 78–82. 120. John Cleveland, A Character of a London Diurnall (London, 1644), 1, 2, 4. 121. The Full answer to a scandalous Pamphlet (London, 1645), 2, 6. See also The character of the New Oxford Libeller, in an answer to his Character of a London Diurnal (London, 1645); The Oxford character of the London diurnal examined and answered (London, 1645). 122. See Surfeit to A.B.C. (London, 1656); Naps upon Parnassus (London, 1658); Satirical Characters and Handsome Indescriptions (1659); Richard Flecknoe, Enigmaticall Characters (London, 1658); K. W., Confused Characters of Concerted Coxcombs (London, 1661). 123. The Character of the Protector exists only in manuscript versions. Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell, 88–91. 124. Ralph Johnson, The Scholars Guide from the Accidence to the University (London, 1665), 15. Richard Flecknoe characterized the character as “a Sermon as well as a Picture” based on “observations of several Nature, Humors portrait,” which provided “Pictures of the Mind.” It provided “only the heads of things in general: and briefly, avoiding all superfluity of words and matter.” Fifty-Five Enigmatical Characters (London, 1665). 125. The Character of a Phanatique (London, 1660); The Character of a Presbyter, or Sir John anatomiz’d (London, 1660); John Denham, The True Presbyterian without Disguise (London, 1661); Marchamont Nedham, The True Character of a Rigid Presbyter (London, 1661); The Character of an Anabaptist (London, 1661). John Geree’s portrait of the Puritan was reissued as The Character of an old English Protestant formerly called a Puritan, now a Nonconformist (n.p., 1670); Samuel Austin, The Character of a Quaker in his true and proper Colours (London, 1672); R. H., Plus Ultra, or, The second part of the Character of a Quaker (London, 1672); The Character of a Papist (London, 1673); The Character of a Turbulent Pragmatical Jesuit (London, 1678); The Character of a Jesuit (London, 1681); The Character of a Protestant Jesuit (London, 1682). The character was also used for pejorative descriptions of foreign countries. 126. Clarendon Historical Society Reprints, 2nd ser., 11 (1884–86), 357–58. See also The Phanatique in his Colours, being a full and final Character of a Whig (London, 1681); The Character of a Leading Petitioner (London, 1681); The Hypocritical Whigg Displayed (London, 1682); John Nalson, The Character of a Rebellion (London, 1681). 127. The Character of Popery and Arbitrary Government (London, 1681); The Character of a Tory (London, 1681); The Character of through-pac’d Tory (London, 1682); The Character of those two Protestants in Masquerade; Heraclitus and the Observator (London, 1681). 128. Elkanah Settle, The Character of a Popish Successor, in The Struggle for Sovereignty: Seventeenth Century English Political Tracts, ed. Joyce Lee Malcolm, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, IN, 1999), II, 673–716. Settle became a Tory in 1685. See also An answer to a late pamphlet; entitled, A Character of a Popish Successor (London, 1681); Roger L’Estrange, The Character of a Papist in masquerade (London, 1681); Roger L’Estrange, A Reply to the second part of the Character of a Popish Successor (Lon-



Notes to Chapter Six

don, 1681); John Phillips, The Character of a Popish Successor, . . . with reflections on L’Estrange (London, 1681); The Character of a Popish Successor in defense of the first part, against two answers (London, 1681). 129. Malcolm, The Struggle for Sovereignty, II, 684, 691, 697, 711, 712, 716. See also Elkanah Settle, A Character of the true blue Protestant Poet (London, 1682); Elkanah Settle, The present state of England in relation to popery (London, 1684). 130. The Character of an Honest Man: Whether Styled Whig or Tory, and his opposite, Knave. Together with some short Reflections on . . . a late Pamphlet called the Character of a Popish Successor (London, 1683), 5–6, 7, 9–13. Several of Samuel Butler’s posthumously published characters dealt with political life. These included “The Politician,” “The Modern Politician,” “The Leader of a Faction,” “The Seditious Man,” “The Republican,” “The Factitious Member,” and “A Rabble.” Samuel Butler, The Genuine Remains, II, 52, 56, 60–61, 290, 292, 331, 332, 335, 345. See also Morley, Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century, 383–84, 393–94. 131. Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, 30. See also Sir John Harrington, A Preface, or rather a brief Apologie of Poetrie (London, 1591), 2–3. 132. The Moral Philosophie of Doni, trans. Thomas North (London, 1570), quoted in Richard Dutton, “Volpone and the Beast Fable: Early Modern Analogic Reading,” Huntington Library Quarterly 67 (2004): 347–70, 362. 133. Bacon, De Augmentis, in The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding (London: Routledge, 1905), IV, 316–17. 134. Annabel Patterson, Fables of Power: Aesopian Writing and Political History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 83–84. Patterson suggests that political fabling was a form of resistance to unjust power utilized by those who lacked power and were forced to encode political commentary. Mark Kishlansky rejects Patterson’s claims. “Turning Frogs into Princes: Aesop’s Fables and the Political Culture of Early Modern England,” in Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to David Underdown, ed. Susan D. Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 338–60. 135. Edward Forset, Comparative Discourse of the Bodies Natural and Politique (London, 1606), 3, 8. 136. Roger L’Estrange, Fables of Aesop and other Eminent Mythologists: with Morals and Reflexions, 3rd ed. (London, 1699), 47. 137. W. H. Greenleaf, Order, Empiricism, and Politics: Two Traditions of English Political Thought, 1500–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 25. 138. Worden, The Sound of Virtue, 275. See also John Hepwith, The Caledonian Forest (London, 1641); The Cuckow (London, 1607); Thomas Scot, Philomythie (London, 1616); Richard Niccols, The Beggers Ape (London, 1627); The Hunting of the Fox or, the Sectaries dissected in a Parallel (London, 1648). 139. (Paris, 1643), Preface, 6, 7, 9, 11–13. See also James Howell, Dendrologia Dodona’s Grove or the Vocall Forest (1649), an “allegorical discourse” of “the choicest Occurrences and Criticisms of State.” 140. John Ogilby, The Fables of Aesop Paraphras’d (London, 1651), 16. The comment about statesmen appears in the prefatory poem by William Davenant. 141. See also Thomas Fuller, Antheologia, or The Speech of the Flowers (London, 1655).

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Notes to Chapter Six 142. Francis Barlow, Aesop’s Fables (London, 1666), Dedication. 143. Aesop Improved (London, 1673), Preface to the Reader; Aesop Explained (London, 1682), Preface. 144. L’Estrange, Fables of Aesop and Other eminent Mythologists, with Morals and Reflections (London, 1692). See Line Cottegnies, “‘The art of Schooling Mankind’: The Uses of the Fable in Roger L’Estrange’s Aesop Fables,” in Roger L’Estrange and the Making of Restoration Culture, ed. A. Dunan Page and B. Lynch (Aldershot: Hampshire, 1988), 144. 145. Mythologia Ethica: or Three Centuries of Aesopian Fables (London, 1689), Preface. 146. See Ogilby, The Fables of Aesop Paraphras’d, III, 13–16. 147. Francis Bacon, The Essays (London: Penguin, 1985), 103. 148. L’Estrange, Fables of Aesop, 47. 149. Quoted in Patterson, Fables of Power, 94. 150. Quoted in Nancy Klein Maguire, Regicide and Restoration: English Tragicomedy, 1660–1671 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 145. See also Francis Osborne, A Persuasive to a Mutuall Compliance under the Present Government (London, 1652), 24; Frog and Log: A Vote for moderate Counsels (1681). 151. L’Estrange, Fables of Aesop, Preface, 20–21. 152. Grimalkin, or the Rebel Cat: A Novell Representing the unwearied Attempts of the Beasts of his Faction against Sovereignty and Succession (London, 1681), 5, 11, 13. 153. Curtis Perry, The Making of Jacobean Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 156. 154. Wither, Prince Henries Obsequies. 155. Christopher Brooke, The Ghost of Richard the Third (London, 1614). 156. Thomas Scot, Robert, Earle of Essex His Ghost sent from Elizian (London, 1624). See also Thomas Scot, Sir Walter Rawleigh’s ghost or Englands forewarned (Utrecht, 1626). 157. Strange apparition, or, the Ghost of King James (London, 1642). 158. A Copy of two Remonstrances. Brought over the River Styx in Charon’s Ferryboat by the Ghost of Sir John Suckling (London, 1643). 159. The Earl of Strafford’s Ghost complaining, of the cruelties of his country-men (London, 1644), 3, 4, 6–7. See also A Description of the Passage of Thomas late Earl of Strafford over the River of Styx, with the conference betwixt him, Charon and William Noy (London, 1641); A Discontented Conference betwixt . . . Thomas, late Earl of Strafford and William, Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1641). 160. (London, 1647). 161. (London, 1649), 3–6. See also A Coffin for Cromwell: A Pit for the People (London, 1649). 162. Bradshaw’s ghost being a dialogue between the said ghost, and an apparition of the late King Charles (London, 1659), 6–7, 8, 10–11. See also Bradshaw’s Ghost, . . . A Dialogue between John Bradshaw, Ferry-man Charon, Oliver Cromwel, Francis Ravilliack, and Ignacious Loyola (London, 1660); Richad Perrinchief, A Message from the Dead, . . . a . . . Dreadfull Colloquie . . . betwixt the Ghosts of Henry the Eight and Charles the First (London, 1657); Dr Dorislaw’s ghost (London, 1652). 163. (London, 1661) (written earlier), 8–9, 12, 15, 16, 25–29, 30–31. 164. Lilburns Ghost, With a Whip in one hand (London, 1659), 1–2, 4, 5–6, 7–8.



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165. The World in a Maize, or Olivers Ghost (London, 1659), 4, 5, 6. See also A New Conference between the Ghosts of King Charles and Oliver Cromwell (London, 1659); A Third Conference between Oliver Cromwell and Hugh Peter (London, 1660); The Devils Cabinet Councell Discovered (London, 1660); A Dialogue Betwixt the Ghosts of Charls the Late King of England; and Oliver, The late Usurping Protector (London, 1659); A New Conference Between the Ghosts of King Charles and Oliver Cromwell (London, 1659); A Parly between the Ghosts of the Late Protector and the King of Sweden (London, 1660); The Case is Altered; or Dreadful News from Hell (London, 1660). See also A Conference between the Ghost of the Rump and Tom Tel-Troth (London, 1660); Hells Higher Court of Justice: or, The Triall of the Three Politick Ghosts (London, 1661); A meeting of the Ghosts at Tyburn (London, 1661). 166. Lord, Poems on Affairs of State, I, 195. 167. Clod-Pate’s Ghost (London, 1679). 168. Old Cromwells Ghost: or Old Noll Newly Revived (London, 1679), 1, 2–3. See also Cromwell’s ghost at St. James’s (London, 1680). 169. The Answer of Coleman’s Ghost (London, 1679); Father Whitebreads walking Ghost (London, 1679); Dangerfield’s Ghost to Jefferys (London, 168?); The Lord Staffords Ghost: or A Warning to Traitors (London, 1680); The Ghosts of Edward Fitz-Harris and Oliver Plunket who was lately Executed at Tyburn (London, 1681). 170. A Dialogue between Toney, and the Ghost of the late Lord Viscount-Stafford (London, 1681), 1. 171. Garnets Ghost, Addressing to the Jesuits . . . after the murther of Sir EdmundBury Godfrey (London, 1679); The Ghost of Sir Edmondberry Godfrey Truman (1681); A New Apparition of S. Edmund-bery Godfrey’s Ghost (London, 1681); Sir Edmondbury Godfreys Ghost: or, An Answer to Nat. Thompsons Scandalous Letter (London, 1682); George Everett, A Second Letter . . . in reply to the Ghost of Sir Edmond-bury Godfrey (London, 1682). 172. (London, 1681), 1. 173. Spectrum anti-monarchism, or The Ghost of Hugh Peter . . . [to] the whole assembly of fanatick Presbyters (London, 1680), 2, 3. 174. Strange News from Newgate, or, A Relation how the Ghost of College, the Protestant Joiner appeared (London, 1683). 175. Stephen Colledge’s Ghost to the fanatical Cabal (London?, 1681), 1. See also The Strange and Wonderful Apparition; or, the Advice of Colledge’s Ghost to the new Plotters (London, 1683). 176. The King of Poland’s Ghost (London, 1683), 1. See also Shaftsbury’s ghost to Doctor Oats (London, 1683), 1, 2, 3; A Dialogue between Doctor Titus and Bedlows ghost concerning the bayling the Lords out of the Tower (London, 1684). 177. Murder will out being a relation of the late Earl of Essex’s Ghost appearing to my Lord Chancellor in the Tower (London, 1683). See also On the Pretended Ghost of the late Lord Russel (London, 1683). 178. A Satyr on the Pretended Ghost of the late Lord Russel (London, 1683), 1. See also The Strange and wonderful apparition, or the Advice of Colledge’s ghost to the new plotters; The Protestant Joyners ghost (London, 1683); Sylla’s ghost, a satyr against Ambition and the late horrid Plot (London, 1683); Pluto, the Prince of Darkness his entertainment of Coll Algernoon Sidney upon his arrival at the infernal palace (London, 1684).

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Notes to Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven 1. Handbooks for preachers by William Perkins, John Brinsley and Richard Bernard were readily available. Puritan sermons often showed the influence of Ramist organization. Restoration era handbooks advocated a less complex treatment. John Wilkins’s Civil War era Ecclesiastes was reissued and revised several times. See also James Arderne, Directions concern the Matter and Style of Sermons (London, 1671); and Joseph Glanvill, An Essay on Preaching (London, 1678). John Tillotson was considered a model Restoration era preacher. See W. F. Mitchell, English Pulpit Oratory from Andrewes to Tillotson: A Study of Its Literary Aspects (London, Russell and Russell, 1962). 2. Edmund Hickeringill, The Horrid Sin of Man-Catching (London, 1681), Epistle to the Reader. 3. Godfrey Davies, “English Political Sermons, 1603–1640,” Huntington Library Quarterly 39 (1939): 1–22. 4. Certayne sermons, or Homelies appoynted by the Kynges Maiestie (London, 1547). 5. Peter Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus (London, 1671), 153. 6. Quoted in Peter E. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 59, 60. 7. P. C. Hughes and J. F. Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, 1553–87, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964, 1969), II, 118–19, 123. 8. Peter Lake, “The Politics of ‘Popularity’ and the Public Sphere: The ‘Monarchical Republic’ of Elizabeth I Defends Itself,” in The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, ed. Peter Lake and Steven Pincus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 70–71. 9. John Rushworth, Historical Collections, 7 vols. (London, 1659–1701), I, 442. 10. Edward Cardwell, Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England (Oxford University Press, 1966), II, 146–54. 11. Quoted in J. P. Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots: Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Longman, 1999), 111. 12. Paul S. Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships: The Politics of Religious Dissent, 1560– 1662 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970), 125, 143, 144, 263. 13. Wallace Notestein, ed., Journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1923), 9 n. 49. 14. Quoted in Jacqueline Eales, “Kent and the English Civil Wars, 1640–1660,” in Government and Politics in Kent, 1640–1914, ed. Frederick Lansberry (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2001), 15. 15. Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain, ed. J. S. Brewer, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1845), III, 102. 16. Quoted in Joad Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641–1649 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 188. 17. Edward, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion, ed. W. D. Macray (Oxford, 1888), IV, 194. 18. Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Times, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1823), I, 57. 19. December 12, 1648.



Notes to Chapter Seven

20. James Howell, A Trance: or, News from Hell (London, 1649), 9. 21. John Nalson, An Impartial Collection of the Great Affairs of State, 2 vols. (London, 1682), II, 807. 22. Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth, or the Long Parliament, ed. F. Tonnies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 24, 39, 126. 23. For lecturers, see Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships, passim. 24. His Majesties Letter of Instruction Directed . . . to the Justices of Assize (Oxford, 1642), 2–4, 6. 25. Quoted in Jason Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 49–50. 26. Stephen Marshall, A Peace-Offering to God (London, 1641), 45–46. See also Jeremiah Burroughs, Sions Joy (London, 1641), 25–26. 27. Thomas Case, Two Sermons (London, 1641), 47. 28. Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper, 186. 29. Jacqueline Eales, “Provincial Preaching and Allegiance in the First Civil War (1640–1646),” in Politics, Religion and Popularity in Early Stuart Britain, ed. Thomas Cogswell, Richard Cust and Peter Lake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 185–210. See also Tai Liu, Discord in Zion: The Puritan Divines and the Puritan Revolution, 1640–1660 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973). 30. Quoted in Paul Crossman, Two Sermons (1681), 26. 31. Directions concerning Preachers (London, 1662), 2. 32. Quoted in N. H. Keeble, The Restoration: England in the 1660s (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 152. 33. Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms, 1660–1685 (London: Allen Lane, 2005), 254, 256. See also Tony Claydon, “The Sermon, the ‘public sphere’ and the Political Culture of Late Seventeenth-century England,” in The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History, 1600–1750, ed. Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough (New York: Manchester University Press, 2000), 208–34. 34. Tim Harris, “Understanding Popular Politics in Restoration Britain,” in A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration, ed. Alan Houston and Steve Pincus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 135. 35. Lori Anne Ferrell, Government by Polemic: James I, the King’s Preachers, and the Rhetorics of Conformity, 1603–1625 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). Ferrell warns against viewing all court preachers as preaching the same message. See also McCullough, Sermons at Court. 36. Hughes and Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, II, 563. 37. But see Caroline Edie, “Right Rejoicing on the Occasion of the Stuart Restoration, 1660,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 62 (1969): 61–86. Almost one hundred sermons were printed by royal command. Matthew Jenkinson, Culture and Politics at the Court of Charles II, 1660–1685 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), 105. Sermons by Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Wilkins, Standish, Long, Cartwright and Lamb were reprinted. Ibid., 85. 38. There were sermons by latitudinarians John Wilkins, Edward Stillingfleet, William Lloyd, Simon Patrick and John Tillotson. More than ninety sermons preached before the king were published between 1660 and 1688. 39. David J. Sturdy, “English Coronation Sermons in the Seventeenth Century,”

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Notes to Chapter Seven in Herrscherwihe und Konigskronung in Fruhneuzeitlichen Europa, Herausgebeben, ed. Heinz Duchhardt (Wisbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag DMBH, 1983), 69–81. Coronation sermons, delivered by bishops, emphasized the divine right of kings. Thomas Bilson’s sermon for James I also featured anti-papal themes. George Morley’s sermon at the coronation of Charles II emphasized that history and nature both supported the institution of monarchy. James II’s coronation sermon underlined the unquestionable right of succession. Its author Francis Turner emphasized the murder of Charles I, “the best of Kings” and characterized the civil war and interregnum years as a period of atheism, profaneness, sacrilege and heresy. 40. A Sermon preached before their Majesties K. James II and Q. Mary, at their Coronation in Westminster Abbey (London, 1685), 15, 17, 19, 24, 26. See also Leticia Alvarez Recio, “The Politicization of the Pulpit in Seventeenth Century England: Thanksgiving Sermons after the Duke of Monmouth Rebellion,” Miscelanea Journal 40 (2009): 13–23. 41. Millar MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1534–1642 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), 3–4; Arnold Hunt, “‘Tuning the Pulpits’: The Religious Context of the Essex Revolt,” in The English Sermon Revised, ed. Ferrell and McCullough, 90; Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 283–85; Mary Morrissey, “Elect Nations and Prophetic Preaching: Types and Examples in the Paul’s Cross Jeremiad,” in The English Sermon Revised, ed. Ferrell and McCullough, 43–86. See also Stephen Baskerville, Not Peace but a Sword: The Political Theology of the English Revolution (London: Routledge, 1993); Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), xi, xii, 26, 35. There was special seating for City officials and Privy Councilors. Ibid., 13. 42. McCullough, Sermons at Court, 59. 43. Whitgift, A Most godly and Learned Sermon (1589), quoted in MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 214; see also 55, 68. 44. Quoted in Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England, 285–87. 45. MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 68, 70, 215, 235; Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 139. 46. MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 204, 205, 209, 210. 47. Roger Hacket, A Sermon needful for these times (1591), quoted in ibid., 215; see also 71–80, 215–16. 48. Alan Fager Herr, The Elizabethan Sermon: A Survey and Bibliography (Philadelphia, 1940), 52. See also Thomas S. Nowak, “Propaganda and the Pulpit: Robert Cecil, William Barlow and the Essex and Gunpowder Plots,” in The Witness of Times: Manifestations of Ideology in Seventeenth Century England, ed. K. Keller and G. Schiffhorst (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1993), 34–52. 49. Thomas Sutton, England’s First and Second Summons (1616), 187–89. 50. John White, Two Sermons: The Former Delivered at Pauls Cross (1615), quoted in MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 256. 51. Vivat Rex. A Sermon Preached at Paul’s Crosse, quoted in ibid., 235. 52. Gods Goodness and Mercie . . . Preached at Pauls-Crosse (London, 1626), preached 1622, pub. 1626. 53. MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 102.



Notes to Chapter Seven

54. Samuel Buggs, Davids Strait: A Sermon Preached at Pauls-Crosse (1622). 55. Thomas Fuller, Sermon intended for Paul’s Cross (London, 1626), 32. 56. The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, D.D., 7 vols. (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1847–60), I, 185–212. 57. Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 100, 188–221, 223. 58. Quotations from MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 253, 254. 59. Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England, 283–87; MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 18; Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), app. 1; Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 224, 226–67. 60. John F. Wilson, Pulpit in Parliament: Puritanism during the English Civil Wars, 1640–1648 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 32–33. 61. Jeremiah Dyke, A Sermon Preached at the publicke fast to the commons house of parliament April 5th, 1628 (London, 1628), 35. See also Christopher Durston, “‘For the Better Humiliation of the People’: Public Days of Fasting and Thanksgiving during the English Revolution,” The Seventeenth Century 7 (1992): 129–49. 62. See Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England, 283–88. 63. See H. R. Trevor-Roper, “The Fast Sermons of the Long Parliament,” in Essays in British History, Presented to Sir Keith Feiling, ed. H. R. Trevor-Roper (London: Macmillan, 1964; reprint 1965); James C. Spalding, “Sermons before Parliament (1640–1649) as a Public Puritan Diary,” Church History 36 (1967): 24–35; Ethyn W. Kirby, “Sermons before the Commons, 1640–42,” American Historical Review 44 (1939): 528–48; Glenn Burgess, “Was the Civil War a War of Religion? The Evidence of Political Propaganda,” Huntington Library Quarterly 61 (1998): 173–201. See also Liu, Discord in Zion, 15. 64. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, ed. W. D. Macray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), IV, 22–23. Marshall preached the sermon over sixty times. Patrick Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), 127. 65. William Bridge, Babylon’s Downfall (London, 1641). For the “Babylon Yoke” in connection with the Laudian regime, see Burgess, First Sermon (London, 1641), 6. 66. Thomas Goodwin, Zerubbabel’s Encouragement to finish the Temple (London, 1642). 67. Fairclough, The Troubles Troubled, or Achan Condemned and Executed (London, 1641); Edmund Calamy, God’s Free Mercy to England, quoted in Trevor-Roper, “The Fast Sermons of the Long Parliament,” 100. See also Joseph Symonds, A Sermon Preached before the . . . House of Commons (London, 1641). 68. Calamy, God’s Free Mercy to England (London, 1642). 69. Edmund Calamy, England’s Looking Glass (London, 1641), 45. 70. Thomas Coleman, Hopes Deferred and Dashed (London, 1645), 3, 23, 25, 26, 29. Providential victories included those of Naseby and Taunton. 71. Edward Reynolds, Israel’s Petition in Time of Trouble (London, 1642); John Gauden, The Love of Truth and Peace (London, 1640). 72. Calamy, God’s Free Mercy To England (London, 1642).

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Notes to Chapter Seven 73. Trevor-Roper, “The Fast Sermons of the Long Parliament,” 108. 74. Coleman, Hope Deferred and Dashed, 3, 12, 15–16, 19, 22, 25, 30, 31. 75. Cornelius Burgess, Washing the Heart (London, 1645), 19, 20, 34, 37. 76. Francis Cheynell, The Man of Honor (London, 1645), 7. 77. William Strong, The Right Way to the Highest Honor (London, 1647), 2–3, 41. 78. Francis Woodcock, Lex Taliones (London, 1646), 6, 13, 19. Woodcock also refers to revelations of The Cabinet Council. 79. Stephen Marshall, A Two Edged Sword (London, 1646), 22. 80. Liu, Discord in Zion, 22. 81. Trevor-Roper, “The Fast Sermons of the Long Parliament,” 131, 133. 82. See, for example, William James, Sermon Preached . . . April the 11th (London, 1679); Gilbert Burnet, A Sermon Preached on the Fast Day, December 22, 1680 (London, 1681). Burnet received thanks both for his sermon and for his History of the Reformation of England. See also William Lloyd, Sermon Preached before the House of Lords, on November 5, 1680 (London, 1681). 83. See Lancelot Andrewes, A sermon preached before His Maiestie at Whitehall the fifth of November last, 1617 (London, 1618); Henry Burton, For God, and the King, The summe of Two Sermons Preached on the Fifth of November last (London, 1628); Jeremy Taylor, A Sermon delivered in Oxford on anniversary on the fifth of November last (London, 1628). See also David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1989), 152–54. 84. Cornelius Burgess, Another Sermon Preached to the Honourable House of Commons November the 5th 1641 (London, 1641), 25, 26, 31. 85. Gerard Reedy, Robert South, 1634–1716: An Introduction to His Life and Sermons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 60–68. See also Helen W. Randall, “The Rise and Fall of a Martyrology: Sermons on Charles I,” Huntington Library Quarterly 10 (1947): 135–67. 86. Gilbert Burnet, A Sermon Preached at the Chappel of the Rolls, Preface, 16–17, 27, 28. 87. Edward Pelling, A Sermon Preached on the Anniversary of that Most Execrable Murder (London, 1682), 10–12. 88. William Hampton, Lacrymae Ecclesiae (London, 1661), 30–31. 89. See The Life and death of King Charles the martyr, parallel’d with our saviour (London, 1649); J. W., King Charles I. His imitation of Christ (London, 1660). See also Lois Potter, “The Royal Martyr in the Restoration,” in The Image and Representation of Charles I, ed. Thomas N. Corns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 2. 90. Thomas Wilson, A sermon on the martyrdom of King Charles I (London, 1682), 18–20. 91. Francis Turner, A sermon preached before the King on the 30th of January, 1684/5 (London, 1685), 18–20. 92. Hampton, Lacrymae Ecclesiae, 35. 93. Luke Milbourne, The originals of rebellion, . . . a sermon preached on the thirtieth of January, 1682 (London, 1683), 31–32.



Notes to Chapter Seven

94. George Hickes, A sermon preached before the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and citizens of London (London, 1682), 23. 95. Thomas Sprat, A Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons (London, 1678), 1; see also 5, 45–47. 96. John Paradise, Hadadrimmon, sive, Threnodia anglicana ob regicidium, a sermon on Davids humiliation for cutting off the royal robe, and detestation of cutting off the royal head of the Lords anointed (London, 1661), 44, 49; Edward Pelling, A sermon preacht on January 30th, 1683 in Westminster-Abby (London, 1684), 8; Pelling, A Sermon Preached on the Anniversary of that Most Execrable Murder, 12, 13. 97. Edward Stillingfleet, A Sermon Preached before the King, January 30, 1668/9, being the day of the execrable murther of King Charles I (London, 1669), 22–23, 28–29. 98. John Meriton, Curse not the King. A sermon preached at St. Martin’s in the Fields, on the 30th of January, 1660 (London, 1661), 24. 99. John King, A sermon on the 30th of January (London, 1661), 17–20. 100. George Stradling, A sermon preach’d before the King at White-Hall, Jan. 30, 1674/5 (London, 1675), 28. 101. Edward Pelling, A sermon preacht on January 30th, 1683 in Westminster Abby 11. 102. John Burrell, The divine right of kings proved from the principles of the Church of England in a sermon preach’d at Thetford, January 30th, 1682/3 (London, 1683), 8–12, 13. 103. Pelling, A sermon preacht on January 30th, 1683, 204. 104. Francis Turner, A sermon preached before the King on the 30/1 of January 1680– 81 (London, 1681), 19–21; Turner, A sermon preached before the King on the 30th of January, 1684/5, 11–13; Stillingfleet, A Sermon Preached before the King, 36; Robert Twisse, England’s breath stopp’d being the counter-part of Judah’s miseries lamented publickly . . . on January 30 (London, 1665), 19; Arthur Bury, The bow, or, The lamentation of David over Saul and Jonathan, applyed to the royal and blessed martyr, K. Charles the I (London, 1662), 17; Paradise, Hadadrimmon, sive, Threnodia anglicana ob regicidium, 3, 16; Pelling, A sermon preacht on January 30th, 1683, 34; William Payne, The unlawfulness of stretching forth the hand to resist or murder princes with the principal cases about resistance, considered, in two sermons (London, 1683), 2–5, 12; Stradling, A sermon preach’d before the King at White-Hall, 15; Crossman, Two sermons, 10, 19, 38; Henry Hesketh, A sermon preached before the Right Honorable Lord Mayor and aldermen of the city of London at Guild-Hall Chappel (London, 1678), 3; James Ellesby, The doctrine of passive obedience asserted (London, 1685), 12. 105. King, A sermon on the 30th of January, 87, 11; John Winter, A sermon preached . . . Jan. 30, 1661 (London, 1662), 1, 9. Bury, The bow, 20. See also Hampton, Lacrymae Ecclesiae, 24; Nathaniel Hardy, A loud call to great mourning (London, 1662), 28–31, 33–34. 106. Thomas Long, Moses and the Royal Martyr, King Charles the First, parallel’d (London, 1684), 27; Paradise, Hadadrimmon, sive, Threnodia anglicana ob regicidium, 11, 35; Richard Meggott, A sermon preached before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor and Aldermen . . . January the 30th 1673/4 (London, 1674), 19; Meriton, Curse not the King 14, 21; Milbourne, The originals of rebellion, 36–37; Robert Lawe, Pia Fraus, or Absalom’s theft (London, 1684); Ellesby, The doctrine of passive obedience asserted, 11.

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Notes to Chapter Seven 107. See Thomas Reeve, A Dead Man Speaking (London, 1661), 32, 35–36; Henry Glover, Cain and Abel Parallel’d (London, 1664); David Jenner, Cain’s mark and murder K. Charles the I his martyrdom (London, 1680), 20. 108. Stillingfleet, A Sermon Preached before the King, 37; see also 9, 14–19, 33–34, 40. 109. Joseph Glanvill, A Loyal Tear Dropt (London, 1667). See also Crossman, Two sermons, 36–37; Reeve, A Dead Man Speaking, Dedication; Meriton, Curse not the King, 16, 21, 27, 28; Long, Moses and the Royal Martyr, 27; Meggott, A sermon preached before the Right Honourable the Lord Major and aldermen, 19; Ellesby, The doctrine of passive obedience asserted, 11. 110. Stradling, A sermon preach’d before the King at White-Hall, 11, 14. See also Pelling, A Sermon on January 30, 1683, 15–16; Pelling, A Sermon on the 30th of January, 1684, the day of martyrdom of King Charles I (London, 1685), 15–16, 20; Meriton, Curse not the King, 21; Stradling, A sermon preach’d before the King at White-Hall, 23; Stillingfleet, A Sermon Preached before the King, 22–23. 111. Glanvill, A Loyal Tear Dropt, 12, 13. 112. Henry King, A sermon preached the 30th of January at White-Hall (London, 1665), 7–8; Pelling, A Sermon Preached on the Anniversary of that Most Execrable Murder, 32; Glanvill, A Loyal Tear Dropt, 15; see also 12, 26. 113. Crossman, Two sermons, 36. 114. Hickes, A sermon preached before the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, 2. 115. Hampton, Lacrymae Ecclesiae, 21. 116. Wilson, A sermon on the martyrdom of King Charles I, 5. 117. Hardy, A loud call to great mourning, 45. 118. Bury, The bow, 28. 119. Long, Moses and the Royal Martyr, 27. 120. John Cave, A Sermon preached in a Country-Audience (London, 1681), 25–26. See also Pelling, A Sermon Preached on the Anniversary of that Most Execrable Murder; Lawe, Pia Fraus, 21. 121. Thomas Sprat, A sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons, 47. 122. Paradise, Hadadrimmon, sive, Threnodia anglicana ob regicidium, 38. 123. Turner, A Sermon Preached before the King (London, 1685), 22. 124. Pelling, A Sermon Preached on the Anniversary of that Most Execrable Murder, 31. 125. Paradise, Hadadrimmon, sive, Threnodia anglicana ob regicidium, 42. See also Cave, A Sermon preached in a Country-Audience, 20. Thomas Wilson identified Knox, Goodwin, Milton, Rutherford and Baxter. A Sermon on the Martyrdom of King Charles I, 31–36. 126. Pelling, A Sermon Preached on the Anniversary of that most Execrable Murder, 12, 13; Bury, The bow, 28. 127. Turner, A sermon preached before the King on the 30th of January, 1684/5, 15, 18. 128. Hickes, A sermon preached before the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, 1. See also Wilson, A Sermon on the Martyrdom of King Charles I, 20. 129. Meggott, A sermon preached before the Lord Mayor, 43; Milbourne, The origi-



Notes to Chapter Seven

nals of rebellion, 42; Bury, The bow, 28; Hickes, A sermon preached before the Lord Mayor, 17; Lawe, Pia Fraus, 2. 130. Meggott, A sermon preached before the Lord Mayor, 43; see also 34. 131. Hickes, A sermon preached before the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, 29. 132. Paradise, Hadadrimmon, sive, Threnodia anglicana ob regicidium, 43. 133. Bury, The bow, 38–39; Long, Moses and the Royal Martyr, 27; Stradling, A sermon preach’d before the King at White-Hall, 26; Hardy, A loud call to great mourning, 45. Hardy’s sermon was given before the House of Commons. 134. Pelling, A sermon preacht on January 30th, 1683, 6. 135. Hickes, A sermon preached before the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, 19, 22. 136. Pelling, A Sermon Preached on the Anniversary of that most Execrable Murder, 18. 137. Hugh Adlington has compiled a bibliography of assize sermons between 1571 and 1700 that includes some eighty sermons printed before 1642 and about one hundred titles for 1642 to 1700. “The Use (and Abuse) of Evidence in English Assize Sermons, 1571–1642: Religion, Law, and Rhetoric” (conference paper, November 2006, Cambridge University). See also Tom Charlton, “The Due Administration of Justice: The Restoration, Romans 13, and the Assize Sermons” (conference paper, November 2006, Cambridge University); J. S. Cockburn, A History of English Assizes, 1558–1714 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 65–66; Barbara Sha­ piro, “Political Theology and the Courts: A Survey of Assize Sermons c. 1600–1688,” Law and Humanities 2 (2008): 1–28. 138. Richard Baxter, “A Sermon of the Absolute Soveraignty of Christ,” in Baxter, True Christianity: or, Christs absolute dominion, . . . In two assize sermons (London, 1655), To the Christian Reader, 120. 139. Nathaniel Alsop, A Sermon Preached at the Assizes Held at Leicester (London, 1682), Dedicatory Letter; Antonie Scattergood, Jethro’s Character of Worthy Judges (London, 1664), 13. 140. See Robert Sybthorpe, Apostolike Obedience. Shewing the duty of Subjects to pay Tribute and Taxes to their Princes (London, 1627), 3–5; Richard Forster, Prerogative and Privilege Represented in a Sermon (London, 1684), 19. 141. Francis Gray, The Judges Scripture, or, God’s Charge to Charge-Givers (London, 1636), 5; Ad. Littleton, A Sermon Preached in Lent-Assizes (London, 1671), 14. 142. Lancelot Dawes, Two Sermons Preached at the Assizes (Oxford, 1614), 81; William Dickinson, The Kings right briefly set downe in a sermon preached before the reverend iudges (London, 1619), C2; Thomas Foster, Plouto-mastix: The Scourge of Covetousnesse: . . . A Sermon Preached at the Assises in Deuon (London, 1631), 19; Robert Abbot, Foure Sermons, Whereof Two Preached at Two Assizes (London, 1639), 2; Thomas Trescot, The Zealous Magistrate (London, 1642). See also Thomas Pomfret, Subjection for Conscience-Sake: Asserted in a Sermon Preached at the Assizes (London, 1682), 28–29; Thomas Willis, God’s Court: Wherein the Dignity and Duty of Judges and Magistrates, Is shew’d (London, 1683), 3, 6. 143. Robert Bolton, Two Sermons Preached at Northampton at Two Several Assizes (London, 1635), 6. There were also editions in 1629 and 1631. 144. Sir Edward Coke, The Selected Writings and Speeches of Sir Edward Coke, ed. Steve Sheppard, 3 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2003), II, 518–32.

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Notes to Chapter Seven 145. John Selden, The Reverse or Back-Face of the English Janus [1610], trans. R. Westcot (London: T. Bassett and R. Chiswell, 1682), 4, quoted in Paul Raffield, “Contract, Classicism, and the Common-Weal: Coke’s Reports and the Foundations of the Modern English Constitution,” Law and Literature 17 (2005): 78. 146. John Warren, The unprofitable servant: a sermon preached at the assize (London, 1655), 2. 147. Henry Symons, Time Kai Timoria, . . . or, Magistrates Deity (London, 1658), 3, 4, 7. See also John Hinckley, Two Sermons Preached before the Judges of the Assize (Oxford, 1657), 49, 64; Thomas Hurste, The Descent of Authoritie, or the Magistrates Patent from Heaven (London, 1657); William Sclater, Civil Magistracy by Divine Authority Asserted (London, 1652); Baxter, True Christianity, 12 (reprinted in 1656 and 1658). 148. Thomas Hall, The Beauty of Magistracy (London, 1660), 2, 6, 8, 11, 13, 142. 149. Thomas Horton, A Sermon Preached Before the Judges (London, 1672), 6, 8, 12. See also Obadiah Howe, Eloheem, or God and the Magistrate (London, 1663), 54–55; Samuel Drake, Theou diakonos, or, The civil deacon’s sacred power in a sermon: . . . at the summer assize, 1669 (London, 1670), 4, 16; Jonathan Kimberley, Of Obedience for Conscience-Sake (London, 1683), 1. 150. Gregory Hascard, Gladius justitiae, a sermon preached at the assizes (London, 1668), 9. 151. George Macey, A Sermon Preached at . . . the Assizes (Exeter, 1601), 28. 152. Dickinson, The Kings right briefly set downe, C3. See also William Pemberton, The Charge of God and the King (London, 1619), 20. 153. Edward Boteler, Jus poli et fori or, God and the King (London, 1660), 13–15. 154. Samuel Burton, A Sermon preached at the Generall Assizes in Warwick (London, 1620), 6–7. 155. Daniel Nicols, A Sermon Preach’d in the Cathedral of Lincoln (London, 1681), 17. See Forster, Prerogative and Privilege, 18. For judges, see Samuel Garey, Ientaculum Iudicum, Or, A Breakefast for the Bench (London, 1623), 1–18; Willis, God’s Court, 6–23. 156. James Hickson, A Sermon Preached . . . at the Assizes (London, 1682), 8; Hall, The Beauty of Magistracy, 30; Littleton, A Sermon Preached in Lent-Assizes, 4. 157. Thomas Bradley, Caesar’s Due, and the Subjects Duty (York, 1663), 11. See also Kimberley, Of Obedience, 3; Littleton, A Sermon Preached in Lent-Assizes, 12. 158. Bradley, Caesar’s Due, 17. 159. John Scott, A Sermon Preached at the Assizes (London, 1686), 13. 160. Thomas Cartwright, A Sermon Preached July 17, 1676 (London, 1676), 6, 9, 36. 161. See J. P. Sommerville, “Richard Hooker, Hadrian Saravia, and the Advent of the Divine Right of Kings,” History of Political Thought 4 (1983): 229–45; M. C. Questier, “Loyalty, Religion and State Power in Early Modern England: English Romanism and the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance,” Historical Journal 40 (1997): 311– 29; Rebecca Lemon, Treason by Words: Literature, Law, and Rebellion in Shakespeare’s England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 107–36. 162. Dickinson, The King’s Right briefly set downe, E2. 163. Bolton, Two Sermons, 15, 18, 19, 20, 23, 25, 32, 41, 42.



Notes to Chapter Seven

164. Dawes, Two Sermons Preached at the Assizes, 8–91, 93, 120. See also William Westerman, Two Sermons of Assise the One Intituled A Prohibition of Revenge, the Other, A Sword of Maintenance (London, 1600), Sermon I, 54. 165. Symons, The Lord Jesus his commission . . . at the assize (London, 1657), 11. 166. Luke Beaulieu, The Terms of Peace and Reconciliation . . . A Sermon Preach’d at the Assizes (London, 1684). 167. Richard Standfast, A Sermon Preached at Christ Church in Bristol (London, 1676), 21, 24, 26. See also Forster, Prerogative and Privilege, 18–19; Kimberley, Of Obedience, 5. 168. Alsop, A Sermon Preached, 9–10, 13–17. 169. Sclater, Civil Magistracy, 9, 12, 14. The preacher used arguments from nature and grace, reason and religion. See also Zacheus Montague, The jus divinum of government (London, 1652), 19. 170. John Allen, Of Perjury, a sermon (London, 1662), 18. 171. Alsop, A Sermon Preached, 11, 14. 172. John Locke, Two Treatises on Government (London, 1690), Preface. 173. Christopher Wyvill, An assize-sermon preached (London, 1686), 12, 14. 174. Bolton, Two Sermons, 10. 175. Symons, Time Kai Timoria, 27. See also Hinckley, Two Sermons, 15. 176. Nicholas Stratford, A sermon preached at the assizes (London, 1681), 7. 177. Nicols, A Sermon Preach’d, 18; Drake, Theou diakonos, 17. 178. Cartwright, A Sermon Preached, 10, 11, 12. See also Dawes, Two Sermons Preached at the Assizes, 87; Montague, Jus Divinum, 28; William Stainforth, An assize sermon preached August 3, 1685 (York, 1685), 24. 179. Alsop, A Sermon Preached, 6. 180. Hurste, The Descent of Authoritie, 21. See also Wyvill, An assize-sermon, 26; Thomas Gipps, Three Sermons . . . . wherein the Nature of Subjection to the Civil Magistrate is Explained (London, 1683). 181. Wyvill, An assize-sermon, 3, 8, 85. See also Hurste, The Descent of Authoritie, 32; Cartwright, A Sermon Preached, 13. 182. Hurste, The Descent of Authoritie, 32. 183. Alsop, A Sermon Preached, 6–7. 184. Richard West, The profitableness of Piety Opened in an Assize Sermon (London, 1671), 10. 185. Wyvill, An assize-sermon, 19. 186. Thomas Stephens, “The Spoiler Spoiled” [1660], in Stephens, Ad magistratum: three sermons preached before the justices of assize (Cambridge, 1661), 7. 187. Cartwright, A Sermon Preached, 13. See also Hascard, Gladius justitiae, 8; William Reresby, A Warning-piece to Repentance Presented in an Assize-sermon (London, 1664), 481. 188. William Creed, Judah’s Purging in the Melting Pot (London, 1660), 37–39. See also Reresby, A Warning-piece, 52. 189. Wyvill, An assize-sermon, 18. 190. Scott, A Sermon Preached at the Assizes, 19–21. 191. Creed, Judah’s Purging, 36–37. 192. Anthony Palmer, The Saints Posture in Dark Times (London, 1650), 6, 10.

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Notes to Chapter Seven 193. John Riland, Elias the Second his coming to Restore all things (Oxford, 1662), 16–18. 194. Scott, A Sermon Preached at the Assizes, 20. 195. William Kethe, A sermon made at Blanford Foru[m] in the countie of Dorset on Wensday the 17. of Ianuarij last past at the session holden there, before the honorable and the worshyppefull of that shyre (London, 1571), 7, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18. 196. Edward Boteler, Urbs deplorata. A sermon preached . . . at the time of the general assize (London, 1669), 58. 197. Francis Fullwood, The necessity of keeping our parish-churches . . . in a sermon . . . at the last assizes (London, 1672). 198. Richard Hollingworth, A sermon preached before the honourable judges of assize (London, 1673), 3, 6–7, 8, 18, 20, 22. 199. Nathaniel Bisbie, Prosecution no Persecution (London, 1682), 31. 200. Drake, Theou diakonos, Dedicatory Epistle. 201. Macey, A Sermon Preached, 19. See also Westerman, Two Sermons, Sermon I, 50; Dawes, Two Sermons Preached at the Assizes, 89 (preached 1597); Thomas Pestell, The Poore Mans Appeale (London, 1620), 6; Theophilus Taylor, The mappe of Moses: or, a guide for governours . . . preached before the iudges of assize (London, 1629), 10; Trescot, The Zealous Magistrate, 6; Bolton, Two Sermons, 15. 202. James Strong, Justice Justified; or, the Judges Commission Opened (London, 1657), 5, 19–20. See also Hall, The Beauty of Magistracy, 17–18; Edward Stanley, Three Sermons (London, 1662), 127. 203. Cartwright, A Sermon Preached, 20–22, 23–24. 204. Reresby, A Warning-piece, 52. 205. See also Wyvill, An assize-sermon. 206. Alsop, A Sermon Preached, 27, 28, 32. 207. John Standish, A sermon preached at the Assizes (London, 1683), 26, 28. 208. Strong, Justice Justified, 4, 18. The phrase “shields of the earth” is from Psalms 47, 49. See also Reresby, A Warning-piece, 17–23; John Chetwynd, A Memorial for Magistrates. A Sermon Preached . . . at the Assizes (London, 1682), 30. 209. Sclater, Civil Magistracy, 32; see also Thomas Bradley, A Sermon preached at the Assizes (York, 1663), 90–91. 210. Dawes, Two Sermons Preached at the Assizes, 48, 72; Symons, The Lord Jesus, 29. 211. Hinckley, Two Sermons, 76. 212. George Swinnock, The gods are men: or The mortality of persons in places of magistracy (London, 1657), 20. See also Simon Ford, Primitiae regiminis Davidici (London, 1654), 32. 213. Hinckley, Two Sermons, 38. 214. Reresby, A Warning-piece, 38, 39, 57. 215. James Johnson, Nature inverted, or, Judgement turned into gall (Cambridge, 1670), 115. 216. Thomson, A Sermon Preached at the Assizes held at Strafford (n.p., 1681), 23. See also Immanuel Bourne, The anatomie of conscience (London, 1623), 38; Dawes, Two Sermons Preached at the Assizes, 73–74. 217. Benjamin Smith, A Sermon Preached July 17, 1681, at the assizes in Huntingdon (London, 1682), 30.



Notes to Chapter Seven

218. See Westerman, Two Sermons, Sermon II, 36–38; Thomas Pestell, Morbus epidemicus . . . a sermon preached before the judges of the assises (London, 1615), 20; Robert Daborne, A Sermon Preached in the Cathedrall Church (London, 1618), 20–21; Anthony Fawkner, The Pedegree of Peace: Delivered in a Sermon Intended to the Judges at the Assises (London, 1634), 10; Anthony Fawkner, The Widowes Petition, Delivered in a Sermon before the Judges at the Assises (Oxford, 1635), 24–25; Hinckley, Two Sermons, 76, 81; Swinnock, The Gods are men, 20; Robert Harrison, Two sermons lately preached at the Assizes (London, 1672), 16–19, 60; Humphrey Babington, Mercy and Judgment a sermon (Cambridge, 1678), 20–23. 219. Cockburn, A History of English Assizes, 66. 220. Symons, The Lord Jesus, 17; Garey, Ientaculum Iudicum, 14–15. 221. Sermons frequently echoed the “Resolution of Judges of Assize” requiring justices of the peace to deal with poor children, parishes, drunkenness, unlicensed alehouses, unmarried mothers and bastard children. 222. Thomas Scott, The projector teaching (London, 16230; Hinckley, Two Sermons, 36; Johnson, Nature inverted, 24. 223. Dawes, Two Sermons Preached at the Assizes, 69. See also Fawkner, The Widowes Petition, 23. 224. Harrison, Two Sermons, 59. 225. Symons, The Lord Jesus, 16–17. See also Richard Carpenter, The Conscionable Christian (London, 1623), 36; William Hayes, The Paragon of Persea, or The Lawyers Looking-Glasse (London, 1624). 226. Hascard, Gladius justitiae, 17. 227. Dawes, Two Sermons Preached at the Assizes, 69. 228. Macey, A Sermon Preached, 22, 23–24. See also Abbot, Four Sermons, 85. 229. Hascard, Gladius justitiae, 17. See also West, The profitableness of Piety, 23; John Straight, A Sermon preached at the assizes (London, 1670), 25; William Durham, Maran-atha: The Second Advent, or, Christ’s Coming to Judgment. A Sermon preached Before the Honorable Judges of Assize (London, 1652), 34. 230. Bourne, The anatomie of conscience, 39. 231. West, The profitableness of Piety, 27. See also Carpenter, The Conscionable Christian, 35–36. 232. Thomas Lodington, The honour of the magistrate asserted (London, 1674), 28, 29. 233. Abbot, Four Sermons, 16. See also Bradley, A Sermon, 34; Edward Reynolds, The shieldes of the earth (London, 1636); Fowler, Properties of Heavenly Wisdom, 35. 234. Fowler, Properties of Heavenly Wisdom, 35. See also Abbot, Four Sermons, 85–86. 235. Anthony Cade, A sermon of the nature of conscience (London, 1621), 8. See also Westerman, Two Sermons, Sermon II, 45, 47, 48, 49; Pestell, Morbus epidemicus, 4; Edward Gee, Two Sermons. One, The Curse and Crime of Meroz. Preached at the Assises at Exon (London, 1620), 27; Dawes, Two Sermons Preached at the Assizes, 25; Scott, The projector teaching, 26–27. Taylor, The mappe of Moses, 28; John Shawe, Eikon basilike, or, The princes royal being the sum of a sermon (London, 1650), 9; Montague, The Jus Divinum, 55; Durham, Maran-atha, 46; Sclater, Civil Magistracy, 38; Thomas Gilbert, An assize sermon preached (London, 1657), 29; Willis, God’s Court, 29–32; Cade, A sermon of the nature of conscience, 10–11, 12.

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Notes to Chapters Seven and Eight 236. See, for example, Hausted, Ten Sermons, 272; Fawkner, The Widowes Petition, 15, 16, 18. 237. Westerman, Two Sermons, Sermon I, 46–47. 238. Warren, The unprofitable servant, 15, 17. 239. Reresby, A Warning-piece, 26–27. See also Littleton, A Sermon Preached in Lent-Assizes, 28–29. See also John Gauden, A discourse concerning publick oaths (London, 1662), 17; Benjamin Calamy, Sermons Preach’d upon Several Occasions (London, 1687), 11. 240. Allen, Of Perjury, 8. 241. Harrison, Two Sermons, 60. 242. Allen, Of Perjury, 8. 243. Ibid., 2, 18. 244. Reresby, A Warning-piece, 26–27; Gauden, A discourse concerning public oaths, 18. 245. John Tillotson, The lawfulness, and obligation of oaths a sermon preach’d at the assises (London, 1681), Dedication, 3, 4. See also Thomas Comber, The nature and usefulness of solemn judicial swearing (London, 1682).

Chapter Eight 1. R. M. Smuts, “Public Ceremony and Royal Charisma: The English Royal Entry in London, 1585–1642,” in The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone, ed. A. L. Beier, David Cannadine and James M. Rosenheim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 2. Quoted in Paula Bachscheider, Spectacular Politics: Theatrical Power and Mass Culture in Early Modern England (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 3. 3. Quoted in Richard C. McCoy, “‘The Wonderful Spectacle,’ and Obscure Ordo Progress of Elisabeth’s Coronation,” in Law, Literature and the Settlement of Regimes: Papers Presented at the Folger Institute Seminar “Political Thought in the Elizabethan Age, 1558–1603” (Washington, DC: Folger Institute, 1990), I, 107. 4. Smuts, “Public Ceremony and Royal Charisma,” 78. See also Roy Strong, Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy (London: Harper Collins, 2005), 221–24. 5. Smuts, “Public Ceremony and Royal Charisma,” 78, 81; Roy C. Strong, “The Popular Celebration of the Accession Day of Queen Elizabeth I,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 21 (1958): 86–103, 92–93. 6. Sir Robert Naunton, Frangmenta Regalia, or Observations on Queen Elizabeth, Her Times and Favorites, ed. J. S. Cerovski (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1985), 44, 45. 7. See John Nicoll, Progresses, Public Power of Queen Elizabeth (London: John Nichols and Son, 1823); Mary H. Cole, The Portable Queen: Queen Elizabeth and the Politics of Ceremony (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 2–4; Roy C. Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977); Gabriel Heaton, Writing and Reading Royal Entertainments: From George Gascoigne to Ben Jonson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).



Notes to Chapter Eight

8. Quoted in Jennifer Woodward, The Theatre of Death: The Ritual Management of Royal Funerals in Renaissance England 1570–1625 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1977), 88; see also 92. 9. McCoy, “The Wonderful Spectacle,” 106. 10. James’s reluctance to participate in such ceremonies has been attributed both to his lack of experience with court ceremony in Scotland and to the increasing withdrawal of European monarchs from contact with the populace. Smuts, “Public Ceremony and Royal Charisma,” 67, 87. 11. Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 175–203. 12. Carolyn Edie, “The Public Face of Royal Ritual: Sermons, Medals and Civic Ceremony in Later Stuart Coronations,” Huntington Library Quarterly 53 (1990): 311–36, 313. See also John Adamson, The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I (London: Phoenix, 2007), 438–46. 13. Quoted in Laura L. Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait and Print, 1645–1661 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 76. See also Lawrence Price, Great Britaines Times of Triumph (London, 1641) 14. Smuts, “Public Ceremony and Royal Charisma,” 68, 92. 15. Sean Kelsey, Inventing a Republic: The Political Culture of the English Commonwealth (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 58, 60, 86. 16. Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell, 61, 71, 77–79. See also Edward Holberton, Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics and Institutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 39–41. 17. Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell, 123–25, 140–45; Woodward, The Theatre of Death, 200. 18. John Evelyn, Diary, ed. E. S. De Beer, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), III, 246. 19. Gerard Reedy, “Mystical Politics: The Imagery of Charles II’s Coronation,” in Studies in Change and Revolution: Aspects of English Intellectual History 1640–1800, ed. Paul J. Korshin (Menston, Yorkshire: Scolar Press, 1972), 19–42; Paul Hammond, “The King’s Two Bodies: Representations of Charles II,” in Culture, Politics and Society in Britain, 1600–1800, ed. Jeremy Black and Jeremy Gregory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 19; L. J. Morissey, “English Street Theater 1655–1708,” Costerus IV (1972): 105–37, 111–12; Benjamin F. Klein, “The Splendor of the Solemnity” (Ph.D. thesis, Brown University, 2002), I, 44–47, 59–62. 20. Pepys and Clarendon quoted in Nancy Klein Maguire, Regicide and Restoration: English Tragicomedy, 1660–1671 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 113. See also The Relation of his Majesties Entertainment Passing through the City of London: With a Description of Triumphal Arches, and Solemnity (1661). 21. Edie, “The Public Face of Royal Ritual,” 315–16. 22. Lorraine Madway, “‘The most conspicuous Solemnity’: The Coronation of Charles II,” The Stuart Courts, ed. Eveline Cruickshanks (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2000), 147, 152. For popular hostility, see Tim Harris, “There is None that Loves Him but Drunk Whores and Whoremongers: Popular Criticism of the Restoration Court,” in Politics, Transgression and Representation at the Court of Charles II, ed. Julia Marciari Alexander and Catherine Macleod (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 35–60.

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Notes to Chapter Eight 23. Quoted in Maguire, Regicide and Restoration, 111. 24. Jonathan Sawday, “Re-Writing a Revolution: History, Symbol and Text in the Restoration,” The Seventeenth Century 10 (1992): 171–99, 175. 25. Klein, “The Splendor of the Solemnity,” II, 28–34. 26. Ibid., 25, 42–43. 27. CSPD 1685, quoted in ibid., III, 1. 28. Anthony Wood, The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary of Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891), III, 127–30. 29. Ibid., 130. 30. James Welwood, Memoirs (London, 1700), 148–49. 31. Klein, “The Splendor of the Solemnity,” IV, 12, 17, 18, 21. 32. See Sheila Williams, “The Lord Mayor’s Show in Tudor and Stuart Times,” Guildhall Miscellany 10 (1959): 3–18; James Knowles, “Civic Consciousness, Rhetoric and Ritual,” in Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts, ed. J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 158–89; Raymond D. Tumbleson, “The Triumph of London: Lord Mayor’s Day Pageants and the Rise of the City,” in The Witness of Times: Manifestations of Ideology in Seventeenth Century England, ed. Katherine Keller and Gerald Schiffhorst (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1993), 53–68; D. L. Smith, R. Strier and David Bevington, eds. The Theatrical City: Culture, Theater and Politics in London, 1576–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 33. See Tracey Hill, “‘Representing the aweful authoritie of Soveraigne Majestie’: Monarchs and Mayors in Anthony Munday’s The Triumphes of Re-United Britania,” in The Accession of James I: Historical and Cultural Consequences, ed. Glen Burgess, Rowland Wyler and Jason Lawrence (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 15–33; David M. Bergeron, ed., Pageants and Entertainments of Anthony Munday: A Critical Edition (New York: Garland, 1985) . 34. David M. Bergeron, ed., Thomas Heywood’s Pageants: A Critical Edition (New York: Garland, 1976), 7, 9, 16–20, 36–42. Heywood was responsible for seven shows. See also Graham Parry, The Golden Age Restor’d: The Culture of the Stuart Court, 1603–42 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981), 7–9, 17, 20, 36–39, 41–42, 58–60, 92, 106. 35. Quoted in Benjamin Klein, “‘Between the Bums and the Bellies of the Multitude’: Civic Pageantry and the Problems of Audience in Late Stuart London,” London Journal 17 (1992): 18–26, 19. 36. Morissey, “English Street Theater,” 112. 37. “The Duke of Newcastle on Government,” in A Catalogue of Letters and Other Historical Documents Exhibited in the Library at Welbeck, comp. S. A. Strong (London, 1903), 210. 38. John P. Montano, “The Quest for Consensus: The Lord Mayor’s Day Shows in the 1670’s,” in Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration, ed. G. M. MacLean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 31–51. See also Kenneth Richards, “The Restoration Pageants of John Tatham,” in Western Popular Theater, ed. K. Richards and D. Mayer (London: Methuen, 1977). 39. Thomas Jordan, London’s Resurrection to Joy and Triumph (London, 1671), 4, 17.



Notes to Chapter Eight

40. Thomas Jordan, London Triumphant (1672), 11, 14, 15. See also Thomas Jordan, London in its Splendor; Consisting of Triumphant Pageants (London, 1673); Susan J. Owen, “City Drama: Thomas Jordan’s Lord Mayor’s Shows,” in Restoration Theater and Crisis, ed. Susan J. Owen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 275–99. 41. (London, 1675), 22–23. 42. Klein, “Between the Bums and the Bellies of the Multitude,” 23. 43. Quoted in John Spurr, England in the 1670’s: “This Masquerading Age” (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 286. See also Odai Johnson, Rehearsing the Revolution: Radical Performance, Radical Politics in the English Restoration (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 2000). 44. Quoted in Spurr, England in the 1670’s, 286. See also Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714, 6 vols. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1857), I, 233, 238. 45. Sheila Williams, “The Pope-Burning Processions of 1679, 1680 and 1691,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958): 104–18, 107. 46. Williams, “The Pope-Burning Processions,” 109, 117. See Elkanah Settle, London’s Defiance to Rome (London, 1679); The Solemn Mock Procession of the Pope, . . . November ye 17th, 1679 (London, 1680). 47. David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 180, 183; Klein, “The Splendor of the Solemnity,” III, 8. 48. The Protestants Joy (London, 1680), quoted in Klein, “The Splendor of the Solemnity,” II, 23. 49. Morrissey, “English Street Theater,” 112–13. 50. Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1823), 397. 51. Klein, “The Splendor of the Solemnity,” IV, 44, 45. 52. Oliver Arnold, The Third Citizen: Shakespeare’s Theater and the Early Modern House of Commons (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 228. 53. David Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 95, 96. 54. J. P. Kenyon, ed., The Stuart Constitution 1603–1688: Documents and Commentary, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 71–76, 321–36. 55. Ibid., 82–85; Coke, quoted in John Rushworth, Historical Collections, 2 vols. (London, 1680), I, 562. 56. Quoted in Derek Hirst, The Representative of the People? Voters and Voting in England under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 185. 57. Paul Seaver, Wallington’s World: A Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth-Century London (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), 15; Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture, 228. See also David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution, 1640–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 178–86, 274–78, 373–74, 415; Sir Thomas Aston, A Collection of Sundry Petitions Presented to the King’s Most excellent Majestie (London, 1642). 58. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, ed. W. Dunn MacRay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), I, 417.

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Notes to Chapter Eight 59. Seaver, Wallington’s World, 150–51; Nehemiah Wallington, Historical Notices of Events Occurring Chiefly in the Reign of Charles I, 2 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1869), II, 1–12. 60. Quoted in Joad Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks 1641–1649 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 118. 61. Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture, 88. 62. Andrew Sharp, ed., The English Levellers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 73–74. See also Tim Harris, “The Leveller Legacy,” in The Putney Debates of 1647: The Army, the Levellers, and the English State, ed. Michael Mendle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 227, 233. 63. Women petitioning for Lilburne’s release were told, “[T]he matter you petition about is of higher concernment than you understand,” so “you are desired to go home, and . . . meddle with huswifery.” England’s Moderate Messenger, April 23–30, 1649. See also Ann Marie McEntee, “The [Un]Civil-Sisterhood of Oranges and Lemons: Female Petitioners and Demonstrators 1642–1653,” in Pamphlet Wars: Prose in the English Revolution, ed. James Holstun (London: Cass, 1992), 92–111. 64. Quoted in David Dean, “Public Space, Private Affairs: Committees, Petitions, and Lobbies in the Early Modern English Parliament,” in Parliament at Work: Parliamentary Committees, Political Power, and Public Access in Early Modern England, ed. Chris R. Kyle and Jason Peacey (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), 169; see also 169–78. 65. Andrew Browning, ed., English Historical Documents, 1660–1714, vol. VIII of English Historical Documents, gen. ed. David C. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 66. See also Brian Weiser, “Access and Petitioning during the Reign of Charles II,” in The Stuart Courts, ed. Cruickshanks, 203–13. 66. James Sutherland, The Restoration Newspaper and Its Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 165; see also 166–67. See also Tim Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 67. Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture, 269; Sutherland, The Restoration Newspaper, 162–63; Tim Harris, “Propaganda and Public Opinion in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Media and Revolution: Comparative Perspectives, ed. Jeremy D. Popkin (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1995), 66. 68. Collections of Sundry Petitions . . . [presented to King and Parliament] (London, 1681). See also Vox Patriae: . . . A True Collection of the Petitions and Addresses (London, 1681). 69. The Loyall Protestants Association (London, 1679). 70. The Loyal Address of the Eminent Town of Lynn-Regis (London, 1681). 71. Cressy, Bonfires and Bells, 67. See also J. E. Neale, “November 17,” in Essays in Elizabethan History (London: Jonathan Cape, 1958), 9–20; Strong, “The Popular Celebration of the Accession Day,” 86–103. 72. Strong, “The Popular Celebration of the Accession Day,” 93–95, 97–98; N. E. McClure, ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939), II, 330. Celebration in the countryside depended on the parish elites. 73. Strong, “The Popular Celebration of the Accession Day,” 91, 103. 74. McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, II, 330.



Notes to Chapter Eight

75. Quoted in Cressy, Bonfires and Bells, 138–39. 76. Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 152. 77. Cressy, Bonfires and Bells, 144–55. 78. Ibid., 152, 157, 158, 161. 79. Ibid., 163–84. 80. Ibid., 7; see also 94–95, 98–99. 81. Jerzy Limon, Dangerous Matter: English Drama and Politics in 1623/24 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 31. 82. Thomas Cogswell, “England and the Spanish Match,” in Conflict in Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603–1642, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (London: Longmans, 1989), 107–9, 125. 83. Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. Latham and W. Matthews, 11 vols. (London: Bell, 1970–83), I, 45. 84. See Phil Withington, Society in Early Modern England: The Vernacular Origins of Some Powerful Ideas (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010), 216–25. 85. Richard Burt, “Doing the Queen: Gender, Sexuality and the Censorship of Elizabeth I’s Royal Image,” in Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England,” ed. Andrew Hadfield (London: Palgrave, 2001), 208; Louis A. Montrose, “Idols of the Queen, Policy, Gender and the Picturing of Elizabeth I,” Representations 58 (1999): 108–61; Roy Strong, Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987); Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth; David Howarth, Images of Rule: Art and Politics in the English Renaissance 1485–1649 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997); John King, Tudor Royal Iconography: Literature and Art in an Age of Religious Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Kevin Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and Image in Sixteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 362–416. 86. See John Peacock, “The Politics of Portraiture,” in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 199–238; John Peacock, “The Visual Image of Charles I,” in The Royal Image and Representations of Charles I, ed. Thomas Corns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 178–85; Kevin Sharpe, Image Wars: Promoting Kings and Commonwealths in England 1603–1660 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 190–209; see also 59–69. 87. Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell, 130; Pincus, 1688, 136. 88. King, Tudor Royal Iconography, 154–55. See also Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy, 466–67. 89. Baziliologia, A Book of Kings, being the true and lively effigies of all our English Kings from the Conquest (1618). 90. Godfrey Davies, “English Political Sermons, 1603–1640,” Huntington Library Quarterly 39 (1939): 1–22, 5; Alastair Bellany, “Buckingham Engraved: Politics, Print Images in the 1620’s,” in Printed Images in Early Modern England, ed. Michael Hunter (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), 215–35; Antony Griffith and Robert A. Gerard, The Print in Stuart Britain 1603–1689 (London: British Museum, 1998), 144, 151; M. D. George, English Political Caricature: A Study of Opinion and Propaganda (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 15, 17, 259; Sharpe, Image Wars, 289–93. 91. The History of the Troubles and tryal of . . . archbishop Laud (London, 1698),

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Notes to Chapter Eight 179–80. See also Helen Pierce, “Ánti-Episcopacy and Graphic Satire in England, 1640–1645,” Historical Journal 47 (2004): 809–48. 92. Griffith and Gerard, The Print in Stuart Britain, 141, 144, 152–54, 157; George, English Political Caricature, 17, 18, 20–25. 93. Sharpe, Image Wars, 430–37. 94. George, English Political Caricature, 42, 46–47; Griffith and Gerard, The Print in Stuart Britain, 195–96. 95. James Sutherland, The Restoration Newspaper, 150; Griffith and Gerard, The Print in Stuart Britain, 159, 176–77, 195–96, 280–91; Klein, “The Splendor of the Solemnity,” IV, 29, 30; B. J. Rahn, “A Ra-ree Show—A Rare Cartoon: Revolutionary Propaganda in the Treason Trial of Stephen College,” in Studies in Change and Revolution, ed. Paul J. Korshin, 77–98; for Godfrey, see Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation, I, 244–45. 96. Peacock, “The Visual Image of Charles I,” 209–20; Kelsey, Inventing a Republic, 86. 97. R. A. Beddard, “Wren’s Mausoleum for Charles I and the Cult of the Royal Martyr,” Architectural History 27 (1984): 36–49. 98. Quoted in Peter Hinds, The Horrid Popish Plot: Roger L’Estrange and the Circulation of Political Discourse in Late Seventeenth-Century London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 361; see also 366–84, 387, 388, 394–96. 99. See Simon Thurley, “A Country Seat fit for a King,” in The Stuart Courts, ed. Cruickshanks, 214–39. 100. See John Newman, “Inigo Jones and the Politics of Architecture,” in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Sharpe and Lake, 229–55; see Paul Hunnyball, “Cromwellian Style: The Architectural Trappings of the Cromwellian Protectorate Regime,” in The Cromwellian Protectorate, ed. Patrick Little (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), 53–96. 101. See Peacock, “The Visual Image of Charles I,” 178–85; Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy, 402–10; Sharpe, Image Wars, 80, 221–22. 102. Peacock, “The Visual Image of Charles I,” 187–98; Sharpe, Image Wars, 80–84, 215–20, 357–61; John Evelyn, Numismata: A Discourse of Medals, Antient and Modern (London, 1697), 171. 103. Evelyn, Numismata, 154–55, 160–74. 104. See Ian Gentles, “The Iconography of Revolution: England 1642–49,” in Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution, ed. Ian Gentles, John Morrill and Blair Worden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). See also Allan Ellenicus, Iconography, Propaganda and Legitimization (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). 105. Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II, 168–71; Tim Harris, “The Parties and the People: The Press and Crowd and Politics Out of Doors in Restoration England,” in Charles II and James VII and II, ed. Lionel Glassey (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), 125–51; Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation, I, 110–11; Peter Millard, ed., Notes of Me: The Autobiography of Roger North (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 213; David Allen, “Political Clubs in Restoration London,” Historical Journal 19 (1976): 561–80, 569; Grant Topsell, The Personal Rule of Charles II, 1681–8 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), 119. There are references to wearing green and scarlet ribbons in Aphra Behn, Prologue to Romulus (London, 1682), 1–2.



Notes to Chapters Eight and Nine

106. Andrew Lacy, The Cult of King Charles the Martyr (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2003), 158; George, English Political Caricature, 48, 52, 56; Klein, “The Splendor of the Solemnity,” IV, 30; Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy, 401–2. 107. See Charles C. Ludington, “‘Be sometimes to your country true’: The Politics of Wine in England, 1660–1714,” in A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in 17th-Century England, ed. Adam Smyth (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), 89–90. 108. Buchanan Sharp, “Popular Political Opinion in England, 1660–1685,” History of European Ideas 10 (1989): 13–29, 23.

Chapter Nine 1. See Howard Nenner, The Right to Be King: The Succession to the Crown of England, 1603–1714 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). 2. Sir John Fortescue, On the laws and governance of England, ed. Shelley Lockwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 3. Johann P. Sommerville, ed., King James VI and I: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 75. 4. Quoted in Johann P. Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots: Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640 (Harlow, Essex: Pearson, 1999), 115–19. 5. Frederick Pollock, ed., Table Talk of John Selden (London: Quaritch, 1927), 112. 6. Robert Cecil and Charles I, quoted in Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots, 126–27. 7. Quoted in John Reid, Rule of Law: The Jurisprudence of Liberty in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 19. 8. Quoted in Reid, Rule of Law, 19. 9. John Speed, The Historie of Great Britaine (London, 1623), 410. Speed, however, recognized that the forms of pleading and process had been “brought in by the conquest.” 10. Sir John Davis, Le primer report des cases & matters en ley (Dublin, 1615), in Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writing in Stuart England, ed. David Wootton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), 131. See J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); J. W. Tubbs, The Common Law Mind: Medieval and Early Modern Conceptions (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 2000); Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots, 81–109; Alan Cromartie, The Constitutionalist Revolution: An Essay on the History of England, 1450–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Christopher W. Brooks, Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Howard Nenner, By Colour of Law: Legal Culture and Constitutional Politics in England: 1660–1689 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). 11. Sir Edward Coke wrote that “in many cases the common law will control acts of parliament, and sometimes adjudge them to be utterly void: for when an act of parliament is against common right and reason . . . the common law will . . . adjudge such act to be voide.” Edward Coke, The Reports of Sir Edward Coke (London, 1658), 596–97.

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Notes to Chapter Nine 12. For the crowds at Westminster, see Roger North, A Discourse of the Study of the Laws (London, 1824), 33, 34. 13. Sir Edward Coke, The First Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England (London, 1670), fol. 97b. 14. Sir Mathew Hale, The History of the Common Law of England and an Analysis of the Civil Part of the Law (London: Henry Butterworth, 1820), 46, 207. See also Thomas Hobbes, Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England, ed. Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). 15. Wilfred R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts, 1590– 1640 (London: Longmans, 1972), 222. For the 60 percent figure, see A. Cromartie, “The Constitutional Revolution: The Transformation of Political Culture in Early Stuart England,” Past and Present 163 (1999): 86. 16. Derek Hirst, The Representative of the People? Voters and Voting in England under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Mark Kishlansky, Parliamentary Selection: Social and Political Choice in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Richard Cust, “Politics and the Electorate in the 1620’s,” in Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603–1642, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (London: Longman, 1989), 143–51; Patrick Little and David L. Smith, The Parliaments and Politics during the Protectorate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 49–79. 17. David Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 75–81. See also J. H. Plumb, “The Growth of the Electorate in England from 1600– 1717,” Past and Present 45 (1969): 90–116. 18. John Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 17. 19. Roger North, Examen, 540, quoted in R. H. George, “Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in 1685,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., 19 (1936): 270. 20. Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Time, III, 16–18. 21. Andrew Browning, ed., English Historical Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 191–92; George, “Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in 1685,” 167–95. Many urban dwellers participated in borough elections. London elections of the Restoration, especially shrieval elections, were contentious. For James’s election campaign, see Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 157–58, 184–86; Gary De Krey, Restoration and Revolution in Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 212–13. 22. See Anthony Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces: The Government of Stuart England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 14–18, 22, 24–25. Many were purged between 1679 and 1681. James II dismissed 150 and added 5,000 new justices of the peace, including 3,000 Roman Catholics. De Krey, Restoration and Revolution in Britain, 200. 23. Michael Dalton, The Complete Justice (London, 1630), 7. 24. Theobald Francis, A Discourse Concerning the Basis and Original of Government . . . As it was Delivered by way of Charge to the Grand jury (London, 1667), 21–22.



Notes to Chapter Nine

25. Conyers Read, William Lambarde and Local Government: His ‘Ephemeris’ and Twenty-Nine Charges to Juries and Commissions (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962), 118, 120. 26. The Lord Coke His Speech and Charge (1607), in The Selected Writings and Speeches of Sir Edward Coke, ed. Steve Sheppard, 3 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2003), II, 525. 27. Sergeant Thorpe Judge of Assize for the Northern Circuit, His Charge (London, 1649), 3, 4, 5, 8–9. 28. Thomas Edgar, Two Charges, As they were delivered by T. E. Esquire, Justice of the Peace for the County of Suffolk (London, 1649), 3, 4, 5, 6. 29. E. M. Halcrow, ed. Charges to the grand Jury at Quarter Sessions, 1660–1677 (Manchester: Chetham Society, 1953), 6–7, 10, 44–45, 48, 57, 59, 65, 66, 69, 76–78, 81–82, 85, 89–91. See also Penistone Whalley, The Religion Established by Law, . . . delivered in a charge at the quarter Sessions (London, 1674), 2, 7, 29. 30. Francis, A Discourse concerning the Basis and Original of Government (London, 1667). 31. The Charge given by Sir William Smith at the Quarter session . . . Middlesex at Westminster, April 24, 1681 (London, 1682), 1, 2–3, 4, 5, 7, 9. The charge was answered by J. W., Some remarks on a speech made to the Grand jury (London, 1682). 32. Norma Landau, The Justices of the Peace: 1679–1760 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 51–55. 33. See Barbara Shapiro, Beyond Reasonable Doubt and Probable Cause: Historical Perspectives on the Anglo-American Law of Evidence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 42–114. 34. [Sir John Somers], The Security of English-Men’s Lives (London, 1681), 17–18. 35. Sir Matthew Hale, The History of the Pleas of the Crown, 2 vols. (London, 1800), II, 312. See also Caroline Robbins, ed., The Diary of John Milward (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938), 167–70. 36. The Peoples Ancient and Just Liberties Asserted (London, 1670); A Guide to Juries Setting for their Antiquity, Power and Duty (London, 1683); see Thomas A. Green, Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury, 1200–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 209n, 248–49. 37. Sommerville, King James VI and I, 222. 38. Ibid., 220. 39. Ibid., 205. 40. James Spedding, ed., The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, 7 vols. (London: Longman, 1861–74), VI, 211. For the executive functions of judges, see J. S. Cockburn, A History of English Assizes, 1558–1714 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 154–87. 41. Cockburn, A History of English Assizes, 235. 42. Ibid., 239, 241, 243–45. 43. Ibid., 247. When the king issued the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672 and some judges expressed doubt about its legality, two were dismissed. Alfred F. Havighurst, “The Judiciary and Politics in the Reign of Charles II,” Law Quarterly Review 66 (1950): 62–78, 229–52; Havighurst, “James II and the Twelve Men in Scarlet,” Law Quarterly Review 69 (1953): 522–46.

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Notes to Chapter Nine 44. See The Bellowings of a Wild-Bull: or Scroggs Roaring Lamentation for Being Impeached of A High-Treason (n.p., n.d.), 1–2; The Lord Chief Justice Scroggs His Speech in the Kings-Bench . . . Occasion’d by the many Libellous Pamphlets (London, 1679); Innocence unveil’d: or, A poem on the acquittal of the Lord chief justice Scroggs (London, 1680); Justice in Masquerade, a poem (London?, 1680); A satyr against in-justice: or, Sc—gs upon sc—gs (London, 1681?); The Triumphs of Justice over Unjust Judges (London, 1681). 45. A Guide to English Juries (London, 1682), 27. 46. Cockburn, A History of English Assizes, 252–55. 47. See Phil Withington, The Politics of Commonwealth: Citizens and Freemen in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 48. See The Book of Oaths (London, 1649); Conal Condren, Argument and Authority in Early Modern England: the Presupposition of Oaths and Offices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); John Spurr, “Perjury, Profanity and Politics,” The Seventeenth Century 8 (1993): 29–50; Edmund Leites, ed., Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 49. Tam Quorom (London, 1683), 12. 50. See Edward Vallance, Revolutionary England and the National Covenant: State Oaths and Protestations and the Political Nation, 1533–1682 (Woodbridge, NJ: Boydell Press, 2005). 51. See M. C. Questier, “Loyalty, Religion and State Power in Early Modern England: English Romanism and the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance,” Historical Journal 40 (1997): 311–29; Stephen Alford, “Politics of Emergency in the Reign of Elizabeth I,” in English Radicalism, 1550–1850, ed. Glenn Burgess and Matthew Festenshein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 25–30. 52. The Book of Oaths (London, 1689), 226–27. See David M. Jones, Conscience and Allegiance in Seventeenth Century England: The Political Significance of Oaths and Engagements (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 1999). 53. See John Wallace, “The Engagement Controversy, 1649–1652: An Annotated List of Pamphlets,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library 68 (1964): 384–405; Edward Vallance, “Oaths, Casuistry, and Equivocation: Anglican Responses to the Engagement Controversy,” Historical Journal 44 (2001): 59–77. 54. Peter Hinds, The Horrid Popish Plot: Roger L’Estrange and the Circulation of Political Discourse in Late Seventeenth-Century London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), app. 5, 413–14. 55. See Barbara Shapiro, “Law Reform in Seventeenth Century England,” American Journal of Legal History 19 (1975): 280–312. 56. Spedding, Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, I, 339–40. See also Barbara Shapiro, “Sir Francis Bacon and the Mid-Seventeenth Century Movement for Law Reform,” American Journal of Legal History 24 (1980): 331–62; David Dean, Law-Making and Society in Late England: The Parliament of England, 1584–1601 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 188–216. 57. Lord Brooke, “Of Laws,” in The Works in Verse and Prose Complete of the Right Honourable Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (London, 1870) I, 99, 101, 103, 104–5. 58. Quoted in Robert Zaller, The Parliament of 1621: A Study in Constitutional Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 64.



Notes to Chapter Nine

59. Stuart Prall, The Agitation for Law Reform during the Puritan Revolution, 1640–1660 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966); Donald Veall, The Popular Movement for Law Reform, 1640–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970); Mary Cotterell, “Interregnum Law Reform: The Hale Commission of 1652,” English Historical Review 83 (1968): 689–704. 60. Journal of the House of Lords, vol. 11, 1660–66, 695. See also Shapiro, “Law Reform in Seventeenth Century England,” 296–310. 61. Gilbert Burnet, Supplement to the History of My Own Times (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), 351–52. See also Shapiro, “Law Reform in Seventeenth Century England,” 297–312. 62. Lawyers were rarely involved in ordinary criminal trials. Defendants in felony cases were not permitted counsel. 63. See J. A. Sharpe, “‘Last Dying Speeches’: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth-Century England,” Past and Present 107 (1985): 144–67; Charles Carlton, “The Rhetoric of Death: Scaffold Confessions in Early Modern England,” Southern Speech Communication Journal 49 (1983): 66–79; Thomas W. Laqueur, “Crowds, Carnival and the State in English Executions, 1604–1868,” in The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone, ed. A. L. Beier, David Cannadine and James M. Rosenheim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 305–55. 64. Arraignment, trial and condemnation of Robert Earl of Essex, and Henry Earl of Southampton, 1600 (London, 1679). See also the broadside, By the Queen; Thomas Churchyard, The fortunate farewell to the most forward and noble Earl of Essex (London, 1599); Robert Pricket, Honors fame in triumph riding. Or, The life and death of the late honorable Earle of Essex (London, 1604). See also Mervyn James, “At a Crossroads of the Political Culture: The Essex Revolt, 1601,” in Society, Politics, and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England, ed. Mervyn James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 416–66. 65. A Sermon Preach’d at Paules Cross . . . With a short discourse of the late Earle of Essex (London, 1601), quoted in James, “At a Crossroads of the Political Culture,” 462. See also Paul E. J. Hammer, “The Smiling Crocodile: The Earl of Essex and Late Elizabethan Popularity,” in The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, ed. Peter Lake and Steven Pincus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 95–115. 66. Francis Bacon, A Declaration of the Practice & treasons attempted and committed by Robert, late Earle of Essex (London, 1610). See also Sir Francis Bacon his apologie, in certain imputations concerning the late Earle of Essex (London, 1604). Reprinted in 1604, 1605, 1642 and 1651. 67. See also T. W., The arraignement and execution of the late traytors (London, 1606). 68. We “think it not fit, because it would make him too popular, as was found by experiment at the arraignment at Winchester, where . . . he turned the hatred of men into compassion for him.” See Karen Cunningham, “‘A Spanish Heart in an English Body’: The Ralegh Treason Trial and the Poetics of Proof,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 22 (1992): 327–51. 69. A Declaration of the Demeanor and Carriage of Sir Walter Raleigh . . . and of

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Notes to Chapter Nine the true motives and inducements, which occasioned his Majestie to proceed in doing Justice upon him (London, 1618), 1–2, 61. 70. Matthias Adam Shaaber, “Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England, 1476–1622” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1929), 142–43. 71. Quoted in Zaller, The Parliament of 1621, 84; Cust, “Politics and the Electorate in the 1620’s,” 142. See also Colin G. C. Tite, Impeachment and Parliamentary Judicature in Early Stuart England (London: Athlone Press, 1974); Allen Horstman, “The Parliament of 1621 Revisited: The Beginnings of Impeachment,” in Law and Authority in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to Thomas Garden Barnes, ed. Buchanan Sharp and Mark Charles Fissel (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007), 77–105. 72. J. P. Kenyon, ed., The Stuart Constitution 1603–1688: Documents and Commentary, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 62–64. 73. T. B. Howell, ed., A Complete Collection of State Trials (London: T. C. Hansard for Longman, 1816–28) III, 293–94, 309–10. But see Mark Kishlansky, “Tyranny Denied: Charles I, Attorney General Heath, and the Five Knights Case,” Historical Journal 42 (1999): 53–83. 74. W. J. Jones, Politics and the Bench: The Judges and the Origins of the Civil War (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971), 199–200, 215. The impeachment articles were published. 75. See Conrad Russell, “The Theory of Treason in the Trial of Strafford,” English Historical Review 80 (1965): 30–50; D. Alan Orr, Treason and the State: Law, Politics and Ideology in the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 30–46. 76. See John Pym, The Speech or Declaration of John Pym . . . against Thomas Earle of Strafford (London, 1641). The House of Lords brought charges against the printer. See A. D. T. Cromartie, “The Printing of Parliamentary Speeches, November 1640–July 1642,” Historical Journal 33 (1990): 23–44. 77. Terence Kilburn and Anthony Milton, “The Public Context of the Trial and Execution of Strafford,” in The Political World of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, 1621–1641, ed. J. F. Merritt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 230–51. Even Digby thought Strafford was “a name of hatred in the present age by his practices, and fit to be made a terrour to future ages by his punishment.” Kilburn and Milton, “The Public Context of the Trial and Execution of Strafford,” 240. See also John H. Timmis, Thine Is the Kingdom: The Trial for Treason of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, First Minister to King Charles I and Last Hope of the English Crown (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1975); Jason Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 114 (“talk of the nation”). 78. Kilburn and Milton, “The Public Context of the Trial and Execution of Strafford,” 240, 242. 79. In answer to the Earle of Straffords oration (London, 1641); Annotations upon the Earle of Straffords Conclusion (London, 1641); Thomas May, History of the Parliament of England, ed. Francis Maseres (London, 1812), 92. 80. Historical Manuscripts Commission, 12th report, The Manuscripts of Earl Cowper (1888), II, 282, quoted in David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolu-



Notes to Chapter Nine

tion, 1640–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 296. Over 100 publications in 1641 dealt with Strafford. 81. The Tryal of Thomas, Earl of Strafford (London, 1680), Preface. 82. J. Nalson, A True copy of the journal of the High Court of Justice for the tryal of K. Charles (London, 1684), 8. 83. See William L. Sachse, “English Pamphlet Support for Charles I, Nov. 1648– Jan. 1649,” in Conflict in Stuart England: Essays in Honour of Wallace Notestein, ed. W. A. Aiken and B. D. Henning (London: Jonathan Cape, 1960), 149–68. 84. Mendle, “News and the Pamphlet Culture,” 65; Mercurius Politicus (August 22–29, 1650), 183–85. See also David Lagomarsino and Charles T. Wood, eds., The Trial of Charles I: A Documentary History (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989); Howard Nenner, “The Trial of Charles I and the Failed Search for a Bounded Monarchy,” in Restoration, Ideology, and Revolution, ed. Gordon J. Schochet et al. (Washington, DC: Folger Institute, Folger Shakespeare Library, 1990), 1–22; Nancy Klein Maguire, “The ‘Tragedy’ of Charles I: Distancing and Staging the Execution of a King,” in Restoration, Ideology and Revolution, ed. Schochet, 45–66; Lois Potter, “Royal Actor as Royal Martyr: The Eikon Basilike and the Literary Scene in 1649,” in Restoration, Ideology and Revolution, ed. Schochet, 217–41. 85. The bloody court, or, The fatall tribunal (London, 1660), 14. 86. The triall, of Lieut. Collonell John Lilburne (London, 1649). For the government response, see An Anatomy of Lieut. Col. John Lilburne’s spirit and pamphlets (London, 1649). Lilburne was tried again in 1653. See also Green, Verdict According to Conscience, 81, 183–84, 192–97, 198, 204. 87. See A hue and cry after the high court of injustice (London, 1660); Heneage Finch, Earl of Nottingham, An exact and most impartial accompt of the indictment, arraignment, trial, and judgment (according to law) of twenty nine regicides (London, 1660). See Howard Nenner, “Trial of the Regicides: Retribution and Treason in 1660,” in Politics and the Political Imagination in Later Stuart Britain, ed. Howard Nenner (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 21–42. 88. George de F. Lord, ed., Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660–1714 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), I, 158. See also News from Dunkirk-House: or, Clarendon’s farewell to England (London, 1667). 89. The accuracy of the printed trials was praised by Roger North and John Evelyn. Michael Mendle, “The ‘Prints’ of the Trials: The Nexus of Politics, Religion, Law and Information in Late Seventeenth Century England,” in Fear, Exclusion and Revolution: Roger Morrice and Britain in the 1680s, ed. Jason McElligott (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 132. 90. Lois G. Schwoerer, “The Attempted Impeachment of Sir William Scroggs, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench, November 1680–March 1681,” Historical Journal 38 (1995): 853–55, 857. See also J. P. Kenyon, “The Acquittal of Sir George Wakeman: 18 July 1679,” Historical Journal 14 (1971): 693–708. 91. See A short, but just account of the tryal of Benjamin Harris (London, 1679), 2. Care was charged with being the author of a “certain scandalous, and malitious” publication, The Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome. See Timothy Crist, “Government Control of the Press after the Expiration of the Printing Act in 1679,” Pub-

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Notes to Chapter Nine lishing History 5 (1979): 49–77; Lois G. Schwoerer, The Ingenious Mr. Henry Care, Restoration Publicist (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). 92. Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714, 6 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1857), I, 146. 93. Observator, I, 76, cited in Hinds, The Horrid Popish Plot, 146. 94. The arraignment, tryal and condemnation of Stephen Colledge for high-treason (London, 1681). See also A Letter concerning the tryal at Oxford of Stephen College (London, 1681); A Letter from the Grand-Jury of Oxford to the London-Grand-Jury relating to the case of the Protestant-joyner (London, 1681); A modest vindication of the proceedings . . . against Stephen Colledge, Ignoramus (London, 1681); A Poem (by way of elegie) upon Mr. Stephen College (London, 1681); The Whiggs lamentation for the death of their dear brother Cooledge, the Protestant joyner (London, 1681); Roger L’Estrange, Notes upon Stephen College grounded principally upon his own declarations and confessions (London, 1681); A Letter from a gentleman in London . . . on the occasion of the late tryal of Stephen Colledge (London, 1681). See Simon Stern, “Between Local Knowledge and National Politics: Debating Rationales for Jury Nullification after Bushell’s Case,” Yale Law Journal 111 (2002): 1815–59. 95. The Autobiography of Roger North (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 159. 96. An account of the whole proceedings (London, 1683); The Execution of William Lord Russel . . . for conspiring the death of the King (London, 1683); The tryal of the Lord Russel (Dublin, 1683); Elkanah Settle, Animadversions on the Last Speech and Confession of the late William, Lord Russell (London, 1683). 97. The last speech and behaviour of William late Lord Russell (Dublin, 1683); The Lord Russel’s speech vindicated (London, 1683); Some succinct remarks on the speech of the late Lord Russel (London, 1683); A Vindication of the Lord Russell’s speech and innocence (London, 1683); Roger L’Estrange, Considerations upon . . . The speech of the late Lord Russel (Edinburgh, 1683); John Nalson, Animadversions upon . . . The speech of the late Lord Russel, &c. (London, 1683). The University of Oxford condemned his “damnable doctrine[s]” that government originated in consent or was a contract between people and rulers, that tyrants might lawfully be resisted or that parliament shared sovereignty with the king. De Krey, Restoration and Revolution in Britain, 204. 98. The Condemnation, behaviour, last dying words, and execution of Algernon Sidny (London, 1683); An exact account of the manner of the execution of Algernoon Sidney (London, 1683); An exact account of the tryal of Algernoon Sidney (London, 1683); The arraignment, tryal & condemnation of Algernon Sidney, Esq. for high-treason (London, 1684); Algernon Sidney, Colonel Sidney’s speech delivered to the sheriff on the scaffold (London, 1683). See also Pluto, the Prince of Darkness his entertainment of Coll. Algernoon Sidney upon his arrival at the infernal palace (London, 1684); Algernoon Sidneys farewel (London, 1687); An Elegy on the death of Algernon Sidney, Esq. (London, 1683); John Nalson, Reflections upon Coll. Sidney’s Arcadia, the old cause (London, 1684); Edmund Bohun, A defence of Sir Robert Filmer, against the mistakes and misrepresentations of Algernon Sidney (London, 1684); Algernon Sidney, Mr. Sidney his self-conviction (London, 1684). For Sidney, see Alan Craig Houston, Algernon Sidney and the Republican Heritage in England and Puritan America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Jonathan Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis,



Notes to Chapters Nine and Ten

1577–1682 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Lee Ward, The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Michael P. Winship, “Algernon Sidney’s Calvinist Republicanism,” Journal of British Studies 49 (2010): 753–73. 99. Quoted in Benjamin F. Klein, “‘The Splendor of this Solemnity’: Royal Ceremony and Celebration in Late Stuart England, 1660–1714” (Ph.D. thesis, Brown University, 2002), IV, 26. 100. G. M. Crump, ed., Poems on Affairs of State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), IV, 215–35; Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution, 442–47; Howell, A Complete Collection of State Trials, XIII, 416–17, 424–29. The trial, published in 1689, was dedicated to the William, Prince of Orange. See also Roger Thomas, “The Seven Bishops and Their Petition, 18 May 1688,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 12 (1961): 56–70; Pincus, 1688, 196. 101. An Account of the proceedings . . . relating to the tryal and discharge of the Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1688), Dedicatory letter. 102. Collections of state trials were published in four volumes in 1719. There were later editions during the eighteenth century.

Chapter Ten 1. Paula McDowell, The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace 1678–1730 (Oxford: Oxford, 1998). 2. Knowledge of public celebrations has been greatly enhanced by the work of David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989). 3. Jonathan Clark, English Society, 1588–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 6–7; J. C. D. Clark, Revolution and Rebellion: State and Society in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 4. Conrad Russell and J. G. A. Pocock have been particularly influential. See John Morrill, “The Fashioning of Britain,” in Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State, 1584–1724, ed. Steven G. Ellis and Sarah Barber (London: Longman, 1995), 8–39; J. G. A. Pocock, “British History, a Plea for a New Subject,” Journal of Modern History 47 (1975): 601–28; J. G. A. Pocock, “The Kingdoms and Three Histories? Political Thought in British Contexts,” in Scots and Britons: Scottish Political Thought and the Union of 1603, ed. Roger A. Mason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 293–312; but see Tim Harris, “The British Dimension, Religion and the Shaping of Political Identities during the Reign of Charles II,” in Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c. 1650–c. 1850, ed. Tony Claydon and Ian McBride (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); 131–56; Linda Colley, Britains: Forging the Nation 1707–1815 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 176–79, 204. 5. See Sarah Barber, “Scotland and Ireland under the Commonwealth: A Question of Loyalty,” in Conquest and Union, ed. Ellis and Barber, 195–221. 6. Brian Levack, The Formation of the British State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). But see Tim Harris, “Understanding Popular Politics in Restoration

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Notes to Chapter Ten Britain,” in A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration, ed. Alan Houston and Steven C. A. Pincus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 125–53. 7. In 1640 some 848 titles appeared; two years later there were 3,666. At the beginning of the Popish Plot and Exclusion, some 1,174 titles were published in London. The number of published items peaked in 1680 at 2,145, falling off to 1,978 and 1,898 in 1681 and 1682. Peter Hinds, The Horrid Popish Plot: Roger L’Estrange and the Circulation of Political Discourse in Late Seventeenth Century London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 9. 8. There is also disagreement about whether one should think of English society as moving in the direction of a unified culture or whether one should distinguish between elite and popular culture. See Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York: Harper, 1978); Buchanan Sharp, “Popular Political Opinion in England 1660–1685,” History of European Ideas 10 (1989): 13–30; Bernard Capp, “Popular Culture and the English Civil War,” History of European Ideas 10 (1989): 31–42; Tim Harris, “The Problem of ‘Popular Political Culture’ in Seventeenth-century London,” History of European Ideas 10 (1989): 43–58. 9. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. T. Burger and F. Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), 50. 10. See also T. Claydon, “The Sermon and the Public Sphere,” in The English Sermon Revived: Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750, ed. Lori Anne Ferrell and P. McCullough (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001). But see Mark Knights, “How Rational Was the Later Stuart Public Sphere?,” in The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, ed. Peter Lake and Steven Pincus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 252–67; Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Michael Heyd, “Be Sober and Reasonable”: The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (London: E. J. Brill, 1995). 11. See Fritz Levy, “How Information Spread among the Gentry, 1550–1640,” Journal of British Studies 21 (1982): 11–34; Richard Cust, “News and Politics in Seventeenth-Century England,” Past and Present 112 (1986): 60–90; Alastair Bellany, The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Paul E. J. Hammer, “‘The Smiling Crocodile’: The Earl of Essex and Late Elizabethan ‘Popularity,’” in The Politics of the Public Sphere, ed. Lake and Pincus; Peter Lake and Michael Questier, “Puritans, Papists and the ‘Public Sphere’ in Early Modern England: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context,” Journal of Modern History 72 (2000). The question of the public sphere has, thus far, attracted relatively little attention from scholars of the pre-Elizabethan period. But see Ethan H. Shagan, “The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Public Sphere?,” in The Politics of the Public Sphere, ed. Lake and Pincus. 12. David Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). See also David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution, 1640–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 322–29.



Notes to Chapter Ten

13. Alexandra Halasz, The Marketplace of Printing, Pamphlets and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Joad Raymond, News, Newspapers and Society in Early Modern Britain (London: Frank Cass, 1999); Joad Raymond, “The Newspapers, Public Opinion and the Public Sphere,” in News, Newspapers and Society in Early Modern Britain, ed. Raymond. See also Sharon Achinstein, “The Politics of Babel in the English Revolution,” in Pamphlet Wars: Prose in the English Revolution, ed. James Holstun (London: Frank Cass, 1992), 14–44. 14. Jason Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). See also David Randall, “Recent Studies in Print Culture: News, Propaganda and Ephemera,” Huntington Library Quarterly 67 (2004): 457–72. 15. See Knights, “How Rational Was the Later Stuart Public Sphere?,” 252–67; Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation. For an earlier discussion involving attacks on “enthusiasm,” see Heyd, “Be Sober and Reasonable.” See also Lawrence Klein, “Gender, Conversation and the Public Sphere,” in Textuality and Sexuality: Reading Theories and Practices, ed. J. Still and M. Worton (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993). 16. Brian Cowan, “Geoffrey Holmes and the Public Sphere: Augustan Historiography, Post Namierite to the Post-Habermasian,” Parliamentary History 28 (2009): 177–78. 17. Geoff Baldwin, “The ‘Public’ as a Rhetorical Community in Early Modern England,” in Communities in Early Modern England, ed. Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 199–215. 18. See Bronwen Wilson and Paul Yachnin, “Introduction,” in Making Publics in Early Modern Europe: People, Things, Forms of Knowledge, ed. Bronwen Wilson and Paul Yachnin (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), 1–21; Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002). For difficulties with the public-private distinction and the public sphere see Conal Condren, “Public, Private and the Idea of the ‘Public Sphere’ in Early Modern England,” Intellectual History Review 19 (2009): 15–28. 19. Peter Lake and Steve Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 45 (2006): 270–92; Peter Lake and Steve Pincus, “The State and Civil Society in Early Modern England: Capitalism, Causation and Habermas’s Bourgeois Public Sphere,” in The Politics of the Public Sphere, ed. Lake and Pincus, 225. Pincus refers to Habermas as the “social theoretician pop star of the early modernists.” Claydon, “The Sermon and the Public Sphere.” See also Cowan, “Geoffrey Holmes and the Public Sphere,” 165–78. Cowan emphasizes the development as a rejection of Namierite approach to political history. 20. See Knights, “How Rational Was the Later Stuart Public Sphere?,” 252–67. See also Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation; Heyd, “Be Sober and Reasonable”; Brendan Dooley, “News and Doubt in Early Modern Culture, or, Are We Having a Public Sphere Yet?,” in The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, ed. Brendan Dooley and Sabrina A. Baron (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 275–90. 21. Lake and Pincus suggest that France experienced episodic public spheres

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Notes to Chapter Ten during the religious wars and the Fronde, and also that the Netherlands experienced public spheres closer to that of England. “The State and Civil Society in Early Modern England,” 284–86. 22. See Steve Pincus, “‘Coffee Politicians Does Create’: Coffee Houses and Restoration Culture,” Journal of Modern History 67 (1995); Brian Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). 23. See Lawrence Klein, “Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century,” Historical Journal 14 (2003): 869–98; Nicholas Phillipson, “Politics and Politeness in the Reign of Anne and the Early Hanoverians,” in Varieties of British Political Thought, 1500–1800, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 211–43. 24. There is a large and varied scholarly literature on the nature of nationalism, much of which emphasizes it as a modern, not an early modern, development. For a recent discussion of the role of religion in the formation of early modern nationalism, see Anthony W. Marx, Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

Index

Act of Oblivion, 263 Act of Uniformity, 42, 251 Adlington, Hugh, 359n137 Aglionby, William, 63–64, 69 alehouses, 25, 51, 151, 228, 272 Allen, John, 194 Amboyna, 31, 107, 126, 152, 224 Anabaptists, 191, 210 ancient constitution, 12, 21, 75, 83–86, 99, 100, 102, 195, 203, 288 anthropology, 67, 74, 299n4 anti-Catholicism, 45–45, 50, 162, 170, 217, 218, 240–242; ballads, 152; drama, 108, 113–114, 122, 123, 124, 125; in ecclesiastical history, 21, 93–95; Elizabeth as symbol, 91, 208, 216, 229; Gunpowder Plot, 211–218; in historical writing, 93; Jesuits, 153, 254; papal deposition doctrine, 30, 143, 188, 250; political culture, 9, 43, 253–254, 276, 290; “popery and arbitrary government” slogan, 43, 47, 49, 92, 158, 261, 266, 291; riots, 209–210; sermons, 170, 177, 178, 179–180, 217; sermons, Paul’s Cross, 169, 172, 173, 174, 175, 177–178; succession, 8–9, 158; visual expression, 224, 229; Whig, 43, 93, 158, 251,

261, 266, 308, 269. See also Armada; Gunpowder Plot; Exclusion; Pope burning processions; Popish Plot; succession Armada, 200; celebrations, 210, 219; images, 222, 228; news, 43; poems and ballads, 143, 151 Assembly of Divines, 38, 112, 115, 157, 178 assizes, 10, 48, 185, 196. See also sermons, assize Atwood, William, 87 Aubrey, John, coffee houses, 49, 51, 311n157 audiences, 1, 4, 5, 7, 12, 14, 17, 74, 129, 130, 132, 132, 133, 135–136, 267, 273, 280, 285, 291; for assize sermons, 195–196; expectations, 3; for history, 80, 81, 282; and literacy, 36; for lord mayor’s shows, 182, 187, 195; male, 81; for news, 26, 296; for plays, 7, 21, 105, 106, 112–113, 116–117, 119–120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 270, 293; for political ballads, 153; for political trials, 253, 258; for prints and paintings, 230; for Roman history, 96; for sermons, 4, 7, 22, 168, 170–171, 174, 175; women, 271

384

Index Bacon, Francis: on Elizabeth, 90; Essex trial, 254; fables, 247; greatness of kingdoms, 71, 101; on history and historians, 78, 81–83, 96, 97; History of Henry VII, 76, 82, 90, 123; impeachment, 256; judges, 247; Julius Caesar, 97; law reform, 252; libels, 30; masques, 109, 110, 252; natural history, 67, 69; political description, 56–57, 67, 71; Raleigh trial, 255; Royal Society, 69; sedition, 161; travel, 56–57, 68 Bacon, Nathaniel, 86, 90 ballads, 1, 3, 130–155, 270, 271, 344n77, 345n82; Buckingham, 152; celebratory, 151–152; censorship and control, 151, 152; Robert Cecil, 151; contemporary events, 152–154; Cromwell, 153; Earl of Essex, 151; Gunpowder Plot, 152; illustrated, 344n79; influence of, 152; news and, 3, 151, 152, 266; poetry and, 3, 138, 266; Selden on, 152; Tory, 153–154; Whig, 153–154 Banks, John, 115 Bates’s Case, 235, 256 Baxter, Richard, 138, 175, 185, 210, 309n112, 340n7 Behn, Aphra, 115, 228 bell ringing, 22, 198, 199, 215, 219, 229; Charles II, 40, 203, 218; Elizabeth, 208, 216; Gunpowder Day, 179, 217; James I, 219; James II, 205; Duke of Monmouth, 204; Spanish match, 219, 263 Bellarmine, Robert, 188 Berkeley, Sir Robert, Judge, 224, 248 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 225 Bethel, Slingsby, 71 Bible, see scripture Biondo, Flavio, 55 Blundeville, Thomas, 78, 81, 313n5 body politic, 18, 112, 129, 157, 159–160, 172, 203, 259, 279

Bolton, Edmund, 83, 97, 98 Bolton, Robert, 186, 188 Bond of Association, 350n124 bonfires, 40, 108, 179, 198, 204, 205, 218, 219, 220, 229 Boteler, Edward, 19 Botero, Giovanni, 71, 100 Boyle, Roger, Earl of Orrery, 113, 127 Bradshaw, John, 163, 220, 260 Brady, Robert, 84, 321n62 Brathwaite, Richard, 89 Brookes, Christopher, 142 Brutus, 97, 128, 142 Buckingham, 1st Duke of, George Villiers, 27, 32, 33, 91, 107, 119, 163, 176, 223, 288; foreign policy, 31, 109; ghost dialogues, 162; hostility toward, 30, 33, 144, 152, 162, 283; impeachment, 256–257; libels, 30, 144, 152; masques, 109; as Sejanus, 98, 131 Buckingham, 2nd Duke of, 72, 137, 317n61; hostility toward, 145, 146; playwright, 113 Burgess, Cornelius, 176, 178, 179 Burgess, Glen, 84 Burnet, Gilbert, 46, 97, 168 Burton, Henry, 35, 220, 223, 256, 295 Burton, Robert, 32 Bushel’s case, 249 Butler, Martin, 332n20 Butler, Samuel, 112, 349n130 Caesar, Augustus, 76, 93, 98, 100, 140, 142, 203, 206, 340n13; in drama, 128–130 Caesar, Julius, 93, 95, 96, 97, 108, 125, 128, 129, 140, 142, 202 Caesar, Julius, Sir, 81 Calamy, Edmund, 175, 177–178 Cambridge University, 96, 140 Camden, William, 76, 78, 79, 80, 90 Care, Henry, 44–45, 47, 191, 261, 377 Carew, Thomas, 110

Cassius, 97, 142 Castiglione, 17; The Courtier, 17, 137, 138, 150 Cecil, Robert, 29, 30, 152, 173, 236 Cecil, William, Lord Burghley, 56, 168, 173 censorship and control, 6, 9, 10, 14, 20, 27, 333n10; debate over, 14; government, 6, 9, 20. See also drama; history; licensing; news; public sphere Chamberlain, John, 216 Chamberlayne, Edward, 60, 61, 69, 315n36, 324n69 Chapman, George, 107 “character,” 22, 138, 155, 268, 269, 284; Samuel Butler, 349n150; John Cleveland, 157; of countries, 358n125; definition, 155, 157, 165, 347n109, 348n123, 349n130; John Earle, 33; evolution, 4, 10, 155–159; Thomas Fuller, 155; kings, 155–156; political, 156, 157; as political genre, 4, 10, 49, 50, 155–159; popularity, 156; religious, 4, 15, 156; stereotyping, 156–157, 165; Tories, 58, 269; Whigs, 157–158 Charles I, 35, 85, 140, 213; and Duke of Buckingham, 110; building plans, 225–226; censorship, 48; coronation, 201; court, 97, 10; drama, 112; Eikon Basilike, 141, 223; ghost dialogues, 162–163; history, 79, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 98; January 30 commemorations, 170, 180–185, 186–187, 218; lord mayor’s shows, 206; marriage, 31, 143, 219, 234; as martyr, 102, 115, 126, 141, 146, 171, 180–181, 225, 259, 268; masques, 109–110; news of, 38; on news, 33, 34, 38, 93, 97; and Parliament, 86, 89, 236; Petition of Right, 33, 220; poetry, 140–141, 142, 143; prerogative, 236; scriptural comparisons and parallels, 102, 181, 812; sermons on, 168, 171, 174, 178, 180–185; ship money, 162, 236, 256;

Index trial and execution, 22, 184, 234, 253, 259–260; as tyrant, 89, 91; visual images, 222–226. See also Buckingham, 1st Duke of; masques; Parliament; Petition of Right; prerogative; ship money; Spanish match Charles II: accession, 234; as Augustus, 98, 140, 203; ballads, 153; building plans, 226; coronation, 79, 203–204; drama, 113, 125, 130; royal entries, 201, 203; history, 89, 90–91, 98; judiciary, 249; lord mayor’s shows, 206–208; on news, 40, 92; news of, 43, 236, 241; opera, 111; parallels, 140, 268; Parliament, 43, 236, 241; Popish Plot, 43; portraits, 22; progresses, 203; public display, 204; Restoration, 40, 153; seditious libel, 48; sermons, 170; as tyrant, 89, 92; visual representations, 224. See also Declaration of Indulgence; Duke of York; Exclusion; Parliament; Popish Plot; prerogative Cheynell, Francis, 178 chorography, 3, 20, 59, 76, 313n1; overlap with natural history, 67 Church of England, 8 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 17, 130 Clarendon, see Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon Clark, Jonathan, 276 Cleveland, John, 38, 152, 156 Clifford, James, 299n4 coffee houses, 10, 11, 46, 52, 241, 267, 272, 279, 292, 296; John Aubrey, 41, 49, 311n157; auctions, 312n155; Clarendon, 51, 52; Brian Cowan, 285, 312n139, 312n162; culture, 2, 52; Jürgen Habermas, 1, 14, 48, 285, 299; Roger L’Estrange, 45, 49, 51; licensing, 51, 52; and news, 10, 20, 44, 46, 47, 48–53, 228, 292; Steven Pincus, 115, 285, 311n139; public sphere, 48, 214, 279, 285, 299; republicanism,

385

386

Index 100; Rota, 51; satires of, 50, 145, 146, 207; suppression, 52; Tories and, 50–51; Whigs and, 51, 115, 228 Coke, Sir Edward: charge to grand jury, 186, 243; common law, 371n61; dismissal, 246, 247; John Hayward and, 88–89; historical views, 80, 84, 87; Institutes, 239; judging, 186, 239; law, 84, 95, 239; libels on, 30; Parliament, 87, 246; Petition of Right, 211; prohibitions, 238; Sir Walter Raleigh, 255; Reports, 233, 239 coins, 23, 226, 227, 230 Colledge, Stephen: in ballads and broadsides, 154, 164, 262; ghost dialogues, 164; images, 224; trial of, 154, 262, 281 Collins, Samuel, 66 Colonies, 75, 100–101, 102, 132, 221 communication, see drama; gossip; news; trials Conner, Bernard, 64, 65 conscience, 18, 19, 144, 194–195, 208, 279; liberty of, 50, 72, 93, 170, 191, 210, 241, 244, 337n85 Constantine, 99, 131, 216, 223 contract, theories of government, 18, 88, 100, 149, 182, 188, 239, 279, 290, 329n132, 378n97; condemned, 183–184, 195, 378n97; Jesuit origin, 181, 183; marriage contract, 149 corantos, 4, 5, 31–32, 33, 35, 157, 305n47. See also news coronation, 22, 198, 202, 207, 229; Charles I, 202; Charles II, 203; Elizabeth, 200; James I, 201; James II, 204, 205 corruption: in law courts, 63, 193; Rome, 96, 98, 107, 131, 206; in royal court, 30, 63, 97, 98, 107, 114, 126, 131, 140, 147, 150, 338n93 Cotton, Sir John, 34, 78, 80, 88, 324n67 Council of State, 38, 39, 62, 63, 112, 153, 168

court culture, 2, 15 courts: borough, 16; Chancery, 16, 232, 252; common law, 23, 230–231, 237–239, 273, 276; Court of Wards, 252; ecclesiastical, 16; High Court of Justice; 252, 259; Levellers on, 252–253; petty sessions, 242, 252; prerogative, 9, 16, 233, 237, 238, 286–287; quarter sessions, 10, 16, 48, 212, 242, 243, 271; Star Chamber, 237, 267. See also judges; juries; law; Star Chamber; trials courts, royal, corruption in, 30, 63, 97, 98, 107, 114, 126, 131, 140, 147, 150, 338n93. See also masques Cowan, Brian, 281, 282, 285, 311n138, 312n152, 379n4 Cowell, John, 235 Cowley, Abraham, 102, 129, 139, 142–143, 149, 165, 324n66, 341n66 Cressy, David, 301n20, 379n4 Cromwell, Oliver, 20, 52, 98, 163, 226, 260, 276; “character,” 157, 163, 228; drama and, 112, 125; in ghost dialogues, 162, 163, 164, 165; hostility toward, 97, 153, 163, 164, 207, 220, 224, 228, 260; images of, 224, 226; lord mayor’s shows, 207; newsbooks, 39, 41; poems on, 140, 141, 143, 149, 340n14; republicans and, 91, 97; satirized, 53, 163, 164; tyrant, 89, 90, 157; visual images, 222, 226, 227 Cromwell, Richard, 39, 234, 260 Crowne, 113, 115, 122 Curtis, Jane, 309n110 Curtis, Langley, 309n110 Cust, Richard, 32–33 Dallington, Robert, 57, 63 Daniel, Samuel, 85, 89, 107, 120, 141, 148, 325n77 Davenant, William, 110, 112, 113, 125 Declaration of Indulgence: Charles II,

42, 236, 273n43, 287; James II, 47, 170, 210, 236, 263, 287 Defoe, Daniel, 69, 314n22 Dell, William, 178 Dekker, Thomas, 6, 108, 123, 124, 206 Denham, John, 112, 113, 127, 128 Denmark, 62, 63–64, 176, 178, 316n37, 316n40 D’Ewes, Sir Simonds, 111 Digby, Lord, 212, 258, 376n77 diplomats, 109, 199; and political information, 20, 29, 54, 61–70, 72, 74, 76, 271 divine right of kings, 30, 88, 125, 176, 206, 235, 243–245, 250, 290; Charles I, 201, 204; coronations, 203, 205; drama, 1, 119, 120, 123, 126, 128; James I, 91, 167, 222; masque, 108, 110, 202; sermons, 171, 174, 180, 181, 184, 185, 186–188, 195–197, 255, 267, 269, 271 Donne, John, 143 drama, 107, 134–135, 273; to 1642, 107–110; 1642–1660, 111–114, 131; 1660–1688, 112–114; ambassadorial interference, 106, 107; audiences, 21, 105, 111–112, 115, 117, 118, 130, 132, 133, 134, 145, 270; Julius Caesar, 108; censorship and control, 104, 106–108, 111, 129, 131, 135; chronicle plays, 104, 115–122, 128–131; Clarendon on, 123; closing of theaters, 111–112; court corruption, 117, 126, 127, 130, 132, 134; Dutch wars, 125–126; Elizabeth, 123, 125; European settings, 107, 123–127; focus on individuals not institutions, 134–135; A Game at Chess, 107, 125; genre, 135; Henry IV, 21, 120, 121, 124, 135, 336n72; Henry V, 121; Henry VI, 121–122; historical plays, 10, 21, 104, 131, 132, 133, 336n72; lessons and usefulness, 104–106, 115, 116, 131–134; monarchy in, 117, 119,

Index 121–122, 133–134; parallels, 106, 113, 116, 117, 124–126, 127–129, 130, 132, 334n44; patronage, 21, 116, 132, 133, 136; printed plays, 106, 107, 111–112, 113, 115; prologues, 114, 115, 124, 132, 266, 335n49; Puritans, 106, 109; rebellion, 120–121, 133; Richard II, 12, 116, 120, 132, 135; Richard II and Elizabeth, 88; Richard III, 122–123; Roman, 108, 128–131; rulers portrayed, 116, 117, 121–122; succession plays, 107, 117–118, 119, 121, 125–126; theaters, 106; theory of, 104–106; Tories and, 111, 113, 114–115, 125, 269; tragedy, 32, 268; tyrants and tyranny, 133, 135; usurpation, 122, 125, 133; Whigs and, 114, 115, 124. See also individual dramatists Drayton, Michael, 124, 141 Dryden, John, 2, 6, 130, 347n57; Dutch war, 126, 144; history and historians, 83, 115, 124, 125; on poetry, 115, 138, 139, 141; prologues, 115, 124; on satire, 144; theater audiences, 113–114; Tory polemicist, 115, 124, 125, 137, 146, 227, 269; on tragedy, 10; translator, 124. Works: Absalom and Achitophel, 102, 146; Albion and Albanius, 114; All for Love, 130; Amboyna, 126; Annus Mirabilis, 144; Astraea Redux, 341n18; Conquest of Granada, 125; Duke of Guise, 114, 124; Heroicque Stanzas, 141; The Medal, 146; The Indian Queen, 125; The Spanish Fryer, 125; Threnodia Augustalis, 141 Duke of Monmouth, 165, 204, 206, 209, 228, 337n86; ballads and poems, 146, 147, 154; in drama, 124, 337n86; possible successor to Charles II, 43, 44, 204, 218, 234, 262 Duke of York, James Stuart, later James II, 46, 224, 228, 262; ballads, 154, 262; Catholicism, 89, 251; dramatic

387

388

Index treatment of, 111, 125; exclusion of, 26, 43, 44, 154, 187, 213, 216, 234, 244; Popish Plot, 43; progresses, 204. See also Exclusion; James II; Test Act D’Urfey, Thomas, 113, 122 Dury, John, 71 Echard, Laurence, 66 Earle, John, 33 Edward the Confessor, 84, 88, 118, 238 Edward II, 120 Eisenstein, Elizabeth, 14 elections, 11, 17, 221, 244, 292, 293, 372n21; City, 209; James II, 372n21; parliamentary, 42, 43, 154, 169, 213, 232, 240–241 Elector Palatine, 31–32, 108, 126, 219, 223, 234, 332n19, 338n93 Eliot, Sir John, 98, 257 Elizabeth, Queen of England, 7, 15, 109, 162, 255; accession, 5, 8, 91, 172, 208, 233; Accession Day, 10, 205, 215–217, 269, 285, 291; as Astraea, 140; to biblical figure, 102, 172, 215–216; censorship, 106, 107, 120; ceremonial, 200, 201, 209; as Constantine, 98; drama, 123, 125; Earl of Essex, 116, 254, 278; funeral, 201; ghost dialogues, 162; historians on, 76, 79, 88, 90–91; images, 9, 222, 228, 229, 285; linked with Protestantism, 90, 123, 208; marriage, 28, 160, 167, 233, 235; Mary, Queen of Scots, 254; poetry, 141–142, 143, 147–148, 160; plots against, 20, 188, 229, 254; popularity, 201; portraits, 221–222; public display, 200; as Richard II, 116, 120, 278; sermons, 167, 173, 176; succession, 233, 235 Elyot, Thomas, 18, 109 engagement, 39, 164, 179, 251, 252, 270 Essex, Earl of, 29, 97, 162, 255, 278, 280; ballads, 151, 154; drama, 107,

116, 120, 123, 124, 129, 130; ghost dialogue, 164–165; rebellion, 107, 116, 130, 254; sermons, 173, 254; trial of, 151, 254, 255, 283 Evelyn, John, 46, 69; medals, 81, 227; political description, 63, 69, 72; on Restoration, 203 Exchange, the, 9, 10, 25, 30, 32, 37, 58, 279, 285, 292; ballads, 345; petitioning, 45, 214 Exclusion, 94, 132, 136, 164, 188, 209, 218, 261, 282, 290; ballad, 153; bill introduced, 209; fable, 162; grand jury charges, 245; pamphlets, 8, 114, 270; Parliament, 41, 271; petition, 213; poems, 146–147; Shaftesbury, Earl of, 261; Tories, 266; Whigs, 209, 266. See also Duke of York executions, 13, 17, 198, 231, 254, 284, 294, 298; Algernon Sidney, 150, 154; Charles I, 22, 39, 112, 150, 163, 169, 171, 177, 179, 180, 184, 215, 223, 227, 239, 259; Mary, Queen of Scots, 28, 151, 211. See also trials fables and analogies, 18, 159; Aesop, 18, 159–161; critique of fables, 118; fable of the belly, 129, 161; political uses, 138, 155, 159–162, 165, 349n34. See also body politic Fanshawe, Sir Charles, 112, 140, 141, 143, 148 Ferrell, Lori Ann, 352n35 fiction, 4, 82, 110, 267; contrasted with fact, 3, 27, 28; history plays, 132 Filmer, Sir Robert, 18, 44, 182, 189, 262 fireworks, 22, 198, 214, 217, 218, 219, 220 Fitz-Harris, Edward, 141 Five Knights Case, 235, 248, 257, 356n82 Five Mile Act, 251 flags, 227–228 Fletcher, Giles, 65–66 Fletcher, John, 126, 131



Index

Forset, Edward, 159 Fortescue, Sir John, 235 Foxe, John, 80, 81, 83, 90, 94, 222 Foucault, Michel, 6 France, 11, 60, 63, 71, 72, 143, 164, 283; antagonism toward, 8, 42, 121; anti-Catholicism, 8, 123, 291; civil wars, 29, 124, 381n21; descriptions, 58–59, 63–69, 315n33; English drama and, 123–124, 377n85; “greatness,” 71, 315n33; law, 235; news, 28, 29, 32, 42; political culture, 11; public sphere and, 381n21; sermons, 173, 174, 183 franchise, 17, 213, 241 Fulbecke, William, 98 Fuller, Thomas, 91, 94, 155–156, 160, 168 funerals: Cromwell, 202; royal, 202, 203

Graunt, John, 68, 317n54 “greatness” of states, 61, 63, 66, 71–75, 100, 318n68 Green Ribbon Club, 114, 115, 208, 228 Greenberg, Janelle, 84 Greene, Jack, 299n3 Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke, 71, 96, 127, 130, 142, 148, 160; law reform, 252 Grindal, Edmund, Archbishop, 215–216 Gunpowder Plot, 30, 92, 162, 188, 229; ballads, 152; celebrations, 10, 17, 22, 215, 217–218, 269, 285, 290; playing cards, 228; poems, 142, 143; prints, 222; sermons, 170, 171, 174, 177, 179–180; trials, 254–255 Gustavus Adolphus, 33, 140, 219

Gailhard, Jean, 58 Garnett, Henry, 255 Gauden, John, 177 Gazette, see London Gazette geography, 20, 55, 57, 60, 62, 65–66, 67, 69, 72, 74, 313n4 Geertz, Clifford, 11 genre, 266–268; advantages and disadvantages of genre approach, 24, 270–272; channels for political expression, 3–5, 268; stability, 3 ghost dialogues, 162–165, 268, 283 Glanvill, Joseph, 182, 184 Glapsthorne, Henry, 108, 126 Glorious Revolution (1688) 5, 7, 13, 14, 114, 147, 192, 195, 211, 248, 249, 263, 266, 274, 312n176; and public sphere, 282 Godfrey, Edmondberry, Sir, 115, 145, 164, 208, 224, 227 Gondomar, Count, 105, 107, 125 Goodwin, John, 179, 181, 183 Goodwin, Thomas, 177, 178 gossip, 3, 17, 26, 30, 31, 48, 49, 239, 267, 272, 278, 294. See also news

Habermas, Jürgen: coffee houses, 2, 14, 48, 285, 299; public sphere, 2, 48, 274, 279–286 Haclaz, Alexandra, 281 Hakewill, William, 85 Hale, Sir Matthew, 87, 239, 245 Hall, Edward, 80, 119 Hall, Thomas, 187 Hampden, John, 35, 247; Hampden’s case, 256 Harrington, James, 2, 39, 40, 97, 99–100, 268; civil war, causes, 92; colonies, 100; history, 78, 99; Oceana, 312n157; republicanism, 78, 99–100 Harris, Benjamin, 44, 45, 261 Harris, Robert, 174 Harris, Tim, 285 Harrison, William, 59, 60 hawkers, of news and ballads, 25, 32, 44, 153, 288; women, 45, 309n110 Hayward, John, 80, 88–89, 97, 278, 324n71 Hedley, Thomas, 85 Heinemann, Margot, 331n10

389

390

Index Henrietta Maria, Queen of England, 92, 110, 126, 222, 226 Henry IV, King of England, 120; dramatic treatment, 21, 120, 121, 124, 336n72; Sir John Hayward and, 80, 97, 278; treatment by historians, 88, 121, 124, 277, 325n77 Henry IV, King of France, 29, 31, 315n33, 325n77 Henry VII, 76, 123 Henry VIII, 8, 109, 123, 221, 336n72 Henry, Prince of Wales, 97, 107, 109, 140, 151, 219, 332n20; investiture, 201, 219; public exposure, 201 Heraclitus Ridens, 45 Herbert, Sir Thomas, 127 Herodotus, 55 Heylyn, Peter, 85, 91, 94; on France, 63, 315n35 Heywood, Thomas, 105, 116, 123, 130, 206, 366n34 Hickes, George, 182 Hicks, Michael, 12 High Commission, 26, 169, 177, 211, 233, 252 Hill, Christopher, 333n10 Hirst, Derek, 240 history, 11, 266, 267; ancient, 55; of the book, 6, 14; civil war, 21, 91–93; ecclesiastical, 21, 93–99, 102; English, Saxon to Norman, 83–88; English, Norman to Tudor, 88–93; genres, 3, 81–82; Greek, 95; of ideas, 5; intellectual, 1, 56; interest in, 21; lessons and uses, 21, 77–81, 103; literary, 5, 6, 11, 55, 274, 275, 276, 279; Marxist, 13; norms, 82–84; parallels drawn, 78, 79–80, 88–89, 98, 116, 117, 120, 124, 129, 131, 135, 259, 278, 329n69; political education, 21, 77–81, 267; of political thought, 2, 5, 6, 67, 73; providential, 19, 83, 101, 102, 190; reading, 17, 56, 75, 77, 78–79, 115; revisionist, 11, 13, 14, 275–276, 280,

282; Roman, 3, 95–98, 102, 128, 266; scriptural, 101–102; translations, 9. See also ancient constitution; Magna Carta; parallels; providence; individual historians Hoak, Dale, 12 Hobbes, Thomas, 2, 3, 6, 189, 268, 319n8; contract, 181; history, 78; judges, 239; law, 239–240; mixed monarchy, 95; poetry, 139; preaching, 168; prudence, 319n13; rebellion, 92; romance, 149; translator of Thucydides, 95 Holinshed, Raphael, 89, 118, 119, 120, 123 homilies, 19, 181, 266; on obedience, 166, 167, 190. See also sermons Hooker, Richard, 6 Houston, Allen, 275 Howard, Robert, 79, 89, 113, 125, 317n61 Howell, James, 58, 60, 168, 314n13, 319n10 humanism and humanists, 19, 74, 76, 150, 328n130; application of knowledge, 267; education, 17–18, 95, 138, 295; political description, 67, 76 Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 203, 260; civil war, 92; coffee houses, 51, 52, 168; on Elizabeth, 91; on Grand Remonstrance, 36, 212; historian, 91, 92; impeachment, 125, 260, 295; on news, 33 images, see portraits; coins impeachment, 255–256, 288, 289; Francis Bacon, 256; Clarendon, 125, 260; Lionel Cranfield, 256; judges, 245, 246, 254, 257, 258, 295; Roger Maynwaring, 255; Strafford, 257, 258, 295, 376n74. See also trials Independents, 38, 143, 156, 168, 170, 178, 183; hostility toward, 323; and Presbyterians, 256, 179; sermons, 179, 183; sermons against, 178

“interest” of states, 50, 59, 61, 65, 71–72, 73, 75 Ireland, 13, 58, 142, 143, 162, 226, 275; ballads, 151; description, 59–60; news, 39; rebellion and war, 39, 254, 258 Ireton, Henry, 85, 220, 260 James I, 27, 32, 75, 98, 109, 162, 216, 233–234, 326n64, 326n87; ceremonies, 201, 202, 365n10; coronation, 201; divine right of kings, 29–30, 187, 195, 222, 235, 354n39; and drama, 107, 118, 125; entry into London, 201; funeral, 201; ghost dialogues, 16; history, 79, 87; judges, 159, 248, 249, 326n87; law, 85, 187, 234, 239, 252; lord mayor’s shows, 206; Magna Carta, 87–88; monopolies, 255; Parliament, 313, 326n87; preaching, 206; prerogative, 30; public exposure, 201, 365n10; Sir Walter Raleigh and, 255; Society of Antiquaries, 8; speeches, 30; as Solomon, 101, 173; Union of England and Scotland, 30, 206, 234, 252, 276, 387; visual images, 221–222, 226, 227 James II, 11, 47; accession, 204, 205; ballads, 154; coronation, 205, 354n39; Declaration of Indulgence, 170, 210, 234, 263; divine right of kings, 128; Exclusion, 88, 154, 158; judges, 248, 249; justices of peace purged, 3, 72n22; lord mayor’s show, 209, 210; portraits, 222; progresses, 205. See also Duke of York; Exclusion Jeffreys, George, 52, 209 Jesuits, 152, 183, 212, 173, 224; contract theory, 181; hostility toward, 173, 224; plots, 283; pope burning processions, 208; trial and execution of, 254. See also anti-Catholicism Jewel, John, 172, 173, 180, 181

Index Jones, Angela, McShane, 345n94 Jones, Inigo, 109, 110, 225 Jonson, Ben, 31, 98, 149–150, 153, 344n77; drama, 98; masques, 109, 131; poetry, 138, 139, 140–150, 255, 345n83; Sejanus, 107, 130–131 Jordan, Thomas, 207 judges, 9, 23, 192, 194, 196, 232, 246– 250, 252, 253, 254, 265, 271; assizes, 193, 185, 246, 249, 286; charges by, 242; criticism of, 186, 193, 254, 257; Crown and, 9, 46, 185, 196, 237, 247, 257, 264; Declaration of Indulgence, 43; dismissals, 237, 249, 373n43; divine authority, 186, 187, 192, 195; fining by, 245; French, 63; impeachment, 235, 246, 254, 257, 258, 295; interpretation, 252; James I on, 30, 34, 85, 247, 326n87; and juries, 144; oaths, 193, 194; politics, 247–249, 264, 265; Popish Plot trials, 268; precedent, 238; prerogative, 247; sermons, 166, 181, 186, 192, 363n221; ship money, 112, 248–249, 256, 257–258; tenure, 248, 249, 284. See also Coke, Sir Edward; courts; Hale, Sir Matthew; juries; trials juries, 23, 238, 242, 245, 246, 250, 251, 253, 254, 256, 260, 263, 293; assize sermons and, 186, 192; charges to, 186, 188, 243–245, 269; coffee houses, 48; criticism of, 246, 247; evidentiary standards, 245; exclusion of women, 17, 23, 272; fining of, 245, 248; heritage, 16; judges and, 238, 245, 247, 248, 265; oaths, 194, 245, 250; political education, 10, 221, 243–244, 267, 271, 273; property qualification, 246; as right and liberty of Englishmen, 231, 246, 273; service, 221, 230, 239, 249, 246, 273; superiority of English law and, 238, 246; Whig, 114, 115 jury, grand, 23, 168, 194, 195, 231,

391

392

Index 242–243, 245, 247, 248, 249, 255, 264, 265, 266, 272–273, 293; assize sermons, 186, 192; charges, 188, 242–243, 244–246, 247, 269; Stephen Colledge, 154; Sir Edward Coke, charge to, 243, 269; controversy, 245; judges and, 245, 247; William Lambarde, charges to, 243; oaths, 245, 250, 269; Parliament, 272; petitioning, 210, 212, 213; political education, 195; political theory, 243–244; Shaftesbury, Earl of, 220, 245, 261; Whig, 245 justices of the peace, 60, 239, 242–243, 262, 264, 271, 272, 286, 293, 363n221, 372n22; assize sermons, 193; charges by, 243, 243; handbooks, 242; oaths, 250, 262; petitioning, 210, 212, 213, 232; petty sessions, 242; quarter sessions, 242; sheriffs and, 245; supervision, 247 Justinian, 216 Kahn, Victoria, 149, 329n132 Kelying, C. J., 245 Kewes, Paulina, 129, 275 Killigrew, Sir William, 113 Kingdom’s Weekly Intelligencer, 37, 41 Kishlansky, Mark, 240–241, 349n134 Knights, Mark, 46, 276, 281 Knolles, Richard, 65 Lake, Peter, 281–282, 284, 285, 379n4 Lambarde, William, 85, 243 Landau, Norma, 245 Latitudinarians, 94, 171, 184, 253n38 Laud, William, 156, 163, 169, 176, 177, 217, 219, 221, 225; ballads, 152, 345n86; and censorship, 35; images, 111, 233; sermons by, 175, 176; speech, 257; trial of, 257, 258, 259, 283, 295; unpopularity, 30, 156, 177, 284 law, 18, 21, 45, 51, 97, 135, 145, 232, 239;

common law, 16, 23, 171, 194, 211, 230, 231, 207, 237–240, 264, 273, 276, 286, 292, 295, 371n11; common law, history, 79, 81, 84–88, 91, 102; criticism, 112, 192, 230, 251–252; in drama, 116, 119, 123, 155–156, 335n51; due process, 88; feudal, 12, 84–85; fundamental, 167, 211, 259, 261; idealization, 230, 251; interpretation, 233, 246; James I, 235, 239; kings limited by, 155, 164, 187, 190; knowledge of, 239, 264–268, 286; law making, 23, 85, 120, 232–233; law reform, 64, 252–255, 268, 296, 333n125; martial, 211; Norman, 84– 86, 238; political culture, 9, 231–264, 273, 288; in political description, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 162; and prerogative, 9, 23, 86, 211, 230, 233, 234–237, 264, 290; Roman, 235, 238; rule of law, 16, 100, 175, 196; Saxon, 84–85, 86, 102, 238; sermons, 167, 169, 174, 180, 190, 192, 194, 195; in Strafford trial, 162, 223, 257, 259; Tories, 81, 114, 158; Whigs, 86. See also ancient constitution; courts; judges; juries; lawyers; Magna Carta; prerogative; trials lawyers, 17, 84, 113, 165, 186, 192, 233, 238, 246, 375n62; criticism, 193, 196, 249, 252, 253; historical studies, 79, 85, 273, 288; in literature, 249; in Parliament, 238, 249, 288; and prerogative, 235. See also Coke, Sir Edward; law Lee, Nathaniel, 113, 124, 128, 130, 131 Leicester, Sir Peter, 244 Le Sueur, Hubert, 225 L’Estrange, Roger, 41, 42, 45, 47; coffee houses, 45, 49, 51, 261; fables, 161–162; libels, 146; news, 307n81; pope burning processions, 208; ridiculed, 158, 218, 224; Tory polemist, 160, 170. See also Observator

Levellers, 38, 157, 241, 260; attacks on, 39, 144; law reform, 213, 252–253; Norman conquest, 86; petitions, 213, 215, 368n63 libel, 4, 27, 28, 36, 41–42, 47, 48, 120, 219, 245, 295, 302n8, 342n46; Bacon on, 38; on Duke of Buckingham, 30, 144, 152; on Robert Cecil, 30; on Sir Edward Coke, 30; epigrams, 159; on Archbishop Laud, 30; libelous poems and verses, 4, 31, 138, 144, 151, 152, 174, 257, 277; manuscript libels, 33, 145, 266, 285; newsbooks, 38, 48; seditious libel, 4, 45, 48, 78, 237, 277, 280, 285, 286, 288, 290; Selden on, 152; Seven Bishops case, 170, 263; Star Chamber, 27, 152, 237, 29; suppression by Privy Council, 291 licensing, 270; coffee houses, 51, 52; news, 20, 26, 28, 33, 38–39, 46, 47; by Parliament, 35, 38–39 Licensing Act, 37, 47, 272, 277; expiration, 26, 27, 44, 47, 64, 86, 154, 189, 261, 278, 281 Lilburne, John, 38, 86, 268, 227; trials of, 259–260, 377n86 literacy, 17, 36 Livy, 96, 100 Lloyd, William, 94 Locke, John, 2, 6–7; on education, 59; history, 79; on Livy, 96; observation of foreign countries, 59; poetry, 140; and Lord Shaftesbury, 261; Two Treatises on Government, 18, 44, 189 London and environs, 35, 129, 200, 225, 229; ballads, 151, 154, 292; bell ringing and bonfires, 179, 201, 208, 216, 217, 218, 219, 229, 265; coffee houses, 48, 146; charter, 46, 154, 209; City authorities and drama, 106, 135; City elections, 154, 206, 209; City government, 205–206, 209; as communications center, 10, 53; drama and theater, 106, 108, 111,

Index 113, 116, 121, 129, 136; Great Fire, 42, 144, 218, 225; ignoramus juries, 134, 146, 154, 209, 261; legal center, 10, 16, 293; literacy, 36, 115, 116; lord mayor, 154, 172, 199; newsbooks and newspapers, 37, 41, 44, 45, 157, 292; petitions, 213, 229, 292; political culture, 292, 294; population, 16, 42; printing and publishing center, 16, 33, 34, 35, 38, 44, 113, 151, 223, 273, 293; Restoration, 40, 153, 203; royal entries, 99, 200–202, 229, 230, 251, 258, 296; sheriffs, 154, 245, 261. See also coffee houses; elections; Exchange; lord mayor’s shows; Paul’s Walk; pope burning processions London Gazette, 40, 45, 46, 47, 210, 214; proclamations in, 41, 45, 47, 214 lord mayor’s shows, 17, 22, 49, 172, 182, 187, 195, 199–210, 229, 270, 289, 292; anti-rebellion themes, 207; Augustan themes, 206–207; harmony between Crown and merchants, 205, 206, 207; monarchs and, 206 Louis XIV, 75 Lucan, 97, 141, 142 Luttrell, Narcissus, 146 Machiavelli, 7, 70, 96, 100 Machiavellianism, 7, 34, 100, 119, 121, 161, 182 MacLean, Gerard, 141, 147, 148, 341n17 Magna Carta, 87–88, 91, 120, 142, 224, 237, 242, 243, 273, 288, 292, 324n66 Mainwaring, Roger, 171, 255 manuscripts: circulation, 2, 7, 14, 26, 32, 34, 143, 157, 267, 272, 277, 292, 297; newsletters, 3, 5, 26, 40–41, 50, 277, 278, 285, 292; Parliament, 31, 42; poems, 138, 145, 266, 285; verse libels, 27, 30, 33, 144, 146, 262 Marlowe, Christopher, 97, 120, 124 Marsh, Henry, 65

393

394

Index Marshall, Stephen, 175, 176 Marston, John, 107, 126 Martin Marprelate, 28 Marvell, Andrew, 43, 92, 342n37; on pamphlets, 42; poetry, 143, 150; polemicist, 43, 137, 145, 269 Mary, Queen of England, 80, 90, 92, 123, 290 Mary, Queen of Scots, 90, 101, 148, 233, 254; in drama, 123; execution of, 211, 219; and James I, 343n64 masques, 2, 108–111, 131, 147, 199, 252, 271, 273, 289, 332n19, 332n20, 332n21, 333n25, 333n26, 333n27, 333n32 Massinger, Philip, 126, 338n93 Master of the Revels, 106, 107, 116, 274, 277 maxims, political, 59, 63, 64, 65, 73–74; of law, 161, 235 May, Thomas, 90, 97, 142, 156, 326n92 Mercurius Aulicus, 37, 156, 157 Mercurius Britannicus, 37 Mercurius, Civicus, 37 Mercurius Gallobelgicus, 26 Mercurius, Impartialis, 168 Mercurius Politicus, 85, 100, 143, 144, 202, 259, 307n69, 440 Mercurius Publicus, 41 Mercurius Pragmaticus, 38 Middleton, Thomas, 6, 118; A Game of Chess, 107; lord mayor’s shows, 206 Miege, Guy, 64 Millstone, Noah, 34 Milton, John, 2, 6, 268; death of Charles I, 181, 358n125; “good old cause,” 183; poetry, 138, 239n14; Readie and Easie way to establish a Free Commonwealth, 39–40; republicanism, 39–40, 99–100, 183; Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 329 Molesworth, Robert, 63–64, 314n19 Mompesson, Giles, 144, 152, 171, 223, 255 monarchy, 5, 37, 211, 287; abolition, 99,

295; absolute, 6, 30, 63, 64, 65, 66, 75, 86, 90, 95, 145, 167, 187, 235, 244, 255; accessibility, 20, 199, 200, 201, 203, 204; Augustus and monarchy, 90, 98, 143; best form of government, 171, 175, 181, 187; building, 225–225; celebrations, 196, 215, 216; central political institution, 15, 23, 133, 290; in “character,” 153–156, 160; coins, 226; contractual, 88, 90, 99, 181; coronation, 22, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 207, 229; Cromwell and, 98; deposition, 78, 88, 122; divine right, 30, 88, 125, 171, 176, 239, 243–245, 250; divine right in sermons, 128, 133, 167, 171, 174, 175, 184, 187–188, 196, 205, 267, 268; in drama, 117, 119, 120, 121–122, 125–135; dynastic, 15, 33; elective, 205, 316n41; fear of Roman Catholic monarch, 204, 265; feudal, 119; Sir Robert Filmer on, 18, 44, 189; Sir John Fortescue on, 235; funerals, 201, 203; Fulke Greville on, 142; harmony of monarchy and merchants, 205, 206; head, in body politic analogy, 18, 159; hereditary, 15, 65, 160, 171, 201, 205, 233, 234, 245, 316n41; history of value to, 74, 79; James I on, 29–30; law and monarchy, 232–236; lawmaking, 233; limited, 6, 73, 88, 93, 96, 181, 187, 235; lord mayor’s shows, 199, 206, 229; loyalty oaths, 186, 250–251; medals, 226–227; mixed, 85, 92, 95, 244; model monarchs, 90–91, 121; mystique broken, 204; Norman Conquest and, 83–85; as office holder, 258; paintings and prints, 221–224, 299; Parliament and, 83, 234–237, 287; in pastoral poetry, 147–148; patriarchal, 18, 189; in political description, 51, 58, 62, 76; prerogative and law, 233–237, 243; protector of people’s rights,

181; rebellion against, 142, 189–190, 197; royal entries, 99, 200–203, 204–205, 229, 230, 251, 258; Saxon, 83; sculpture, 224–225; Sir Thomas Smith on, 50, 65; sovereignty, 181; succession problems, 233–234; in traditional classification of government, 18, 73, 95; treason, 254; trial of, 255–258; and tyranny, 37, 86, 89, 90, 91, 127, 133, 135, 138, 139, 142, 156, 161, 162, 183, 203, 235, 237, 243, 258. See also ancient constitution; masques; prerogative; succession; individual monarchs Monk, George, 40, 113, 140 Monmouth’s Rebellion, 47, 220, 262 Montagu, Richard, 174 Moore, Sir John, 209 More, Thomas, 76, 89, 122; Utopia, 4, 74, 76 Moryson, Fynes, 65 Muddiman, Henry, 40, 41, 46 Nalson, John, 93 nationalism, 291, 381n21 natural history, 20, 54, 55, 67–70, 73 natural resources, 55, 57, 65, 68 Nedham, Marchamont, 38, 39, 43, 71, 96, 99, 100, 268, 307n75; and Cromwell, 39, 142; Mercurius Politicus, 39, 42, 49; Mercurius Pragmaticus, 38; and republicanism, 99; supervision by Secretary of State Thurloe, 74, 307 Nero, 96, 97, 98, 128, 130, 189 Netherlands, 85, 147, 227, 291, 315n32, 321n21; description, 62–63, 72, 315n32; in drama, 124, 125 Neville, Henry, 50, 79, 100, 153 New Model Army, 39, 213 Newcastle, Duke of, 40, 90, 91, 207 news, 3, 25–53; appetite for, 25, 29, 33; ballads, 4, 26; Bohemia, 3; Charles I, 31, 34; civil war and Interregnum,

Index 35–40; Clarendon on, 33; control by government, 40–41, 42, 44, 53; corantos, 4, 5, 27, 31–32, 33, 35, 157; distribution, 26, 27, 36; domestic, 29, 31, 36; Dutch wars, 42, 50; foreign, 31, 32, 33, 38; France, 29, 31, 32, 50; government supplied, 20, 28; Ireland, 31; licensing, 26, 27, 28, 33, 38–39, 44, 46, 47; London, center for, 25, 32, 36, 42, 44, 53; norms, 3, 25, 28, 53, 268; misinformation, 31, 50; Parliament news, 25, 26, 29, 36, 38, 40, 42–43, 48, 49; Restoration, 40–48; Royalist, 37; serial, 36, 53, 306n48; truthfulness of, 27–28; Turkish, 28, 31, 32, 46, 50. See also censorship and control; coffee houses; licensing; newsbooks; newsletters; proclamations newsbooks, 3, 20, 36, 37, 41, 49 newsletters, manuscript, 3, 5, 25, 32, 41, 49, 294, 306n47, 309n103 Newton, Isaac, 59 Nicholas, Sir, Edward, 40 North, Francis, 41–42 North, Roger, 241, 261, 377n89 North, Thomas, 78, 96, 15 Noy, William, 223 Oath of Allegiance, 30, 143, 174, 250 oaths, 8, 23, 169, 182, 186, 190, 209, 245–246, 250–251, 263, 291, 294; of allegiance and loyalty, 30, 143, 158, 173, 245, 265; coronation, 290; Engagement, 39, 251; ex officio, 178; in legal proceedings, 193, 194, 245, 265; of Supremacy, 8 Observator, 45, 46, 47, 124, 146, 261, 309n112. See also L’Estrange, Roger Ogilby, John, 160, 161 Ortelius, Abraham, 55 Osborne, Francis, 65, 90, 91 Osborne, Thomas, Earl of Danby, 41, 140, 145, 169, 213, 295

395

396

Index Otway, Thomas, 114 Overbury, Thomas, 30, 31, 280, 303; “characters,” 347n109; political description, 62–64, 315n28 Owen, John, 178, 179 Owen, Susan, 275 Oxford, 37, 47, 48, 11, 140; royal entry, 204–205 Oxford University, 96 pageants, 198, 203, 205, 207 paintings, 14, 126, 198, 221, 222, 224 parallels, 21, 43, 106, 132, 192, 277–278, 324n73; Buckingham and Sejanus, 98; in drama, 106, 113, 116, 117, 119, 124–126, 127, 128, 129, 130; historical, 78, 79, 88–89, 98, 116, 117, 120, 124, 129, 131, 135, 324n69, 324n73, 319n69; scriptural, 101, 118, 159, 172, 181–182, 198, 259, 268, 278 Parker, Matthew, 152–153 Parliament, 6, 9, 18, 21, 35, 43, 52, 62, 72, 93, 102, 114, 137, 195, 204, 208, 210, 223, 226, 238, 287, 292; abeyance, 1629–1640, 34, 185; ballads on, 152–153; Cavalier Parliament, 145, 240–241; common law and, 239; control and censorship by press, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 281; Convention Parliament, 40; Cromwell, 187; Crown and, 15, 37, 187, 196, 208, 238, 241, 253, 265, 290; elections, 42, 154, 169, 213, 232, 240–241, 248, 292; Exclusion Parliament, 4; in fables, 160; fear of Parliament’s demise, 9, 16, 34, 240, 256, 283, 289; in ghost dialogues, 162–164; grievances, 15, 32, 241, 282; history of, 21, 79, 81, 83–92, 267, 291–292; House of Commons, 33–34, 43, 240; House of Lords, 36, 240; impeachment, 255–259, 260; James I and, 1, 30, 201, 227; lawmaking, 24; lawyers, 238, 240, 219, 288; Long Parlia-

ment, 111, 212, 217, 248; meetings and public awareness, 10, 31, 32, 273, 286; news, 28, 29, 33–36, 38–39, 42–43, 48–49, 293, 294; oaths, 249; origins, 323n62; Oxford Parliament, 48, 52, 170, 245; petitions, 210–215; poetry, 142, 144, 145; political culture, 9, 15–16, 272, 285–286, 287, 293; Prides Purge, 38, 240, 284, 288; religion, 16, 19, 38, 290; royal prerogative, 234–237; Rump, 39, 144, 240; satirized, 111–112; Saxon, 87; sermons, 22, 167, 168–169, 170, 176–179, 183–184; speeches, 26, 31, 32, 35, 36, 95, 107, 109, 232, 252, 257; succession, 158, 233–234; Whigs, 244, 251. See also courts; Exclusion; law; news; Petition of Right; ship money; individual monarchs Parliamentary Intelligencer, 40, 41 patronage, 6, 15, 98, 249, 271, 189, 294; of drama, 15, 21, 107, 132, 135 Paul’s Walk, 10, 30, 32, 33, 285, 292 Peacey, Jason, 281, 307n75 Pelling, Edward, 184 Pepys, Samuel, 203, 220; ballad collection, 344n78; theater, 113, 114, 125 Peter, Hugh, 178 Petition of Right, 33–34, 85, 88, 178, 211, 220 petitions and petitioning, 13, 22, 45, 152–153, 161, 165, 198, 220, 229, 265, 268, 270, 271, 281, 292; channel of political communication, 210–215; grievances, 5, 10, 265; heritage, 265; importance of 1640–1660, 35, 211, 229; to king, 31; lawyers, 288; Leveller, 213; London, 292; to Parliament, 37; political mobilization, organization, 210–211, 213, 265; printing, 281; public sphere, 280, 282; Seven Bishops, 263; signature collection, 45, 51, 210, 214; Tory, 269; Tory “loyal addresses,” 45, 214; tradition,

5; Whigs and, 115, 154, 214, 228, 265; women, 271, 368n63 Petty, William: greatness, 318n68; political description, 60, 68–69, 70, 71, 72, 317n56, 318n68; method, 68–69, 71, 75 Petyt, William, 87 Phillips, Katherine, 141 Pierreville, Gideon, 64 Pincus, Steven, 281–282, 284, 285, 379n4 plays, see drama Pliny, 55, 74 Plutarch, 78, 96, 129 Pocock, J. G. A., 7, 12, 84, 379n4 poetry, 140, 141, 144, 145, 267, 268; affairs of state, 145; ballads and, 4, 150–151; on Charles I, 138–139, 140, 141, 143; Charles II, 140, 142; civil war themes, court, 138; contemporary affairs, 143–144; country house, 149–150; Cowley on, 139; Dryden on, 139; elegy, 4, 140–141; on Elizabeth, 140, 141; on European wars, 147; epic or heroic, 4, 139, 267; genres, 4, 139; on Gunpowder Plot, 143; historical, 141–142; Hobbes on, 139, 149; hostility toward, 139; manuscript, 145, 147; on Monmouth, 145, 146; moral instruction, 139; panegyric, 139–140; pastoral, 4, 147–149, 165; as political discourse, 137–165; political education, 137–165; reading of, 138; romance, 147–149, 165; Rump, 133; Shaftesbury, Earl of, 141, 145, 146–147; on Algernon Sidney, 141; Sprat on, 119; uses of, 138–139; verse libels, 144–145. See also ballads; drama; fables; individual poets Poland, 31, 33, 108; description, 64–65, 69. See also Shaftesbury, Earl of political arithmetic, 68–69 political culture: anti-Catholicism, 3;

Index censorship and control, 277–279; channels for expression, 2, 7, 12, 15, 24, 265–268, 272–273, 274; classical tradition, 17, 267; coffee house, 52; conflict and harmony, 175–177, 274, 275–277; drama, 104–136, 268; education, 17, 267; experience and observation, 22, 198–230, 272; history, 75–76, 268; juries, 246; legal culture and, 23, 231–265; poetry and literature in, 137–166, 268; political assumptions, 15–20; political description, 55, 74–76; public sphere, 23, 279–289; religion and scripture, 19, 20, 21, 101–102, 268, 273; sermons, 166–197; scholarly debates, 274–277; scholarly use of term, 10–13; women, 271–272. See also anti-Catholicism; coffee houses; public sphere political description, empirical, 4, 10, 20, 53–76, 267, 296; absence of generalization, 3–4; Francis Bacon on, 56–57; diplomat contributions, 5, 61–66, 109; European countries, 60–66; grid or topics, 20, 53, 57, 61, 64, 69, 72, 74, 75; norms, 20, 61, 70–71; and political culture, 83–84 political theory, 6, 7, 12, 29, 54, 75, 243, 269, 274, 299n5 Polybius, 95 Popery, see anti-Catholicism Pope burning processions, 2, 91, 114, 198, 207, 210, 229, 260, 269, 271, 181, 290, 292; printed images of, 224; Whig sponsored, 180, 207 Popish Plot, 43, 44, 91–92, 94, 207, 218, 228, 273, 282, 380; ballads, 224; in drama, 114, 132; ghost dialogue, 164; mock elegy, 141; news, 44, 51; pamphlets, 93, 153, 224; sermons, 170, 179, 180, 224; trials, 50, 119, 158, 148, 261

397

398

Index portraits, royal, 23, 145, 221–222, 223, 224, 226, 294 postal service, 25, 37, 47, 305n48 prerogative, 156, 157, 167, 256, 260; courts, 9, 16, 233, 237, 258, 286, 287; and law, 9, 86, 142, 211, 235–238, 264, 296; and Parliament, 19, 159, 296; Petition of Right, 211; religious toleration, 42; royal, 9, 18, 23, 43, 61, 86, 156, 231, 233, 244, 247, 256, 289, 295, 296 prerogative, royal, Parliament, 19, 23 Presbyterians, 38, 156, 158, 168, 179, 224; “characters” of, 157; hostility toward, 163, 180, 223; Parliament and, 173, 178, 179; satirical poems on, 145; Scotland and, 276; sermons, 185, 178; tension with Independents, 156, 169 Preston, John, 176 Privy Council, 41, 46, 51, 56, 206, 219, 237, 272; censorship and control, 46, 80, 89, 106, 161, 277, 341n31; drama, 106, 151; factions, 27, 28, 45, 287; historical writing, 80, 89, 102; news, 33, 34, 45, 46; libels, 29; sermons, 172 proclamations, 3, 20, 26, 33, 34, 38, 41, 148, 235, 270, 286, 287, 294; coffee houses, 52; first printed, 26; James II, 204; licentious speech, 32, 44; news, 3, 20, 26, 34; petitioning, 211, 213; seditious publications, 44; theater, 106, 107 progresses, royal, 198, 200, 204, 271 protectorate, 143, 193, 234, 290; control of press, 40; disillusion with, 99, 162; drama, 110, 112, 125; medals, 226, 227 Protestantism, and political culture, 19–20, 21, 80, 251, 289–291; Elizabeth as symbol, 91, 123; European, 23, 101, 291 providence, 19, 120, 173; in history, 19, 83, 101, 102, 190, 321n41

Prynne, William, 87, 108, 154; trial of, 35, 220, 223, 257, 295 The Public Intelligencer, 40, 41 public sphere, 2, 14, 23, 279–286, 292; and coffee houses, 14, 48, 285; distinguished from government, 14, 286–288; in England, 280–289; Habermas, 2, 14, 48, 279–286; and licensing, 280–281; and news culture, 280 Puritans, 94, 105, 158, 191, 217, 218, 228, 247, 290; anti-Puritan sermons, 173, 174, 191; “characters” of, 155; fracturing of, 38; hostility toward, 173, 174, 175, 181; petitioning, 211; sermons, 129, 168, 172, 174, 178, 186, 224; theater, 107, 112 Puttenham, George, 105, 138, 144, 187 Pym, John, 85, 92, 167, 236 Quintilian, 17 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 29, 345n82; history, 80, 101; poetry, 10, 80; trials, 31, 152, 255, 283, 375n86 rational debate, 14, 280, 283–284. See also coffee houses; public sphere Raymond, Joad, 271 reading, 1, 4, 6, 14, 24, 54, 270, 285; history, 17, 56, 75, 77, 78–79, 92, 115; news, 48; poetry, 137; scripture, 101; sermons, 12, 192 Reid, John Phillip, 87 republicanism, 7, 78, 290, 291, 328n130 republicans, 91, 97, 99, 100, 202, 312n153; Dutch, 126 Reynolds, John, 162 rhetoric, 3, 17, 70, 137, 279; genre, 4; and history, 321n36; lawyers, 193, 290; poetry and, 138; sermons, 166 Richard II, 73, 77, 122, 278, 324; deposition, 21, 88, 89, 116, 135; dramatic treatment, 116, 120, 121, 132, 336n65; historical treatment, 88, 89

Richard III, 76, 89, 142 rituals of royalty, see coronation; funerals; progresses; royal entries Roman Catholicism: clandestine worship, 19. See also anti-Catholicism; Gunpowder Plot; Popish Plot; Test Act royal entries: into London, 199, 201–202, 203, 229 Royal Society, 67–70, 74, 317n54 Rump Parliament, 39, 213, 220, 224, 228, 240; anti-Rump publications, 40, 144–145, 153, 228 Rushworth, John, 93 Russell, Conrad, 275, 379n4 Russell, Lord John, 141, 164–165; ballads, 154; trial and execution, 46, 147, 154, 262, 283; Whig martyr, 47, 165, 262, 275, 295 Russia, 65–66 Rycaut, Paul, 65 Rye House Plot, 46, 154, 225, 228; trials, 261–262. See also Russell, Lord John; Sidney, Algernon Rymer, Thomas, 330n6 Sackville, Thomas, 117 Sallust, 96 Salus populi, 256, 257–278, 264 Savile, Sir Henry, 96–97 Scotland, 13, 40, 60, 163, 177–178, 202; ancient, 117; empirical description, 59, 60–61; James VI and I, 226, 233–234; rebellion, 35, 92, 275; trial of Charles I, 259; union with England, 30, 109, 206, 276; wars, 39, 153, 258, 276 Scott, Jonathan, 275 Scott, Thomas, 32 Scripture, 102, 139, 197, 288, 329n132; Bishop’s Bible, 222; knowledge of, 268; law and, 232, 252; obedience, 189; parallels and examples, 19, 101, 108, 172, 181–182, 198, 259, 268, 273;

Index patriarchalism, 189; reading, 101; scriptural history, 3, 78, 101–102; subject matter for poetry, 139 Scroggs, Justice, 248, 260 Sejanus, 95, 97, 98, 165; in drama, 107, 130–131 Selden, John, 34, 94, 95, 152, 186, 236 sermons, 2, 4, 17, 19, 22, 26, 39, 102, 123, 135, 219, 232, 267, 268, 279, 288, 291, 194; ambassador complaints, 173; anti-Catholic, 166, 167, 168, 169–179, 174, 175, 224, 225; antiCatholic at Paul’s Cross, 172, 173, 174, 175; anti-Puritan, 172, 173; antiSpanish, 173; Armada, 200; assize, 185–186, 195–196, 246, 249, 254, 270; assize sermons on civil war, 190–191; audience, 4, 106, 166, 168, 170, 173, 174, 175, 270, 271, 272; audience for assize sermons, 195–196; audience, Paul’s Cross, 172, 177; before the king, 22, 171; before Parliament, 170, 176–179; on Bohemia, 174, 176; censorship and control, 166, 167, 168, 169–172, 174–175, 277; on Charles I, 180–182; church reform, 178; civil war explanations, 182–183, 190–191; Clarendon on, 176; contractual theories condemned, 182, 195; coronation, 79, 202, 203, 205, 354n39; on deliverances, 177; divine origins of government, 174, 182, 186–187, 195; on divine right of kings, 133, 167, 171, 174, 175, 184, 187–188, 196, 205, 267, 268, 269; Elizabeth on, 167; on Elizabeth, 167; Elizabeth’s accession day, 17, 215–216, 269, 285; Engagement, 179; Exclusion, 260; fast day sermons, 170, 177, 179; as genre, 2, 4, 244, 274; genres, 2, 4, 170–177; Gunpowder Day (November 5), 170, 171, 179–180, 218, 272; homilies, 166–167; human origins of government, 188–189; impositions, 174; In-

399

400

Index dependents, 169; influence, 168–169; James I, 168; James II, 170; January 30, 180–182, 218; judges, 192–193, 195, 196; juries, 192, 196; justices of the peace, 193; latitudinarian, 171; Laud, 176, 177; law and kings, 167; Lent, 167; on monarchy, 171, 175, 181, 184, 187; national repentance, 176; note-taking, 166, 172; norms, 166; on oaths, 169, 194–196, 251; on obedience, 166, 167, 170, 171, 184, 189–­190, 267, 269; parallels, 172, 180, 181–182; Parliament, 1, 168, 169, 177; patriarchalism, 182, 188–189; Paul’s Cross, 170, 171–179, 254; polarizing, 179, 180, 183, 184; on Popish Plot, 170; political education, 165–197; Presbyterian, 169; printing, 17, 166, 167, 171, 179, 185, 273, 292; Protestantism and nationalism, 179; providential themes, 171, 172, 175, 190, 354n70; reading of, 12; rebellion, 169, 182, 184, 189–190, 191; on religious unity, 190–191; Restoration era, 171; rhetoric of, 4; sales, 108, 166; Scots influence, 177, 178; sedition, 167; seditious, 169; Strafford, 176, 177; succession, 173; taxation, 169, 191; Test Act, 42; Tory, 191; trial of Charles I, 180–181; witnesses, 196 Settle, Elkanah, 44, 47, 127, 158; drama, 113, 114, 127, 144, 338n97; pope burning processions, 208, 209 Shaaber, 302n12 Shadwell, Thomas, 114, 124, 146, 335n51, 343n57 Shakespeare, William, 6, 118; adaptations, 122, 129; English history plays, 118–122; history plays, 80; Roman plays, 129, 130 Sharpe, Kevin, 223, 275 sheriffs, 3, 185; elections of, 209, 210, 245, 327n21; London, 154, 245, 261 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 43, 51, 141,

147, 162, 164, 204; attacked by Dryden, 146, 147, 227; ballads, 154; drama, 114; ghost dialogues, 164; ignoramus verdict, 208, 220; lord mayor’s shows, 20; satirized, 141, 146–147; treason charge, 165, 227, 251 ship money, 34–35, 110, 112, 153, 162, 223, 236, 247–248, 256–257, 295 Shuger, Debora, 302n8 Sidney, Algernon, 100, 141, 165; trial and execution, 27, 165, 262, 283 Sidney, Sir Phillip, 105, 140, 148, 149, 159; fables, 159; poetry, 109, 137, 138, 139, 147 Skinner, Quentin, 7 Smith, Nigel, 302, 303n14, 336n68 Smith, Sir Thomas, 59–60, 65, 314n21 Smith, Sir William, 248 Society of Antiquaries, 79, 81 Sommerville, C. John, 302n11 Sommerville, Johan, 84 South, Robert, 180 Spain, 8, 31, 62, 71, 72, 82, 90, 173, 223, 283, 291; drama, 124; hostility toward, 174, 255; news, 28, 33; poetry, 144; war, 29, 151, 173, 226 Spanish match, 31, 109, 152, 167, 174, 211, 219, 220, 223, 234 speeches, 3, 91, 43, 183, 193, 202, 278; Charles I, 34; courtiers, 137; dying, 36, 254, 255, 261, 273, 295; Elizabeth, 28, 289; James I, 30, 109, 235, 252; licentious, 32; manuscript circulation, 31, 21, 272, 273; parliamentary, 26, 31, 36, 43, 95, 108, 232, 257, 258; printed, 28, 30, 34–36, 258, 261, 262, 287; seditious, 27 Speed, John, 98 Spelman, Henry, 84, 85 Spencer, Edmund, 139, 147, 160 Sprat, Thomas, 72, 91, 101, 181; on civil war, 92, 183; on poetry, 149, 159; political description, 67

St. John, Oliver, 34 Star Chamber, 26, 27, 28, 88, 152, 155, 169, 173, 177, 188, 225, 237, 252, 253, 257, 277, 295, 302n8 Staves, Susan, 275 Stillingfleet, Edward, 94, 184, 353n37 Stowe, John, 78, 80, 120, 319n3 Strabo, 55, 74 Strafford, Lord, 92, 160; ballads, 152; ghost dialogues, 112, 162, 164; images, 223; poems, 140; sermons, 176, 177; trial, 164, 177, 212, 257–259, 268, 283, 295, 376n77 Strong, William, 78 Suarez, Francisco, 188 succession, 15, 29, 44, 158, 233, 234; in drama, 107, 116, 117–118, 119, 120, 121–123, 127, 133, 135–136; Elizabeth, 9, 23, 90, 172; law, 23, 44, 207, 231, 233, 234, 264; Duke of Monmouth, 44; pamphlets, 43; Parliament, 233, 235; in poetry, 143, 148; in political description, 57, 65, 69; Protectorate, 234; Roman Catholic, 8, 15, 90, 283; Tories, 234; Whigs, 244; Duke of York, 44, 89, 187, 204, 214, 216, 234, 261 (later James II), 284, 354n39. See also anti-Catholicism; Duke of York; Exclusion Suckling, Sir John, 162 Sweden, 4, 72, 316n42 Swift, Jonathan, 318n74 Tacitus, 96–97, 107, 131 Tate, Nahum, 129, 343n57 taxation, 171, 289; custom duties and, 235; nonparliamentary, 34, 174, 211, 256, 257; in political description, 55, 59, 62, 64. See also ship money Taylor, John, 143 Temple, Sir William, 62, 316n41 Test Act, 42, 236, 248, 251, 290. See also anti-Catholicism; Duke of York Thucydides, 95

Index Tiberius, 7, 95, 98, 128, 130–131, 189 Tillotson, John, 179, 194, 352n1, 352n38, 353n37 Tillyard, E. M. W., 5 toleration, religious, 178, 213; Netherlands, 62; for Protestant dissenters, 19, 38, 42, 191, 291; for Roman Catholics, 19, 291; by royal prerogative, 47, 206; Toleration Act, 263. See also Act of Uniformity; Declaration of Indulgence Tories, 204, 228, 234, 245, 261, 264, 270, 269, 282; ballads, 153–154; “character,” 157–158, 159, 269; civil war, 91; coffee houses, 50, 51, 52; divine right, 123, 125; drama, 111, 113, 114–115, 123, 125, 135, 266, 269; John Dryden, 137, 146–147, 227, 269; elections, 241; Exclusion, 153; ghost dialogue, 164–165; grand jury charges, 244–245, 269; January 30 commemorations, 269; law, 81, 114, 158, 192, 240; Roger L’Estrange, polemicist, 45, 160, 224; lord mayor’s shows, 207, 209; “loyal addresses,” 45, 191, 192, 214; news and newsbooks, 28, 44, 45, 52, 158, 214, 215, 224, 269; Norman Conquest, 86; oaths, 245; Observator, 124, 261; pamphlets, 219; Parliament, 87, 191, 241, 248; petitioning, 44, 229, 324; play prologues, 21, 114, 269; poetry, 266; satire, 146, 227; sermons, 191, 192, 269; slogan, “41 is come again,” 92, 282; stereotypes, 157; succession, 234; visual display, 208, 228. See also ancient constitution; divine right of kings; Dryden, John; L’Estrange, Roger Townsend, Charles, 65 trials, 3, 4, 230, 232, 253, 254, 262; audiences, 258, 259, 260, 262; ballads, 254; Francis Bacon, 256; Henry

401

402

Index Care, 262, 377n86; as channel of political communication, 23, 253–264, 265, 274; Charles I, 253, 259–260; Stephen College, 261; dying speeches, 254, 258, 262; Earl of Danby, 260; Earl of Essex, 254, 255; Gunpowder plotters, 254–255; Benjamin Harris, 261; Archbishop Laud, 26, 258–259; John Lilburne, 259–260; Mary, Queen of Scots, 254; political culture, 253–265; Popish Plot, 260, 261; printing, 230, 257, 258, 259, 260, 262, 263; Sir Walter Raleigh, 31, 152, 255, 283, 377n86; reporting of, 154, 256; Lord John Russell, 262; Rye House, 261–262; Seven Bishops, 262; Shaftesbury, Earl of, 261; Algernon Sidney, 262; Strafford, 257, 258, 268. See also impeachment; judges; jury; ship money Turkey, 28, 31, 46, 50, 65, 66, 310n124 tyranny, 39, 129, 132, 142, 209, 314; in drama, 133; England as, 99, 236; French, 315n35; Norman Yoke, 86; papal, 119, 216; seditious libel, 4; well publicized, 23 tyrants, 39, 83, 89, 105, 161, 183, 203, 235; biblical, 102; Julius Caesar as, 97, 129, 142; Charles I, 37, 89, 91, 156; “characters,” 155, 156, 157; Oliver Cromwell as, 89, 91, 157; in drama, 108, 119, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 135, 139, 335n51, 338n97; James I as, 326n87; overthrow of, 83; resistance, 190, 376n97; Richard II as, 89; Roman, 97, 130; Strafford as, 260; William I as, 243 Ussher, James, 94 Verba, Sidney, 11 Vicars, John, 142 Voss, Paul, 303n14

Wakeman, George, 208, 260 Waller, Edmund, 98, 340n13 Wallington, Nehemiah, 212 Ward, Sir Patience, 209 Waterhouse, Edward, 58 Webster, John, 126, 338n93 Welwood, James, 205 Wentworth, Thomas, see Strafford, Lord Weston, Corrine, C., 84 Whigs: anti-Catholicism, 43, 56, 93, 158, 251, 260, 261, 266, 306; Association, 154, 191, 181; ballads, 153–154; “character,” 157–158; City government, 210, 245, 262; civil war, 93, 139; coffee houses, 51, 115, 228; Stephen Colledge, 261; defeat, 46, 218, 262; discourse and debate, 265, 266, 270, 282; drama, 22, 114, 115, 121, 124, 131, 136, 266, 269; elections, 241; Elizabeth Day celebrations, 91, 208, 269; Exclusion, 187, 209, 210, 261, 266; ghost dialogues, 165, 166, 209, 266; grand juries, 245, 261; Green Ribbon Club, 228; historians, 11, 13, 275; on history, 87, 91; James II, 208; judges, 114, 115, 248, 260–261; law, 86, 240; lawyers, 164; lord mayor’s shows, 208, 297; martyrs, 49, 262, 295; medals, 227; Duke of Monmouth, 204; Monmouth’s Rebellion, 262; news and newsbooks, 28, 44, 45, 46, 269, 278; “no popery” slogan, 228; Norman Conquest, 86; oaths, 245, 251; pamphlets, 33, 269; Parliament, 240, 244, 251; petitions and petitioning, 115, 154, 198, 214, 215, 228, 229, 264, 265; poetry, 146, 266, 269; pope burning processions, 180, 198, 207, 209, 215, 218, 224, 269; “popery and arbitrary government” slogan, 158, 269; Rye House Plot,

46, 261–262; seditious libel, 45, 278; succession, 4, 201, 234, 261. See also petitions; pope burning processions; Russell, Lord John; Shaftesbury, Earl of Whitgift, John, 30, 172, 173, 211, 216 Willey, Basil, 5 William I, the Conqueror, 84–85 Williamson, Sir Joseph, 41, 50, 69–70, 317n61 Wilson, Thomas, 77, 78 Wither, George, 109, 340n14

Index women, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 36, 45, 271; audience, 272 Wood, Anthony, 81, 205 Worden, Blair, 99, 148, 331n101 Wotton, Henry, 78 Wren, Christopher, 225 Wren, Matthew, Bishop, 223 Zaret, David, and public sphere, 281, 282 Zwicker, Steven, 275

403