Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England

STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY Volume 6 ROYALISM, PRINT AND CENSORSHIP IN REVOLUTIONAR...

Author: Jason McElligott

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STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY Volume 6

ROYALISM, PRINT AND CENSORSHIP IN REVOLUTIONARY ENGLAND

Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History ISSN: 1476–9107 Series editors David Armitage Tim Harris Stephen Taylor I Women of Quality Accepting and Contesting Ideals of Femininity in England, 1690–1760 Ingrid H. Tague II Restoration Scotland, 1660–1690 Royalist Politics, Religion and Ideas Clare Jackson III Britain, Hanover and the Protestant Interest, 1688–1756 Andrew C. Thompson IV Hanover and the British Empire, 1700–1837 Nick Harding V The Personal Rule of Charles II, 1681–85 Grant Tapsell


Jason McElligott

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Jason McElligott 2007 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Jason McElligott to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2007 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978–1–84383–323–9

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This publication is printed on acid-free paper Typeset by Pru Harrison, Hacheston, Suffolk

PrintedDisclaimer: in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

Contents Illustrations Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: Royalism and its Problems

vi vii ix 1

1. Royalists and Polemic in the 1640s

13

2. The Politics of Sexual Libel

45

3. The Twists and Turns of Royalist Propaganda

63

4. Authors, Shifting Allegiances and the Nature of Royalism

93

5. Printers, Publishers and the Royalist Underground

127

6. Hunting the Royalist Press

150

7. The Theory and Practice of Censorship

183

8. A New Model of Press Censorship

210

Conclusion

225

Select Bibliography Index

229 269

Illustrations 1. Mercurius Pragmaticus, no. 6, 19–26 Oct. 1647, sig. F1r. Cambridge University Library, Sel.5.114 2. Mercurius Elencticus, no. 10, 25 June–2 July 1649, p. 73. Cambridge University Library, Sel.5.164 3. The Man in the Moon, no. 18, 15–23 Aug. 1649, p. 147. Cambridge University Library, Sel.5.111 4. The Man in the Moon, no. 18, 15–23 Aug. 1649, pp. 148–9. Cambridge University Library, Sel.5.111 5. The Man in the Moon, no. 45, 27 Feb.–6 Mar. 1650, p. 353. Cambridge University Library, Sel.5.111 6. A letter from Marchamont Nedham to the Earl of Denbigh, 28 May 1646. Warwickshire County Record Office. CR2017/C10/115

3 25 26 49 78 113

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vi

Acknowledgements Brian Sommers’s 9 a.m. Tuesday lectures in Theatre P of the Arts Building in University College Dublin first awoke my interest in Stuart Britain, and the support and encouragement of Mary E. Daly, James McGuire, Seymour Phillips and Art Cosgrove encouraged me to indulge my curiosity and undertake further study. More than a decade on, I look back with fond memories on my time spent in the gloomy light of the Leonid Brezhnev-style architecture of UCD. I also have very good memories of my Ph.D. research at St John’s College, Cambridge, where the built environment was decidedly more attractive. John Morrill was a model supervisor: I am not sure which I valued more, his encyclopaedic knowledge of the seventeenth century, his awe-inspiring ability to recall the full details of obscure articles and theses which I had missed in my trawls of the UL, or the social events which he regularly organized for us members of what outsiders called ‘the New Morrill Army’. I am grateful to the British Council in Dublin, which elected me to a Chevening Scholarship for 1997–9, and the National University of Ireland, which awarded me the Travelling Studentship in History. I also benefited enormously from the generosity of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the Robert Gardiner Memorial Trust. Thanks are also due to Robert Tombs, Elliot Vernon, Rachel Foxley, James ‘Harry Hill’ Campbell, Geoff Kemp, Rory Rapple, Marika Keblusek, Rob Nelson, Grant Tapsell, Gerry Hyde, Gary Edmond, Ivar McGrath, Marnie Hay, Christoph Müller, David L. Smith and Kevin Sharpe. Deirdre Vogt waded through layers of bureaucracy and found a complete run of Nouvelles Ordinaires de Londres in Grenoble. I am particularly grateful to Tim Harris for his perceptive comments on the draft manuscript of this book. My three years on the Roger Morrice Entring Book Project (2001–3) in the Faculty of History at Cambridge provided much needed distance from my thesis and a welcome opportunity to study an entirely different period. Mark Goldie helped to keep me sane during the long, long hours of prosopographical work. For their invaluable support and advice on a host of issues I wish to thank Frances Henderson, John Spurr, Stephen Taylor, Mark Knights and David Wykes. Thanks are also due to Peter Lindenbaum, Matt Jenkinson, Annette Walton and Susan Green. I am grateful to the staff of the Cambridge University Library for their good humour and kind assistance over a number of years, particularly Stella Clarke and Godfrey Waller. I have ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

also accrued debts to the staff of the following libraries and archives: St John’s College, Cambridge; the Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge; the British Library; the Guildhall Library, London; Dr Williams’s Library, London; the National Archives, Kew; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Royal College of Physicians, London; Lincoln College, Oxford; Merton College, Oxford; Worcester College, Oxford; Trinity College, Dublin; Bath Central Library; and the National Library of Ireland. Much of the re-writing of this book was completed during my period as an Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) Postdoctoral Fellow in Dublin between 2003 and 2005. I have now moved back across the Irish Sea to Merton College, where Julia Walworth, Steve Gunn and David Norbrook have gone out of their way to make me feel at home. I wish to thank the Electors to the J.P.R. Lyell Research Fellowship in the History of the Early-Modern Printed Book in general, and Nick Davidson in particular. I am particularly grateful to Pablo Mukherjee and Eliza Hilton for their extraordinary warmth and kindness. Finally, it seems strange to try to thank Anne Marie in print; anyone who knows me will know that my debt to her can never be summed up in mere words. She followed me to the wilds of East Anglia and ensured that I now look back so warmly on our time there, especially those trips to Southwold. The three years since the arrival of Rory and Matthew have been wonderful, perhaps more wonderful than anyone has a right to expect, but it is now time to commit this text to print. It is a commonplace that books are never really finished, merely abandoned. I consider this book, abandoned text that it is, to be a small down-payment to Anne Marie for all that I owe to her. Jason McElligott Merton College, Oxford

viii

Abbreviations Place of publication is London unless otherwise stated. ABBREVIATIONS

Add. MS AEB AHR Anon. BDBR BIHR BL BLR Bod. CCISP CHB CJ CLRO CP CSPD CSPV CUL CW DLB 170 DNB DWL EHR GEC HJ HLQ HLMP HMC JBS

Additional Manuscript Journal of Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography American Historical Review Anonymous R.L. Greaves and R. Zaller (eds), Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the Seventeenth Century, 3 vols (Brighton, 1982–4) Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research British Library Bodleian Library Record Bodleian Library, Oxford O. Ogle et al. (eds), Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers, 5 vols (1869–1970) John Barnard and D.F. McKenzie (eds), The Cambridge History of the Book, volume IV, 1557–1695 (Cambridge, 2002) Commons’ Journals Corporation of London Records Office S.R. Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 4 vols (1988 edn) Calendar of State Papers Domestic Calendar of State Papers Venetian Cambridge University Library S.R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, 4 vols (1893–8) J.K. Bracken and Joel Silver (eds), The British Literary Book Trade, 1475–1700 (Washington, DC, 1990) Dictionary of National Biography Dr Williams’s Library, London English Historical Review G.E. Cockayne, The Complete Peerage, 13 vols (1910) Historical Journal Huntington Library Quarterly House of Lords Main Papers Historical Manuscripts Commission Journal of British Studies ix

ABBREVIATIONS

JMH JPHS LJ NHI

Journal of Modern History Journal of the Printing Historical Society Lords’ Journals T.W. Moody, F.X. Martin and F.J. Byrne (eds), A new history of Ireland: early modern Ireland, 1534–1691 (Oxford, 1978) NS Carolyn Nelson and Matthew Seccombe (eds), British newspapers and periodicals, 1641–1700: a short-title catalogue of serials printed in England, Scotland, Ireland and British America (New York, 1987) OBSPP Oxford Bibliographical Society Proceedings and Papers Oxford DNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography P&P Past & Present PBSA Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America POAS W.J. Cameron (ed.), Poems on affairs of state: Augustan satirical verse, 1660–1714, 9 vols (New Haven, CT, 1971) PROB Records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury SC Stationers’ Company SCCB Stationers’ Company Court Book SP State Papers TCBS Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society TNA The National Archives, Kew TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society TSP Thomas Birch (ed.), A collection of the state papers of John Thurloe, Esq., 7 vols (1742)

x

Introduction: Royalism and its Problems INTRODUCTION

The neglect of royalism

This is a study of a remarkable set of royalist newsbooks produced in London during the late 1640s. Books of weekly printed news – known to contemporaries as newsbooks – had first appeared in London during the turmoil of late 1641.1 They quickly found a ready audience and by the summer of 1644 there were a dozen titles in production in the capital and at the royalist headquarters in Oxford, catering for a broad range of political and religious positions. Newsbooks became commonplace during the First Civil War but the royalist titles examined in this book were remarkable because they were published between 1647 and 1650 in conditions of strict secrecy in London, a city which was, in effect, under enemy control. This fifth-column of polemicists provided a fascinating, continuous commentary on some of the most momentous events of the century, including the Second Civil War, Pride’s Purge, the regicide, and the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland. They also shed light on aspects of popular culture, print-culture, clandestine printing, propaganda, the theory and practice of censorship, gender history, the history of London, as well as the politics and nature of royalism. In total, more than 530 issues of fifty-one separate titles were published. Many titles survived for only a few weeks, but a number of them appeared regularly over a period of months or even years. Scholars have long been aware of these newsbooks, but until recently they have been entirely overlooked as a historical source.2 In recent years a number of studies have paid some passing attention to the contents of these underground publications, but we still lack a study of these newsbooks in their own right.3 How and why were they produced? How were they distributed? Who read them? Who wrote, printed and published them? What were their aims, and what arguments did The classic study of this topic is Joad Raymond, The invention of the newspaper: English newsbooks, 1641–9 (Oxford, 1996). 2 Hyder E. Rollins, ‘Samuel Sheppard and his praise of poets’, Studies in Philology, xxiv (1927), 509–55, at 523; J.B. Williams, A history of English journalism to the foundation of the Gazette (1908); Joseph Frank, The beginnings of the English newspaper, 1620–60 (Cambridge, MA, 1960). 3 Raymond, Invention of the newspaper; David A. O’Hara, English newsbooks and Irish rebellion, 1641–49 (Dublin, 2006). 1

1


they put forward in an attempt to secure these aims? How did the authorities in the capital react to their appearance? How did many of the titles survive for long periods, and how did the authorities, who had struggled to control them for so long, finally suppress them in the early summer of 1650? How important were these newsbooks to the political culture of the period? What do they tell us about the beliefs and motivations of the people who supported the king in the late 1640s? Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England aims to provide answers to these questions and, in the process, forces us to re-think the nature of political allegiance during the Civil Wars. The neglect of the royalist newsbooks is surprising. After all, as the British comedian Stephen Fry has wryly noted in Making History, a novel about a student embarking upon doctoral research at Cambridge, ‘everyone knows how you choose a subject for a . . . thesis in history. You go round the libraries in a fever, looking for a subject that no one else has covered, or at least a subject that hasn’t been covered for, say, twenty years and then you bag it. You stake your claim for that one seam. Everyone knows that.’4 Why, then, if the royalist newsbooks are such a rich historical source, has nobody hitherto staked their claim to them? The simple answer is that the reluctance of scholars to engage with these printed pamphlets results from a more general reluctance to engage with, or take seriously, the royalist cause itself. Royalism has never been particularly fashionable among historians of the English Civil Wars. We do possess a number of first-class studies of those who were loyal to the monarch,5 but when one compares this work to the multitude of books and articles on the various parliamentarians and sectaries of the period, one is struck by the great imbalance between the two. Defeat, like familiarity, obviously breeds contempt. James Daly’s description of the royalists as ‘the whipping boys of English history’ may be something of an exaggeration, but it is true to say that Charles’s followers have been less fully studied than those who remained with Parliament.6 The neglect of royalism is unfortunate because we can never hope to unlock the essential characteristics and dynamics of the conflict which engulfed Britain in the 1640s and 1650s until we know far, far more about those men and women from all levels of society who supported the king and thumbed their noses at the Puritans and Roundheads.7 Stephen Fry, Making history (1996), p. 43. Ronald Hutton, The royalist war effort, 1642–1646, 2nd edn (1999); David L. Smith, Constitutional royalism and the search for settlement, c.1640–1649 (Cambridge, 1994); David Underdown, Royalist conspiracy in England, 1649–1660 (New Haven, CT, 1960). 6 J.W. Daly, ‘Could Charles I be trusted? The royalist case 1642–1646’, JBS, vi, 1 (1966), 23–44, at 23; Smith, Constitutional royalism, p. 12; Andrew Lacey, ‘The cult of King Charles the Martyr: the rise and fall of a political theology, ca. 1640–1859’ (Leicester University Ph.D., 1999), p. vii; Nigel Smith, Literature and revolution in England, 1640–1660 (New Haven, CT, 1994), p. 100. 7 This point was made as long ago as 1981 by Ronald Hutton in ‘The structure of the royalist party, 1642–1646’, HJ, 24, 3 (1981), 553–69. 4 5

2

INTRODUCTION

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Figure 1. The first page of Mercurius Pragmaticus, no. 6, for the week of 19–26 October 1647 (180 x 120 mm). Note the doggerel rhyme, which invariably opened the royalist newsbooks, and the poor condition of the type. This title was printed on thin, cheap, brown paper and the discolouration in this photograph picks up staining within the page itself. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

3


Yet the problem is not merely that scholars have neglected the royalists. Arguably the greatest impediment to the study of royalism is that many of those interested in the topic have often displayed a very narrow and uninspiring idea of what merits historical enquiry. There has been too much emphasis on the experience of leading royalists, whether members of the royal family, nobles or senior clergymen. There has also been an inordinate preoccupation with tracing the factional politics of the royalist elite. Until very recently one could have been forgiven for assuming that, apart from Queen Henrietta Maria, there were no female royalists.8 Royalism is still understood as a strangely English phenomenon long after historians of the parliamentary forces have embraced attempts to understand the Scottish or Irish dimensions to the Civil Wars. There has also been little or no attempt to apply the methodology of cultural history to the study of royalists, except in the context of high culture and entertainment.9 A study of royalism below the level of the elite, let alone a social history of loyalism, has never been attempted because many scholars in the field share the late Gerald Aylmer’s scepticism as to the validity of research into royalism among lower social groupings.10 It is true that there has been a good deal of recent work on royalist literature, but even here, with a few honourable exceptions, there has been a tendency to concentrate on a small range of topics: the Eikon Basilike itself, or canonical authors and poets with connections to the royal court, or other prominent loyalists.11 Malcolm Smuts has written that the lack of work done on royalism means that it is impossible to make useful generalizations about the nature of the phenomenon.12 This is only partly true; the problem is the relative lack of research in the field and the surprisingly limited and limiting nature of much of the work that has been done. Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England cannot plug all of the gaps in our knowledge of royalism – it focuses on a relatively small group of people in London during a short period of less than three years – but it is intended to sketch a way of approaching the topic which may be of benefit to other scholars. At one level this book is simply an account of a hitherto unexamined aspect of the Civil Wars, the underground royalist newsbooks produced during the late 1640s. Yet it endeavours to use these flimsy, 8 Hero Chalmers, Royalist women writers 1650–1689 (Oxford, 2004); de Groot, ‘Gorgeous Gorgons: Royalist women’, ch. 5 of his Royalist identities (2004); de Groot, ‘Royalist women’, and Claire Walker, ‘Loyal and dutiful subjects: English nuns and Stuart politics’, in James Daybell (ed.), Women and politics in early modern England, 1450–1700 (Aldershot, 2006). 9 R. Malcolm Smuts, Culture and power in England, 1585–1685 (1999). 10 G.E. Aylmer, ‘Collective mentalities in mid-seventeenth century England: II. Royalist attitudes’, TRHS, 5th ser., 37 (1987), 29. 11 See, for example, the disproportionate emphasis on the poet Henry Vaughan in Robert Wilcher’s The writing of royalism, 1628–1660 (Cambridge, 2001). 12 Smuts, Culture and power, pp. 116–18, 137.

4

INTRODUCTION

ephemeral sheets of paper to say something new about the very nature of royalism and political allegiance itself. It argues strongly against the still widely accepted dichotomy between a forward-looking, proto-democratic parliamentarianism and a quasi-feudal, absolutist, elitist and reactionary royalism.13 It also insists upon rejecting the all too convenient dichotomies within royalism between ‘absolutists’ and ‘constitutionalists’. The realities of politics and polemic were too complicated, nuanced and textured to allow for such simple and simplistic polarities. We shall see that royalism in the late 1640s was a much more socially variegated and heterogeneous creed than has previously been described. It could (and did) attract men and women from a variety of social, cultural and religious backgrounds. It was not a world-view which was predestined to go down to defeat. Perhaps the most significant feature of the newsbooks examined in this study is the evidence they provide of a vibrant, pugnacious royalism, committed to the need to win public opinion and, at least initially, confident of so doing. Contemporaries used the nouns ‘cavalier’, ‘royalist’ or ‘loyalist’ to describe those who sided with the Stuarts during the 1640s and 1650s. The term ‘cavalier’ carried negative connotations of drunkenness, ill-discipline and ungodliness, and was repudiated by all but a small clique of young, pugnacious swordsmen.14 The foreign root of the word ‘royalist’ – ‘roi’ is the French word for ‘king’ – and the fact that it was first coined by William Prynne seem to have ensured that most supporters of the king referred to themselves more often as ‘loyalists’ than ‘royalists’. David Smith has defined the difference between royalism and loyalism in the following way: ‘the obedience of the royalist was to the king’s person, the loyalist’s was to his office and authority’.15 This is a convenient division, yet it is one of the themes of this book that the intellectual consistency and clear-cut polarities favoured by many historians do not accurately describe the muddled and often confusing politics of the period. We should be wary of convenient polarities. Those who wrote these newsbooks in support of the king in the late 1640s tended to describe themselves as ‘loyalists’ but they did use the terms ‘royalist’ and ‘loyalist’ as synonyms. Indeed, the leading royalist title, Mercurius Pragmaticus, was adamant that his comrades formed the ‘Royall, Loyall party’, while another writer appealed to all those with ‘honest, royall, and loyall hearts’ to stand up for the king.16 In general, Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England adopts the common, modern usage of ‘royalist’ and ‘royalism’,

Alan Shepard, ‘ “O seditious Citizen of the Physicall Common-wealth!” Harvey’s royalism and his autopsy of Old Parr’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 65, 3 (1996), 483, 485, 488; de Groot, Royalist identities, p. 23. 14 Edward Symmons, A Vindication of King Charles: Or, A Loyal Subjects Duty [1647], sig. B4v. 15 Smith, Constitutional royalism, p. 319. 16 Pragmaticus, no. 18B, 11–18 Jan. 1648, sig. 4v; Elenticus, no. 2, 22–29 April 1650, sig. 1r. 13

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although the term ‘loyalist’ is often used as a synonym in order to avoid unnecessary and unsightful repetition on the printed page. Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England challenges our preconceptions of what it meant to be a royalist/loyalist. It abandons prescriptive definitions of royalism – what people must have thought or believed in order to qualify as royalists – in favour of a descriptive definition which examines what actual royalists thought, believed or argued. It defines a royalist as somebody who, by thought or deed, identified himself or herself as a supporter of the king’s cause and was accepted as such by other individuals who so defined themselves.17 As we shall see in subsequent chapters, these royalists could (and did) hold a wide variety of political or theological opinions but they were united by a concern to see the Stuarts return to power on their own terms or, failing that, the best possible terms available. This definition of royalism is admittedly broad, but is not so broad as to be meaningless. It has the benefit of allowing us to consider how individuals viewed themselves, and how they were viewed by their contemporaries. In contrast to more traditional definitions of royalism which emphasize the willingness of an individual to fight,18 it forces us to take note of the vast number of people who supported one side or the other without ever actually taking up arms. It also allows us to realize that not every expression of antipathy to Parliament or sympathy for the plight of the king is evidence of royalism. The members of the New Model Army who advocated a temporary alliance with the supporters of the king in 1647 were not royalists.19 They never defined themselves as such and were anxious to secure the return of the king to power on the best possible terms for themselves. For the same reasons it is clear that the Scottish army which invaded England on Charles I’s behest in 1648 was not a royalist army.20 Neither did the Catholic 17 I am grateful to Dr Gary Edmond of the University of New South Wales for our discussions on legal definitions of identity and allegiance. Australian law, he has assured me, defines an aborigine not as a person with a particular set of physical characteristics, blood type or genetic inheritance. Instead, an aborigine is simply somebody who defines themselves as an aborigine and is accepted as such by others who so define themselves. I have borrowed this definition. Perceptive readers will note the similarity of my definition of royalism – the stress on subjective rather than supposedly objective criteria – to the definition of race crimes in the MacPherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. MacPherson provides no prescriptive definition of a race crime; all crimes which the victim believes to have been racially motivated must be treated as such by the police. See the recommendations of The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Report of an inquiry by Sir William MacPherson of Cluny (February 1999). I make no apologies for borrowing from such sources when trying to construct a model of royalist identity. 18 James Loxley, Royalism and poetry in the English Civil Wars: the drawn sword (Basingstoke, 1997). 19 Michael Mendle, ‘Putney’s pronouns: identity and indemnity in the great debate’, in Mendle (ed.), The Putney Debates of 1647: the army, the Levellers, and the English state (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 125–47. 20 David Stevenson, ‘A revolutionary regime and the press: the Scottish Covenanters and their printers, 1638–51’, The Library, 6th ser., 7 (1985), 315–37, at 332.

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INTRODUCTION

Confederates of Ireland become royalists when they formed alliances with Ormond and his men.21 There was no such thing as ‘Leveller royalism’,22 and it should also be clear that occasional expressions of sympathy for the personal plight of Charles I by a number of pro-parliamentary writers in the months before the regicide are not evidence of royalism.23 ‘Doing’ book history and print-culture In addition to re-thinking and re-defining the nature of royalism, Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England challenges us to reconsider the ways in which we ‘do’ book history and print-culture. Print has always been seen as a radical, destabilizing force: an agent of social change, innovation and revolution.24 By contrast, this book seeks to demonstrate how lively, vibrant and exciting the use of print as an agent of social stability and cohesion could be. Indeed, it is tempting to suggest that Charles I’s ability to call on the writers described in this book meant that, at least for a short period, he, like the devil in the old proverb, had the best tunes.25 In the same way that the neglect of royalists and the disproportionate emphasis on the parliamentarians has impaired our knowledge of the Civil Wars in general, we can never hope to understand the role played by print in the conflict until we know much more about how the royalists approached and used this medium of communication. This book is also intended as a contribution to a much-needed future study of the use of print by social and religious conservatives across the early-modern period.26 Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England also seeks to rescue the history of print in the 1640s and 1650s from a pernicious methodology which is unduly preoccupied with the minutiae of the factional politics of Parliament. Politics during the Civil Wars consisted of more than votes and intrigues carried on behind closed doors in Westminster, and books and pamphlets were more than simply tools for politicians. One cannot simply assume that print reflects the interests of great men and that one can read David Scott, Politics and war in the three Stuart kingdoms, 1637–49 (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 182–3. 22 Andrew Sharp, ‘The Levellers and the end of Charles I’, in Jason Peacey (ed.), The regicides and the execution of Charles I (2001), pp. 181–201. 23 Frank, Beginnings of the English newspaper, pp. 121, 124; F.S. Siebert, Freedom of the press in England, 1476–1776 (Urbana, IL, 1965), p. 215. 24 The classic statement of this position is Elizabeth Eisenstein’s The printing press as an agent of change, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1979). 25 Jason McElligott, ‘Stabilizing and destabilizing Britain in the 1680s’, in McElligott (ed.), Fear, exclusion and revolution: Roger Morrice and Britain in the 1680s (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 9–10. 26 See also Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford, 2004). 21

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their thoughts and true interests across a range of cheap books and pamphlets, as we shall see in Chapters 4 and 5.27 This is particularly true because much of this approach has been based upon the highly dubious practice of attributing anonymous pamphlets to well-known political theorists. This will be discussed at length in Chapter 4, but it is important to emphasize here that the unseemly marriage of book history and Namierite political biography is not a fruitful union. The key argument of this book is that to properly understand these royalist newsbooks – and, indeed, all printed items from the period – it is vital to relate them to a sociology of power, to the realities of what was happening in society. There is a tendency in much of the burgeoning literature on Civil War print-culture to divorce words from their context, and to analyse (and perhaps over-analyse) those words in isolation from the society in which they were produced and circulated. We must never lose sight of the fact that the Civil Wars were much more than ‘text-based’ conflicts.28 Among the multitude of words written during these tumultuous years in Britain it is possible to find snippets of information or rumours to support almost any position or argument. Unless one constantly thinks of a sociology of power, and what is possible or feasible within that framework, it is too easy to take isolated words and phrases out of context. It is a contention of Chapter 7 that this overly text-based approach to print-culture has been facilitated by the injudicious use of cross-disciplinary approaches. Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England argues that one cannot apply the methodologies of intellectual history or political thought to pamphlet culture. Those who look for intellectual clarity and consistency of thought in these sources will be sorely disappointed. The sole aim of the polemicist is to convince his audience. There is no requirement for him to be intellectually consistent, honest or logical over a period of time. In fact, such a requirement might conceivably hinder the deployment of ideas best suited to winning an argument. Our authors were not limited to one part of the broad spectrum of royalist political ideas. They found it possible, and even desirable, to inhabit different parts of this spectrum at different times. There are few, if any, references to learned sources in the royalist newsbooks. The authors preferred to use arguments which appealed to the hearts rather than the heads of their readers. This was not a weakness of these titles, it was their great strength.

See, for example, Jason Peacey, Politicians and pamphleteers: propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot, 2004). 28 de Groot, Royalist identities, p. 32. 27

8

INTRODUCTION

Propaganda, censorship and the state Some readers may balk at the use of the term ‘propaganda’ throughout this book.29 Joad Raymond has recently argued that ‘propaganda’ is too blunt and too loaded a term to be of any use in the seventeenth century.30 He is right to be wary, as ‘propaganda’ has too often been invoked in a simplistic way without any understanding of the problems associated with its use, or any attempt to define what exactly is understood by the term.31 Early-modern Britain had no word directly equivalent to the modern concept of propaganda, which, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, involves a ‘systematic scheme, or concerted movement for the propagation of a particular doctrine or practice’. To modern ears it also implies a cynical manipulation and misrepresentation of the facts. However, the word ‘propaganda’ was only known to early-modern Britons in relation to the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, the ‘Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith’, founded in 1622 by the Roman Catholic Church to propagate counterReformation doctrine. In other words, ‘propaganda’ was only used during the Civil Wars (and long after) to describe a particular foreign body charged with the propagation of religious doctrine or practice. To use the modern sense of the word in relation to an earlier period, therefore, runs the risk of anachronism.32 Raymond has suggested that the words ‘intelligence’, ‘information’ and ‘news’ are more accurate and less problematic than the loaded and potentially anachronistic ‘propaganda’. Others are more comfortable with the word ‘rhetoric’, a classically derived means of persuasion and influencing individual judgements.33 None of these alternative terms are without their problems. Mark Knights has noted that rhetoric was an oral skill which placed a premium on rational arguments and was designed to influence a particular, limited and known audience.34 As we shall see again and again in this book, the raucous, gratuitously offensive and deliberately anti-intellectual prose of the royalist newsbooks was as far removed from the world of rhetorical oratory as it was

29 30

OED. Joad Raymond, ‘Introduction’, in Joad Raymond (ed.), News networks in seventeenth-century Britain and Europe (Abingdon, 2006), pp. 1–13. 31 A prime example is afforded by J.P.D. Cooper’s Propaganda and the Tudor state: political culture in the West Country (Oxford, 2003). 32 OED; Raymond, ‘Introduction’, in News networks; Kevin Sharpe, Remapping early-modern England: the culture of seventeenth-century politics (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 435–6. 33 For an introduction to this literature see the sources listed in Mark Knights, Representation and misrepresentation in later Stuart Britain. Partisanship and political culture (Oxford, 2005), pp. 210–12. 34 Knights, Representation and misrepresentation, pp. 210–14, 236. 9


possible to be.35 ‘Intelligence’ implies an access to privileged or restricted information which, as we shall also see, was almost entirely lacking from the royalist newsbooks. There was little, if any, hard ‘news’ in most of these titles; more often than not they are filled with comments or reflections upon events which were widely known to the public because they had been reported elsewhere. They read less like books of ‘news’ or newspapers than the works of pugnacious and opinionated newspaper columnists. Neither is it clear that the main attraction of the newsbooks was that they provided ‘information’. There was certainly ‘information’ in these titles, but the quantity, quality and reliability of it varied from title to title and from week to week. Furthermore, it is often impossible to disentangle the jumble of information, misinformation and disinformation within the royalist newsbooks, a confusing state of affairs which was undoubtedly the result of deliberate decisions by the men who wrote these titles. All historical enquiry involves, by its very nature, an element of anachronism. For example, nobody in Restoration London knew that the plague of 1665 was caused by rats which carried fleas infected by the bacterium ‘Yersinia pestis’. Is it, therefore, anachronistic to refer to, or study, the effect of this bacterium on the population of the capital? Nobody in the early-modern era would have understood a concept such as ‘mental health’. Does this fact mean that there can never be a scholarly study of mental illness during the period? If all historical enquiry involves an element of anachronism, then the most that we can do is hope that our particular anachronisms enhance rather than retard our understanding of the past. We need to guard vigilantly against any tendency to see only the continuities (or the perceived continuities) with our own age, and to ignore all of the differences and discontinuities. Yet no matter how careful one is not to map the present onto the past, one cannot ignore a number of striking characteristics of the royalist newsbooks. They simplified the world into black and white, good and evil; they discredited their opponents with crude smears and parodies; they manipulated the consensus values of the target audience to their own ends; they presented their viewpoint as if it were the unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people; and they orchestrated the constant repetition of the same simple and simplistic messages in a variety of different permutations and combinations. These devices have been described by modern scholars as some of the key elements of propaganda.36 The royalists of the 1640s also had a striking understanding of what one might call ‘news management’ techniques. They knew how to exaggerate the successes of the king’s armies, and to minimize those of their opponents. They held back or denied damaging information, only to admit it and miniIn order to avoid unnecessary repetition in the text, I have, however, occasionally used the word ‘rhetoric’ in a loose, almost colloquial, sense unknown to classical scholars or historians of political thought. 36 Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge, 2005), p. 184. 35

10

INTRODUCTION

mize its importance when it was no longer of immediate relevance to events. For example, throughout July and August 1648 they vehemently denied the stories in the pamphlets and newsbooks loyal to Parliament which claimed that royalist troops had set fire to the suburbs of Colchester. When they finally admitted the veracity of the stories in September – notably only after the fall of the city to the New Model – they were at pains to minimize the conflagration as the actions of a few lowly soldiers carried out without the knowledge of their commanding officers.37 Another striking example of this tactic is afforded by the royalist denial for several weeks in September and October 1649 that the Irish town of Drogheda had fallen to Cromwell. When they finally admitted Cromwell’s success they were at pains to – falsely – claim that an enormous number of Cromwellians had died in the storming of the town. One royalist even went so far as to claim that Cromwell’s penis had been destroyed by a bullet as he entered Drogheda, making it a hollow victory indeed. Above all else, the royalists had a concept of the manufacture and planting of stories to increase one’s reputation, impune that of one’s enemies, prepare the public for certain events, or test their mood.38 They understood that news items could be placed in the press in order to see which way the wind was blowing and ‘feel how the pulses of the People beat’, although they always claimed that only their enemies engaged in such disreputable actions.39 Not to use the term ‘propaganda’ in the context of a tightly organized campaign to propagate a political agenda which relied on a mixture of information and misinformation is both overly fastidious and risks impeding our understanding of the phenomenon under investigation.40 Some readers may object to the use of the term ‘censorship’ in relation to

Pragmaticus, no. 29, 29 Aug.–5 Sept. 1648, sig. 4r. Bellicus, no. 11, 4–11 April 1648, p. 3; Elencticus, no. 48, 18–25 Oct. 1648, p. 391; Parliament-Kite, no. 15, 24–31 Aug. 1648, p. 91; Man in the Moon, no. 22, 12–19 Sept. 1649, 182; Parliaments Scrich-Owle, no. 2, [7 July] 1648, p. 9; Pragmaticus, no. 4, 18–25 April 1648, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 10B, 19–26 June 1649, sig. 3r; Fidelicus, no. 1, 17–24 Aug. [1648], sig. 2r. 39 The striking image of ‘paper kites’ being flown to test which way the wind was blowing can be found in Pragmaticus, no. 36, 1–8 Jan. 1649 [i.e. 1650], sig. 3r–v, and again in no. 51, 23–30 April 1650, sig. 2r. The equally intriguing description of the press being used to take the pulse of the people is in Pragmaticus, no. 41, 9–16 Jan. 1649, sig. 3v–4r. Here Pragmaticus referred to the spoken word from the pulpit as the ‘diastole’ part of the pulse. This implies that the printed word fulfilled the systolic role of the cardiac cycle. The extended metaphor that sermons and printed words formed the heartbeat of the rebel beast is arresting. 40 Knights, Representation and misrepresentation, pp. 213–14. Andrew Pettegree suggests that ‘polemic’ implies a dialogue, a two-way process. Propaganda lacks that quality of interchange. It is one-sided, a systematic attempt to propagate a particular opinion or doctrine (see Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion, p. 183). In the course of this book I do not draw this distinction. I use the terms ‘propaganda’ and ‘polemic’ interchangeably solely to prevent repetition. 37 38

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the seventeenth century. As was the case with ‘propaganda’, the word ‘censorship’ was unknown to the society analysed in this book, and to modern eyes it is often associated with modern dictatorships such as Communist Russia or Nazi Germany. It seems to imply a developed, monopolistic and totalitarian state completely unlike any locus of power in early-modern England. On the other hand, there were pre-publication censors in Tudor and Stuart Britain who could censure items of which they disapproved. As we shall see, the control of print became a central concern of state during the 1640s. One must, as always, be aware of ignoring discontinuities between modern and early-modern censorship in favour of the superficial similarities. It would be crass to try to revive the historiography which until thirty years or so ago could liken the Stationers’ Company – the trade guild responsible for overseeing the smooth running of the book trade in early-modern England – to the brutal, murderous thugs of the Gestapo. Yet it is a central claim of the second half of this book that recent attempts to minimize the nature and effectiveness of censorship in early-modern Britain have created a profoundly distorted picture of that society, one which has hampered the development of a satisfactory model for the relationship of the state to the printed word. The ‘censorship’ described in this book is a nuanced and textured process which takes on board some of the most important recent work on the press but allows us to describe the conditions under which the state could (and did) exert its will over the press. The ‘state’ invoked in this book consists of a series of overlapping coercive bodies which generated records which could provide precedents for legal proceedings. This state was not solely a coercive body at the apex of society, however. The maintenance of law, order and social stability was underpinned, as Mark Goldie and others have shown, by a widely diffused ‘unacknowledged republic’ of men who held local positions of civic and religious responsibility and power. The early-modern British state relied to a surprising degree on the active participation of unpaid, part-time or local officials who were often drawn from outside the ranks of the elite.41 Again, it is important to be aware of the differences between early-modern and modern states, but it is at least equally important to acknowledge that there is a striking gulf between the work of scholars who have traced the increasing power and reach of the early-modern state and those who deny the ability or inclination of the state to impose repressive conditions upon the populace.

Mark Goldie, ‘The unacknowledged republic: office-holding in early modern England’, in Tim Harris (ed.), The politics of the excluded, c.1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 153–94.

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1

Royalists and Polemic in the 1640s

ROYALISTS AND POLEMIC IN THE 1640S

The development of royalist propaganda

Charles I has traditionally been seen as a proud, haughty and aloof man unconcerned with the need to court public opinion.1 He has often been portrayed, both consciously and unconsciously, as an arrogant, foppish snob, a devotee of courtly masques, fawning verse, extravagant architecture and opulent art who thumbed his nose at the increasingly obvious need to use the printing press to explain his controversial policies to his subjects during the first decade and a half of his reign. It is somewhat surprising that both his admirers and detractors have fashioned such broadly similar images of the king, although they have of course differed as to whether his interests, preoccupations and personality should be commended or condemned. In recent years we have come to realize that this image of Charles’s relationship with his subjects is a caricature, a skilfully created image which captures something of the truth but distorts it beyond all reason while ignoring other important facets of his character. It is certainly true that Charles was personally shy and that, like many people in this situation, he sometimes seemed to others to be rude, arrogant or disagreeable. It is also true that he was a connoisseur of the finer things in life and that he enjoyed the process of buying and amassing an admirable collection of art.2 It is also undeniable that these interests created a great deal of suspicion among the ‘hotter sort’ of Charles’s subjects. It would, however, be inaccurate to claim that Charles did not understand the need to appeal to his people. Even during the Personal Rule, the eleven-year period when Charles was supposedly at his most removed from his subjects, the king regularly communicated with the political nation by long-established modes of communication such as royal proclamations and the ‘tuning of the pulpits’ by the prescription of prayers and homilies in the 10,000 or so parish churches throughout England and Wales. It is also necessary to note that on a number of occasions during the first three or four years of his reign Charles did explain a number of his policies in print. Indeed in David L. Smith, Constitutional royalism and the search for settlement, c.1640–1649 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 325. 2 Jerry Brotton, The sale of the late king’s goods. Charles I and his art collection (2006). 1

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1627 he went so far as to flirt with the idea of issuing an explanation for the decision to embark upon the disastrous military expedition to the French Isle de Rhé. Charles and his ministers laboured over a written public apology for the campaign and the king even examined the final version of the proposed text, but it was ultimately decided not to proceed with such an innovative explanation of royal policies. It was not that Charles was unable or unwilling to communicate with his subjects; he was aware of the need to project images of his power and influence but he came to believe that print – a potentially divisive and misleading medium often associated with a coarse, cheap or earthy way of speaking – could not and should not play a central part in that strategy.3 In hindsight one could argue that Charles’s reluctance during the first half of his reign to use print as a weapon of the crown was a serious mistake which allowed the Puritans to sow insidious and highly damaging ideas about his alleged absolutist and popish inclinations. Yet it would have been strange of Charles to have embraced innovative technologies and modes of communication during the 1630s. His realm was peaceful and prosperous. There were no abnormal tensions in the body politic, and, as far as he was concerned, he was not embarking upon any striking new policies which would have necessitated the use of new ways of addressing his subjects. Nobody could have had the faintest inkling that within a few years Britain would descend into internecine civil war and that books and pamphlets would be an important weapon of his opponents in rallying the country against him. Print, as we shall see in this book, was a weapon of parties and factions. Why should the uncontested king of a united polity have placed any great store on having an arsenal of ‘paper bullets’? How could Charles have used print to fix a constitution, a monarchy and a state which before the Scottish Rebellion of the late 1630s was not broken? The traditional methods of royal communication used by Charles before the Scottish crisis were, quite simply, entirely adequate and appropriate. The great irony of this situation is that, although Charles was often accused by his enemies of admiring the French model of absolutist government, he was simply not interested in emulating the Gallic fondness for printed propaganda. The Bourbon monarchy in France had long appreciated 3 Richard Cust, ‘News and politics in early seventeenth-century England’, P&P, 112 (1986), 60–90; Thomas Cogswell, ‘The politics of propaganda: Charles I and the people in the 1620s’, JBS, 29 (1990), 187–215; Richard Cust, ‘Was there an alternative to the Personal Rule? Charles I, the Privy Council and the Parliament of 1629’, History, 90, 299 (July 2005), 330–52; Richard Cust, Charles I: a political life (Harlow, 2005), pp. 38–9, 43–4, 166–71, 300–1, 313–14; Mark Kishlansky, ‘Charles I: a case of mistaken identity’, P&P, 189 (Nov. 2005), 41–80; G.E. Gorman, ‘A Laudian attempt to “tune the pulpit”: Peter Heylyn and his sermon against the Feoffees for the Purchase of Impropriations’, Journal of Religious History, 8 (1975), 333–49; Johann Sommerville, Royalists and patriots: politics and ideology in England, 1603–1640, 2nd edn (1999), pp. 37, 49, 108, 112, 119, 120–2; Kevin Sharpe, The personal rule of Charles I (New Haven, CT, 1992), pp. 647–53.

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the potential usefulness of print to the state. The conflict of 1614–17 between the Duc de Condé and the royal government was transformed from the realm of internal palace politics to a national crisis by the fact that both sides used print to appeal to the populace at large. About 75 per cent of the 1,200 or so pamphlets produced in France during this bitter conflict were published by the supporters of royal government. The French state became even more prolific in its use of the press under Cardinal Richelieu, a politician who believed that a ruler could do more through manipulating public opinion than through the use of armies. His professionalized propaganda machine was an important tool in the complex process of French statebuilding and bureaucratic centralization which accelerated over the course of the seventeenth century. Richelieu’s establishment in 1632 of the first ever officially-controlled newspaper, the Gazette de France, and the survival of this title under various secretaries of state until it expired at the time of the French Revolution, demonstrate the importance which the French state attached to the control and dissemination of printed information. It is the presence of severe strains in French society and the absence of such conflicts in Britain which explain the respective attitudes of the Bourbons and the Stuarts to print in the years before 1640.4 In England it was the opponents of Charles’s religious and political policies who were the most daring and innovative in their use of the printing press, largely because parish pulpits and other established avenues of communication were closed to them. The most extreme opponents of the English crown were forced to publish their material in the Netherlands but these men and women constituted nothing more than a tiny fringe of the Puritan movement. The vast majority of those who opposed Charles’s policies remained in England and most of their printing was done on home soil. The number of printed oppositional works increased in direct proportion to the growing influence of Laud’s supporters over church and state, and the dichotomy between the royal rejection of print during the king’s Personal Rule and the oppositional embrace of this medium is striking. It is necessary to appreciate, however, that the recourse to print was a sign of the weakness of the king’s opponents during the 1630s. The MPs who sat together in Parliament in 1640 were united in their determination to force the king to work with them in future, but there was no way to force Charles to accede to their demands, unless pressure could be brought to bear on him from other quarters. This is why during the course of 1641 Parliament began to use print to explain its actions and appeal to the people, or, perhaps more accurately, to a section of the politically engaged electorate. This tactic was not without its problems; it laid MPs open to charges of rabble-rousing and facilitating or encouraging the serious distur4 Jeffrey K. Sawyer, Printed poison: pamphlet propaganda, faction politics, and the public sphere in seventeenth-century France (Berkeley, CA, 1990), passim; Joseph Klaits, Printed propaganda under Louis XIV (Princeton, NJ, 1972).

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bances which occurred on the streets of London in the two years before the outbreak of civil war. Indeed, the use of print by Parliament played an important part in splitting the hitherto united opposition to the king and facilitating the formation of a royalist party committed to law, order and stability. Sir Edward Dering was not alone in his objection to the fact that Parliament had begun to ‘remonstrate downward’ and was telling ‘stories to the people’.5 Yet print did allow MPs to appeal for support to the people ‘out of doors’ and helped to create a powerful dynamic which placed Charles and his new-found supporters on the defensive. The books and pamphlets printed in support of Parliament during these years can be divided into two broad categories: a relatively small number of officially sanctioned items printed by order of the House of Commons, and a greater number of unofficial or semiofficial publications to which the House turned a blind eye because they put the case for those opposed to the king. Parliament was not interested in freedom of the press per se; its idea of liberty involved freedom to publish its own arguments and the right to punish its opponents.6 The policy of using the press to appeal to an audience beyond the confines of the debating chambers at Westminster was to have momentous, unforeseen consequences because Parliament could never hope to control or set the agenda for every book or pamphlet published in the chaotic months before the outbreak of war. One of the consequences of Parliament’s use of print was that it forced Charles and his advisers to reassess the ambivalence to the medium which they inherited from the era of the Personal Rule. The king and his advisers were slow to embrace the new realities and not best qualified by experience or temperament to engage in printed rhetoric or polemic. Charles’s lack of personal warmth or charm were distinct disadvantages for those determined to write news, propaganda or polemic on his behalf. The efforts to explain royal policy during the Bishops’ Wars of the late 1630s were at best ineffectual and, at worst, counter-productive. The handful of royal proclamations issued during these years were no match for the pamphlets in support of the Covenanters which circulated freely in Scotland and England.7 Even as the Smith, Constitutional royalism, p. 84. Michael Mendle, ‘Grub Street and Parliament at the beginning of the English Revolution’, in J.D. Popkin (ed.), Media and revolution (Lexington, KY, 1995), pp. 31–47, and ‘De facto freedom, de facto authority: press and parliament, 1640–43’, HJ, 38 (1995), 307–32. 7 David Stevenson, ‘A revolutionary regime and the press: the Scottish Covenanters and their printers, 1638–51’, The Library, 6th ser., 7 (1985), 315–37; E.S. Cope, ‘The king’s declaration concerning the dissolution of the Short Parliament of 1640: an unsuccessful attempt at public relations’, HLQ, 40 (1977), 325–31; Ethan H. Shagan, ‘Constructing discord: ideology, propaganda and the English responses to the Irish Rebellion of 1641’, JBS, 36 (1997), 4–34, at 30–2. Cf. Mark Kishlansky, ‘A lesson in loyalty: Charles I and the Short Parliament’, in Jason McElligott and David L. Smith (eds), Royalists and royalism during the English Civil Wars (Cambridge, 2007), fns 35–9. 5 6

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Long Parliament began to appeal to the public out-of-doors, a number of leading loyalists were still sceptical of the utility or desirability of engaging in a form of communication which would implicitly, if not explicitly, appeal for the support of those outside the traditional governing classes. There had been no need for the king to appeal to his subjects in print during the 1630s, when he had been a king in command of a prosperous and peaceful kingdom. By 1641, however, he was merely the leader of a party who was quickly losing control of the country, and part of the reason for this loss of control was that Parliament had the advantage in terms of both the number and the quality of books and pamphlets published in defence of its actions. This situation began to change during 1642 as the king attracted an increasing number of adherents with experience of, and familiarity with, print. In the year before the outbreak of military hostilities the royalists began for the first time to address themselves not to Parliament but to the king’s subjects.8 The defection of the skilled polemicist Edward Hyde from the benches of the Commons to the side of the king was an important milestone in the development of this newly invigorated royalist polemic.9 The royalists operated a number of printing presses across the country during the First Civil War, but the centre of their propaganda effort was at Oxford. Between 1642 and 1646 a variety of writers in the city produced more than 800 titles in a variety of formats and genres including sermons, royal proclamations, theological tracts, poetic works, satiric, railing pamphlets, and popular songs, catches and ballads.10 There was evidently some form of agreement among the royalist leaders that in order to reach as wide a section of their potential audience as possible it was necessary to provide time on the city’s printing presses for as many different types of books, pamphlets and ballads as possible. In truth we know little about the most basic features of this propaganda effort. There has been surprisingly little work done on this topic, and that which has been conducted is often hamstrung by a rather simplistic, monolithic notion of royalism as a fixed and unchanging ideology of the elite which was divided between mutually antagonistic ‘constitutionalists’ and ‘absolutists’. There is little, if any, sense in the literature on royalism during the First Civil War that it was a rich, variegated and complex collection of attitudes and positions which might not be adequately described in terms of simple polarities. In the light of the arguments presented in subsequent chapters of this book concerning the nature of political allegiance, it will be necessary to question the conventional depiction of royalist propaganda at Oxford as the This change is easily discerned by browsing the titles published in 1641 and 1642 contained in W.J. Rawles (ed.), A hand-list of the contents of the seventeen volumes of miscellaneous pamphlets in the Home Office Library (Calstock, 2003), pp. 1–55. 9 Brian Wormald, Clarendon: politics, historiography and religion, 1640–1660 (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 66–70. 10 Falconer Madan, Oxford books, 1641–1650 (Oxford, 1912), pp. 172–430. 8

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preserve of a victorious absolutist political and religious programme which had triumphed over a more moderate and reasonable constitutionalism.11 It is not entirely clear that the ‘absolutists’ and ‘constitutionalists’ described by historians are anything other than two small parts (or even points) of a broad and shifting spectrum of political and religious opinions, an argument which we shall examine in some detail in Chapter 4. In fact, it is tempting to suggest that royal absolutists of the 1640s are akin to the monsters under the bed which frightened us as young children; we imagined for so long that a host of fearsome and dangerous creatures lurked in that dark space that when we finally summoned the courage to investigate, we could not but be disappointed at the few inconsequential creepy-crawlies which scurried away at the first sign of light.12 In propaganda terms at least, almost every royalist was a constitutional royalist, as that term has been defined by David L. Smith. Who could not be for law, order, the ancient liberties of the subject and the Church ‘as by law established’, especially if the criteria for admission to that Church could be loosely defined and interpreted? If there is a sense in which ‘absolutists’ were almost as rare as hen’s teeth, then perhaps the danger implicit in ‘constitutional royalism’ is that the criteria for membership of the club are so broad and general – so commonplace – that the term encompasses almost everyone on the royalist side. We need then to be open to, and aware of, the broad range of political and religious opinions, strategies and tactics which could be encompassed within the mainstream of ‘constitutional royalism’. Scholars need to examine the reality of what was published at Oxford during these years without the distorting lens of anachronistic assumptions as to what royalism must have been or should have been. Jerome de Groot’s recent attempt to ask what royalism wanted to be and what images it projected of itself is interesting and suggestive, but ultimately unsatisfactory.13 There is no substitute for a clear exposition of what royalism actually was, a process which both necessitates and leads to a more nuanced and textured understanding of allegiance than we have hitherto employed. This is not a book about the propaganda produced at Oxford during the First Civil War, but the discussion in subsequent chapters of royalism, political allegiance and print during the late 1640s does provide a model of how one might approach a history of royalist polemic during the first half of the decade. It is necessary at this point to sketch some of the details concerning the production of newsbooks in Oxford. This is not because newsbooks were the only items of interest published during these years. One might look at any P.W. Thomas, Sir John Berkenhead, 1617–1679 (Oxford, 1969), passim; Jerome de Groot, Royalist identities (2004), pp. 50–3, 59. 12 One such creature is described by Linda Levy Peck in her ‘Beyond the pale: John Cusack and the language of absolutism in early Stuart Britain’, HJ, 41 (1998), 121–49. 13 de Groot, Royalist identities, passim. 11

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number of printed formats and genres. Ballads and loyal songs, for example, were considered by many to be of vital importance in reducing ‘the deluded Multitude to their just Allegiance’. According to one Tory bookseller of the early 1680s who published both newspapers and ballads, while the rebels of the Civil Wars had concerned themselves with complicated political theories there were a host of successful royalist songs that had asserted ‘the Rights of Monarchy’ and proclaimed Loyalty in every street. The mis-inform’d Rabble began to listen; they began to hear . . . Truth in a SONG, [and] in time found their Errors, and were charm’d into Obedience. These that despise the Reverend Prelate in the Pulpit, and the Grave Judge on the Bench . . . will yet lend an itching Ear to a New Song, and often become a Convert by It, when all other means prove ineffectual.14

One might also usefully examine any number of poems, sermons or political tracts produced at Oxford during these years. Yet it is a central contention of this book that one of the great strengths of newsbooks as a historical source is that their serial nature allows us to track the deployment and development of images, ideas, arguments and tropes at regular intervals over a long period of time. They also provided a regular narrative and organizational framework around which the other elements of the propaganda effort were arranged. The royalist newsbook entitled Mercurius Aulicus, or ‘The Court Mercury’, was written under the supervision of the Secretary of State, and printed in the same building in which the executive committee of the Privy Council sat. One should not underestimate the significance of the dissemination of newsbooks by a royal court which had turned its back on proposals for the production of weekly news during the late 1620s and early 1630s. Aulicus first appeared in early January 1643 and 118 issues appeared before it ceased publication in September 1645. Aulicus was initially edited by the writer and Laudian cleric, Dr Peter Heylyn, but from about the fourth issue his young assistant, John Berkenhead, wrote and edited most of the copy. Berkenhead displayed a natural gift for polemic, and by September 1643 he had assumed complete editorial responsibility for Aulicus. Under Berkenhead’s direction Aulicus was ‘the most sophisticated, amusing and informative periodical of its day’.15 During its first eighteen months Aulicus reflected the general confidence of the royalist forces that they would vanquish the ‘rebels’. Its mood changed after the defeat inflicted upon Charles’s army at Marston Moor in July 1644.

N[athaniel] T[hompson], A Choice Collection of 120 Loyal Songs, All of them written since the Two late Plots (1684), sig. A2r–v. 15 Thomas, Berkenhead, p. 44; P.W. Thomas, The English Revolution: Oxford royalist newsbooks, 4 vols (1971), i, p. 2; C.V. Wedgwood, The King’s war, 1641–1647, 6th edn (1973), pp. 153–5. 14

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Its tone became more bitter, its reports increasingly inaccurate and unreliable, and it no longer carried any news from Oxford or on the fortunes of the royalist army.16 Only three issues of Aulicus were printed in the months after the rout of the royalist forces at Naseby in June 1645.17 Oxford was under intermittent siege during these months and Aulicus finally disappeared in September 1645 due to the difficulties of receiving intelligence and distributing the title once printed. The royalists produced three other short-lived newsbooks during the final year of the First Civil War, but they came to an end shortly before Charles I fled from the city and surrendered himself to the Scottish army at Southwell in Nottinghamshire. There was very little printing of royalist books or pamphlets in the year or so after the fall of Oxford. During these months those loyal to the king were naturally demoralized by Fairfax’s triumphant march into the royalist military headquarters. They seem to have been overawed by the evident power of the New Model Army, unsure as to what they should do next, and were intensely conscious of their isolation from the vast majority of the political nation. The future seemed bleak. Yet during 1647 the royalists, at first cautiously and then more stridently, came to believe that the tide of events had turned decisively in their favour. The captive Charles might yet triumph over his enemies and be returned to the throne on a wave of popular enthusiasm. Although Parliament and its army had won the Civil War, Charles was determined not to bow to the demands of his enemies and he embarked upon a dangerous game of trying to play Parliament, the army and the Scots against each other in order to secure the best possible terms for his return to power.18 The protracted, interminable nature of these negotiations combined with the continued economic dislocation, political uncertainty and the high levels of taxation necessary for the maintenance of the New Model to create a great deal of resentment against those in power in London. The tedious in-fighting between the various factions in Parliament and the army, and the increasingly evident radicalism among sections of the army, also helped to convince many inhabitants of England that what was needed above all else was a speedy return to normality. The unfortunate circumstances in which Charles found himself during his captivity were cleverly used by the royalists as a metaphor for the difficulties which Englishmen in general experienced during these years. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, a surprising array of individuals went over to the king during 1647 and the first half of 1648, because the loyalist message that it was they, and they

Thomas, Berkenhead, pp. 42, 49, 76–7. Joseph Frank, The beginnings of the English newspaper, 1620–60 (Cambridge, MA, 1960), p. 75. 18 Robert Ashton, Counter-revolution: the Second Civil War and its origins, 1646–8 (New Haven, CT, 1994), p. 7; Mark Kishlansky, A monarchy transformed: Britain 1603–1714 (1996), pp. 158–86. 16 17

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alone, who stood ‘stoutly and immutably for the religion, the liberties, [and] the laws’ of England began to make sense to more and more people.19 During 1647 the royalists began confidently and systematically to put forward the argument that the years before 1641 had been a period of remarkable plenty, peace and tranquillity.20 The Civil War had not been the result of a fundamental difference between the king and his happy and contented people. It was the consequence of a long-standing plot by a small clique to abolish monarchy, murder the king and queen, enslave the nobility and gentry and eradicate the ancient laws of the land. The only way to ensure the required return to peace and normality was to return the king to his rightful place at the head of the nation. The king’s subjects had been hypnotized into acting against their own interests and it was now time to return to their natural loyalty, safe in the knowledge that Charles was a loving and forgiving monarch who would not take revenge on those who had been beguiled by such evil men. The volume of royalist books and pamphlets increased dramatically after the army removed the king from the custody of his parliamentary jailers at Holmby in June.21 We know very little about how this royalist propaganda effort was organized and who financed it, but, as we shall see in Chapters 5 and 6, it is clear that there was a conscious attempt by leading royalists in and around London to use the press to rally support for the king. It was evidently hoped that print would play a role in persuading the populace of London to force the MPs at Westminster or the grandees of the army to negotiate an acceptable final settlement with the king or, failing that, lay the foundations for some form of royalist military action, most likely some form of coup or rising in the City.22 There was an embarrassed acknowledgement that during the Civil War Charles’s enemies had ‘been more diligent in defaming, then we have been in defending the king’.23 This later phase of the conflict would, it was hoped, generate a cacophony of voices on behalf of the king and his supporters which would create the impression of ‘an overwhelming tide, an unstoppable movement of opinion’. This multitude of voices, this ‘crowd made text’,24 would both help to cement the allegiance of those who had recently sided with the king and be used to appeal to the Wormald, Clarendon, pp. 93, 96, 102, 116, 139; Richard Cust, Charles I: a political life (Harlow, 2005), pp. 363, 364, n.16, 369, 372–3. 20 I.M. Smart, ‘An interim period in royalist political writing, 1647–48’, Durham University Journal, 76 (1983), 25–30. 21 CW, iii, pp. 134–5. 22 Ian Gentles, ‘The struggle for London in the Second Civil War’, HJ, 26, 2 (1983), 277–305; Michael J. Braddick, ‘Popular politics and public policy: the excise riot at Smithfield in 1647 and its aftermath’, HJ, 34, 3 (1991), 597–626. 23 Edward Symmons, A Vindication of King Charles: Or, A Loyal Subjects Duty (1648[?]), p. 306. George Thomason dates this pamphlet to November 1647. 24 Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 162–3. 19

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growing number of people whom it was believed were tired of endless political and religious turmoil. Whoever oversaw the preparations for this campaign was sufficiently organized by the start of September 1647 to begin publishing the flagship newsbook Mercurius Pragmaticus. This was joined over the following months by a number of titles, some of which were evidently sponsored, supported or facilitated by senior royalists. Others were, however, the work of men who were inspired to take up the pen by the example of those who initiated the propaganda campaign. The growth in the number of newsbooks encouraged yet more titles to be produced, which, in turn, encouraged the appearance of further titles. The snowball effect of these newsbooks both resulted from and helped to create an increasing confidence among the royalists. These serials also had the added advantage of providing an organizational nucleus for a much broader range of royalist print. In fact, many of the hundreds of royalist books, pamphlets and broadsides published during the late 1640s explicitly made reference to the name of one or other loyal newsbook; in a sense they availed of the ‘brand recognition’ afforded by these titles. The changing fortunes of the royalist cause are attested to by the publishing history of Edward Symmons’s A Vindication of King Charles: Or, A Loyal Subjects Duty. Most of this important defence of Charles’s person and policies had been written by Symmons in Cornwall in 1645, but the author had to flee with the manuscript to the continent when ‘the Enemy, like a flood’ invaded the county. Symmons sat down to finish the manuscript in exile and it was ready for publication in May 1646, but the fall of Oxford and the fact that ‘peoples hearts were not then so capable to receive a Vindiction of their Soveraigne’ meant that he had neither access to a printing press nor the physical and emotional strength to bring forth his work. However, a subsequent perceived shift in public opinion in England reinvigorated him, allowed him access to a press, and, he believed, ensured that people would be more amenable to arguments in favour of the king.25 His pamphlet was published in November 1647 and was an integral part of the campaign to persuade the populace that Charles was an honest and honourable man who had been sorely maligned for too long. The confidence of the royalists grew gradually over the following months, but increased markedly after Parliament published its intemperate and ill-advised declaration of 11 February 1648 that it would engage in no further negotiations with the king. Here was a perfect example for the royalists of the bad-faith of Parliament and its allies.26 The MPs and their associates could be presented as stubborn and unreasonable in their attitude to the king and indifferent to the on-going financial calamity caused by continued conflict. The king, it could be argued, was happy to keep negotiating in order Symmons, A Vindication of King Charles, sig. 1r–2v; p. 305. W.D. Macray (ed.), The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England Begun in the Year 1641, 6 vols (Oxford, 1888), iv, pp. 282–6; CW, iii, pp. 298–9. 25 26

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to find a solution, but his enemies had walked away from the negotiating table and were therefore to be blamed for all future misfortunes to befall the kingdom. In April of that year Mercurius Aulicus went so far as to claim that whereas the king ‘had about a twelve-moneth agoe, two friends in a thousand, he hath now hardly two foes in more then the [same] num[b]er’. This was clearly an exaggeration but it does sketch the direction of a flow in public opinion which was noticed by other commentators at the time, most notably the Venetian ambassador to London. The comment by Elencticus in July 1648 that the rebels had ‘lost the hearts of three (of 4 parts) of all England’ is noteworthy not merely because it implicitly acknowledged that the king’s opponents had previously enjoyed widespread support but also because it chimed with other contemporary accounts of the alienation by this time of large sections of the population from Parliament and the army. Of course, mere opposition to the policies of the Presbyterians or the Independents did not make one a royalist, but the sea-change in popular sentiment which occurred during these years ensured that those loyal to the king were confident that they could win the active support of the populace for their cause.27 The royalist newsbooks In this book a royalist newsbook is defined as a serial which argued or agitated for the return of the Stuarts to power on their own terms or, failing that, the best possible terms available. Using this definition it is possible to identify fifty-one separate royalist newsbooks which were printed in London between September 1647 and June 1650.28 It is possible that there were other titles which have not survived, but a number of collectors realized that they were living through interesting times and made a point of buying and binding a large variety of printed matter. It is therefore unlikely that any royalist newsbooks which appeared for more than a few weeks have vanished

Aulicus, no. 10B, 30 Mar.–27 April 1648, sig. 4v; Edward and Peter Razzell (eds), The English Civil War: a contemporary account, 1648–1656 (1996), iv, p. 18; Elencticus, no. 35, 19–26 July 1648, p. 273; Elencticus, no. 41, 30 Aug.–6 Sept. 1648, pp. 328–30; Eliot Warburton (ed.), Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, 3 vols (1849), iii, pp. 248–9. I have deliberately avoided invoking the pejorative term ‘conservative reaction’ used by David Scott to describe the change in public sentiment during this period. See David Scott, Politics and war in the three Stuart kingdoms, 1637–49 (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 131–2. 28 See section 1.C of the bibliography of this book for a full list of these newsbooks. This list is much the same as that provided by Joseph Frank’s Beginings of the English newspaper and Joad Raymond’s Invention of the newspaper, with one important exception. Both men identify Westminster Projects as a royalist newsbook, but when one applies the definition of royalism outlined in this book it reads as a neutralist title that attacked both royalists and parliamentarians. 27

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without trace. The first of these fifty-one titles, Mercurius Melancholicus, was published on 4 September 1647. Three weeks later both Mercurius Clericus and Mercurius Pragmaticus appeared; only one issue of Clericus was ever published but Pragmaticus was the flagship of the propaganda effort and appeared regularly in various editions for over two and a half years. On 5 November 1647 Mercurius Elencticus joined the fray. Over the next few months the number of royalist newsbooks continued to grow, and by June 1648 there were a dozen titles in production. Many of these newsbooks appeared for only one issue, but some of them survived for longer periods and achieved a degree of popularity among royalists and notoriety among their opponents. The spring and early summer of 1648 represented the high-water mark of royalist pamphleteering,29 but thereafter the number of newsbooks declined as some of the existing titles disappeared and fewer new ones were produced. The decline in the number of royalist newsbooks was due in large part, as we will see in Chapter 6, to the demoralizing effect of the New Model Army’s victory in the Second Civil War and the increased efforts of the authorities in London to arrest those involved with these serials. The months after the execution of Charles I brought forth a number of new royalist serials, but most appeared for no more than a few weeks. By September 1649 only two royalist titles, The Man in the Moon and Mercurius Pragmaticus, were still in production. In the months after the promulgation of the Printing Act of September 1649 only two new, short-lived, royalist titles were published. Eventually, in late May and early June 1650, the authorities suppressed the last surviving newsbooks. The majority of newsbooks which supported Parliament had titles in English but the royalists preferred Latinate titles that began with the word ‘Mercurius’: Mercury was, of course, the winged messenger god of classical mythology. The use of Latinate titles was both an imitation of the great Mercurius Aulicus produced by the royalists at Oxford during the First Civil War and a statement of cultural sympathies. The royalists tried to publish these serials on fixed days, but for security reasons they were sometimes forced to alter the day of their appearance: Mercurius Elencticus tended to appear on Mondays; Mercurius Pragmaticus on Tuesdays; The Man in the Moon on Wednesdays; and Mercurius Melancholicus on Saturdays. All of the newsbooks were printed in the quarto format favoured by producers of topical ephemeral material.30 They ran to eight pages, but Mercurius Pragmaticus briefly increased its size to twelve pages for fifteen weeks between August and November 1648 to report on the worsening situation of the king. Eight-page quarto pamphlets were usually offered for sale for between one and two pence but the dangers involved in producing and selling subversive material ensured that it sometimes fetched higher prices.

29 30

Frank, English newspaper, p. 142. Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering, p. 5. 24



Figure 2. Mercurius Elencticus, no. 10, for the week of 25 June–2 July 1649 (180 x 120 mm). This newsbook, like that in Figure 1 on page 3, was also printed on cheap, thin, brown paper. The author began his text by conjuring up an impression of a garrulous, drink-fuelled conver- sation among friends in an alehouse or tavern: ‘Come away Sirs! Let’s cleanse our Cisternes and call the Tankard bearers . . .’

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Figure 3. The first page of The Man in the Moon, no. 18, for the week of 15–23 August 1649 (180 x 120 mm). This title was the most scurrilous, worst printed, and most eminently readable of the royalist weeklies. This paper was whiter than that used for the newsbooks shown in Figures 1 and 2, but its thinness is evident from the fact that one can almost read the text of the following page. The opening ballad or rhyme predicts the defeat of Cromwell’s expedition to Ireland and the success of the Levellers in England. The author proved to be wrong on both counts. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 26


For example, the royalist Mercurius Aulicus sometimes sold for as much as eighteen pence in London during the early 1640s, a price which reflected the high demand for it and the dangers involved in smuggling copies from Oxford into the capital. The asking price for the royalist newsbooks produced in the late 1640s seems to have fluctuated between a penny, a penny and a half, and two pence: a useful indication that they must have been relatively freely available in the capital.31 It is possible that at least some customers could purchase these items at a reduced price; William Clarke’s collection of printed material from the 1640s and 1650s, for example, contains a number of notes as to the asking price for a pamphlet and the lower price which he actually paid for it.32 On average each issue of an eight-page royalist newsbook contained between 2,800 and 3,200 words. The first third of the first page was invariably taken up with the mast-head which proclaimed the title, issue number and date of publication. Below these details there was almost always a doggerel rhyme of four verses of four lines each. Mercurius Pragmaticus claimed that these rhymes were designed to ‘tickle and charm the more vulgar fancies, who little regard truths in a serious garb’.33 Some of the more established titles also carried a Latin motto on their first page. For example, the motto of Mercurius Pragmaticus was ‘Nemo me Impune lacessit’, or ‘No one provokes me with impunity’, the motto of the crown of Scotland. The text usually began at the end of the first page with an editorial comment on recent events, which might consist of a few lines or take up the majority of the text. Only after the editorial did the author or authors turn to ‘intelligence’. This news varied greatly in scope, detail and reliability from title to title and even from week to week in the same title. Most of the shorter-lived titles carried little news, as such, and tended to confine themselves to a commentary on recent events. On the other hand, a number of the more established titles, such as Mercurius Pragmaticus and Mercurius Elencticus, prided themselves on the accurate reporting of events. In general, the vast majority of the news which was published focused on events at Whitehall, Westminster and in the army. There was very little news of events outside London, and even less foreign news which did not concern the alleged preparations of foreign princes to aid the Stuarts. The royalist newsbooks had very few, if any, sources of privileged information, and their news was usually drawn from printed sources which were widely available in London. The physical appearance of these newsbooks was primitive. Some books and pamphlets of the 1640s tried to increase sales by using wood-cut illustrations, but these were unknown in the royalist newsbooks, probably because J.B. Williams, A history of English journalism to the foundation of the Gazette (1908), p. 41; Melancholicus, no. 6, 2–9 Oct. 1647, p. 36; Pragmaticus, no. 39, 19–26 Dec. 1648, sig. 1r; Pragmaticus, no. 18, 14–21 Aug. 1649, sig. 1v; HMC, Salisbury, p. 282. 32 I am grateful to Dr Frances Henderson for this information. 33 Pragmaticus, no. 1, 28 Mar.–4 April 1648, sig. 1r–v. 31

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of the financial and security implications of spending time on the production of visual images.34 The newsbooks were generally produced on thin, cheap, poor quality paper and the quality of printing ranged from poor to very poor; typical symbols of poor printing include over- or under-inking of the sheet, spelling mistakes, missing or upside-down letters, and the use of worn, damaged type. The shoddy appearance of the royalist newsbooks was not due to any absence of skill on the part of those involved in printing the titles. Each printer, as we shall see in Chapter 6, had served a long apprenticeship and had worked as a journeyman for a number of years. Rather, their poor physical format was the result of a number of inter-related factors. The profit margin on a commodity which sold for one or two pence was extremely small and it would have made no sense to expend more money than was absolutely necessary on its production. The time constraints involved in the production of weekly newsbooks meant they were written, typeset and printed to a strict deadline, and it would have been impossible to proof-read two or three draft copies, as was common with more learned or expensive works. The danger of arrest also ensured that authors often neglected their traditional duty of being on hand to proof-read their text as it came off the press. In this situation any proofing which was done would have been carried out by the printer, who might not have been as concerned about the elimination of typographical errors as the author. For example, in April 1650 the author of Mercurius Elencticus was not present when the first issue of his title was printed. He was so shocked when he saw the final product that he added a postscript to the reader at the bottom of the last page: ‘Gentlemen, I must intreat you to passe by the Printer’s faults, promising you that he shall be more careful in my next.’35 The normal print-run for a book during the mid-seventeenth century was usually between 1,500 and 2,000 copies per impression.36 According to a printer named John Harris, however, the usual print-run of controversial or illegal ephemera printed during the 1640s and 1650s was 1,000 copies.37 There is no information as to the actual print-runs of serial newsbooks from this period, but nearly four decades ago Anthony Cotton suggested that the print-runs of the London newsbooks in the 1640s varied from 250 to 850, with a few reaching 1,000.38 Cotton’s figures are based upon a series of This contrasts with the anti-episcopal pamphlets described in Helen Pierce, ‘Anti-episcopacy and graphic satire in England, 1640–1645’, HJ, 47, 4 (2004), 809–48. 35 Elenticus [sic], no. 1, 22 April 1650, sig. 4v. 36 D.F. McKenzie, ‘Printers of the mind: some notes on bibliographical theories and printing house practices’, Studies in Bibliography, 22 (1969), 59; Sheila Lambert, ‘Journey men and master printers in the early seventeenth century’, JPHS, 21 (1992), 19; Marjorie Plant, The English book-trade (1974), p. 94; Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering, p. 62. 37 D.F. McKenzie, ‘The London book-trade in the later seventeenth-century’ (Sanders Lectures, 1976), p. 29; TSP, iii, pp. 149, 738; iv, p. 717. 38 A.N.B. Cotton, ‘London newsbooks in the Civil War: their political attitudes and sources of information’ (Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1971), pp. 10–13; Joad Raymond, The 34

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unproven (and unprovable) assumptions about printing practices, but they do provide a guide to the likely print-runs of newsbooks produced legally in London during the 1640s. If we choose to accept these figures as the likely parameters of print-runs for illegal material we should be aware of two important caveats. First, it is unlikely that there was any typical print-run for a royalist newsbook. In other words, the shorter-lived titles probably had print-runs closer to a minimum figure of 250, and the more established titles, such as Pragmaticus or Elencticus, may have enjoyed circulations closer to the presumed maximum print-run. Second, it is unlikely that any of the newsbooks had a consistent print-run. The number of copies of any newsbook printed must have fluctuated from week to week or month to month depending on a number of factors, such as the availability of paper and ink, the confidence or demoralization of the royalists, and the diligence (or luck) of the authorities in seeking-out illegal printing. The sales of these newsbooks were probably higher in the spring and summer of 1648 when the royalists believed they were in the ascendant, and lower after the demoralizing effect of the king’s execution and the implementation of the Printing Act of September 1649. The inability to provide anything other than general parameters for the print-runs of the royalist newsbooks is unfortunate, but the influence of a book, pamphlet or serial was (and is) not necessarily proportionate to its circulation. In the early eighteenth century, for example, Daniel Defoe’s influential Review never sold more than 500 copies per issue, and the royalist newsbook Mercurius Pragmaticus seems to have exerted an influence out of all proportion to its likely sales.39 Another indication that one should not reify print-runs is the fact that the notoriety of the royalist newsbooks probably ensured that they were circulated among friends, relations and work-mates after being read. Furthermore, seventeenth-century England was a society in which orality and literacy were intertwined, and it was common for many people (not merely those who were illiterate or semi-literate) to hear ballads, newsbooks and pamphlets being read aloud.40 In 1649, for example, John Lilburne read a copy of his pamphlet Englands New Chains Discovered to ‘a great multitude of people’ in London, and in 1659 an army officer stationed in Scotland read a pamphlet aloud to a group of private

invention of the newspaper: English newsbooks, 1641–49 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 233–8; Joyce Malcolm, Caesar’s due: loyalty and king Charles, 1642–1646 (1983), p. 143. 39 H.L. Snyder, ‘The circulation of newspapers in the reign of Queen Anne’, The Library, 5th ser., 23 (1968), 209. 40 Adam Fox, Oral and literate culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 36–9; Barry Reay, Popular cultures in early-modern England (1998), pp. 62–3; Tessa Watt, Cheap print and popular piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 6–7, 251, 328; Dagmar Freist, Governed by opinion: politics, religion and the dynamics of communication in Stuart London, 1637–1645 (1997), pp. 20, 127, 242–3; Paula McDowell, The women of Grub Street: press, politics and gender in the London literary marketplace, 1678–1730 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 83–4. 29


soldiers.41 It is likely, then, that many more people read newsbooks or heard them being read aloud than print-runs and sales figures (if they existed) would lead us to believe. Distribution There were three principal methods for distributing printed material in London during the 1640s: anonymous dispersal on the streets, booksellers’ stalls and shops, and the use of hawkers on the streets. Those distributing libellous or scandalous printed matter often left their wares in public places in the hope that they would be found and read.42 On the morning of 9 December 1644, for example, a printed sheet of paper attacking two of the commanders of the parliamentary army was found scattered about the streets of London.43 This was such a common way of distributing illegal or subversive material that George Thomason made a note on fifteen separate libels which he collected during the 1640s and 1650s that the item in question had been scattered about the capital during the night.44 The men behind the royalist newsbooks seem to have eschewed this rather crude method of distribution because it meant that the publisher had no chance of recouping his production costs, an important consideration when one was producing a work at regular intervals over a period of time. The most common way of distributing printed matter was from the shops and stalls of booksellers which were, at that time, located predominantly in the area around St Paul’s Churchyard, Paternoster Row, Little Britain, Temple Bar and Moorfields.45 It is impossible to provide a figure for the number of outlets which might have sold printed matter in the capital during the 1640s, but a total of 200 outlets does not seem unreasonable.46 Most

McKenzie, ‘London book-trade’, p. 24; CSPD, 1649–50, pp. 59–60; C.H. Firth (ed.), The Clarke Papers: selections from the papers of William Clarke . . ., 4 vols (Camden Society, 1891–1901), iv, p. 231. 42 Throughout this book I use the words ‘libel’ or ‘libels’ in the sense of abrasive pamphlets rather than in the strictly legal sense of the Tort of Libel. I am grateful to Professor Ian Maclean for this point. 43 Henry Plomer, ‘Secret printing during the Civil War’, The Library, N.S., v (1904), 374–403, at 375. 44 G.K. Fortescue (ed.), Catalogue of the pamphlets, books, newspapers, and manuscripts relating to the Civil War, the Commonwealth, and Restoration, collected by George Thomason, 1640–1661 (1908), p. xxiii; TSP, iii, pp. 738–9, vii, pp. 104–5; Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials of the English Affairs (1682), p. 422. 45 Plant, The English book-trade, pp. 82, 253; Adrian Johns, The nature of the book: print and knowledge in the making (Chicago, IL, 1998), pp. 65–72. 46 Johns, Nature of the book, p. 66; J.S.T. Hetet, ‘A literary underground in Restoration England: printers and Dissenters in the context of constraints’ (Cambridge Ph.D. dissertation, 1987), p. 35. 41

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books and pamphlets were only offered for sale at a small number of booksellers’ shops, but others were evidently sold at a large number of places.47 There is evidence to suggest that some newsbooks were sold at a number of locations throughout the capital. In May 1659, for example, the author of Occurrences from Forraigne Parts claimed that he had tried to persuade several booksellers around London to stock his newsbook only to find that the author of the rival Mercurius Politicus had persuaded them to boycott it.48 The royalist newsbooks were, as we shall see in Chapter 7, sometimes offered for sale at booksellers’ stalls and shops, but the obvious dangers involved in storing this material suggest that they were most commonly distributed by the hawkers who wandered the streets of the capital selling all manner of printed material.49 A satirical pamphlet of 1641 suggests that there were around 280 hawkers of printed material in London at that time.50 It is impossible to verify the accuracy of this claim, but it does not seem to be beyond the bounds of possibility. The hawkers were invariably drawn from the poorest sections of society and were often illiterate, elderly, crippled or blind. There were hawkers of all ages and both sexes, but the majority of those arrested for hawking were women.51 Little is known about the conditions of their employment: how much they earned, whether or not they worked exclusively for one bookseller, and whether they paid in advance or hawked the items on a ‘sale or return’ basis. It is, however, clear that they usually carried their legal wares in a pouch or basket and drew attention to themselves by calling phrases such as ‘Come buy a new Booke, a new Booke, newly come forth.’52 They wandered up and down the streets of London, but tended to congregate near places of public assembly such as the Royal Exchange or St

The title-page of John Fry’s The Accuser sham’d (1648) records that it was ‘printed for John Harris and are to be sold at his house on Addle Hill’, but that of The Intrigues of the Popish Plot (1685) claims that it was ‘to be sold by the booksellers of London and Westminster’. 48 Occurrences from Forraigne Parts, no. [3], 12–19 July 1659, pp. 17–19. 49 Sean Shesgreen (ed.), The criers and hawkers of London: engravings and drawings by Marcellus Laroon (Aldershot, 1990), pp. 37–150. 50 The Downefall of Temporizing Poets, unlicenst Printers, upstart Booksellers, trotting Mercuries, and bawling Hawkers (1641), p. 5. After the Restoration, the terms ‘hawker’ and ‘mercury’ were used to describe the separate professions of hawking and the wholesale suppliers of hawkers respectively. See Michael Treadwell, ‘London trade publishers, 1675–1750’, The Library, 6th ser., iv, 2 (1982), 99–134, at 123, and McKenzie, ‘London book-trade’, p. 25. During the 1640s and 1650s, however, the two terms seem to have been used interchangeably. For an example see Elencticus, no. 6, 28 May–4 June 1649, p. 47. 51 A Description Of the Passage of Thomas late Earle of Strafford, over the River of Styx (1641), pp. 5–6; Downefall of Temporizing Poets, p. 1; McDowell, The women of Grub Street, pp. 25, 58. 52 Downefall of Temporizing Poets, p. 2. 47

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Paul’s Cathedral. They may also have sold their material in the numerous alehouses, taverns and inns of the metropolis.53 The sheer number of hawkers and their mobility ensured that any attempt to clamp down on the practice could never be entirely successful. Those hawkers who sold illegal or subversive books and pamphlets probably did not cry aloud or publicly display the offending items. Instead, prospective customers seem to have approached hawkers and asked for the material which they wanted to purchase. Some hawkers may have had a lookout or an assistant who carried their subversive titles, thereby minimizing the risk to the hawker and ensuring that the requested title could be produced quickly.54 The evidence suggests, however, that this relatively sophisticated strategy was not favoured by, or was unavailable to, the impoverished men and women who sold the royalist newsbooks. Instead, the male hawkers seem to have hidden these titles in their ‘breeches’, and the females inserted them into the ‘plackets’, or pockets, of their skirts.55 This was not a foolproof way of avoiding arrest, but it did allow hawkers to deny any knowledge of, or involvement with, subversive material if they were suspicious of the prospective buyer.56 One might reasonably wonder whether a network of hawkers could be an effective means of distributing dangerous books, but the royalist bookseller Richard Royston used an unspecified number of hawkers to sell more than 2,000 copies of the Eikon Basilike in the capital.57 There was a constant clamour for news in the 1640s and 1650s and, given the ubiquity of booksellers and hawkers in London, it is likely that anyone who wanted to buy a non-subversive newsbook in the capital would have had no problem in so doing. However, the subversive nature of the royalist newsbooks and the fact that they seem to have been distributed mainly by hawkers probably ensured that it was difficult to purchase them on a regular basis. For example, George Thomason evidently tried to purchase a copy of every issue of every royalist title, but he was sometimes unable to locate and buy particular issues of these newsbooks. He managed to collect 90 of the 99 issues of Mercurius Pragmaticus, and 59 of the 69 issues of Mercurius Melancholicus. Yet, he bought only 48 of the 57 issues of The Man in the Moon, and was unable to purchase this title for five consecutive weeks in November and December 1649. This would suggest that the royalist newsbooks were usually readily Natasha Glaisyer, ‘The culture of commerce in England, 1660–1720’ (Cambridge Ph.D. dissertation, 1999), p 66; 248.12, 4; Johns, Nature of the book, pp. 156–7; H.N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution, 2nd edn (1983), p. 105. 54 CSPD, 1640–41, p. 40; David Cressy, England on edge: crisis and revolution (Oxford, 2006), p. 289. 55 Parliament-Porter, no. 4, 18–25 Sept. 1648, p. 3; Psitacus, no. 4, 21 June–3 July 1648, p. 1. 56 Pragmaticus, no. 8, 5–12 June 1649, pp. 59–60. 57 Thomas Long, Dr Walker’s True, Modest, and Faithful Account of the Author of the Eikon Basilike (1693), p. 57; McKenzie, ‘London book-trade’, p. 28; McDowell, The women of Grub Street, p. 26; Johns, Nature of the book, p. 155. 53

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available in the capital, but that readers may sometimes have had problems locating particular issues of certain titles. People in the countryside were as anxious for news as their metropolitan counterparts, and it is clear that some newsbooks were distributed across the country. The royalists, who had no reason to exaggerate the power and influence of their enemies, complained that the pro-parliament Perfect Occurrences and The Perfect Diurnall were available throughout the kingdom.58 This period also saw the growth of newsbooks, such as The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer and The Weekly Intelligencer, which were explicitly marketed at a rural audience.59 Many individuals enclosed newsbooks in letters which they sent to friends or relatives in the country,60 but this rather haphazard practice could not have been the publishers’ preferred method for distributing newsbooks in the localities. Instead, it is likely that London publishers commonly dispatched newsbooks to provincial booksellers via the postal system, or perhaps by carrier if a comparatively large number of newsbooks had to be transported over a shorter distance.61 There is, however, some evidence to suggest that during the 1650s Mercurius Politicus was included in military dispatches and thereby made available to large numbers of troops and sailors throughout Britain and Ireland. This would explain how it apparently ‘flew every week into all parts of the nation’.62 Royalist books and pamphlets may have circulated relatively widely during the early 1640s. For example, Mercurius Aulicus was often distributed in official royalist communications during the First Civil War.63 In 1644 the royalist press at Bristol printed a pamphlet entitled Mercurius Hibernicus which sought to explain and justify the royalist truce with the Confederate Catholics in Ireland. This was obviously sold in Bristol and may have circulated among soldiers and civilians in the relatively small area of England which was still under royalist control at that time, yet it is surprising to find that George Thomason was able to purchase a copy of Mercurius Hibernicus

58 Aulicus, no. 5, 24 Feb.–2 Mar. 1648, sig. 3v; Pragmaticus, no. 41, 5–12 Feb. 1649 [i.e. 1650], sig. 3r; Royall Diurnall, no. 3, 7–14 Aug. [1648], sig. 2v. 59 The Weekly Intelligencer of the Commonwealth, no. 9, 28 July–5 June [i.e. 28 June–5 July] 1659, p. 57. 60 Raymond, Invention of the newspaper, p. 9. 61 Michael Frearson, ‘The distribution and readership of London corantos in the 1620s’, in Robin Myers and Michael Harris (eds.), Serials and their readers, 1620–1914 (Winchester, 1993), pp. 1–25; John Walter, Understanding popular violence in the English Revolution: the Colchester plunderers (1999), pp. 122, 287–91; Raymond, Invention of the newspaper, pp. 8, 238–41; Capp, John Taylor, p. 73; J.L. Black, ‘ “Pikes and Protestations”: Scottish texts in England, 1639–40’, Publishing History, 42 (1997), 5–19; Margaret Spufford, Small books and pleasant histories: popular fiction and its readership in seventeenthcentury England (1981), chapter v. 62 SP 25/61/90; SP 25/78/189; Athenae Oxonienses, ii, p. 626. 63 Thomas, Berkenhead, p. 59; Malcolm, Caesar’s Due, p. 126.

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in London on or shortly after 27 June 1644.64 This pamphlet had not merely travelled the 120 miles between the two towns, but had been smuggled across the front-line separating the two opposing armies and through parliamentary-controlled territory into the capital. A similar smuggling operation was organized by the London bookseller Richard Royston who used a network of ‘adventurous Women’ to disperse royalist books ‘everywhere, as well in the King’s army’ as in that of Parliament during the First Civil War. He also used these women to smuggle books and newsbooks from the royalist headquarters at Oxford into London; the women travelled on foot ‘like Strowlers begging from House to House, and loitering at Places agreed upon, to take up Books (which Mr Royston had conveyed by stealth among other Merchandize into the western barges of the Thames, and the Bargemen had put on Shore there) and sell them to Retailers well known to them’.65 The royalist newsbooks produced in London between 1647 and 1650 sometimes claimed that they were distributed across the country. In May 1648 The Parliament Kite boasted that he would ‘flye all the kingdom over’, and Mercurius Pragmaticus later declared: ‘I . . . am ready once every weeke to despatch my Mercurie . . . into every Corner of the Kingdome.’66 Yet, it is unlikely that they were distributed as widely as the material produced by those loyal to the king during the First Civil War. The vast majority of the royalist propaganda produced during the later 1640s was printed surreptitiously in London, a city that was, in effect, enemy territory. The royalists had no access to the postal services which left London regularly, and the distribution of royalist propaganda in the localities would, therefore, have been a dangerous and difficult affair. This is not to argue that royalist material never circulated in the provinces during the second half of the decade. For example, Lionel Gatford’s Englands Complaint (1648) was a plea to ‘the Inhabitants of the County of Suffolk’ to aid the small royalist garrison at Colchester which held out against the New Model Army during the summer of 1648. Gatford had been the rector of Dennington in Suffolk before the outbreak of civil conflict, and he and the publisher of Englands Complaint evidently envisaged that it would be circulated throughout Suffolk.67 Charles II’s declaration of 21 October 1649 announcing his determination to avenge his father’s murder seems to have circulated widely throughout England. A copy of this declaration was, apparently, sent from the continent to London where it was secretly printed. A certain Mr Parker was entrusted with the distribution of the printed declaration, and he ensured Mercurius Hibernicus: Or, A Discourse of the late Insurrection in Ireland, 2nd edn (Bristol, 1644). 65 G.F. Barwick, The life of Dr John Barwick, Dean of St. Paul’s (1724), pp. 61–2. 66 Parliament-Kite, no. 1, 10–16 May 1648, p. 4; Pragmaticus, no. 7, 29 May–5 June 1649, sig. 1v. 67 Lionel Gatford, Englands Complaint: Or, A sharp Reproof for the Inhabitants thereof ([31 Aug.] 1648), title-page, pp. 37–8, 43. 64

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that it was ‘pasted upon the Exchange and other places by and did take care by ye posts and all the carriers of that weeke to send packets of those declarations into all partes of England’.68 The distributors of royalist material seem to have used the posts if they had the advantage of surprise and could be reasonably confident of catching the authorities off-guard. They obviously hoped that the material would have been dispersed and sold before the authorities became aware of its existence.69 The royalist newsbooks were occasionally enclosed in letters sent by individuals to friends or relatives in the country,70 but it is unlikely that their publishers ever used the postal service or carriers to distribute their serial titles to booksellers or customers in the provinces. This was because they had the distinct disadvantage of being published on a specific day of the week over a period of time; if the authorities became aware that a royalist serial was being offered for sale in a particular town or village they only needed to wait and apprehend the next post or carriers to arrive at that location.71 However, the royalist newsbooks were not aimed at a rural or provincial audience. They were explicitly targeted at Londoners from a variety of social, political and religious backgrounds. Readership The ephemeral nature of the royalist newsbooks means that the usual methods of determining the nature and extent of early-modern reading are unavailable to us. These flimsy, poorly-printed texts were never recorded in wills or probate inventories and it is almost unknown to find readers’ annotations, or marginalia, upon surviving copies.72 The impressive library of the philologist Thomas Marshall, who abandoned his studies at Oxford during the 1640s to take up arms for Charles I, contains numerous learned books on Indo-European and Semitic languages which are crammed with lengthy marginal annotations. By contrast, the seventy-seven volumes of pamphlets

68 G.F. Warner (ed.), The Nicholas papers: correspondence of Sir Edward Nicholas, Secretary of State, 1641–1660, 4 vols (1886–1920), i, p. 158; Whitelocke, Memorials, p. 419; SP 25/64/414. 69 McKenzie, ‘London book-trade’, p. 28; Hetet, ‘Literary underground in Restoration England’, p. 129. 70 David Underdown, Pride’s purge: politics in the English revolution (Oxford, 1971), p. 175. 71 SP 25/62/124. 72 Roger Chartier, The cultural uses of print in early-modern France (Princeton, NJ, 1989), pp. 146, 184; Carl B. Estabrook, Urbane and rustic England: cultural ties and social spheres in the provinces, 1660–1780 (Manchester, 1998), pp. 164–91; Joad Raymond, ‘Irrational, impractical and unprofitable: reading the news in seventeenth-century Britain’, in Kevin Sharpe and Steve Zwicker (eds), Reading, society and politics in early modern England (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 185–212.

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and newsbooks which he collected from the 1640s until his death in 1685 contain no markings other than occasional directions to the binder of the material.73 William Clarke, the secretary of the New Model Army, amassed a library of over 7,000 pamphlets from this period which is also frustratingly devoid of handwritten comments which might show how he read or reacted to his purchases. Indeed, the only time that George Thomason ever marked a royalist serial in his collection was in May 1648 when he wrote the word ‘true’ beside the following rhyme concerning the sons of Charles I: [T]he name of [princes] Charles and Iames, will sure out-doe The name of Parliament, and Army too.74

Most surviving collections of early-modern correspondence, diaries, commonplace books, or private papers contain some evidence of reading, but a few sources are real gems which provide us with extensive evidence of how the reader internalized and appropriated the items which he or she read. Samuel Pepys’s diary mentions reading all or part of 125 books in the years from 1660 to 1669. It is possible to follow Pepys week by week or month by month and see what he was reading and where he read it: he frequently added little comments about books such as ‘weel writ’, ‘excellent’ or ‘pretty’. Pepys read for sheer enjoyment across a wide variety of material, from highbrow to lowbrow. He read early in the morning and late at night, over meals, in bookshops, in his coach, on a boat on the Thames, and even on the street. On a number of occasions he even recorded the fact that he masturbated after reading a book which contained erotic material.75 Few diaries or collections of private papers are as candid and as informative as those of Pepys. In fact, such sources can sometimes provide a distorted image of reading habits in the past. For example, Kevin Sharpe’s study of the thirty-seven commonplace books kept by a provincial gentleman and MP named Sir William Drake between 1627 and the late 1660s ‘constitute the greatest archival resource we have to chart how an early-modern English gentleman read, and how reading shaped his mental universe’.76 Sharpe demonstrates that Drake re-read a number of works of history and political theory again and again in order to make sense of the turbulent times in which he lived. Drake’s commonplace books show that although he was outwardly a pious, orthodox Anglican gentleman, in private his was a rational, pragmatic and political mind which valued religion primarily as a useful method of social control. Yet the voluminous manuscript notes which I intend to write about this important collection in the near future. Bellicus, no. 5, 25 April–2 May 1648, p. 7 [sic]. R.C. Latham and W. Matthews (eds), The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 vols (1970–83), x, pp. 34–9. 76 Kevin Sharpe, Reading revolutions: the politics of reading in early-modern England (New Haven, CT, 2000), p. 73. 73 74 75

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Drake left to posterity give the strange impression of a man more familiar with Machiavelli and the ancients than with contemporary political pamphlets or newsbooks. He must have been acquainted with this sort of material, but evidently did not feel the need to record these items in his diary and commonplace books. One can occasionally find evidence in surviving correspondence, letters and diaries that particular individuals read the royalist newsbooks. The letters of a Dorset gentleman named John Fitzjames display a familiarity with Mercurius Pragmaticus, and the papers of the Marquis of Salisbury contain a receipt for a copy of the same newsbook in January 1649.77 Yet private papers only exist for a relatively small number of the middling and upper sort, and those papers which do survive cannot be taken at face value because many people must have read books and pamphlets without feeling the need to record the fact. Under the terms of the Printing Act of September 1649 the purchase of an unlicensed book or pamphlet was an offence punishable by a fine of £1.78 Readers would, therefore, have been very circumspect about recording their purchase or perusal of these items. One cannot, therefore, assume that whenever an individual’s private papers do not make reference to the royalist newsbooks, that means he or she never purchased, read or heard these titles being read aloud. A reliance on private papers might lead to the mistaken assumption that the majority of the population below the level of the gentry, for whom such records rarely exist, had no access to print-culture in general, and the royalist newsbooks in particular. Any attempt to recreate communities of actual readers of ephemeral or topical print is a futile exercise because, at best, the historical sources provide the names of a few titles read by a small number of readers of high or middling status. It is, however, possible to suggest the intended readership of the royalist newsbooks by examining the texts themselves for clues as to who their authors believed or, perhaps more accurately, hoped would read them. This approach would be problematic if one were examining one-off books or pamphlets where the use of particular words to address the audience might not have been a conscious strategy. However, the serial nature of the newsbooks – their regular publication over a period of time – allows us to trace patterns in the appeal to particular types of readers which are very suggestive. It is also possible to track variations in the type of reader appealed to over time. The intended audience of the royalist newsbooks was located in the cities of London and Westminster. The authors always explicitly addressed an audience located within the metropolis and its immediate environs. On a number of occasions the authors did address readers outside the capital, primarily those loyalists in Essex and Kent who rose in arms during the Underdown, Pride’s purge, p. 175; HMC, Salisbury, p. 282. C.H. Firth and R.S. Rait (eds), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, 3 vols (1911), ii, pp. 245–54. 77 78

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Second Civil War, but these isolated examples only serve to emphasize the London focus of the newsbooks.79 The metropolitan focus of the newsbooks is also clear from their silence concerning the hunger and dearth experienced in many rural areas of England during these years. In 1646, immediately after Charles I became a prisoner of the Scots, the harvest failed. The harvests of 1647, 1648, 1649 and 1650 also failed. This succession of calamities caused an enormous amount of financial distress and hardship in rural areas of England, and reliable reports suggest that cases of starvation were not unknown in pockets of deprivation across the country.80 The coincidence that the harvest failures began shortly after Charles’s imprisonment and continued until the first years of the republic could have made for very powerful arguments from providence on the part of the royalists. Yet there was little or no mention in the serials of the intense distress in rural areas, a very telling indication of their intended audience. These newsbooks were obviously read in the countryside and in urban areas outside London, but it seems clear that such readers were not the primary target of the propaganda effort. In 1714 Jonathan Swift claimed that pamphlets were produced by polemicists ‘Not with a View of convincing their Adversaries, but to raise the Spirits of their Friends, recall their Stragglers, and unite their Numbers by Sound and Impudence’. Much more recently, Andrew Pettegree has suggested that people in Reformation Europe only ever bought books and pamphlets with which they already knew they agreed.81 The authors of the newsbooks of the late 1640s certainly hoped to be read by ‘Thousands of loyal subjects within the City’, and they seem to have envisaged that these loyalists consisted of two main groups of people, ‘gentlemen’ and apprentices.82 They did not, however, wish to preach only to the converted, and they certainly intended their readers to include at least some of their enemies: MPs, members of the Westminster Assembly, the Common 79 Elencticus, no. 27, 24–31 May 1648, p. 210; Elencticus, no. 28, 31 May–4 June 1648, p. 220. 80 Steve Hindle, ‘Dearth and the English Revolution: the harvest crisis of 1647–50 revisited’, an unpublished paper delivered at the Early-Modern British History Seminar at Merton College, Oxford in February 2006. 81 Jonathan Swift, The Publick Spirit of the Whigs, 4th edn (1714), p. 7; Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion, pp. 156–7, 162–3. Both men note the importance of the ‘din’ or noise made by crowds of pamphleteers. 82 Women were never addressed as possible readers in these newsbooks. Any explicit appeal to female readers would have afforded them an active role which was at loggerheads with the argument that the rebelliousness of Parliament had led directly to an increase in the unruliness and disobedience of women. Men could not hope to control their wives and their households until the king was restored to his rightful place at the head of the nation. It was probably understood that some women would read the newsbooks after their husbands or other male relatives had finished with them, but the royalist antipathy to female involvement in the political sphere ensured that they did not directly target or address them.

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Council of London, rank-and-file soldiers and officers in the army, the searchers of the Stationers’ Company, and various individuals who were personally committed to the parliamentary cause.83 They initially seem to have harboured hopes of persuading these opponents of the errors of their ways or, failing that, of drawing such scorn, contempt and antagonism upon them from the public that they would be forced to recant their opposition to the king. However, once it became clear that their opponents would not be easily converted and that the vitriol of royalist propaganda might actually harden the resolve of those attacked, the royalists seem to have settled for the less ambitious goal of infuriating, irritating, annoying and, it was hoped, demoralizing their opponents.84 The primary aim of the royalist newsbooks was to appeal to the citizens of London and its environs who were believed to be increasingly alienated by the high burden of taxation, the slow-down in trade, and the increasingly erratic and unpredictable behaviour of Parliament and the army. Their intended readership was composed of ‘gentlemen’, merchants, city shopkeepers and ‘lads’ or apprentices: independent citizens of means and young men who aspired to reach this status.85 The message to the citizens of the capital was that their woes were the natural consequence of rebellion, and that monarchy was the only guarantee of law, order and stability. The king must be allowed to return to his capital to negotiate an end to the conflict, consistent with the ‘fundamental lawes’ and liberties of the kingdom. On the first appearance of the newsbooks in September 1647 the royalists themselves admitted that their arguments were not meeting with wide acceptance and it was envisaged that the majority of their readers would be convinced royalists. This changed gradually over the next few months, and by February 1648 the royalists (and a number of other commentators) came to believe that the political climate had become much more favourable to the Stuart cause. For about six months thereafter the authors gave the defiElencticus, no. 8, 12–19 Jan. 1647, p. 53; Elencticus, no. 19, 29 Mar.–5 April 1648, p. 148; Elencticus, no. 1, 24 April–1 May 1649, p. 7; Melancholicus, no. 59A, 2–9 Oct. 1649, sig. 3v; Pragmaticus, no. 6, 5–9 May 1648, sig. 1r–v; Pragmaticus, no. 1, 28 Mar.–4 April 1648, sig. 1v; Parliament Kite, no. 10, 20–27 July 1648, p. 53; Publicus, no. 1, 16 May 1648, p. 3; Clericus, no. 1, 17–24 Sept. 1647, sig. 1v. 84 Melancholicus, no. 38, 8–15 May 1648, pp. 225–6; Pragmaticus, no. 8, 2–9 Nov. 1647, p. 58. 85 Elencticus, no. 7, 4–11 June 1649, p. 53; Elencticus, no. 2, 5–12 Nov. 1647, p. 10; Elencticus, no. 21, 12–19 April 1648, p. 162; Pragmaticus, no. 20, 8–15 Aug. 1648, sig. 1v; Bellicus, no. 16, 9–16 May 1648, sig. 1r–v; Elencticus, no. 9, 19–26 Jan. 1648, p. 61; Elencticus, no. 17, 15–22 Mar. 1648, p. 127; Elencticus, no. 20, 5–12 April 1648, p. 146 [sic]; Melancholicus, no. 31, 27 Mar.-3 April 1648, p. 180; Melancholicus, no. 34, 17–24 April 1648, p. 198; Melancholicus, no. 59B, 14–21 Nov. 1648, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 7, 26 Oct.–2 Nov. 1647, p. 53; Pragmaticus, no. 8, 2–9 Nov. 1647, p. 58; Pragmaticus, no. [51B], 17–24 April 1649, sig. 1r; Pragmaticus, no. [52B], 23–30 April 1649, sig. 1r–v; Pragmaticus, no. 2, 24 April–1 May 1649, p. 16; Pragmaticus, no. 8A, 5–12 June 1649, p. 57; Royall Diurnall, no. 4, 14 Aug.–22 Aug. [1648], sig. 4r. 83

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nite impression that they believed they were being read by royalists and non-royalists alike. During these months they repeatedly tried to persuade those who had either previously supported the rebels or remained neutral to declare for the king. Their confidence that they were reaching an increasing number of readers increased over the spring of 1648, and by May they seem to have believed that they were in a position to rally support among the citizens for the royalist insurrections across the country. During that eventful summer they specifically envisaged their titles as a way of organizing and directing a royalist fifth-column which could seize control of the capital while most of the armed forces in the region loyal to Parliament were tied down fighting the royalist insurrections in Essex and Kent. Internal evidence suggests, however, that the authors believed their readership contracted significantly in the wake of the Second Civil War and the regicide. During 1649 and 1650 the main intended audience seems not to have been the citizens of London in general, but committed royalists and London Presbyterians who were alienated from the regime and could be relied upon to support a Scottish invasion of England.86 Yet even this relatively restricted audience may have declined over time. The expulsion of thousands of royalists from the capital in 1650 probably removed a significant portion of the newsbooks’ potential readership at a single stroke. The authors continued to address themselves to the London Presbyterians, but one must wonder how many of them would have been favourably disposed to royalist rhetoric during late 1649 and 1650. As we shall see in Chapter 5, during these months the newsbooks simultaneously praised the Scottish preparations for invasion and the efforts of the Irish Catholics against Cromwell. One would have to be a strange sort of Presbyterian indeed to read praise of the Irish Catholic clergy and the Ulster Catholics with equanimity, and it is tempting to suggest that the potential readership of the newsbooks had contracted significantly by the end of 1649. By the spring of 1650 the few surviving royalist serials give the impression that they believed few, if any, were listening to them. One gets the impression that they continued to be published merely for the sake of being published, for their ability to irritate the regicides and as a badge of the authors’ extraordinary loyalty. During the spring and summer of 1648 these newsbooks had been potentially very powerful weapons of war, but by the time they disappeared two years later they were nothing more than feeble, marginalized and largely irrelevant sheets of paper. The royalist newsbooks, therefore, explicitly envisaged their readers to be male Londoners of the upper and middling sort, but were sufficiently tactically aware to be able to shift their focus from Londoners in general to particular religious or political groupings in response to changing circumstances.

86 Pragmaticus, no. 1, 17–24 April 1649, sig. 3v; Pragmaticus, no. 42, 12–19 Feb. 1649 [i.e. 1650], sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 38, 15–22 Jan. 1649 [i.e. 1650], sig. 2v.

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Yet the preponderance of simple, vernacular English in the texts suggests that they implicitly tried to attract readers from lower down the social scale. Anybody who attended a grammar school in the early-modern period would have been familiar with a range of texts in Latin and Greek, and those who went on to university would have been highly proficient in Latin and, possibly to a lesser extent, Greek. A small number of highly erudite individuals may have been familiar with several other languages,87 but most of the middling sort and some of the poorer sort would have been able to read English with varying degrees of fluency but would have understood nothing more than a few basic words or phrases in Latin. In this context, the use of simple vernacular English must be seen as a deliberate attempt to appeal to readers who had only a modicum of schooling. It was almost entirely unknown for the royalist newsbooks to use words from any European language other than English. The few instances in which French appeared amounted to no more than ‘Vive le Roy’. The only Italian phrase to be used was translated for readers as ‘warre makes thieves, and peace hangs them up’: a suitably comforting aphorism for royalists about the fate of their enemies.88 Mercurius Pragmaticus used the Dutch phrase ‘hogen mogen’, or ‘high and mighty’, to describe the proverbial arrogance of the inhabitants of the Netherlands.89 The use of a phrase from Dutch is hardly surprising as it was the language of a militarily powerful Protestant people who enjoyed enormous commercial prosperity.90 The use of phonetic spellings of the Irish word for ‘alas’ – ochón – in a number of royalist titles is, however, very curious. This word seems to have been one of only two words or phrases of Irish commonly understood in England during the century; the other was, perhaps predictably, ‘uisce beatha’ or ‘whiskey’.91 In May 1648 the author of Mercurius Publicus phonetically quoted two lines of Irish verse: The Marquis of Dorchester owned several thousand books in English, Greek, French, Hebrew, Latin and Italian. I am grateful to Geoffrey Davenport, the librarian at the Royal College of Physicians, for allowing me to consult the original catalogue of Dorchester’s library. 88 Pragmaticus, no. 48, 2–9 April 1650, sig. 2v; Pragmaticus, no. 55, 21–28 May 1650, sig. 2r; Elencticus, no. 16, 8–15 Mar. 1647 [i.e. 1648], p. 125; Elencticus, no. 7, 5–12 Jan. 1647 [i.e. 1648], p. 50. 89 Pragmaticus, no. 4B, 8–15 May 1649, p. 32; Pragmaticus, no. 6A, 22–29 May 1649, p. 47; Pragmaticus, no. 11, 26 June–3 July 1649, sig. 4r; Elencticus, no. 2, 7–14 May 1649, sig. 3r. 90 Jason McElligott (ed.), Fear, exclusion and revolution: Roger Morrice and Britain in the 1680s (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 7–8. 91 ‘Ochón’ was rendered as ‘ahone’ or ‘ohone’. The Man in the Moon, no. 15, 25 July–2 Aug. 1649, p. 123 and Pragmaticus, no. 3, 11–18 April 1648, sig. 1r. For other occurrences of this word in England see Hyder E. Rollins, ‘Martin Parker, ballad monger’, Modern Philology, xvi (1919), 133; Hyder E. Rollins, The Pepys Ballads, 8 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1929–32), pp. 99, 124, 134, 259; and J.W. Ebsworth (ed.), Merry Drollery Compleat. Being Jovial Poems, Merry Songs, &c (Boston, Lincolnshire, 1875), p. 176. ‘Uisce beatha’ was rendered phonetically as ‘Usquebaugh’ in The Man in the Moon, no. 4, 10 April–7 May 87

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Braher Branagh, Braher Erenough Skeiine un skorny bodagh sassanaigh

The author provided an inaccurate translation for his readers which demonstrated that he did not understand the language himself and did not expect his readers to understand it either.92 The royalist authors never used Greek, not even in the context of referring to the Eikon Basilike. The only Hebrew to be found occurs in the context of a jibe at the ironmonger turned pamphleteer Henry Walker, who frequently tried to divine secret messages from Hebrew anagrams of the names of leading parliamentary figures. Readers did not need to understand Hebrew to grasp the nature of the joke about ostentatious displays of useless knowledge, but those who did may have enjoyed it all the more.93 Latin was the most commonly known and widely used of the ancient languages. Indeed, the majority of the royalist newsbooks had Latinate titles, which were probably seen by authors and readers alike as badges of sophistication, culture and learning, and perhaps also of loyalty to long-established customs and traditions. One might expect, therefore, that the use of Latin would have been common in the texts of the newsbooks, but many of the shorter-lived titles contained no Latin apart from their titles, and the language was almost entirely absent from the pages of the long-running Man in the Moon. Those newsbooks in which Latin did appear tended to use only single words or simple phrases of no more than five or six words, and as a rule a translation was provided whenever a piece of Latin appeared which was longer than one line of text.94 For example, eleven of the twenty-seven issues of Mercurius Bellicus contained not one word of Latin in the text. The language appeared only infrequently in the other sixteen issues of Bellicus, and was confined to a few words – for example, the lament ‘O Tempora, O Mores’ – or consisted of short aphorisms such as ‘Dulce et Decorum est mori pro Patriae’.95 The almost total absence of Latin from the pages of Mercurius Bellicus is particularly striking because it seems to have been written mainly 1649, p. 28; Elencticus, no. 10, 25 June–2 July 1649, p. 73; and The Colchester Spie, no. 2 [10–17 Aug. 1648], sig. 2r. 92 Publicus translated these lines as ‘The Welsh, and Irish, brothers bee, and shall/ Consprire to worke the murthrous English fall’. In fact, they read ‘Welsh brothers, Irish brothers, cut the throat of the English churl’. Publicus may have chosen not to translate the words accurately for reasons of diplomacy when addressing an English audience, but the point about his assumption as to the unfamiliarity of his readers with the language remains. Publicus, no. 3, 22–29 May 1648, p. 20. On bilingualism in Ireland see Raymond Gillespie, Reading Ireland: print, reading and social change in early-modern Ireland (Manchester, 2005), pp. 37, 57. 93 Insanus Insanissimus, no. 7, n.d. [7–14 May 1648], sig. 1v. I am grateful to Selwyn Blieden for translating these characters. 94 One line of text consisted of about eight to twelve words, depending on the size of the font. 95 Bellicus, no. 5, 22–29 Feb. 1648, p. 7; Bellicus, no. 7, 7–14 Mar. 1648, p. 5. 42


by John Berkenhead, a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford who was very familiar with classical languages and literature. The absence of Latin from the pen of such a learned writer must have been a conscious attempt to make the title accessible to less educated men who read only English. Conclusions The defeated royalists were reinvigorated by a perceived sea-change in public opinion during the course of 1647. A conscious effort was made to use print to appeal to the people on behalf of the king and his supporters. Hundreds of loyal books, pamphlets and broadsides were produced from the late summer of 1647, but the weekly newsbooks were the keystone of the propaganda effort because they allowed for a regular appeal to the populace. Considerations of time, finance and security ensured that the form and print-quality of these newsbooks were, at best, rudimentary. They could, however, be surprisingly skilful in their deployment of culturally significant rhetorical devices. These newsbooks undoubtedly sometimes found their way out of London to a variety of urban and rural settings, but the intended audience for the newsbooks was decidedly metropolitan. The authors of these titles explicitly envisaged their readers to be male Londoners of the middling and upper sorts, or young men who aspired to attain this status once their apprenticeships were over. They were able to shift their focus from Londoners in general to citizens of particular religious or political groupings in response to changing circumstances. They were also implicitly aware that these titles might be perused by less well-heeled readers, as the almost total absence from the texts of anything other than clear, simple English suggests.96 Jerome de Groot has recently suggested that royalist writers of the 1640s were uncomfortable with the need to address a public audience, particularly if it was composed of the lower sort. Those writings from this period in support of Parliament, it is claimed, created and presupposed a ‘questioning, debating and intervening’ public, but royalists necessarily tried to create a hierarchical, fixed ‘closed debate’ because ‘confidence in, and enfranchisement of, the popular reader is anathema to Royalist writers’.97 This strict dichotomy of attitudes to the public is too neat and convenient. It is true that some royalists, such as Endymion Porter, were concerned about the king using print in the early 1640s, but the supporters of the king soon adapted to the changing realities of the war with gusto. The royalist newsbooks of the late 1640s show that there was no inherent contradiction between supportPragmaticus, nos 36 and 37, 5–12 Dec. 1648, sig. 1r; Melancholicus, no. 51B, 7–14 Aug. 1648, p. 147; Elencticus, no. 6, 28 May–4 June 1649, p. 42; Parliament Kite, no. 10, 20–27 July 1648, p. 52. 97 de Groot, Royalist identities, pp. 60, 62, 74. 96

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ing the king and appealing to an audience which might consist of those from the lower strata of society. Royalists simply labelled those who would not and could not be convinced of the errors of their ways as ‘silly’, ‘ignorant’, ‘vulgar’ and ‘deluded’. By the same token, those who were receptive to the royalist message were naturally classified as ‘courageous’, ‘true’, ‘loyal’ and right-thinking ‘free-born subjects’. There was no contradiction between condemning the ‘giddy multitude’ and appealing to ‘all His Majesties loyal Subjects’, men who would necessarily be drawn from a variety of social backgrounds.98 Finally, Andrew Pettegree has recently suggested that early-modern readers only ever bought books and pamphlets with which they already knew they would agree. This model of how readers engaged with texts is unsatisfying because it does not take account of the variety of printed voices which readers might encounter at the start of periods of conflict and turmoil, at a time when the majority (but admittedly not all) of readers might not yet have made up their minds as to which side they would align themselves with. Furthermore, this chapter has shown that there were periods within conflicts when hardened or ingrained attitudes might shift as a result of changes in the political landscape. During these moments of realignment, one of which occurred in England in late 1647 and early 1648, pamphlets and books could have an appeal far beyond the usual audience of committed readers who could always be relied upon to purchase them.

See the title-page of Propositions for Peace, Between The Kings most Excellent Majesty . . . ([July] 1648).

98

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2

The Politics of Sexual Libel

THE POLITICS OF SEXUAL LIBEL

Mucky Books

The remarkably sexual and sexualized contents of the newsbooks have ensured that scholars have traditionally believed them to be unworthy of serious historical research.1 When Mercurius Melancholicus attacked the Presbyterian Assembly of Divines he portrayed it as ‘a whore . . . opening her empty quiver’ to the ‘golden shafts’ of the Parliament for ‘foure shillings a day’. In June 1648 another title carried a story about a soldier of the New Model Army who had been arrested for ‘Buggering of a Mare’. The offender was indicted, Elencticus said, and brought before the future regicide John Bradshaw, who asked him ‘what he could say for himselfe’. The soldier replied that he was ‘a Servant to the State, and the Mare was for the States service, and in that she was his owne proper goods he conceived he might use of her as he pleased’. The soldier could have been sentenced to death for bestiality, but his rather strange defence, with its distorted fealty to the ‘State’, was allegedly enough to persuade Bradshaw to release him without charge. In a similar fashion, The Man in the Moon, which was written during 1649 and 1650 by a conventional adherent of the traditional Church ‘as by law established’, contains a graphic story about a member of a religious sect who ‘dreamed that he was in heaven, and there he had carnall copulation with the Virgin Mary, her Son standing and looking on’.2 All those who opposed the Stuarts were considered to be legitimate targets for similarly framed libellous attacks. In July 1649, for example, Mercurius Elencticus claimed that an obscure ‘assertor of the parliaments honour’ named Hawford in Doncaster was an ‘Hermaphrodite’. In April 1648 Mercurius Melancholicus told of a soldier from the New Model Army who kidnapped a woman and stole more than £300 from her. The Puritan allegedly said to his prisoner, CP, ii, p. 83; J.B. Williams, A history of English journalism to the foundation of the Gazette (1908), p. 145; Hyder E. Rollins, Cavalier and Puritan: ballads and broadsides illustrating the period of the Great Rebellion, 1640–1660 (New York, 1923), p. 58. 2 Melancholicus, no. 36, 1–8 May 1648, p. 219; Elencticus, no. 31, 21–28 June 1648, p. 244; Man in Moon, no. 53, 1–9 May 1649, pp. 403–4. A version of this chapter appeared under the title ‘The politics of sexual libel: royalist propaganda in the 1640s’, in HLQ, 67, 1 (2004), 75–99. 1

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I have no minde to hurt thee, only the Spirit moves me to offer thee this kindness, and thou ought’st not to withstand the holy motions thereof, and if thou wilt, it must needs be a presumptuous sin, by which thou mayst justly tempt me to destroy thee. . . . Therefore if thou wilt willingly condiscend to my love, I will restore unto thee the third part of the money againe, which shall remain in thy hands as a pledge of Love.

The ‘honest Lady’ hated ‘the very thought of so vile an act’ and refused to comply, ‘Whereupon he stripped her to the very skin, pulled her by the hare of the head, and offered such incivility to her, that my pen blushes to reveale it.’3 In general, however, the royalist newsbooks concentrated their attacks on a relatively small group of leading rebels: Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Scott, John Bradshaw, Henry Marten, Hugh Peters and Henry Walker. There are hundreds of examples of these attacks, but a few will suffice to reveal their tenor. Cromwell was invariably portrayed as both a lecher and a cuckold, and his wife was frequently alleged to be having an affair with a certain Mr Cressit; her enjoyment of her ‘C___’ was, they claimed, so pronounced that she could justly lay claim to be the ‘Qu[een] of Sluts’. Mercurius Aulicus claimed that the wife of Miles Corbet, the chairman of the hated Committee of Examinations, was a ‘whore’, and The Parliament Kite wrote to inform Corbet that an acquaintance of his had sex with Corbet’s wife in her home ‘the other day’, and ‘he had rather go to your house then to a bawdy-house because it is a great deal cheaper’. The parliamentary journalist Henry Walker was another favourite figure of fun. Mercurius Melancholicus, for example, referred to him as the ‘bastard brat of a nine times baser strumpet then the Whore of Babylon’, who looked ‘as if he had crept into the world through the Devils arse-hole’. Hardly an issue of a royalist newsbook appeared which did not refer to the alleged sexual proclivities of the republican MP Henry Marten and of Cromwell’s chaplain, Hugh Peters. The adventures of Peters’s ‘holy Prick-wood’ were staple fare for the newsbooks, as was Henry Marten’s alleged fondness for prostitutes.4 Marten had the dubious distinction of being condemned as a ‘whore-master’ by both Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, and the royalist newsbooks attacked him with evident glee. For Mercurius Dogmaticus he was a ‘pockifi’d Catamite’ who 3 Elencticus, no. 10, 25 June–2 July 1649, p. 76; Melancholicus, no. 33, 10–17 April 1648, pp. 192–3. 4 Pragmaticus, no. 52, 30 April–7 May 1650, sig. 1v; Melancholicus, no. 20, 8–15 Jan. 1648, p. 118; Melancholicus, no. 28, 6–13 Mar. 1648, p. 163; Man in Moon, no. 16, 1–8 Aug. 1649, p. 151; Bellicus, no. 26 [sic], 11–‘13’ (18) July 1648, sig. 2r–v; Pragmaticus, no. 29, 13–20 Nov. 1649, sig. 3r; Parliament Kite, no. 10, 20–27 July 1648, p. 54; Melancholicus, no. 22, 22–29 Jan. 1648, p. 129; Man in Moon, no. 40, 23–31 Jan. 1650, p. 316; Pragmaticus, no. 47, 19–26 Mar. 1650, sig. 2v; Man in Moon, no. 7, 21–30 May 1649, p. 74; Man in Moon, no. 18, 15–23 Aug. 1649, p. 151; Melancholicus, no. 12, 13–20 Nov. 1647, p. 248; Man in Moon, no. 9, 5–13 June 1649, p. 82.

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maintained a young boy for the purposes of buggering him, but for the rest of the subversive press his interest in sodomy was confined to the prostitutes who frequented the Strand or Covent Garden: Mercurius Melancholicus condemned him as ‘that beastly lecher, [who] stumps the whores in every whole’.5 In June 1649 The Man in the Moon claimed that Marten has so over-ridden himself . . . that ’tis generally thought he will never be serviceable to the state again, it seems a Friday . . . he took up two wagg tayles in the Strand, Carried them to a leaping-school at Charinge-Crosse . . . where after he had feasted them with anchovies, lobsters and caviar and bottles of Stipony, he for some weigthy reasons adjourned into a withdrawing Chamber where all three sat in a close Committee from Friday to Sunday noon.

The likening of the proceedings of the Commons and its committees to a brothel and the suggestion of Marten’s disrespect for the Sabbath were of course deliberately aimed at caricaturing the religious zeal of the Puritans. Mercurius Pragmaticus commented wryly that Marten ‘has no sonnes nor daughters, but more Neeses and Nephews then the Pope. This Saint loves Mutton indeed.’ The republican MP and regicide Thomas Scott was the target of many adverse comments from the royalists, particularly after he took charge of the attempts to crack down on the unlicensed and subversive press during the summer of 1649. There was a particularly nasty twist to the stories about him. In June 1648 Mercurius Psitacus claimed that Scott, who was married on at least two and possibly three occasions before the late 1640s, had ‘laine with his wives owne daughter’ and ‘gotten her with child’. More than a year later Mercurius Elencticus claimed that he had ‘committed sacriledge upon the body of child. (I am loath to mention the name of the girle, for the parents sake) . . . but that he is guilty of such an unworthy Act shall shortly bee read upon all the doores and posts about Westminster.’6 The decision to post such a damning libel in the public spaces of Westminster was a serious matter which exposed the royalists to an increased chance of detection, but it demonstrates how important they felt such seemingly crude slurs could be in deflating the public persona of one of the leading rebels. In addition to these blatantly sexualized stories, the newsbooks also carried innumerable scatological diatribes. They often asked the rebels to ‘kisse my bumme’ and presented themselves as ‘farting’ in the face of their enemies. Mercurius Bellicus claimed that the Scottish opponents of the king ate their own excrement, and Mercurius Elencticus condemned the king’s 5 Dogmaticus, no. 4, 27 Jan.–3 Feb. 1648, p. 40; Melancholicus, no. 22, 22–29 Jan. 1648, p. 129. 6 Man in Moon, no. 10, 13–20 June 1649, pp. 85–6; Pragmaticus, no. 47, 19–26 Mar. 1650, sig. 2v; Psitacus, no. 3, 21–26 June 1648, p. 17; Elencticus, no. 14, 23–30 July 1649, p. 111.

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jailer Hammond as an ‘arse-worm’. The Man in the Moon elaborated upon this, condemning England’s new rulers as ‘half a score of Mouses Arsewormes’. An alderman of London named Thomas Atkins, or ‘Tony Turd’ as he came to be known, who had soiled himself on hearing a volley of shots during the First Civil War, was the target of many of these jokes. In July 1649 the short-lived Mercurius Carolinus claimed that Atkins had recently seen two boys fighting in public, pulled them apart, and asked them the cause of their quarrel. According to Carolinus, ‘one of them magnanimously answered, Sir, he hath broke the laws of our School, . . . for he let a fart and nere cryed Atkins, this affront Tony turd had revenged, but that the fear he was put in, had caused him to make a jakes of his breeches, which he needs must go home to empty’.7 The notion that boys in at least one school took Atkins’s name in vain whenever they passed wind and assaulted any of their peers who did not do so is, even more than 350 years later, strikingly comic.8 The constant repetition of insults used like epithets (Marten’s liking for prostitutes, Scott’s predilection for children, Mrs Cromwell’s promiscuity, Atkins’s propensity to soil himself) not only ridiculed and denigrated but also ensured that the very name of a rebel or his wife would eventually conjure up in the reader’s mind an association with a particular word or unnatural act. This would then attach to these figures a kind of leitmotif of perversion which gave added currency, if not plausibility, to these portrayals. These attacks were designed to convince the reader that there could not be so much smoke without at least some fire. Rethinking sexual libel The libellous, scatological and patently absurd nature of these stories and tirades has ensured that most scholars have considered the royalist newsbooks to be unworthy of serious research. The Victorian and Edwardian gentlemen who pioneered the academic study of the mid-seventeenth century were genuinely appalled at what they saw as the vulgarity and obscenity of these titles.9 In recent years, however, the traditional disregard for this sort of material has given way to a reassessment of the importance of sexual libel in early-modern society. Robert Darnton, for example, has argued that the sexual libels that circulated against the court in eighteenth-

Carolinus, no. 1, 19–26 July 1649, sig. 1r. Melancholicus, no. 25, 12–19 Feb. 1648, p. 145; Man in Moon, no. 22, 12–19 Sept. 1649, p. 181; Elencticus, no. 8, 12–19 Jan. 1648, p. 40; Bellicus, no. 12, 11–18 April 1648, sig. 1r–v; Man in Moon, no. 8, 28 May–5 June 1649, p. 68. For similar references to Laud in the early 1640s see Helen Pierce, ‘Anti-episcopacy and graphic satire in England, 1640–1645’, HJ, 47, 4 (2004), 809–48, at 830 and 833. 9 CP, ii (1988), p. 83; Williams, History of English journalism, p. 145; Rollins, Cavalier and Puritan, p. 58. 7 8

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Figure 4. The second and third pages of no. 18 of The Man in the Moon, 15–23 August 1649 (180 x 120 mm). These pages focus on the difficulties of the new republic. They also contain attacks on some of the regime’s leading figures, Cromwell, John Bradshaw, Henry Marten, and Major General Skippon. Note the poor quality of the printing and the typographical errors in the text. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.



century France were more damaging to the ancien régime than Voltaire’s Social Contract. Similarly, Robert Scribner proposed that Protestant propagandists during the German Reformation deliberately used scatological language and crude imagery to mock, ridicule and desanctify the beliefs of their Catholic opponents. Such imagery had the effect of ‘reducing the elevated to the humble, of humiliating it so that it loses its ability to inspire’ awe or fear.10 Sexual libel has now been taken up enthusiastically by scholars of English history and literature. Pauline Croft, in a study of manuscript verse libels that followed the death in 1612 of the unpopular Lord Treasurer, Robert Cecil, has analysed the language of depravity and moral corruption to trace ‘the emergence of an active public opinion’ in early seventeenth-century England, in which ‘remorseless’ imagery of deformity and immorality was used as a metaphor for political corruption.11 Alastair Bellany has argued persuasively that such libels need to be studied as part of a broader, vibrant news culture attesting to a public and invariably political contest between official and unofficial versions of particular events, especially with regard to the ideological origins of the Civil Wars.12 David Underdown’s excellent study of The Man in the Moon argues that the bawdy stories and sexual slanders that preoccupy this newsbook ‘were part of the popular language’ of the time, and were designed to underline the alleged iniquity of the Puritans, and of women who had rebelled against masculine authority. The Man in the Moon’s ‘wearisome catalogue of sexual insults’ was in fact intended to uphold a traditional moral order which could only be restored with the Stuarts.13 Benne Klaas-Faber has argued that the libels of the 1640s were part of a satirical tradition stretching back to classical times which sought either to transform the beliefs and behaviour of the individuals attacked or to bring about their ruin. The calumny of Puritan sexual perversity, in this view, was a frontal attack on their carefully constructed self-image as pure, diligent, simple Christians. Klaas-Faber explicitly likens the act of libel to the shaming rituals of popular culture, such as the skimmington or charivari.14 This analogy is particularly appropriate to the royalist newsbooks because they often likened their actions to throwing eggs or stones, or publicly whipping an evil-doer. It is important to stress, Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and other episodes in French cultural history (1984), pp. 215–56; Robert Darnton, The forbidden best-sellers of pre-Revolutionary France (1996), pp. 226–7; Robert Scribner, For the sake of simple folk: popular propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), p. 81. 11 Pauline Croft, ‘The reputation of Robert Cecil: libels, political opinion, and popular awareness in the early seventeenth century’, TRHS, 6th ser., 1 (1993), 54, 59, 68. 12 For details of the work of Bellany and other scholars working on this subject see McElligott, ‘The politics of sexual libel’, 88. 13 David Underdown, ‘The Man in the Moon: loyalty and libel in popular politics, 1640–1660’, in David Underdown, A freeborn people: politics and the nation in seventeenth century England (Oxford, 1996), pp. 97, 103, 104, 110. 14 Benne Klaas-Faber, ‘The poetics of subversion and conservatism: popular satire, c. 1640–c. 1649’ (D.Phil. diss., Oxford, 1992), pp. 28–30, 69, 79, 185–6, 190–1. 10

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therefore, that this sexual libel was not intended merely to be funny. These insults were not harmless jokes which could be easily ignored by those on the receiving end of them. They were calculated to be funny and to fulfil an important political task: to destroy the reputation and credibility of the king’s enemies. In a patriarchal society how could Oliver Cromwell possibly hope to command respect or fear when he was seemingly unable to protect the reputation and honour of his wife? Everything we know about the extraordinary sensitivity of people in early-modern society to personal attacks suggests that this strategy of calumny was a sophisticated way for propagandists to achieve their aims.15 The reassessment of sexual libel, however welcome, has one serious drawback; one might be forgiven for assuming that popular satire in the early-modern period consisted of nothing but bawdy tales, smutty stories and scatological rhymes. Sexual libel was, in fact, only one of a repertoire of rhetorical devices that the royalists used to attack and undermine their enemies. The newsbooks commonly deployed a host of images, quotations, analogies and metaphors from a broad swathe of human experience and knowledge, including the Bible, popular culture, politics, the natural world, and classical, medieval and recent history. It is not uncommon to find sexual libel, biblical quotation, historical allusion and metaphors from the natural world jostling against one another in the pages of the royalist titles. A full discussion of such devices might run to volumes, but two of the most common tropes will provide essential context for the foregoing analysis of bawdy material. Analogies from the natural world and references from or allusions to the Bible were very commonly used, and they established overarching contrasts between the sacred and the profane, the natural and the unnatural. The bawdy tales played into this figurative set-up, as obviously profane and unnatural; and they were rhetorically consistent with it, working suggestively and poetically rather than literally and logically. The question of whether the newsbooks merely invented their stories of lechery and perversity needs to be considered in light of Sarah Barber’s biography of Henry Marten, which suggests that the sexual innuendo against him was entirely unfounded. Barber ably demonstrates the importance of Marten’s political thought, but the attempted rehabilitation of his private life is less convincing. She relies on the lack of damning evidence from his own pen or from the pens of his close friends and allies, and asks us to accept that the most private activities will always appear in the historical record. More importantly, she ignores the large number of contemporaries from a wide range of political and religious standpoints who produced, consumed Conyers Read, ‘William Cecil and Elizabethan public relations’, in S.T. Bindoff, J. Hurstfield and C.H. Williams (eds), Elizabethan government and society (1961), pp. 21–55, at 34; Pierce, ‘Anti-episcopacy and graphic satire’, 811, 814; CSPD, July–Sept. 1683, p. 341; Iain McCalman, Radical underworld: prophets, revolutionaries and pornographers in London, 1795–1840 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 176.

15

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and transmitted stories about Marten. Oliver Cromwell and Charles I agreed on little other than that Marten was a ‘whore-master’; and the tales of his nefarious activities were, as Barber acknowledges, ‘the toast of London society’. There is little doubt that the royalists often invented stories, embellished facts and massaged the truth, but the sheer number of people other than the royalists who told similar stories about Marten suggests that there may well have been a kernel of truth to what the newsbooks gave out.16 As we shall see in subsequent chapters, one of the great strengths of the newsbooks as a historical source is that their serial nature allows us to track images, ideas, incidents and processes at regular intervals over a long period of time. The remarkably consistent nature of the libels over time is certainly important and suggestive, and at the very least these stories were evidently credible enough to be considered by many contemporaries as descriptive rather than merely polemical.17 No doubt there was exaggeration, but these stories were not mere random calumny; they were a deliberate pattern of associations linked in some way to the truth but not reliant on it in every detail. The book of nature and the book of God The royalist newsbooks took it for granted that nature was hierarchical, fixed and divinely created. As such, they often used analogies and metaphors from the natural world to underscore the wicked and unnatural nature of rebellion against the king. Both Charles I and Charles II were commonly compared to the sun, on which humanity is, of course, entirely dependent for ‘life and vigor’. This identification was so widespread that John Crouch’s newsbook The Man in the Moon was so titled (at least partly) because he wanted to represent himself as a body that would reflect the light of the sun onto England during the black night of Cromwellian darkness: ‘O Come my Sun, from thee thy Moon has light / Without thee (alas) I cannot shine by night.’ The royalists frequently argued that although the Stuarts had been temporarily obscured (by clouds, night or a dark winter), they would, like the sun, 16 Sarah Barber, A revolutionary rogue: Henry Marten and the immoral English republic (Stroud, 2000), pp. 141–51. See also C.M. Williams, ‘The anatomy of a radical gentleman: Henry Marten’, in Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (eds), Puritans and revolutionaries: essays in seventeenth-century history presented to Christopher Hill (Oxford, 1978), pp. 118–38; Susan Wiseman, ‘ “Adam, the Father of all Flesh”: porno-political rhetoric and political theory in and after the English Civil War’, in James Holstun (ed.), Pamphlet wars: prose in the English revolution (1992), pp. 134–57. For a judicious example of how scholars should handle and assess cases of sexual slurs and libels see Fearghal McGarry’s wonderful study of the vile Eoin O’Duffy: a self-made hero (Oxford, 2005), pp. 163–9. 17 Elizabeth Skerpan, The rhetoric of politics in the English revolution, 1642–1660 (Columbia, MO, 1992), p. 3.

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inevitably return to their rightful place. In March 1650, for example, The Royall Diurnall wrote that we have seen the dawning of our Day of Joy after all our Stormes of Sorrowes; our new Sun is up, and on his course, dazling the bleared Eyes of Rebellion, and enlivening every Loyall Heart, who from his warme rayes of His Majesty, gives now life and vigor to each blooming point of Loyalty, that hath endured as cruell a Winter of hardship, as ever blew in this Isle.18

It is worth noting that this image of day following night and summer following winter disintegrates if one pursues it to its logical conclusion. It creates an image of perpetual change and revolution which was at odds with the desire to portray the fixed and permanent nature of monarchical government. Yet, this image from nature worked as propaganda not because it was logically sound or internally coherent but because it evoked hopeful associations and emotions in the mind of the reader. In contrast to the brilliance of the Stuarts, the rebels were likened to mere ‘Glow-worms’ or to Icarus, the mythological figure who soared too close to the sun.19 The nobility and personal integrity of the king were often emphasized by comparing him to a lion, an eagle, a phoenix or a white dove. It was also common for the Stuarts to be compared to ‘noble’ trees such as the cedar or oak. Mercurius Pragmaticus used this image to good effect when he wrote, in November 1649, that the following spring would witness the banishment of ‘Mr. Frost’ and the growth of leaves on the branches of the royal tree. These words were a statement of faith in the future success of Charles II, a play on the idea of re-birth and re-growth in nature, but also a swipe at Walter Frost, a prominent member of the Council of State who was responsible for licensing one of the regime’s official newsbooks. The king was sometimes compared to a shepherd guarding his flock from cruel wolves, but he more commonly appeared as the kind and diligent lord of the vineyard of England.20 The Stuarts were the protectors of the harvest from the ‘evill Man in Moon, no. 55, 8–23 May 1650, p. 413; Royall Diurnall, no. 3, 4–11 Mar. 1650, sig. 1r–v. 19 Elencticus, no. 44, 20–27 Sept. 1648, p. 351; Man in Moon, no. 52, 24 April–2 May 1650, p. 396; Man in Moon, no. 55, 8–23 May 1650, p. 413; Royall Diurnall, no. 3, 4–11 Mar. 1650, sig. 1r–v; Royall Diurnall, no. 7A, 14–23 April 1650, sig. 1r; Pragmaticus, no. 39B, 19–26 Dec. 1648, sig. 1r; Aulicus, no. 2, [14 August] 1648, p. 12. For examples of imagery depicting Charles I as the sun in royalist propaganda during the early and mid-1640s, see Kevin Sharpe, ‘So hard a text? Images of Charles I, 1612–1700’, HJ, 43 (2000), 383–405, and Joad Raymond, ‘Popular representations of Charles I’, in Thomas N. Corns (ed.), The royal image: representations of Charles I (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 47–72. 20 Parliament Kite, no. 9, 13–20 July 1648, p. 52; Academicus, no. 1, 15 April 1648, p. 1; Pragmaticus, no. 30, 20–27 Nov. 1649, sig. 1r; Pragmaticus, no. 9B, 9–16 Nov. 1647, p. 68; Bellicus, no. 27, 19–26 July 1648, sig. 2v; Elencticus, no. 52, 15–22 Nov. 1648, p. 501; Parliament Kite, no. 1, 10–16 May 1648, p. 2; Melancholicus, no. 45C, 1–8 July 1648, p. 269. 18

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servants’ who, ‘in stead of weeding and fencing the Vineyard of the Common-Wealth, . . . root up the fruitfullest Vines, and cut up the fattest Olives, till they have destroyed the Vinyard’.21 The king’s enemies were likened to a variety of pests and noxious animals such as snakes, hornets, scorpions, horse-leaches, locusts, toads, frogs, lice and fleas. They were sometimes compared to brambles encroaching upon fertile ground, but they were most commonly described as caterpillars that had ‘destroyed all the good things of the land’ through their greed and corruption. They were an Egyptian plague that, if it prevailed for another year, would ‘not leave us so much as a Dock-leaf to grase on’. It went without saying that these pests would have to be exterminated before the vineyard of England could again bear fruit. When the rebels took the form of birds, they were invariably presented as peacocks, crows, jackdaws and magpies – birds that were commonly associated with pride, evil or theft. These birds were thought to be easy prey for the talons of the royal eagle himself, or for one of the loyal newsbooks such as the Kite or Scrich-Owle, ‘scrich’ alluding to the discordant hunting cry of the owl.22 The royalists sometimes imagined individual rebels (most notably Cromwell) as cunning foxes who should be hunted down without mercy. During the Second Civil War, for example, Mercurius Aulicus called upon his fellow countrymen to Arme, arme, ye Hunstmen, kennels are abroad of subtill Foxes, couple then your hounds, Hunt and destroy them, leave them no aboad; Their stinck hath poysoned Englands utmost bounds, These loathsome Creatures which we tearme the Fox, Are more destructive then the Plague or Pox.

On the whole, however, they preferred to imagine their enemies as vicious wolves or contemptible dogs. The effect of rebellion was to have turned nature on its head, so that now: Lyons are yoak’t, and forc’t to draw the plow While Doggs are coach’t, and garlands deck their brow.23

Bellicus, no. 1, 13–22 Nov. 1647, p. 6; Bellicus, no. 2, 22–29 Nov. 1647, pp. 13–14; Parliament Kite, no. 4, 1–9 June 1648, p. 18. 22 Fourteen issues of The Parliament Kite appeared between May and August 1648, and three issues of The Parliaments Scrich-Owle were printed in June and July of the same year. These were precisely the months when the royalists saw themselves as hunting a cornered prey. From the autumn of 1648, as we shall see in Chapter 6, the tables were turned. 23 Melancholicus, no. 35, 24 April–1 May 1648, p. 205; Aulicus, no. 2, [14 Aug.] 1648, p. 10; Aulicus, no. 3, 10–17 Feb. 1648, sig. 4v; Aulicus, no. 15, 11–18 May 1648, sig. 2r; Melancholicus, no. 53B, 21–28 Aug. 1648, p. 155; Aulicus, no. 1, 25 Jan.–3 Feb. 1648, sig. 1v; Elencticus, no. 44, 20–27 Sept. 1648, p. 358; Man in Moon, no. 12, 27 June–4 July 21

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The royalists thus used figurative oppositions from the natural world to draw the rebels as completely opposed to the natural order. It was rare for the newsbooks to quote directly from Scripture, but the authors frequently alluded to incidents and individuals in the Bible. Indeed, the Roundheads’ familiarity with the Bible – their propensity to find an exactly appropriate biblical quotation for every event – was mocked as a sign of their ignorance of everything else.24 Although the newsbooks were scathing toward the king’s enemies who claimed to be fighting to establish ‘Canaan’, ‘Israel’, or the ‘New Jerusalem’ in England, they frequently compared Charles I to various heroes from the Old Testament, including Solomon, David, Daniel and Job. David, the greatest of the kings of Israel, had faced a rebellion that engulfed his entire kingdom, yet he never lost his faith in God, and it was this faith that ensured that he regained his throne and saw his enemies vanquished. To the royalists, Charles was, like Job, steadfast in the face of extreme affliction, a man of ‘blameless and upright life, . . . who feared God and set his face against wrongdoing’. The king’s friends could also be assured that ‘the triumph of the wicked is short-lived, the glee of the godless lasts but a moment’ (Job 20:5).25 The newsbooks also ransacked the Old Testament for suitable examples of treachery, murder and tyranny with which to stigmatize their opponents and extol the virtues of the king. Their enemies were ‘sons of Belial’, frequently used to designate Satan. The rebels were often likened to the enemies of ancient Israel such as Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who destroyed the Temple and enslaved many of the children of God.26 They were also compared to various Israelites (such as Absalom, Achitophel, Cain, Jacob, Jerabom and Joab) whose greed and treachery had led them to betray their friends, family or king. The rebels were ‘cunning 1649, p. 90; Man in Moon, no. 37, 2–9 Jan. 1650, pp. 293–4; Man in Moon, no. 41, 30 Jan.–6 Feb. 1650, p. 322; Melancholicus, no. 35, 24 April–1 May 1648, p. 205; Aulicus, no. 4, 21–28 Aug. 1648, p. 32; Aulicus, no. 5, 24 Feb.–2 Mar. 1648, sig. 4v; Aulicus, no. 10B, 30 Mar.–27 April 1648, sig. 1v; Aulicus, no. 3, [22 Aug.] 1648, p. 21; Aulicus, no 2, 21–28 Aug. 1649, p. 15; Bellicus, no. 2, 22–29 Nov. 1647, pp. 13–14; Bellicus, no. 4, 14–20 Feb. 1648, sig. 1v; Bellicus, no. 5, 29 Feb.–7 Mar. 1648, sig. 4r; Bellicus, no. 8, 14–21 Mar. 1648, p. 4; Bellicus, no. 12, 11–18 April 1648, p. 5; Bellicus, no. 22, 20–27 June 1648, sig. 3v; Elencticus, no. 1, 29 Oct.–5 Nov. 1647, p. 5; Melancholicus, no. 1, [25 Dec. 1648–1 Jan. 1649], sig. 2r; Bellicus, no. 26, 11–‘13’ (18) July 1648, sig. 1v–2r; Man in Moon, no. 11, 20–27 June 1649, p. 97; Parliament Porter, no. 4, 18–25 Sept. 1648, p. 18; Pragmaticus, no. 4B, 8–15 May 1649, p. 29; Royall Diurnall, no. 2, 31 July–7 Aug. 1648, sig. 1r; Aulicus, no. 1, 25 Jan–3 Feb. 1648, sig. 1r. 24 Bellicus, no. 12, 12–18 April 1648, p. 4. 25 Pragmaticus, no. 5, 25 April–2 May 1648, sig. 4v; Aulicus, no. 2, 21–28 Aug. 1649, pp. 13–14; Aulicus, no. 18, 23–30 May 1648, sig. 2v; Bellicus, no. 2, 22–29 Nov. 1647, p. 13; Domesticus, no. 1, [5 June] 1648, sig. 2r; Melancholicus, no. 2–9 Oct. 1647, p. 33. 26 Aulicus, no. 1, 14–21 Aug. 1649, p. 6; Aulicus, no. 3, [22 Aug.] 1648, p. 20; Domesticus, no. 1, [5 June] 1648, sig. 1v; Melancholicus, no. 6, 2–9 Oct. 1647, p. 35; Dogmaticus, no. 1, [6–13 Jan.] 1648, p. 8; Pragmaticus, no. 40, 29 Jan.–5 Feb. 1650, sig. 1r–v. 55


Joabs’ who have ‘the dexterity to kill with a Kisse, cruell Cains that think to expiate their irreligious acts with the blood of their brethren’.27 The duplicity of the king’s enemies was most frequently linked to the story of Naboth’s vineyard (Kings 1:21). As it is fairly obscure, it is worth rehearsing here. Naboth, a man of Jezreel, owned a vineyard adjoining the palace of King Ahab. The king wished to add this vineyard to his lands and offered to buy it or exchange it for another. Naboth, however, refused to give up ‘the inheritance of his fathers’, and Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, conspired to bring a false charge of treason and blasphemy against Naboth. Naboth was stoned to death, but as Ahab went to take possession of the vineyard, he was confronted by the prophet Elijah, who pronounced doom on him and his family.28 This story seems to have been popular not merely as a parallel to the righteousness of Charles (foretelling the doom of those who conspired against him), but also because it was part of the broader topos of England as the vineyard of the Stuarts. The vineyard was an important component of the royalist myth that England was a tranquil idyll in the years before the Civil Wars, and it also alluded to the centrality of alcohol, conviviality and sociability to the self-image of the loyalists (in contrast with Puritan abstemiousness). The use of the story of Naboth’s vineyard, however, like the images of the sun and the seasons, does not clearly support the intended application. The author of The Royall Diurnall certainly believed that the lesson of the story was ‘woe be to that subject that takes away the Inheritance of their King’,29 but at least some readers must have realized that Ahab was a treacherous king who had been cursed for interfering with the property rights of a subject, a possible parallel to the actions of Charles I in the 1630s. Like the images of day and night or winter and summer discussed above, the story of Naboth’s vineyard becomes ambiguous if one examines it too closely. Yet, it worked as propaganda not because it was unambiguous but because it played so effectively on the fears of social anarchy and divine wrath that were so prevalent during the 1640s.30 The royalists also scoured the Old Testament for references that could be used simultaneously to attack both the Presbyterians and Independents. They were likened to Simeon and Levi, the bloodthirsty murderers of Shechem whose perfidiousness had led to their destruction; to the terrible monsters Leviathan and Behemoth; or to Gog and Magog, the armies of Satan that were to lead the final abortive attack on the kingdom of God. 27 Domesticus, no. 1, [5 June] 1648, sig. 1v; Melancholicus, no. 25, 12–19 Feb. 1648, p. 149; Melancholicus, no. 52B, 14–21 Aug. 1648, p. 250; Bellicus, no. 14, 25 April–2 May 1648, sig. 2r. 28 Royall Diurnall, no. 7A, 14–23 April 1648, sig. 2r; Pragmaticus, no. 11, 6–13 June 1648, sig. 2r; Aulicus, no. 2, 3–10 Feb. 1648, sig. 1v; Academicus, no. 1, [15 April] 1648, p. 6; Bellicus, no. 1, 13–22 Nov. 1647, p. 6; Bellicus, no. 6, 29 Feb.–7 Mar. 1648, sig. 2v. 29 Royall Diurnall, no. 7, 14–23 April 1650, sig. 2r. 30 For the use of Naboth’s vineyard in loyalist propaganda at the time of the Exclusion Crisis see POAS, ii, pp. 82–4.

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The Bible prophesied that Gog and Magog would attack Israel from the north, and it may be that the royalists sometimes intended this to allude only to the Scots, but more often than not it is clear that the royalists had the English factions in mind.31 It was rare for the royalist newsbooks to draw on references to the New Testament before the trial and execution of the king in January 1649. When Charles I escaped from custody in November 1647, Mercurius Elencticus likened the efforts of Parliament to find him to Herod’s efforts to discover the infant Jesus. In May 1648 Mercurius Pragmaticus compared the king’s plight to being crucified between ‘two theevish Factions, the Presbyterians and the Independents’. The vast majority of the references to the New Testament are, however, confined to the weeks immediately before and after the regicide. During this period the royalists likened the rebels to Judas, or to the Jews who had cried out for the crucifixion of Jesus. By the same token, Parliament was compared to the Sanhedrin, the supreme court in Jerusalem that had conducted the preliminary trial of Jesus. John Bradshaw, the President of the High Court of Justice who had pronounced the sentence of death on Charles, was inevitably likened to Pontius Pilate, although The Man in the Moon, in a fit of zeal that must have been difficult to square with orthodox theology, claimed that his sin was actually worse than that committed by Pilate. The Man in the Moon may have merely got carried away with emotion, but if this remarkable claim was premeditated then it may have been due to a distinction between Pilate, whose sin derived from giving way to the clamour of the Jews, and Bradshaw, who consciously set out to murder Charles I. In the summer of 1649 Mercurius Elencticus equated those who purchased any of the late king’s lands or personal possessions to the Jews who had cast lots ‘for the Vestment of our Saviour’ at the foot of the cross.32 In addition to mining the Old and New Testaments, the newsbooks marshalled a whole range of contemporary anti-Jewish stereotypes to point to the corruption and depravity of those who opposed either Charles I or his son. Indeed, almost all of those with whom the royalist newsbooks came into conflict (including Parliament, the New Model Army, the militia of London, the Presbyterians, the Independents, the Levellers in general, and John Lilburne in particular) were given the pejorative epithet ‘Jew’. Despite this seemingly indiscriminate use of the label, however, the deployment of anti-Jewish stereotypes represented systematic propaganda that drew on one of the most common popular prejudices. The royalists imagined their opponents as swarthy, unclean, miserly and 31 Melancholicus, no. 47, 10–17 July 1648, p. 284; Bellicus, no. 22, 20–27 June 1648, sig. 2r; Pragmaticus, no. 23 [sic] [24B], [5–12 Sept.] 1648, sig. 1r–v; Bellicus, no. 4, 14–20 Feb. 1648, p. 6. 32 Elencticus, no. 3, 12–19 Nov. 1647, p. 18; Pragmaticus, no. 6, 5–9 May 1648, sig. 1r; Elencticus, no. 10, 25 June–2 July 1649, p. 79; Pragmaticus, no. 7B, 29 May–5 June 1649, sig. 1r; Man in Moon, no. 22, 12–19 Sept. 1649, p. 180.

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degenerate Jews with ‘Rabbinical Monkey-faces’. They were a superstitious people led by ‘ignorant’ rabbis whose ‘Synagoge[s] of Satan’ were synonymous with idolatry. Indeed, in July 1648 Mercurius Melancholicus invoked the anti-Jewish blood libel by comparing the king’s enemies to the rabbis and their followers who, it was claimed, used the blood of Christian children in their religious ceremonies. The newsbooks also liked to portray the Scots and the London Presbyterians as greedy, mercenary Jews who worshipped ‘Gold’ in place of ‘God’.33 Most of these anti-Jewish comments were aimed at the king’s enemies in general, but two individuals were singled out in particular, Henry Walker and Miles Corbet. Henry Walker was the most prominent journalist on the side of Parliament in the late 1640s and was regularly attacked by the royalists as a liar, a lecher and an ignorant fool. This was enough to earn many the epithet ‘Jew’, but he was also interested in Hebrew and had a sideline as a sectarian preacher, and furthermore had red hair and a red beard – the same physical characteristics that Christians had traditionally ascribed to Judas Iscariot. Like the sexual libels, this labelling was effective as propaganda because it could be linked to some indisputable facts. The other figure so singled out was Miles Corbet, and once again there was a reason rooted in physiognomy. Corbet was the chairman of the Committee of Examinations, which harassed the royalist newsbooks, and he sat in the High Court of Justice in early 1649 and was one of those who signed the royal death warrant. We have already seen that the newsbooks carried numerous stories about the alleged sexual activities of Corbet and his wife, but he was also frequently labelled a Jew, even before the regicide, likely motivated by his sallow complexion. In November 1647 Mercurius Melancholicus joined these stereotypes with scatological ones, claiming that Corbet was ‘in countenance a Jew, in colour like a piece of sooty Bacon hang’d seven years in the devils arse-hole’. Later, Mercurius Elencticus wrote that the ‘sooty-fac’d, bacon-chapt Corbet’ had unleashed his dogs against the newsbooks. Christians had frequently portrayed the Jews as dogs who had barked at and attacked their saviour Jesus Christ.34 33 Pragmaticus, no. 30, 17–24 Oct. 1648, sig. 1r; Academicus, no. 1, [15 April] 1648, p. 4; Melancholicus, no. 45A, 26 June–3 July 1648, p. 269; Pragmaticus, no. 14, 27 June–4 July 1648, sig. 1v; Aulicus, no. 2, 3–10 Feb. 1648, sig. 2v; Elencticus, no. 57, 19–26 Dec. 1648, p. 548; Pragmaticus, no. 6B, 22–29 May 1648, sig. 2r; Pragmaticus, no. 11, 6–13 June 1648, sig. 4r–v; Bellicus, no. 22, 20–27 June 1648, sig. 4r. For an early labelling of a Puritan meeting as a ‘Synagogue’, see J. Harris, The Puritanes Impuritie (1641), pp. 4–5. 34 Man in Moon, no. 22, 12–19 Sept. 1649, p. 182; Melancholicus, no. 13, 20–29 Nov. 1647, p. 77; Melancholicus, no. 20, 8–15 Jan. 1648, p. 118; Elencticus, no. 9, 19–26 Jan. 1648, p. 65; Elencticus, no. 18, 22–29 Mar. 1648, p. 138; Elencticus, no. 59, 2–9 Jan. 1649, p. 563; Man in Moon, no. 2, 16–23 April 1649, p. 12; Man in Moon, no. 22, 12–19 Sept. 1649, p. 182; Man in Moon, no. 24, 26 Sept.–10 Oct. 1649, p. 201. On this particular anti-Jewish trope see Frank Felsenstein, Anti-Semitic stereotypes: a paradigm of otherness in English popular culture, 1660–1830 (Baltimore, MD, 1995), pp. 29–31; J.W. Willis Bund

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It must be stressed that the anti-Jewish sentiments in the royalist newsbooks are not synonymous with modern anti-Semitism, though they may sound very much like it. Physiognomic insults had not yet been linked to pseudo-scientific arguments about the unchanging (and unchangeable) genetic make-up of the allegedly inferior Jewish ‘race,’ which came at least two centuries later. The royalists certainly believed that a number of individuals, most notably the regicides, had (like Judas Iscariot) been irreversibly damned for all eternity, but for the most part they had a different point in mind in comparing their enemies to Jews. The conversion of the Jews was a doctrinally necessary precondition for the Second Coming. If it was possible for the degenerate Jews to be saved in spite of their enormous crimes, it was also possible for those who opposed the king to save their souls. All that was required of them (so long as they had not been actively involved in the shedding of the king’s blood) was that they renounce rebellion and embrace the divinely created institution of monarchy. So, in this way a crude and unthinking prejudice provided a strategy for achieving at least three goals simultaneously (only two of which were addressed by the sexual libels): appealing to a broadly held sentiment among the populace; undermining the self-image of the parliamentarians as righteous Christians; and arguing that those who had opposed the king could, without any difficulty, renounce their errors and embrace the Stuart cause. Sexual libel: ancestors and descendants It is clear that the royalist newsbooks are not the sub-literate pornographic rags that some have imagined them to be. Rather, they represent a conscious strategy devised by skilled authors to appeal to the broadest possible cross-section of the public. As the author of Mercurius Pragmaticus put it, his simple style was designed to ‘tickle and charm the more vulgar fancies, who little regard truths in a serious garb’.35 One searches the pages of these newsbooks in vain for any grand political theory, because the authors eschewed book-learning and intellectual argument in favour of an appeal to the emotions of the reader. Nonetheless, the newsbooks had a number of serious objectives: to give heart to royalists; to encourage them to remain apart from their enemies; to annoy, irritate, divide, dishearten, and confuse these enemies; and to win new adherents to the royal cause. Much of the recent research on libels seems to assume that they were entirely fixated upon sexual matters. By contrast, this chapter has suggested that sexual libel was an effective strategy for attacking one’s enemies, but that, at least in the (ed.), The diary of Henry Townshend (1915–20), i, p. 87; BL, Sloane MS 756, fol. 11v. I am grateful to Dr Paul Hammer for sharing this last reference, which comes from the 1601 trial of Essex and Southampton. 35 Pragmaticus, no. 1, 28 Mar.–April 1648, sig. 1r–v. 59


royalist newsbooks, it was only one aspect of a discourse that functioned in a richer figurative and cultural context, as well as a broader historical context. In all likelihood the royalists of the 1640s drew inspiration from the conventions of a vibrant, popular culture that were also available to, and used by, the libellers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. For example, earlier in this chapter it was suggested that one of the reasons why John Crouch called his newsbook The Man in the Moon was that he wanted to portray himself as reflecting the light of the sun onto England during the Cromwellian night; but there was at least one other reason: he was consciously referring to an old folk-song and ballad called The Man in the Moon Drinks Claret. In a period in which Parliament had banned the importation of French wine, an allusion to a ballad which celebrated the joys of alcohol could be deployed to good anti-Puritan effect. The transmission through time and space of such images and ideas is an example of the often remarked-upon interdependence of literate and oral cultures in early-modern society.36 The propagandists in the pay of Parliament and the Army during the 1640s and 1650s certainly used satire and libel, and they occasionally dabbled in much more risqué material.37 For example, Henry Neville’s Newes from the New Exchange, Or The Commonwealth of Ladies (1649) was a passable attempt at smuttiness, but it was practically unique among republican tracts and its contents were less skilfully constructed and deployed than similar tracts written by the royalists. The self-consciously godly Puritans and their allies could, quite simply, never make use of the imagery of sex and sexual promiscuity or perversity in the same way, or to the same extent, as their enemies.38 What of propaganda and libel after the 1640s? How much, for example, does the enormous volume of libel and invective produced by the Whigs and Tories in the early 1680s owe to the propagandists of the 1640s, or to the manuscript libels and popular songs of the early seventeenth century? It is perhaps also worth noting that the great Tory writer Sir Roger L’Estrange, who spewed out so much spleen against the Whigs during the last crisisridden years of Charles II’s reign, learnt his trade during the summer of 1648 by penning a number of royalist pamphlets.39 L’Estrange’s broadside The Fox, Oral and literate culture, p. 200; A New Tom of Bedlam, or, The Man in the Moon Drinks Claret (1690). 37 Nigel Smith, Literature and revolution in England, 1640–1660 (New Haven, CT, 1994), pp. 302–3; Margot Heinemann, ‘Popular drama and Leveller style – Richard Overton and John Harris’, in Maurice Cornforth (ed.), Rebels and their causes: essays in honour of A.L. Morton (1978), pp. 69–92. 38 On the striking differences in the use of sexual imagery on royalist and parliamentary banners and colours during the Civil Wars see Ian Gentles, ‘The iconography of revolution’, in Ian Gentles, John Morrill and Blair Worden (eds), Soldiers, writers and statesmen of the English revolution (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 101, 113. 39 George Kitchin, Sir Roger L’Estrange: a contribution to the history of the press in the seven36

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Committee of 1681 clearly borrowed a number of important tropes, such as innuendoes about bestiality between radical men and women and horses and dogs, from the ephemeral literature of the 1640s and 1650s.40 Indeed, L’Estrange’s repeated insistence that ‘whoever Sauces not his Earnest with a Tang of Fooling, misses his Marque’ is strikingly similar to Marchamont Nedham’s maxim on the need to ‘tickle and charm the more vulgar fancies’.41 There must have been many other similar occasions on which the products of the 1640s and 1650s were pressed into service during the 1680s. Some would have been direct, conscious borrowings but others would have been indirect and unconscious. For instance, was ‘The Man in the Moon; or, Bumm for a Bishop’, a Whig verse libel of the early 1680s which told of an act of buggery between a bishop and a lord, an entirely original work? Or did it draw on, and appropriate, earlier printed and manuscript satires on, say, John Atherton, the bishop of Waterford and Lismore, who was executed for sodomy in 1640 and who, inevitably, became infamous as the ‘ArseBishop’?42 Recent work by Tim Harris on the Tory propaganda of the 1680s has touched upon this topic indirectly, but a comprehensive study of the nature and extent of the borrowings by both Whigs and Tories from the propaganda of the mid-century crisis is long overdue.43 The years after 1688 saw a large number of disparaging references to the alleged sexual preference of William III for handsome young men. Most of these accusations were wisely couched in terms of double entendres or innuendoes, but a cheap ballad entitled The Orange (1688) was particularly explicit: it mocked Orange as ‘an open-arse delicate fruit’.44 There may or may not have been direct links between the libels produced by supporters of the Stuarts during their first and second exiles of the century, but, at the very

teenth century (1913), pp. 33–5. On the trope of female promiscuousness and sexual deviancy as a metaphor for social radicalism and instability after 1660, see Melissa M. Mowry, The bawdy politic in Stuart England, 1660–1714: political pornography and prostitution (Aldershot, 2004). 40 Roger L’Estrange, The Committee (1681), s.sh. 41 Quoted in Geoff Kemp, ‘L’Estrange and the publishing sphere’, in Jason McElligott (ed.), Fear, exclusion, and revolution: Roger Morrice and Britain in the 1680s (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 67–90, at p. 86. 42 That the first half of the 1680s libel refers to ‘The Man in the Moon’ suggests that the use of the trope in a sexual libel after a forty-year gap was not mere coincidence. BL, Add., MS 34,362, fol. 19, cited in Tim Harris, London crowds in the reign of Charles II: propaganda and politics from the restoration until the exclusion crisis (Cambridge, 1987), p. 128, fn. 211. For Atherton’s execution see Anon., The Life and Death of John Atherton, Lord Bishop of Waterford and Lysmore (1641). I am grateful to Dr John McCafferty for drawing my attention to the obvious joke about Atherton. 43 Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and his kingdoms, 1660–1685 (2005), pp. 211–59. 44 Anon., The Orange (1688), s.sh. The reproduction of this ballad in Poems on affairs of state fails to convey the rushed, poor-quality nature of the original typography which provides a vivid sense of the danger faced by those who printed such outrageous claims. POAS, iv, p. 305. 61


least, the methodology outlined above for assessing sexual libel provides us with a way of advancing beyond the embarrassed and rather unconvincing statement by one of William’s biographers that he could never have engaged in homosexual activities because his ‘tremendous burden of work left no time for it’.45 Whether or not each and every story about William’s sexuality was true is irrelevant. What is important, however, is that William’s enemies believed him to be particularly vulnerable on this issue and that they repeatedly made the same allegation over a period of time. As mentioned above when discussing the stories concerning Henry Marten, it is important to understand that the calumnies levelled against William were evidently credible enough to be considered as descriptive rather than merely polemical by at least some readers and listeners. The attacks on William’s sexuality were a deliberate attempt to emasculate and enfeeble him, to undermine his martial and marital reputations, and thus to destroy his ability to inspire respect or fear in his new subjects. The accusations against Henry Marten, William III or even Oliver Cromwell have a cultural importance far beyond their strict adherence to actual facts.

45

Stephen B. Baxter, William III (1966), p. 352. 62

3

The Twists and Turns of Royalist Propaganda

THE TWISTS AND TURNS OF ROYALIST PROPAGANDA

Strategy and tactics

The aim of the royalist newsbooks was very simple: to assist in the successful restoration of Charles I (and after the regicide, Charles II) on the best possible terms for the Stuarts. Yet if the aims of the newsbooks were simple, the short-term tactical manoeuvres forced upon them by the twists and turns of royal policy were remarkably convoluted and intricate. Some of the ‘aboutturns’ forced upon the Stuart kings were so quick and sharp that they must have disorientated and demoralized many royalists. There was always a danger that winning the new allies necessary to deliver a royal victory would involve the adoption of policies and actions which would alienate the faithful. The men who wrote and printed the newsbooks must, like very many of their readers, have been taken aback by the sudden, seismic shifts in royal policy during these years. Yet it was the task of these men to argue for, explain, or explain away, the changes and contradictions of royal policy. The newsbooks of these years evidently hoped to keep the loyalists on-side as well as appealing to the king’s potential new allies. It was the authors’ misfortune that they implicitly agreed in advance to defend every decision of the king and his ministers without having any idea what those decisions might be. Neither did they have any prospect of influencing the decisions of the king and his ministers. Yet, as we shall see, whatever their personal misgivings or beliefs, the men behind the royalist newsbooks followed the twists and turns of royal policy with a surprising degree of skill and dogged determination. They were, quite simply, willing and able to propagandize in favour of any new royal policy or alliance, no matter how inconsistent with their previous arguments it seemed to be. It would be possible to look at any number of tactical shifts made by the royalists between 1647 and 1650. One might, for example, describe how, during the summer of 1648, they temporarily laid aside their deep-seated antipathy to the Presbyterians who controlled the City of London. It was a commonplace in the newsbooks that the City and the men who controlled it had been ‘the Nursery of the late Warre, and the main cause of the Kingdomes present miseries’.1 During the summer of 1648, however, there 1

Elencticus, no. 24, 3–10 May 1648, p. 185. 63


was a brief period in which it seemed that the City government might declare for the king and allow the royalist force under the Earl of Norwich into the City. Such a course of action would have been a crushing, perhaps terminal, blow to the king’s enemies.2 The newsbooks of this period therefore addressed their ‘brothers’ and ‘cousins’ in the City in the friendliest of terms, in order to convince them that a royalist victory was in their best interests. When it became clear, however, that London would not declare for the king, the newsbooks returned to attacking the citizens and their civic leaders in the strongest terms. Indeed, after Pride’s Purge the royalists expressed a certain degree of satisfaction that the City would now be at the tender mercy of the very army which it could have helped to destroy only a few months previously. One might also examine how the newsbooks were prepared to forget their dislike of that ‘rare Knave’ John Lilburne and his ‘despicable and desparate knot’ of Levellers whenever their attempts to secure The Agreement of the People led them to clash with Parliament or the senior army officers.3 During periods of Leveller unrest, the royalists presented Lilburne as ‘honest John’ and the Levellers became ‘the Champions of Liberty’. It is important to stress that the royalists did not become Levellers or Leveller ‘collaborators’ by cheering the destabilizing activities of Lilburne and his comrades. They did not wish to see The Agreement of the People implemented: they were merely interested in stirring any conflagration which might weaken both the Levellers and their various opponents in the Parliament and army. Their praise of this groupuscule was purely tactical, and the royalists always reverted to attacking them whenever they were not in active conflict with the enemies of the king.4 The Man in the Moon believed that if both sides destroyed each other ‘it will save our young king a labor’, and Pragmaticus drew comfort from an old proverb: ‘When Thieves rob and cheat one another, then true men come to their goods again.’5 The royalists’ attitudes to the City of London and the Levellers are of interest, but perhaps the two most important and illuminating examples of their reactions to policy decisions by the king and the court are afforded by Ian Gentles, ‘The struggle for London in the Second Civil War’, HJ, 26, 2 (1983), 277–305, at 292–4. 3 David Wootton, ‘Leveller democracy and the Puritan Revolution’, in J.H. Burns and Mark Goldie (eds), The Cambridge history of political thought, 1450–1700 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 412–42, at 412. 4 Cf. Amos Tubb in ‘Mixed messages: royalist newsbook reports of Charles I’s execution and of the Leveller uprising’, HLQ, 67, 1 (2004), 59–74, and ‘Printing the regicide of Charles I’, History, 89, 296 (Oct. 2004), 500–24. For an inaccurate and anachronistic description of Lilburne as a ‘royalist collaborator’ in 1647, see Jason Peacey, ‘The hunting of the Leveller: the sophistication of parliamentarian propaganda, 1647–53’, Historical Research, LXXVIII, 199 (Feb. 2005), 15–42, at 15. 5 Man in the Moon, no. 2, 16–23 April 1649, p. 10; Pragmaticus, no. 51A, 17–24 April 1649, sig. 2v; Pragmaticus, no. 4B, 8–15 May 1649, p. 26. 2

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events in Ireland and Scotland. This is because events in the western and northern Stuart kingdoms were of concern to the royalist press throughout the entire period under examination in this book. This contrasts with the sporadic, episodic attention which they gave to the Levellers and the government of the City. In addition, the recent intense interest in the ‘British’ dimension to English politics makes it useful to know how the royalists explained political developments in Ireland and Scotland to their readers. In what follows we shall see how the newsbooks were forced by events to write in favour of what must have seemed to many of their readers as the most shocking and inexplicable changes in policy. Their willingness to write in support of any royal policy forced them into a number of striking inconsistencies and illogical positions, such as when, during the early summer of 1650, they were simultaneously writing in praise of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland and the Scots Covenanters who had executed their beloved Marquess of Montrose. Ireland This is not the place to examine the ‘sudden changes of side’ and ‘bewildering kaleidoscopes of alliances’6 which characterized Irish politics in the 1640s, but the attitude of the royalist newsbooks to these sudden shifts in royal policy and to the shifting allegiances of the various forces in that kingdom throws much light on their tactical sophistication. In particular, their willingness to condemn, praise, attack and then once again praise the Gaelic Irish leader Owen Roe O’Neill at different points during these years shows a remarkable ability to adapt to changing circumstances. The situation in Ireland in 1647 was complicated. There was no credible royalist force on the island after the departure for the continent of Ormond, Charles I’s trusted Lord Lieutenant, in the wake of his failure to negotiate an alliance between the royalists and the Catholic Confederates.7 As such, from

R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (1989), pp. 79–80. See also Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘The Civil Wars in Ireland’, in John Kenyon and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds), The Civil Wars: a military history of England, Scotland and Ireland, 1638–1660 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 73–102. 7 Despite the considerable amount of recent, specialist work done on 1640s Ireland I have chosen to base this general narrative on the, as yet, unsurpassed account of S.R. Gardiner. On the disastrous military strategy of the Confederates see Pádraig Lenihan, Confederate Catholics at war, 1641–49 (Cork, 2001). For the internal politics of the Confederates during these years see Micheál Ó Siochrú, Confederate Ireland, 1642–1649: a constitutional and political analysis (Dublin, 1999), pp. 143–204. On the important role played by the Roman Catholic clergy and the papal nuncio Rinuccini see Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin’s excellent Catholic reformation in Ireland: the mission of Rinuccini, 1645–1649 (Oxford, 2002). Robert Armstrong’s Protestant war. The ‘British’ of Ireland and the wars of the three kingdoms (Manchester, 2005) offers a much needed account of the Protestant experience of this traumatic decade. 6

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their first appearance on the streets of London in September 1647, the royalist newsbooks lauded the Munster Protestant Lord Inchiquin. Intriguingly, the authors’ praise of Inchiquin ignored the fact that he was in arms for the Parliament which they professed to hate. Instead, they chose to focus on the fact that he was a Protestant engaged in fighting Irish Catholics. They were particularly enthusiastic about Inchiquin whenever he clashed with Owen Roe O’Neill and his ‘insatiable bloodquaffing Kerns’ from Gaelic Ulster. The newsbooks contrasted the pride and avarice of the rebels in London with the valour of Inchiquin and the privations of ‘the pore Protestants in Ireland . . . who are ready to eate their owne flesh for food, having neither meat for their bellies, nor cloathing for their backes’. While the Irish Protestants struggled against a ‘mercilesse Enemy’, the army in England was concerned only with trifles such as arrears of pay, and Parliament was unwilling to dispatch a serious fighting force to Ireland for fear of leaving itself defenceless against the people at home. They also suggested that the delay in sending aid was due to the fact that the money raised for the relief of Ireland had found its way into the pockets of the members at Westminster.8 Inchiquin abandoned his allegiance to Parliament in April 1648 and went over to the royalist cause, one among numerous incidents of shifting and changing loyalties which we shall come across in this book.9 His change of heart offered the prospect of a coalition of royalists and Catholic Confederates against those forces in Ireland loyal to Parliament, a prospect which the royalist newsbooks welcomed enthusiastically.10 However, O’Neill, following the lead of the hard-line Papal Nuncio, Rinuccini, refused to ally himself with the Protestant Inchiquin.11 As a result, the royalist newsbooks stressed that although Inchiquin had allied with Catholics in order ‘to keep up his Majesties interest’ in Ireland, he would be defending that interest against both O’Neill and the English forces loyal to Parliament. They also warned that, unlike the loyal and gallant Inchiquin, the parliamentary forces in Ireland would have no compunction about forming an alliance with O’Neill against ‘the Protestant loyall English’.12 Ormond returned to Ireland at the end of September 1648, and immediately joined with Inchiquin and opened negotiations with the Catholic 8 Melancholicus, no. 1, [4 Sept.] 1647, p. 5; Melancholicus, no. 3A, 11–18 Sept. 1647, p. 16; Melancholicus, no. 3B, 11–17 Sept. 1647, sig. 1v–2r; Melancholicus, no. 6, 2–9 Oct. 1647, p. 34; Elencticus, no. 3, 12–19 Nov. 1647, p. 20; Melancholicus, no. 23, 29 Jan.–5 Feb. 1648, p. 135; Bellicus, no. 4, 14–20 Feb. 1648, p. 6; Bellicus, no. 6, 29 Feb.–7 Mar. 1648, sig. 4r–v; Melancholicus, no. 31, 27 Mar.–3 April 1648, p. 185. 9 CW, iii, pp. 355–6; Scott, Politics and war, p. 139; NHI, iii, pp. 327–9. 10 Pragmaticus, no. 1, 28 Mar.–4 April 1648, sig. 4v; Melancholicus, no. 33, 10–17 April 1648, p. 196; Elencticus, no. 21, 12–19 April 1648, p. 158; Elencticus, no. 22, 19–26 April 1648, pp. 168–9. 11 NHI, iii, p. 328. 12 Melancholicus, no. 50B, 31 July–7 Aug. 1648, p. 142; Melancholicus, no. 48B, 17–24 July 1648, p. 126; Veridicus, no. 2, 21–27 April 1648, sig. 2v.

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Confederates. The newsbooks now hoped for an agreement between the royalists and all factions in Ireland who were opposed to the policies of the English Independents. They explicitly envisaged that O’Neill would now side with the king, and it was even suggested that the Catholic rebels in Ireland were less noxious than the English Protestant variety.13 In early 1649 the Catholic Confederates agreed upon an alliance with Ormond against Parliament in return for the promise of future limited toleration for their religion. Pragmaticus welcomed ‘the happie Conjunction of the Irish Catholiques with us’, and in March 1649 one edition of the same title praised ‘the Loyall Irish’. Similarly, in June 1649 Elencticus described Ormond’s mainly Catholic army as ‘Christians’ preparing to do battle with Cromwell’s ‘infidels’.14 Ormond, however, had not succeeded in winning all Irish Catholics to his side because O’Neill, who was still under the influence of the Papal Nuncio, would not accept the terms offered by the Lord Lieutenant. His refusal to join with Ormond did not perturb the royalist newsbooks. They had, after all, previously condemned him in the strongest possible terms, and they seem to have been confident that Ormond and his new allies could defeat the parliamentary forces without the assistance of O’Neill. In early May 1649 the royalist position deteriorated when the parliamentary general in Ulster, George Monck, concluded an alliance with O’Neill which provided for a three-month truce and mutual assistance in the event of an attack upon either party by Ormond or Inchiquin.15 The royalists greeted this agreement with outrage. In late 1648 they had looked forward to O’Neill’s participation on their side, but now they used Monck’s treaty with O’Neill as a stick with which to beat the regime in London. O’Neill, their former darling, was now presented as a ‘desparate and bloody . . . papist’ who had ‘beene the occasion . . . of spilling the blood of no lesse then 100,000 Protestants’ in Ireland. Those soldiers being sent to Ireland under Cromwell were encouraged to desert because, the royalists claimed, they would now be used to fight alongside Ulster Catholics against ‘Protestants and Loyall Subjects’.16 The newsbooks probably knew these claims to be entirely false. O’Neill had only arrived in Ireland from the continent in 1642, and had Elencticus, no. 49, 24–31 Oct. 1648, p. 404; Elencticus, no. 50, 1–8 Nov. 1648, pp. 400 [sic], 492; Pragmaticus, nos. 32 and 33, 31 Oct.–14 Nov. 1648, sig. 4r; Pragmaticus, no. 38A, 12–19 Dec. 1648, sig. 3v; Elencticus, no. 57, 19–26 Dec. 1648, p. 543. 14 Pragmaticus, no. 43 [sic], 20–27 Feb. 1649, sig. 3v; Pragmaticus, no. 46E, 13–20 Mar. 1649, sig. 3r; Pragmaticus, no. [blank], 23–30 April 1649, sig. 2v; Elencticus, no. 9, 18–25 June 1649, p. 69. 15 CP, i, pp. 76–7. 16 Pragmaticus, no. 20, 28 Aug.–4 Sept. 1649, sig. 1r–v; Pragmaticus, no. 17, 7–14 Aug. 1649, sig. 2r; Pragmaticus, no. 10A, 19–26 June 1649, pp. 78–9; Volpone, 5–12 Oct. 1648, p. 10; Elencticus, no. 15, 30 July–6 Aug. 1649, p. 116; Pragmaticus, no. 16, 31 July–7 Aug. 1649, sig. 2r; Elencticus, no. 17, 13–20 Aug. 1649, p. 133; Pragmaticus, no. 18, 14–21 Aug. 1649, sig. 3v; Elencticus, no. 19, 27 Aug.–3 Sept. 1649, p. 149; Aulicus, no. 3, 14–21 Aug. 13

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played no part in the Ulster Rising of 1641.17 Neither was it conceivable that Cromwell’s men would ever be called upon to fight alongside O’Neill. Both the regicides and O’Neill were clear that they had agreed to a temporary tactical alliance: both were anxious to cut each others’ throats at the earliest possible opportunity. These facts were not, however, allowed to detract from the propaganda opportunity which the temporary alliance of Monck and O’Neill afforded the royalists.18 Within a few months the royalist newsbooks signalled yet another shift in their policy concerning Ireland. In August 1649, Pragmaticus noted favourably that O’Neill had repudiated his agreement with Monck and placed his troops at the disposal of Ormond, giving ‘as ample an Assurance of his future Fidelity as could bee Imagined’. These comments were premature, because, although O’Neill broke with Monck in August, he did not sign a formal agreement with Ormond until mid-October. According to S.R. Gardiner, the terms of this treaty meant that Ormond had to accept ‘a dominant Roman Catholic Church with a virtually independent Celtic Ulster’. This was a high price to pay, but, with the vanguard of Ormond’s army destroyed at Rathmines, Drogheda and Wexford, O’Neill’s men had become vital to the attempt to drive Cromwell into the sea, or, perhaps more accurately, to the increasingly desperate attempt to tie him down in Ireland for as long as possible while the Scots prepared to give battle. Despite their previous hostility to O’Neill and the harsh terms which he dictated to Ormond, the royalist newsbooks began to lionize the Ulster Gaelic leader. He was now a ‘Noble Christian’, a ‘Man of Honour’ whose decision to fight alongside Ormond was to be welcomed because it signified that ‘all the kingdome [of Ireland] is united to withstand and Roote out those barbarous-Pagans that have invaded them’.19 However, O’Neill died suddenly in early November, before he could be of any practical assistance to Ormond, and after his demise the Catholic bishops took the leading role in trying to rally their flock against Cromwell.20 One might have expected the royalist newsbooks to be uneasy about the highly public involvement of Popish clergymen on the royalist side, but they were fulsome in their praise of the Catholic

1649, pp. 18–20; Pragmaticus, no. 8B, 5–12 June 1649, p. 72; Pragmaticus, no. 9A, 12–19 June 1649, p. 72; Pragmaticus, no. 6A, 22–29 May 1649, p. 48. 17 CW, i, p. 132. 18 This agreement between the ‘Saints’ and ‘Oneale’ was considered to be such good propaganda that it was re-hashed by loyalists in 1679. See the image and text of the King of Hearts playing-card in The Knavery of the Rump Lively represented in a Pack of Cards [1679]. 19 Pragmaticus, no. 19, 21–28 Aug. 1649, sig. 3r; Elencticus, no. 24, 8–15 Oct. 1649, p. 192; Pragmaticus, no. 25, 9–16 Oct. 1649, sig. 1r, 4r; Pragmaticus, no. 29, 13–20 Nov. 1649, sig. 3r; Pragmaticus, no. 31, 27 Nov.–4 Dec. 1649, sig. 2v, 4r–v; CP, i, pp. 107, 112, 139. 20 NHI, iii, pp. 344–6; W.C. Abbott (ed.), The writings and speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1937–47), ii, pp. 195–205. 68


bishops, and, in particular, the bishop of Clogher, who had been chosen as commander of the Ulster forces after O’Neill’s death.21 Scotland The attitude of the royalist authors to the question of Scottish interference in English politics also demonstrates their willingness to make tactical alliances with former enemies and to put forward the best possible interpretation of events. It is no exaggeration to say that the royalists (like many Englishmen) viewed Scotland and the Scots in highly unfavourable terms. Indeed, David Smith has argued that those individuals who coalesced into a royalist party were an anti-Scottish group before they were a royalist party.22 Much of their antipathy to Scotland was rooted in the age-old conflict between the two countries. Scotland was, for them, a strange and impoverished land inhabited by uncouth, ignorant people whose accent, manners, poor diet, customs, dress and religion distinguished them from those lucky enough to have been born south of the Tweed.23 They opposed the introduction of Scottish Presbyterianism into England not merely because they believed that it undermined the institution of monarchy, but also because they saw it as a foreign invention which tyrannized over the souls and property of its adherents.24 Such a tyrannical system might have been appropriate for a backward country like Scotland, but it was, they believed, totally unsuited to the laws and constitution of England. The royalists also strongly objected to the persistent interference of the Scots in English politics during the 1630s and 1640s. The Scots’ rebellion of the late 1630s caused two wars between Scotland and England and triggered a series of events which led to the outbreak of civil war in England itself. In 1644 the Scots invaded England in order to support Parliament against the king, a move designed to secure the adoption of a Presbyterian system in England modelled on the Scottish Kirk. In addition to having an army on English soil for much of the 1640s, the Scots exerted a great deal of influence Pragmaticus, no. 43, 19–26 Feb. 1650, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 45, 5–12 Mar. 1650, sig. 2v; Elencticus, no. 1, 22 April 1650, p. 8; Royall Diurnall, no. 2, 25 Feb.–4 Mar. 1650, sig. 3v; Pragmaticus, no. 53, 7–14 May 1650, sig. 2v; Man in the Moon, no. 41, 30 Jan.–6 Feb. 1650, p. 327. 22 Smith, Constitutional royalism, p. 73. On anti-Scots sentiment in the late 1640s see Scott, Politics and war, pp. 121, 149. 23 Melancholicus, no. 8, 16–23 Oct. 1647, p. 59; Elencticus, no. 17, 15–22 Mar. 1647 [i.e. 1648], p. 128; Critticus, no. 1, 6–13 April 1648, p. 3; Pragmaticus, no. 29, 10–17 Oct. 1648, sig. 1r–v; Royall Diurnall, no. 7B, 22–30 April 1650, sig. 4r; Melancholicus, no. 12, 13–20 Nov. 1647, pp. 72, 73–4; Pragmaticus, no. 6A, 22–29 May 1649, p. 48; Pragmaticus, no. 28, 21–28 Mar. 1648, sig. 1r–v. 24 For example, Pragmaticus described Presbyterianism as ‘the great Geneva Idoll’ and a ‘Germane [i.e. German] bastard’. Pragmaticus, no. 39B, 19–26 Dec. 1648, 4r. 21

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on the course of English politics through their membership of the influential Committee of Both Kingdoms (1644–8) in London. For the royalists, however, the Scots’ most grievous sin was to have sold the king, who was then their prisoner, to his enemies in Parliament for £400,000 in January 1647. The first royalist newsbooks appeared at a time when Charles was simultaneously negotiating with Parliament and the army over their respective peace proposals. Charles toyed with the Propositions offered by Parliament and their Scottish allies, but let it be known publicly that he preferred the Heads of the Proposals offered by the leaders of the army. During September and October, the royalist newsbooks consistently expressed their preference for the ‘proposalls of the Army’ as the lesser of the ‘two evills’ presented to the king.25 Pragmaticus was particularly happy with the army’s Heads because it did not involve the establishment of Presbyterianism and did not admit ‘so much as a Scottish Louse to creep into’ the negotiations.26 Charles had no intention of agreeing to the Heads; he was merely playing for time in order to secure Scottish military aid. By mid-October, his negotiations with the army leaders had begun to falter as a result of his increasingly obvious dissimulation and the related growth of radical sentiment in the army. Charles was unperturbed by his low standing with the army because the Scottish Commissioners who arrived in London in mid-October to participate in the negotiations over the Propositions gave him a verbal assurance that the Scots were willing to restore him. It is clear from the contents of the royalist newsbooks that the authors were unaware of Charles’s intrigues with the Commissioners and continued to indulge in anti-Scots rhetoric during October and the first week of November. On 5 November, however, the Scottish Commissioners publicly wrote to the Speaker of the House of Lords asking that the king might be allowed to go to London to conduct a personal treaty with both Houses.27 This letter, combined with the increasing influence of the radicals and sectaries in the army, forced the royalist newsbooks to reassess their antipathy to Scottish involvement in English affairs. Elencticus was initially unconvinced as to the sincerity of the ‘Evill Angels of the North’. They would do nothing for the king, he argued, ‘other then what comprehends their owne safety. For they are false coyne, and let them seeme and pretend never so faire, I know they are but the basest of Mettalls Guilded over, or like the Apples of Sodome, which shew faire to the eye, but

Melancholicus, no. 3B, 11–17 Sept. 1647, sig. 2v–3r; Pragmaticus, no. 2B, 21–28 Sept. 1647, p. 16; Pragmaticus, no. 5, 12–19 Oct. 1647, p. 40; Melancholicus, no. 7, 9–16 Oct. 1647, p. 42; Melancholicus, no. 3A, 11–18 Sept. 1647, p. 15; Melancholicus, no. 10, 30 Oct.–6 Nov. 1647, pp. 60, 62. 26 Pragmaticus, no. 1, 14–21 Sept. 1647, p. 7; Melancholicus, no. 4C, 17–24 Sept. 1647, pp. 12–13; Pragmaticus, no. 7, 26 Oct.–2 Nov. 1647, p. 50; Melancholicus, no. 10, 30 Oct.–6 Nov. 1647, pp. 60–2. 27 CW, iii, pp. 230, 240. 25

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within are full of Poysonous vapour.’28 All of the other newsbooks, however, were much more positive about the Scottish letter. Melancholicus claimed that ‘the despised Scot may in the upshot prove the best subject’, and Bellicus believed that the Scots had become conscious of ‘that stigmatiz’d brand of generall infamy . . . [they had] . . . purchas’d . . . by the sale of the Honour, and safety’ of the king. ‘And therefore . . . [they are] . . . fully resolved to repaye all speedily with a far greater price, even with the involuable price of . . . [their] . . . dearest blood.’29 Even Pragmaticus praised ‘the loyall Subjects of Scotland’ and claimed that their ‘honourable designe shall make an Atonement in al English hearts, for former Failings, and oblige the dejected Nobles, and Gentry, in a perpetuall Bond of gratitude to the Scottish Nation’.30 Charles continued to work towards a Scottish alliance during December 1647, and on the eighteenth of that month the Scottish Commissioners wrote a declaration which attacked the actions of Parliament and the army, demanded a personal treaty, and urged the establishment of Presbyterianism in England, the disbandment of all armies, and the restitution of the king’s rights. Melancholicus was pleased by these ‘Scotch Papers . . . lined with Loyalty and good conscience’, and intoned ‘to ‘em Bonny Scot. Sting ‘em till their hearts break, strike home.’ Pragmaticus was concerned by the Scots’ attempts to force the Covenant on the king and the Presbyterian system on England, and asked them to ‘cling close to that which concerns the honour and happinesse of the King, and the tranquility of the Kingdome’.31 These comments were hardly a ringing endorsement of a Scottish alliance, but they were certainly not a rejection of aid from north of the border. Charles finally signed an Engagement with the Scottish Commissioners on 26 December 1647, which, in return for military aid, promised to establish Presbyterianism in England for three years, and confirmed the security of those who had taken the Covenant, but refused to allow anyone to be forced to take it in the future. For Charles, the Engagement was no more than a short-term tactical manoeuvre. He had no desire to see Presbyterianism take root in England, and evidently calculated that he would be able to thwart the Scottish desire to dictate the terms of England’s religious settlement after he had been restored to the throne. Be this as it may, Charles’s Engagement with the Scots offered the royalist newsbooks a stark choice. They could either disassociate themselves from the king’s actions, or they could propagandize 28 Elencticus, no. 2, 5–10 Nov. 1647, pp. 10, 13; Elencticus, no. 4, 19–26 Nov. 1648, pp. 28, 31. 29 Melancholicus, no. 11, 6–13 Nov. 1647, p. 66; Bellicus, no. 1, 13–22 Nov. 1647, p. 7. 30 Pragmaticus, no. 8, 2–9 Nov. 1647, p. 63; Pragmaticus, no. 9, 9–16 Nov. 1647, p. 71. For other remarks made by both editions of Pragmaticus at this time in favour of ‘Honest Iockey’ see Pragmaticus, no. 10B, 16–22 [i.e. 23] Nov. 1647, p. 73; Pragmaticus, no. 10A, 16–23 Nov. 1647, sig. 2r; Pragmaticus, no. 11B, 23–30 Nov. 1647, p. 79. 31 CW, iii, pp. 270–1; Melancholicus, no. 17, 18–25 Dec. 1647, p. 103; Pragmaticus, no. 15, 21–28 Dec. 1647, sig. 1v.

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in favour of the Scottish alliance and the inevitable invasion of England. All of the newsbooks chose the latter course of action. This is not to argue that the newsbooks put aside their deep-rooted antipathy to the Scots or the Presbyterian form of worship. They sometimes found it difficult to display any great enthusiasm for their new allies, and on occasion exhibited a barely disguised wariness of, or contempt for, the Scots. Despite these misgivings, however, all of the newsbooks preached up the Scottish alliance and urged them to invade England as quickly as possible. It is not without irony that such an invasion, which had been construed as treason during the Bishops’ Wars and the First Civil War, was now defended as the ultimate loyal and patriotic duty. The royalists were able to support a Scottish invasion of England because they chose to ignore Charles’s concessions on the issue of the Covenant and the establishment of Presbyterianism. Instead, they chose to stress that the Scots had recanted their past sins and resolved to be loyal to the king. They also glossed over the very real divisions among the Scots concerning the Engagement, and tended to exaggerate the strength and influence of the comparatively small royalist forces in Scotland. Indeed, they sometimes falsely gave the impression that the majority of the forces which were being raised in Scotland were royalists, as opposed to Presbyterians who were prepared to support Charles in pursuit of their own ends.32 A number of newsbooks did acknowledge that the army which was coming south would seek to impose its religious views on England. They were unhappy about this but seem to have hoped that the forthcoming war would weaken both the Scots and the English rebels. This, they argued, would ensure that Charles would ultimately be in a position to carve out a peace settlement without reference to the Scots.33 In January 1648 the English Parliament sent Commissioners to the Scottish Parliament at Edinburgh. These men urged the Scots to abandon the Engagement with Charles in favour of an alliance with the Houses of Parliament, and were prepared to offer the Scots £100,000 as a token of their goodwill. The English Commissioners remained at Edinburgh for several months, but during this period the royalist authors expressed a great deal of confidence that the Scots would not abandon Charles. The royalists had previously portrayed the Scots as the epitome of fickleness, but now they presented them as true and steadfast subjects of the king. Pragmaticus argued that the Scots had ‘forsaken their old-sinnes, [and] are resolved to value

32 For ambiguous, and perhaps deliberately ambiguous, descriptions of the army in Scotland as the ‘Royall’, ‘Loyall’ or ‘English’ army see Psitacus, no. 4, 21 June–3 July 1648, p. 4; Veridicus, no. 2, 21–27 April 1648, sig. 1r; Parliaments Scrich-Owle, no. 3, [14 July] 1648, p. 18; Parliament Kite, no. 7, 23–29 June 1648, p. 33; Pragmaticus, no. 7B, 9–16 May 1648, sig. 3r; Psitacus, no. 2, 14–21 June 1648, pp. 1–2; Melancholicus, no. 30, 20–27 Mar. 1648, p. 178. 33 Melancholicus, no. 19, 1–8 Jan. 1648, p. 112; Pragmaticus, no. 5, 25 April–2 May 1648, sig. 1v, 4v.

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loyalty to their King at a higher rate, then the love of money’. Melancholicus, too, wrote that: the bonny Scot is resolv’d to stand to his tackling come life, come death; and no hazzard shall cause them to retard, much lesse desert, the prosecution of so necessary and so just a quarrell; who feels not tiltings in his blood, to see a Nation value more one dramm of a good and Loyall Conscience; then a generall deluge of their dearest blood? Our Redemption from this horrid bondage wherein wee are implunged, lies not in our selves; but let the vaulted roof of heaven rebound with overlasting echoes of Thanksgiving, if out of weaknese we gather strength, and be delived [sic] by the feeble hands we have despised.34

The Scottish Parliament and the General Assembly of the Kirk were deeply divided over the Engagement which the Commissioners had signed with Charles. While Lord Hamilton and the majority of the nobility welcomed it, Argyll and the clergy felt that Charles had not made enough concessions on the question of religion. They wanted Charles to take the Covenant, to force it upon his English subjects, and to exclude all those who were hostile to it from the royalist forces about to be raised in England. They were perceptive enough to realize that if these conditions were not met, the Scottish troops who crossed into England would end up shedding their blood for the re-establishment of an episcopal church. For a time these differences threatened to erupt into open warfare between Argyll and Hamilton, but Argyll did not have sufficient strength to fight, and in May the Scottish Parliament appointed Hamilton commander of the 30,000 strong army which was to be raised for service in England. The preparations for the invasion were, however, very slow and it was not until early July 1648 that Hamilton’s army entered England. The royalist newsbooks largely chose to ignore the depth of feeling in Scotland against the Engagement during the tense months between the signing of the Engagement and the invasion of England. Whenever they did acknowledge the existence of opposition to the Engagement in Scotland, they claimed that its opponents were a small minority and that ‘the Loyall party are ten times more Potent and considerable then the rest, and daily encrease’.35 Pragmaticus, no. 17, 4–11 Jan. 1648, sig. 3r; Pragmaticus, no. 18B, 11–18 Jan. 1648, sig. 2r–v; Melancholicus, no. 20, 8–15 Jan. 1648, p. 116; Pragmaticus, no. 20, 25 Jan.–1 Feb. 1648, sig. 3v–4r; Aulicus, no. 4, 17–24 Feb. 1648, sig. 1r–v; Melancholicus, no. 26, 19–28 Feb. 1648, p. 154; Melancholicus, no. 28, 6–13 Mar. 1648, p. 167; Pragmaticus, no. 25, 29 Feb.–7 Mar. 1648, sig. 3r; Elencticus, no. 17, 15–22 Mar. 1647 [i.e. 1648], p. 128; Melancholicus, no. 31, 27 Mar.–3 April 1648, pp. 184–5; Melancholicus, no. 32, 3–10 April 1648, p. 189; Elencticus, no. 18, 22–29 Mar. 1648, p. 137; Bellicus, no. 24, 4–11 July 1648, 1v–2r. 35 Melancholicus, no. 30, 20–27 Mar. 1648, p. 178. Again, the use of the term ‘the Loyall party’ was at best ambiguous and, at worst, misleading. For other references to the differ34

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During the first half of 1648 Bellicus looked forward to ‘a black and prodigious storme’, a ‘whirlwind’ from the north which would revive the royal cause. It was at pains to stress that Hamilton’s army was not coming on ‘a plundering March’, but to liberate the king and restore the laws of England.36 Even Elencticus, who had previously condemned the Scots as ‘Evill Angels’, admitted that he was looking forward to ‘the Northern cure’ for the sickness of rebellion. He claimed that the Scottish army was composed of ‘gallant Souldiers . . . who deport themselves with so much civility and tendernesse to the people where they come, and shew such exemplary Iustice upon the Offenders that they gaine the love of all’.37 Melancholicus expressed excitement at the prospect that ‘the Herculean Scots’ would ‘stifle those poysonous serpents at Westminster’, and encouraged them to come quickly: Come Martiall Ladds, march in a pace of thunder. T’advance the humbled, and keep Treason under.38

The attitude of Pragmaticus to the Scottish invasion was much more problematic. In March, he expressed some concern that a victorious Scottish army would be able to ‘foist’ a Presbyterian settlement on England, and claimed that a ‘three yeares Plague of Presbytery . . . would bring a far more grevious mortality upon our Soules & Purses, than David’s three yeares Pestilence did upon the bodies of his Subjects’.39 After March, however, he became somewhat less antagonistic to the Scots. On 25 April he even wished for ‘a Scotch Pick-tooth to clense their [i.e. the rebels’] Jawes’. Later still, he praised the ‘most gallant Martiall Equipage’ of the Scots and welcomed the news that they had invaded England.40 Pragmaticus’s change in attitude does not seem to have been the result of any fundamental reassessment of the nature and character of the Scots. He was still opposed to the ences in Scotland concerning the Engagement see Veridicus, no. 2, 21–27 April 1648, sig. 1r; Bellicus, no. 14, 25 April–2 May 1648, sig. 3v–4r; Psitacus, no. 2, 14–21 June 1648, sig. 1r–v; Scoticus, no. 1, [19 July] 1648, sig. 1v; Pragmaticus, no. 13, 20–27 June 1648, sig. 4v. 36 Bellicus, no. 7, 7–14 Mar. 1648, sig. 1v–2v; no. 8, 14–21 Mar. 1648, sig. 3v. 37 Elencticus, no. 29, 7–14 June 1648, p. 228; no. 17, 15–22 Mar. 1647 [i.e. 1648], p. 131. 38 Melancholicus, no. 29, 13–20 Mar. 1648, p. 171; Melancholicus, no. 36, 1–8 May 1648, p. 221; Melancholicus, no. 44, 19–26 June 1648, p. 264; Melancholicus, no. 40, 22–29 May 1648, p. 240. Among the other royalist newsbooks which encouraged the Scots to invade were The Parliaments Scrich-Owle, no. 3, [14 July] 1648, p. 18; Scoticus, no. 1, [19 July] 1648, sig. 2v–4r; Royall Divrnall, no. 2, 31 July–7 Aug. 1648, sig. 3r; Royall Divrnall, no. 3, 7–14 Aug. 1648, sig. 4v; Parliament Kite, no. 7, 23–29 June 1648, p. 33; Veridicus, no. 1, 14–21 April 1648, sig. 1r; Psitacus, no. 4, 21 June–3 July 1648, sig. 2v. 39 Pragmaticus, no. 27, 14–21 Mar. 1648, sig. 1r–v; Pragmaticus, no. 28, 21–28 Mar. 1648, sig. 1r–v. 40 Pragmaticus, no. 7B, 9–16 May 1648, sig. 3r; Pragmaticus, no. 4, 18–25 April 1648, sig. 4r; Pragmaticus, no. 9, 23–30 May 1648, sig. 2v; Pragmaticus, no. 12, 13–20 June 1648, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 13, 20–27 June 1647, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 18, 25 July–1 Aug. 1648, sig. 4r. 74


Covenant and Presbyterianism, but he seems to have decided that the Scots offered the best (and perhaps the only) hope of restoring Charles to the throne. He openly argued that the Scots would not be in a position to dictate the nature of the final settlement in England, especially if the English royalists used the invasion as a signal to rise up and defeat the rebels. Pragmaticus made his attitude to Scottish aid clear on 2 May: ‘we are like to have a fine world of it, now the . . . Covenant comes in fashion again: But the Comfort is, it cannot last long; and it is sufficient, if it serve a little to put Independency quite out of fashion’. He claimed it was a pity that the Scots brought the Covenant with them, but wrote that ‘wee’ll swallow anything, If they’ll come, though we vomit it up afterwards’.41 The royalist newsbooks were confident that the combination of a Scottish invasion and a series of royalist risings in England during the summer of 1648 would ensure the defeat of the New Model Army. Unfortunately for them, the impatient English royalists rose too soon and internal wrangling delayed the incursion of the Scots for several months. As a result, the New Model was able to mop up the isolated royalist insurgencies one by one, and then deploy a large force to meet the Scottish threat. The Scots were defeated and suffered heavy casualties at Preston in August 1648, but the royalist newsbooks demonstrated no great sympathy for the plight of their erstwhile allies. Instead, they muttered darkly about the presence of ‘false Brethren in the Scottish army’ who had betrayed their own comrades for money. The Scots, in other words, could never be trusted.42 The rout at Preston destroyed royalist hopes for a speedy restoration, but it also brought this period of Scottish interference in English affairs to an end. It was not until early 1649, in the period before the trial of the king, that the Scots were willing or able to intervene once again in affairs south of the border. When they did again interfere in English affairs it was to express their detestation of the proposed trial of the king. In January 1649 the Scottish Parliament sent a number of commissioners to London to argue against putting the king on trial, and after the regicide the Prince of Wales was proclaimed king in the Scottish capital. The royalists welcomed the Scots’ opposition to the regicide, and praised ‘Jockey’s noncomplyance with the abortive State of White-Hall’.43 Yet, they could neither forgive nor forget the fact that the rebels had bought Charles from ‘the Iudas Scots’. They were also deeply resentful of the fact that the Scots’ recognition of Charles II was 41 Pragmaticus, no. 5, 25 April–2 May 1648, sig. 1v; Pragmaticus, no. 6, 5–9 May 1648, sig. 1r–v. 42 Pragmaticus, no. 22A, 22–29 Aug. 1648, sig. 2r; Pragmaticus, no. 24A, 5–12 Sept. 1648, sig. 3r; Elencticus, no. 41, 30 Aug.–6 Sept. 1648, p. 331; Pragmaticus, no. 27, 26 Sept.–3 Oct. 1648, sig. 3r; Pragmaticus, no. 38A, 12–19 Dec. 1648, sig. 3r; Fidelicus, no. 2, 24–31 Aug. 1648, p. 14; Parliament Porter, no. 1, 28 Aug.–4 Sept. 1648, sig. 1r. 43 Pragmaticus, no. 11, 26 June–3 July 1649, sig. 3r; Pragmaticus, no. 10B, 19–26 June 1649, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 12A, 3–10 July 1649, sig. 3v; Pragmaticus, no. 13, 10–17 July 1649, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 53, 1–8 May 1649, sig. 4v.

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conditional on his adoption of the Covenant, and his willingness to force it upon England and Ireland.44 Charles II realized that he would have to place himself at the head of an army in either Scotland or Ireland before any foreign power would provide him with the armed assistance he so desperately required. He therefore opened negotiations with the Scots at The Hague in March 1649. However, the price of a Scots alliance was now much higher than that which had been asked of Charles I in December 1647. The Scots pressed Charles II to take the Covenant, dismiss the Scottish royalist leader Montrose from the court, observe the Presbyterian form of worship in his household, establish Presbyterianism in England and Ireland, and publicly condemn the royalist leader in Ireland, Ormond, for entering into an alliance with the Irish Catholics. Charles balked at these harsh conditions because he knew that to accept them would have demoralized and alienated every royalist in Britain and Ireland. The negotiations between Charles and the Scots broke down in mid-May 1649, and thereafter Charles committed himself to regaining his throne through the military efforts of Ormond in Ireland and Montrose in Scotland. The royalist newsbooks were aware of Charles’s negotiations with the Scots commissioners at The Hague, and were distinctly uneasy about the prospect of an agreement. It would have been unwise for them to have commented adversely on the negotiations while they were going on, but after they broke up Pragmaticus wrote: it’s no part of my Creed that his Majesty wil become Presbyter, since if he come in upon that score, all his Friends will be undon, and himself inslaved as well as the Kingdom. Nay, this wil be his mildest fate, since we have cause to believe, that all their fair pretences of a settlement with him, is only to get him into their power; and then the men of Westminster, knowing what the price of a King is, according to the Scottish Standard, the Bargain may soon be struck up that they may all reign without Him.

In June 1649 Pragmaticus denied persistent rumours of an agreement between Charles and the Scots in the strongest terms: ‘The Scots are returning home unsatisfied, being (I assure you) quite off with the King.’45 The newsbooks welcomed Charles’s turn away from the Scots in favour of Ormond and Montrose. During the summer of 1649 they professed to be confident that the combined efforts of these men would vanquish the king’s Pragmaticus, no. 46A, 20–27 Feb. 1649, sig. 3v; Pragmaticus, no. 41, 9–16 Jan. 1649, sig. 2v; Pragmaticus, no. 16, 31 July–7 Aug. 1649, sig. 2v; Pragmaticus, no. 18, 14–21 Aug. 1649, sig. 2v; 3 Elencticus, no. 20, 3–10 Sept. 1649, p. 157; Elencticus, no. 11, 2–9 July 1649, p. 86; Elencticus, no. 15, 30 July–6 Aug. 1649, p. 118. 45 Pragmaticus, no. 50, 10–17 April 1649, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 1, 17–24 April 1649, sig. 4r–v; Pragmaticus, no. 52B, 23–30 April 1649, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 6A, 22–29 May 1649, p. 48; Pragmaticus, no. 8B, 5–12 June 1649, p. 72. 44

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enemies. They emphasized – perhaps ‘exaggerated’ is a better word – the strength of the royalist forces in Scotland, and the weakness of their Covenanting enemies. For them, the nobility, the gentry, the highlanders and the ‘poore People’ of Scotland were so ‘burthened with Taxes, and extorted Loanes’ that they were opposed to the Covenanters and entirely ‘fixed upon Monarchy’. They claimed that the arrival of the gallant Montrose from the continent would provide a focal point for the king’s numerous supporters in Scotland, and throughout the second half of the year they assured their readers that Montrose would be in Scotland ‘speedily, if not already’.46 The authors were also confident that the appearance of Montrose and the depth of popular support for the royal cause would force the Covenanters to abandon their unreasonable demands, and fight with (or preferably under) Montrose against the English regicides.47 Charles’s plans came to nothing, however, because Montrose found it difficult to raise sufficient men, money and munitions on the continent, and Ormond’s forces were broken in three decisive battles fought between August and October 1649. The disastrous news emanating from Ireland in late 1649 convinced Charles of the need to come to an agreement with the Scots, and on 11 January 1650 he wrote to the Committee of Estates in Scotland expressing a desire to open negotiations at Breda in the Netherlands. At the same time, however, he allowed Montrose to proceed with his plans for an invasion of Scotland, believing that a strong royalist presence in Scotland would force the Covenanters to moderate their uncompromising stance. Montrose landed in the north of Scotland in March 1650, armed with a small force of men and Charles’s promise that he would never agree to anything which would undermine him. At about the same time, the negotiations between the king and the Scots opened at Breda. It soon became clear to Charles that the Scots were determined to secure the same absolute surrender that they had demanded of him during the previous negotiations at The Hague in 1649. Charles initially tried to resist the Scots’ requests and then attempted to soften them, but his bargaining power became weaker as Elencticus, no. 27, 24–31 May 1648, p. 214; Elencticus, no. 23, 24 Sept.–1 Oct. 1649, p. 182; Elencticus, no. 26, 22–29 Oct. 1649, p. 204; Pragmaticus, no. 26, 16–23 Oct. 1649, sig. 3v; Pragmaticus, no. 24, 25 Sept.–2 Oct. 1649, sig. 2r; Pragmaticus, no. 51A, 17–24 April 1649, sig. 4v; Philo-Monarchicus, no. 2, 14–21 May 1649, sig. 3r; Pragmaticus, no. 5A, 15–22 May 1649, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 7A, 29 May–5 June 1649, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 13, 10–17 July 1649, sig. 1v; Pragmaticus, no. 21, 4–11 Sept. 1649, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 25, 9–16 Oct. 1649, sig. 3v; Pragmaticus, no. 27, 23–30 Oct. 1649, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 31, 27 Nov.–4 Dec. 1649, sig. 4v. 47 Elencticus, no. 22, 17–24 Sept. 1649, p. 175; Pragmaticus, no. 23, 18–25 Sept. 1649, sig. 3r; Elencticus, no. 23, 24 Sept.–1 Oct. 1649, p. 182; Pragmaticus, no. 24, 25 Sept.–2 Oct. 1649, sig. 2r. On Montrose see David Stevenson, ‘James Graham, (1612–50)’, in Oxford DNB, and the eminently readable John Buchan, The Marquis of Montrose (1913; reprinted 1996). 46

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Figure 5. The first page of The Man in the Moon, no. 45, for the week of 27 February–6 March 1650 (180 x 120 mm). The opening verses predict the victory of the royalist forces under Montrose against the regicides. The author’s confidence was misplaced. Within a few weeks Montrose had been executed and the victorious Cromwell had returned from Ireland to take control of the projected invasion of Scotland. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 78


the situation in Ireland became more and more critical. Eventually, by the end of April he was forced to accede to the Scots’ demands, which now included an order to Montrose to lay down his arms and leave Scotland. Charles was undoubtedly playing a double game; before he left the continent for Scotland he had laid plans for a series of royalist insurrections throughout England during the summer of 1650.48 Yet, he evidently miscalculated the scale of the royalists’ shock and dismay at his total capitulation; even his own mother told him that she would never again act as his political adviser. If those closest to Charles were dismayed by his actions, one can imagine the scale of the disorientation and demoralization felt by royalists throughout Britain and Ireland. For many royalists, however, the most shameful incident of this humiliating period was Charles’s abandonment of Montrose. As previously mentioned, Montrose had entered Scotland in March 1650 with Charles’s approval, but under the terms of the agreement with the Scots the king ordered him to lay down his arms and leave the kingdom as soon as possible. However, Montrose was defeated and captured by his Covenanting enemies before this message could reach him. He was executed in Edinburgh on 21 May 1650, and Charles, far from condemning this action, quickly wrote to the Scottish Parliament denying that he had sanctioned Montrose’s invasion. The defeat and execution of Montrose encouraged the Scots to present Charles with still more stringent terms, and, with no hope of foreign aid or royalist action in Ireland or Scotland, Charles had no option but to accede to their demands. His humiliation was complete.49 Charles’s negotiations with the Scots during this period caused severe problems for the royalist newsbooks. In October 1649 Pragmaticus warned that the king could not with Honor nor Safety, or any probable hopes, of ever attayning the Scepter of that Kingdome, unite or comply with the Covenanters, nor without his owne English Party and the assistance of Ireland, and those Forces Raised, and to be raised, under Montrosse; ever attaine that happinesse in his Dominions, which all that love him most earnestly wish and pray for.

The authors were, however, forced to gloss over their hostility to the Covenanters when it became clear that Charles was prepared to negotiate with them. Although the authors continued to laud Montrose and sometimes stressed that the Covenanters would not be ‘the principall workmen’ of a restoration,50 there is no mistaking the change of tone in the newsbooks of

48 David Underdown, Royalist conspiracy in England, 1649–60 (New Haven, CT, 1960), pp. 19–20, 25–35. 49 CP, i, pp. 184–205. 50 Pragmaticus, no. 26, 16–23 Oct. 1649, sig. 4r; Royall Diurnall, no. 7B, 22–30 April 1650, sig. 4r; Pragmaticus, no. 26, 16–23 Oct. 1649, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 33, 11–18 Dec. 1649, sig. 1v–2r.

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this period. On 22 January, Pragmaticus enthused about the prospect of an agreement between the king and the Scots. On 14 February, The Man in the Moon claimed that, in the wake of an agreement between Charles and ‘his Subjects of Scotland’, the king would go to Edinburgh where he would ‘take the Covenant, and so joyne both Loyallists and Presbyters in a firme band of unity: and then he will have a hopefull and gallant Army to revenge his Fathers Blood’. On 19 February, Pragmaticus called on the London Presbyterians to ‘cry to your Brethren to come quickly’, and in the following week The Man in the Moon wrote of his ‘great hopes of a happy Vnion of all Parties’ in Scotland. In March, The Man in the Moon, The Royall Diurnall and Mercurius Pragmaticus praised the Scots’ preparations for war against the English rebels and expressed their satisfaction at the prospect of an agreement between the king and the Covenanters. Only a few months previously Pragmaticus had written against any alliance with the Covenanters, but now he intoned: Then Jockey trip it o’re the Tweede. Advance thy bonnet boldly; Whet, whet, thy Sword! make Traytors bleede! Looke hot and they’le looke coldly.51

The royalist newsbooks seem to have had little, if any, idea of the exact nature of the negotiations which opened between the king and the Scots at Breda in March 1650.52 The authors (like most royalists) must have had serious reservations about the wisdom of an alliance with the Covenanters, but they kept their misgivings to themselves and portrayed the Covenanters as loyal subjects of the king. They also vehemently denied the existence of any disagreements between the king and the Scots. On 29 March, for example, The Man in the Moon claimed that ‘the Newes holds good, the Scots offer very fair for accommodation’. On 3 April The Royall Diurnall wrote that the treaty ‘goes on so cordially on both sides between the King and his Scottish Subjects, that every one takes it to be an ominous signe to the Rebells at Westminster’. A week later, The Man in the Moon claimed that ‘the Treaty is certainly in a manner concluded with much content to all Partyes . . . the Scots have sent his Maiesty word, that they will put the Whole Nation in a redinesse for his service . . . so that in four dayes . . . they Pragmaticus, no. 38, 15–22 Jan. 1650, sig. 1v–2r; Pragmaticus, no. 35, 25 Dec. 1649–1 Jan. 1650, sig. 1r, 1v; Pragmaticus, no. 38, 15–22 Jan 1650, sig. 4v; Man in the Moon, no. 42, 6–14 Feb. 1650, p. 335; Pragmaticus, no. 42, 12–19 Feb. 1650, sig. 4v; Man in the Moon, no. 44, 20–27 Feb. 1650, p. 351; Man in the Moon, no. 45, 27 Feb.–6 Mar. 1650, p. 356; Royall Diurnall, no. 3, 4–11 Mar. 1650, sig. 3v–4r; Pragmaticus, no. 45, 5–12 Mar. 1650, sig. 1r–v; Pragmaticus, no. 46, 12–19 Mar. 1650, sig. 2v; Pragmaticus, no. 47, 19–26 Mar. 1650, sig. 1r. 52 Royall Diurnall, no. 6, 26 Mar.–3 April 1650, sig. 3r; Pragmaticus, no. 49, 9–16 April 1650, sig. 4v; Man in the Moon, no. 49, 20–29 Mar. 1650, p. 379. 51

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can raise him 40,000 fighting men to invade England, or relieve distressed Ireland’. On 16 April Pragmaticus condemned the ‘silly Bond-slaves of England’, many of whom, he claimed, had decided that they would remain neutral or fight alongside the regicides if England was invaded by the Scots or any other foreign force. On 22 April Elencticus marvelled that ‘the Lord hath so strucken . . . [the Scottish] . . . hearts with such an Obedience to their good and gracious King, our deare Soveraigne, that they are all now resolved (as one man) with one mind, to venture their whole Estates and lives’. Elencticus welcomed the prospect of an invasion because he believed that it would ‘rouse up the decaying spirits of all those now defeated Royallists to their former Lustre’. On 30 April Pragmaticus wrote that all parties in Scotland were ‘interwoven with the King’. He also strongly condemned those newsbooks produced by the regicides which ‘tell lyes at randum, and pretend disunity, and somethings demurred in the Scottish Proceedings, as to our Kings interest’.53 The most striking example of the willingness of the newsbooks to make tactical alliances with former enemies, or make enemies of former allies, is afforded by their attitude to the memory of Montrose after his trial and execution by the Covenanters. The royalists denounced the first reports of Montrose’s capture and execution as lies, because they claimed that he and the Covenanters were united in their opposition to the regicides at Westminster.54 However, they performed an extraordinary volte-face when it became clear that Montrose had indeed been executed by Charles’s new allies. On 27 May, a mere six days after his execution, Elencticus claimed that Montrose had been working for the English regicides and that he would have destroyed ‘all his Majesties Forces’ if he had not been exposed and put to death. The fortunate result of his death was that ‘the Scots are satisfied and past that feare [of Montrose]; so that now they are vnanimously setled, and resolved’ to fight for the king. In a similar vein, Pragmaticus expressed the remarkable belief that Montrose’s execution ‘hath now cleaned the home divisions of Scotland, and it will all bee managed against the Regicides by a Presbyterian Interest, who doe expresse full as much enmity as ever Royallists did, and doe provide to make good in the highest degree’.55 The Royall Diurnall, no. 6, 26 Mar.–3 April 1650, sig. 4v; Pragmaticus, no. 48, 2–9 April 1650, sig. 2r; Pragmaticus, no. 49, 9–16 April 1650, sig. 1v–2r; Elencticus, no. 1, 22 April 1650, sig. 1r, 3r, 3v; Pragmaticus, no. 51, 23–30 April 1650, sig. 2r, 4v; Elencticus, no. 3, 29 April–6 May 1650, sig. 4r; Pragmaticus, no. 52, 30 April–7 May 1650, sig. 4r; Elencticus, no. 6, 20–27 May 1649, sig. 2v; Man in the Moon, no. 48 [sic], 13–20 Mar. 1650, p. 375; Man in the Moon, no. 50, 29 Mar.–10 April 1650, p. 292, i.e. 392; Man in the Moon, no. 53, 1–9 May 1650, p. 408. 54 Man in the Moon, no. 55 [sic], 8–23 May 1650, pp. 412, 415; Pragmaticus, no. 55, 21–28 May 1650, sig. 2r. 55 Elencticus, no. 6, 20–27 May 1649, sig. 3r; Pragmaticus, no. 55, 21–28 May 1650, sig. 2r; Elencticus, no. 7 May–3 June 1650, sig. 3v; Man in the Moon, no. 57, 29 May–5 June 1650, pp, 427, 232, i.e. 432. 53

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lesson from this examination of the newsbooks’ attitude to the Scots is clear: the authors were prepared to write in favour of any royal policy or alliance. They had no prior warning of precisely what Charles I and Charles II might be forced to agree to and they had no ability to influence royal policy, yet they navigated the perilous seas of royal policy with a surprising degree of eloquence, style and bare-faced cheek. Law and order: the one constant theme During the early 1640s some of the king’s most prominent supporters disseminated ideas which held that Charles derived his power directly from God and was accountable to Him alone for his actions. These ‘absolutists’ believed that the king was the judge and interpreter of the laws and not vice versa. It was true that the kings of England had agreed to legislate in Parliament, but it was the king’s absolute power, not the consent of the Lords and Commons, that made law. As such, the king might lawfully, if he saw fit, interfere with the property and liberty of any or all of his subjects. The king had a duty to abide by the laws of God and nature, but even if he behaved tyrannically the subject had no right to actively resist the sovereign. The subject’s only options were either to accept the king’s wishes or to resist passively, in the knowledge that he must accept any temporal punishment that the king might inflict for the refusal to obey his commands. Most of those who held such extremist notions were clergymen, but during the First Civil War the authors of the royalist newsbook Mercurius Aulicus, under the direction of George Digby and Edward Nicholas, ‘relentlessly advocated the highest claims made for the King and his prerogative’.56 It must be acknowledged that the king, whatever his personal opinions, had enough sense to ensure that the vast majority of royalist propaganda of the early 1640s avoided such extreme positions.57 Most writers for the king during these years were content to admit that the actions of the king were limited by the laws of England. These publicists emphasized royal respect for the subjects’ liberty and property. It was not the king, they said, but Parliament that threatened the subjects’ property. For these men, the king was a Smith, Constitutional royalism, pp. 244–53; J.P. Sommerville, ‘Absolutism and royalism’, in Burns and Goldie (eds), Cambridge history of political thought, p. 348; Johann Sommerville, Royalists and patriots: politics and ideology in England, 1603–1640, 2nd edn (1999), pp. 41, 45–7, 95; Ian Brice, ‘Political ideas in royalist pamphlets of the period 1642–1649’ (Oxford B.Litt. thesis, 1970), p. 56; Thomas, Berkenhead, pp. 76–7; Jerome de Groot, Royalist identities (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 20–53. 57 Smith, Constitutional royalism, pp. 88–91; J.W. Daly, ‘Could Charles I be trusted? The royalist case 1642–1646’, JBS, vi, 1 (1966), 23–44; J.W. Daly, ‘John Bramhall and the theoretical problems of royalist moderation’, JBS, xi, 1 (1971), 26–44, and Corinne Comstock Weston, ‘The theory of mixed monarchy under Charles I and after’, EHR, lxxv (1960), 426–43, at 427, 436, 440. 56

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far more effective champion of Parliament’s rights and liberties than those who held sway at Westminster. Armed resistance to the monarch was not merely contrary to divine or natural law, it was destructive of the constitution and fundamental laws which the king was pledged to defend.58 These ideas were commonplace in the writings of royalist writers such as Edward Hyde, Henry Ferne, Dudley Digges, John Spelman, John Bramhall, James Howell and David Jenkins.59 Edward Hyde, later Earl of Clarendon, is particularly important because he drafted the majority of Charles’s declarations from late 1642.60 Brian Wormald’s famous study of Clarendon’s career demonstrates that the declarations which he drew up before March 1642 were addressed to the leaders of Parliament in an attempt to facilitate a compromise between that institution and the king. From March 1642 onwards, however, the breakdown in relations between the two parties over the Militia Bill ensured that Hyde’s propaganda became more spirited, strident and aggressive. From this date onwards, Hyde’s propaganda was directed at the public in an attempt to disabuse it of the interpretation put upon events by the parliamentary leaders. These later declarations are models of the view that Parliament was the aggressor against law and property, and that the rights of the subject stood or fell with the maintenance of the rights of the king. Hyde acknowledged the king’s mistakes, but argued that Charles was a chastened man who had realized that the counsel which he had, in all good faith, accepted had been ill-informed. There was no danger that Charles would ever return to the failed policies of the 1630s. Hyde argued again and again that the parliamentary leaders were ‘a faction of malignant, schismatical, and ambitious persons; whose design was, and always had been to alter the whole frame of government both of Church and State, and to subject both king and people to their own lawless, arbitrary power and government’. He devoted much space to Charles’s sincerity and reasonableness, and the indefensible affronts which Parliament and its armies had offered to the dignity of the king. The central message of this propaganda was that it was the royalists who stood ‘stoutly and immutably for the religion, the liberties, [and] the laws’ of England.61 In what follows it will be demonstrated that all of the royalist newsbooks of the late 1640s borrowed from, and developed upon, the arguments which had been put forward by mainstream royalists during the First Civil War. Brice, ‘Political ideas in royalist pamphlets’, p. 18; Sommerville, ‘Absolutism and royalism’, p. 360; Smith, Constitutional royalism, pp. 177, 243, 318; Armstrong, Protestant war, pp. 126–7, 132–5. 59 Smith, Constitutional royalism, pp. 219–43; Daly, ‘Could Charles I be trusted?’, pp. 23, 25; Daly, ‘John Bramhall’, pp. 26–44. 60 Brian Wormald, Clarendon: politics, historiography and religion, 1640–1660 (Cambridge, 1976), p. 66; Paul Seaward, ‘Edward Hyde (1609–74)’, in Oxford DNB. 61 Wormald, Clarendon, pp. 93, 96, 102, 116, 139; Richard Cust, Charles I: a political life (2005), pp. 363, 364, n.16, 369, 372–3. 58

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The royalist newsbooks of the late 1640s were agreed that the rule of Charles I had been a period of remarkable ‘plenty, peace and tranquillity’. The Civil War had not been the result of a fundamental difference between the king and his happy and contented people. It was, rather, the consequence of a long-standing plot by a small clique to abolish monarchy, murder the king and queen, enslave the nobility and gentry and ‘eradicate the ancient and knowne Lawes of the Land’. In April 1648 Elencticus claimed that those behind the plot had ‘provoked the Irish to rebellion and used this as a pretext to seize control of the Armed forces’. On one occasion Pragmaticus suggested that the plot had been hatched by Louis XIII’s minister Richelieu as part of an attempt to increase French power in Europe. These were isolated comments: on all other occasions the newsbooks claimed that the culprits had been the Scots and their Presbyterian allies in England. These plotters had ‘luld a slepe’ and ‘enchanted’ the people like the Sirens of classical mythology. They had preached and written fine words about religion, liberty and the rights of the subject, but their sole concern had been to cause unrest in order to ‘make themselves absolute and command the person and Purses of the people at their Pleasures’.62 Pragmaticus twice claimed that Charles’s reign had been a model of constitutional propriety.63 On the whole, however, Pragmaticus and the other newsbooks were prepared to admit that some of the policies which Charles pursued during the 1630s had been unwise. They admitted that Star Chamber and High Commission had been oppressive, and acknowledged that innovations such as Ship Money, Coat and Conduct Money and the ex officio oath had had a detrimental effect on the kingdom.64 They were adamant, however, that these policies amounted to nothing more than ‘petit mis-carriages’, especially when compared with the crimes of those who had used them as a pretext for rebelling against the king. The rebels were hypocrites because they condemned the king’s misdemeanours but refused to acknowledge their own ‘high enormities’. According to Pragmaticus, ‘their private Searchings and plunderings of the Coffers of the Subjects have made 62 Man in the Moon, no. 5, 7–14 May 1649, p. 3; Bellicus, no. 18, 23–30 May 1648, sig. 2r; Elencticus, no. 19, 29 Mar.–5 April 1648, p. 137; Elencticus, no. 33, 5–12 July 1648, p. 257; Elencticus, no. 47, 11–18 Oct. 1648, p. 387; Elencticus, no. 54, 29 Nov.–6 Dec. 1648, p. 520; Fidelicus, no. 2, 24–31 Aug. 1648, p. 8; Melancholicus, no. 39, 15–22 May 1648, p. 232; Melancholicus, no. 55, 11–18 Sept. 1648, pp. 167–8; Melancholicus, no. 3B, 11–17 Sept. 1647, sig. 1r; Melancholicus, no. 1, 21–28 July 1648, p. 3; Pragmaticus, no. 26, 19–26 Sept. 1648, sig. 1r; Pragmaticus, no. 49, 3–10 April 1649, sig. 2r; Pragmaticus, no. 18A, 11–18 Jan. 1648, sig. 2v; Pragmaticus, no. 23, 15–22 Feb. 1648, sig. 1v; Pragmaticus, no. 31, 24–31 Oct. 1648, sig. 2v; Pragmaticus, nos. 32 and 33, 31 Oct.–14 Nov. 1648, sig. 1r–v; Parliaments Scrich-Owle, no. 1, [29 June] 1648, p. 3; Publicus, no. 3, 22–29 May 1648, p. 18. 63 Pragmaticus, no. 49, 3–10 April 1649, sig. 1v; Pragmaticus, no. 53, 1–8 May 1649, sig. 2r–v. 64 Man in the Moon, no. 5, 7–14 May 1649, p. 6; Royall Diurnall, no. 1, 25 Feb. 1650, sig. 4r; Royall Diurnall, no. 4, 11–19 Mar. 1650, sig. 2r.

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more spoyle in one day, than ever privy Seales did throughout his Majesties Whole Reigne: And as for Coat & Conduct Money, sure that is nothing, if laid in the scales with the oppression of a seven-yeares warre upon free-quarter’. Elencticus made a similar point in May 1649: ‘all the evidence of tyranny ‘gainst all the Kings of England, untill this present age, will not amount to one quarter so much as you [the rebels] have been guilty of within these three years’.65 In contrast to their bellicose denunciations of the present situation, the royalist newsbooks were remarkably unforthcoming about the type of government they envisaged for England under a restored monarch. In August 1648, The Royall Diurnall wrote: ‘I beseech your Majesty to yeeld to anything, till you have recovered the strength you have lost (be their demands never so unreasonable) when your Crowne is againe on your head, your Scepter in your hand, and your sword girt about you, votum extortum non est servandum.’66 This was an isolated, but highly illuminating, outburst. Whatever their private opinions, the royalist authors took every possible opportunity to insist that Charles had no intention of taking revenge against those subjects who had been tricked into rebelling against him.67 They implied (but never explicitly stated) that Charles would confirm the details of the 1641 constitutional revolution. Parliaments would be safeguarded, Star Chamber and High Commission would not return, and the ancient laws of England and the liberties of the subject would be respected. Constructive ambiguity was obviously an important weapon in the royalists’ arsenal. The widespread perception of Charles as untrustworthy had contributed to the outbreak of civil war, and made it extremely difficult to negotiate an end to the conflict.68 The royalist polemicists of the late 1640s were aware that, if their cause was to have any chance of success, they would have to convince large numbers of non-royalists of the king’s integrity and trustworthiness. This was something of an uphill task, especially in the light of Charles’s well-known duplicity during the First Civil War and his attempts to pit Parliament, the army and the Scots against each other in the negotiations which took place during 1647 and 1648. Despite these difficulties, the authors made a valiant effort to portray Charles as an honourable and trustElencticus, no. 2, 1–8 May 1649, p. 11; Pragmaticus, no. 23, 15–22 Feb. 1648, sig. 3v; Pragmaticus, no. 24, 22–29 Feb. 1648, sig. 2r, 3r; Pragmaticus, no. 45, 13–20 Feb. 1649, sig. 3r; Elencticus, no. 10, 26 Jan.–2 Feb. 1648, p. 75; Pragmaticus, no. 24, 22–29 Feb. 1648, sig. 1v. 66 Royall Divrnall, no. 4, 14–22 Aug. 1648, sig. 3r. A rough translation would be ‘an extorted promise need not be kept’. 67 Elencticus, no. 34, 12–19 July 1648, p. 266; Scoticus, no. 1, [19 July] 1648, p. 1; Wormald, Clarendon, p. 219; Lionel Gatford, Englands Complaint (1648), p. 8. 68 Daly, ‘Could Charles I be trusted?’, pp. 23–44; J.W. Daly, ‘The implications of royalist politics, 1642–1646’, HJ, 27, 3 (1984), 725–55, at 752; Wormald, Clarendon, p. 81; Ronald Hutton, ‘The structure of the royalist party, 1642–1646’, HJ, 24, 3(1981), 553–569, at 555; Weston, ‘The theory of mixed monarchy’, p. 438; Cust, Charles I, p. 373. 65

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worthy man. They did this by stressing his loving relationships with his wife and children, his loyalty to his friends, and the depth of his religious convictions. For Elencticus, Charles was ‘the most religious King, that ever swayed the Scepter of Great Brittaine’, and for The Man in the Moon he was ‘the most Christian, Annointed, Crowned, religious, Just, Pious, Vertuous and wise prince in the world’.69 They claimed that Charles had been forced to take up arms to defend his people, but was determined to secure a negotiated end to the conflict at the earliest possible opportunity. In August 1648, for example, Elencticus wrote that Charles would willingly ‘give eare to any motion, (though never so unreasonable on their part) That may conduce to the Happinesse and Peace of His Subjects.’ He was ‘willing to condescend to anything, rather then there should be any more bloodshed.’ In October, Elencticus claimed that Charles had offered all things imaginable to satisfie them in matters of Religion; or conduceing to their own Security: Refusing nothing but what he cannot yeild to, without violence to His Conscience: having given them the Militia. . . . Which was the first ground of all the Bloody Warres in this Kingdome: so that the main cause being removed, there is now nothing wanting but the Yea of the House of Commons.

But, Elencticus continued, the Commons would not agree to conclude the negotiations because ‘there is still Gold and Moneys in the City & Kingdome’.70 The failure to secure the negotiated settlement which the vast majority of England’s inhabitants undoubtedly wanted was, therefore, due entirely to the greed and vanity of the rebels, and not any duplicity on the part of the king. The newsbooks also tried to induce sympathy for the person of the king by inventing a series of stories about the sufferings which were inflicted upon him by his captors at Hampton Court and Carisbrooke Castle. Charles was, in actual fact, afforded every courtesy at Hampton Court and during his first few months at Carisbrooke. After the Engagement with the Scots and the discovery of his attempts to escape, however, the number of his attendants was cut to thirty and security on the island was increased. According to S.R. Gardiner, Charles ‘was now, in a sense in which he had never been before, a prisoner’. It must be stressed, however, that Charles never suffered any abuse or neglect, whether physical or material, at the hands of the army during this

Elencticus, no. 9, 19–26 Jan. 1648, p. 68; Man in the Moon, no. 1, 16 April 1649, pp. 4–5. Raymond, ‘Popular representations of Charles I’, pp. 56, 60, 62. 70 Pragmaticus, no. 10B, 16–22 [i.e. 23] Nov. 1647, p. 75; Elencticus, no. 38, 9–16 Aug. 1648, p. 292; Elencticus, no. 40, 23–30 Aug. 1648, p. 322; Elencticus, no. 42, 6–13 Sept. 1648, p. 340; Elencticus, no. 47, 11–18 Oct. 1648, p. 386; Elencticus, no. 48, 18–25 Oct. 1648, p. 390; Elencticus, no. 51, 8–15 Nov. 1648, p. 497. 69

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period of closer confinement.71 For the royalist authors, however, Charles’s captivity was a period in which he was forced to endure hunger, cold and squalor. He was presented as suffering verbal and physical abuse from his jailers who allegedly denied him the company of family and friends, and deprived him of facilities to wash or read. In January 1648 Pragmaticus claimed that Charles was the ‘most unfortunate (though the most rationall, Pious, Gracious and Conscientious) of all men living; being shut up as a close prisoner; deprived of Wife, Children, Friends, Servants, and all but a good conscience’. In the following month Elencticus asserted that Charles was ‘pinn’d up in a narrow Roome, where he is not permitted to do the necessities of Nature, without Eyes upon Him, and deprived of all Society of his Friends, and all other comforts whatsoever’. In March they claimed that he had been forced to use a bellows to light a fire in ‘his nasty Chamber’, and that he was ‘so carefull of his Throat, He will not give his consent to be shaven’. Throughout March and April they were outraged by the entirely fictional report that the king’s jailer Colonel Robert Hammond had given Charles a black eye. Four months later, the king was alleged to be under constant lock and key and to be ‘every minute in hazard of His Life’. These reports inevitably increased in frequency as 1648 drew to a close.72 The danger of regicide had been a rhetorical device of royalist propaganda since the very start of the 1640s, and it is not clear whether the newsbooks actually believed that the execution of the king was a serious possibility in late 1647 and early 1648. It is true that one or two extremists had consistently spoken of deposing the king. It is also true that in November 1647 a small number of Agitators were alleged to have hatched a plot to assassinate Charles.73 Yet, the army officers and the members of both Houses did not want to depose Charles and were determined to protect him from physical harm. They could not envisage a settlement without him. Before the summer of 1648 those who wanted to depose Charles or bring him to trial as a ‘Man of Blood’ were nothing more than a tiny minority, even among the radicals in the army. Their ideas only gained a wider currency in the army after the bloodshed of the Second Civil War. Even then the idea of deposing the king or bringing him to trial was still so far from the minds of Parliament that the army was forced to purge it in December 1648. The vast majority of the men who signed Charles’s death warrant could, in all conscience, have disclaimed any intention to depose or execute him until well after Pride’s Purge. Many of these men were only persuaded of the

CW, iii, pp. 286, 297, 334, 379; Macray, Rebellion, iv, pp. 228–9, 232, 236–7, 244, 250; Scott, Politics and war, pp. 148, 151. 72 Pragmaticus, no. 16, 28 Dec. 1647–4 Jan. 1648, sig. 4v; Elencticus, no. 10, 26 Jan.–2 Feb 1648, p. 72; Melancholicus, no. 58 [sic], 25 Sept.–2 Oct. 1648, sig. 1r; Elencticus, no. 15, 1–8 Mar. 1648, p. 116. 73 CW, iii, pp. 246–7, 337, 465, 494, 515; Scott, Politics and war, p. 127. 71

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necessity of executing Charles in the days before the event took place.74 Despite these facts, the royalist newsbooks, almost from their first appearance on the streets of London, claimed that there was a long-standing plot among the leading rebels to murder the king. It is likely that the royalists wrote about this plot in order shock their readers, convince them of the seriousness of the crisis facing England, and besmirch the reputation of Parliament and the leaders of the army. In fact, it is probable that they (like the rest of the English people) only realized that execution was a serious possibility late in 1648. Even though the royalists’ early stories of a plot to kill the king had probably been nothing more than black propaganda, it was possible after the regicide to see them as having been prophetic. In a strange way, then, the arguments and veracity of the newsbooks were confirmed, vindicated and authenticated by the king’s execution in January 1649. It must be stressed, however, that the integrity of the king and the indignities which he was forced to suffer were not the keystone of the newsbooks’ propaganda effort. The authors must have known that a good number of his subjects had formed negative opinions of Charles’s character over a period of many years. Some of these individuals were likely to be moved to pity by the stories of Charles’s sufferings, but few were likely to have entirely put aside their misgivings about the king. Charles’s past conduct, his personal temperament and his love of intrigue were, in truth, three of the greatest weaknesses of the royalist cause. The authors did not, therefore, concentrate on the person of the king or the indignities which he was forced to endure. Instead, they chose to play what they believed to be their strongest card: the defence of the laws of the kingdom and the liberties of the subject. As previously mentioned, the royalist propaganda of the early 1640s made a great show of standing for the true religion, the ancient laws and the liberties of the subject. By way of contrast, the royalist newsbooks of the late 1640s emphasized their defence of the ancient laws and the liberties of the subject, but tended to avoid any mention of the Church ‘as by law established’. This is not to say that the authors of the newsbooks ignored the fate of the Church, or were neutral on the question of the religious innovations of the 1640s. Far from it. Mercurius Bellicus, for example, conducted a vigorous defence of ‘orthodox Divine[s]’ such as Mr Wake of Dorset who got into trouble for reading ‘the excelent booke of Common Prayer’, baptizing with the sign of the cross, using wedding rings, and administering ‘the Lords Body . . . according to the ancient and best forme’ of worship. For Bellicus, the Church of England was ‘the true and only religion confirmed by the

Scott, Politics and war, pp. 127, 159, 166, 172, 192; Sean Kelsey, ‘Staging the trial of Charles I’, in Jason Peacey (ed.), The regicides and the execution of Charles I (2001), pp. 71–93; Kelsey, ‘The death of Charles I’, HJ, 45, 4 (2002), 727–54; Kelsey, ‘The trial of Charles I’, EHR, 118 (2003), 583–616; Kelsey, ‘Politics and procedure in the trial of Charles I’, Law & History Review, 22 (2004), 1–25.

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Authority of so many Parliaments, and sealed by the blessed blood of so many martyrs’.75 However, the passion, prominence and frequency of Bellicus’s remarks in favour of the Church of England were unique among the loyal newsbooks. Almost all of the shorter-lived titles avoided any mention of the Church, as did the long-running Melancholicus. Many of the issues of Melancholicus were probably written wholly or in part by the Presbyterian clergyman John Hackluyt, so its silence on this matter is hardly surprising. One might, however, have expected the counterfeit editions of Melancholicus to have expressed some opinions on the matter, but they too were silent on the fate of the Church. Although the other three long-lived newsbooks – Mercurius Pragmaticus, Mercurius Elencticus, and The Man in the Moon – did not completely ignore the question of the Church, neither did they refer to it with anything like the frequency or depth of feeling demonstrated by Bellicus. In fact, the most striking feature of these newsbooks’ attitude to the Church was the infrequency of their references to it.76 It is unlikely that this was the result of any antipathy to the theology or organizational structure of the Church. The author of The Man in the Moon was, after all, an archetypal Anglican royalist.77 Charles I’s attachment to the established Church was so consistent and tenacious that it might be construed as bloody-mindedness. Indeed, at a number of important points during the decade several of his leading advisers would willingly have compromised on the issue of the established Church in order to secure military assistance for the crown.78 In the light of Charles’s attachment to the Church what are we to make of the newsbooks’ silence on the matter? Whatever the private differences of principle, strategy or emphasis among the authors on this issue, their public silence was probably due to a belief that emphasizing the connection between Church and crown might prevent them from winning military assistance from first the Independents and, later, the Presbyterians; it could also have served to alienate men and women from these groups who might have been tempted to move beyond strategic allegiances and go over to the royal cause. To fight as the defenders of the Church ‘as by law established’ would have been to pick a battle which had already been lost with the proscription of the episcopal McElligott, ‘Propaganda and censorship’ (Ph.D. dissertation), pp. 111–13. Dogmaticus, no 1, 6–13 Jan. 1648, p. 4; Elencticus, no. 3, 12–19 Nov. 1647, p. 17; Elencticus, no. 6, 29 Dec. 1647–5 Jan. 1648, p. 46; Elencticus, no. 7, 5–12 Jan. 1648, p. 46; Elencticus, no. 44, 20–27 Sept. 1648, p. 357; Elencticus, no. 5, 13–20 May 1650, sig. 1v; Parliament Kite, no. 4, 1–9 June 1648, p. 16; Parliament Kite, no. 15, 24–31 Aug. 1648, p. 90; Pragmaticus, no. 15, 21–28 Dec. 1647, sig. 3r; Pragmaticus, no. 16, 28 Dec. 1647–4 Jan. 1648, sig. 1v; Melancholicus, no. 7, 9–16 Oct. 1647, p. 41; Melancholicus, no. 17, 18–25 Dec. 1647, pp. 100–1; Melancholicus, no. 19, 1–8 Jan. 1648, p. 110. 77 Jason McElligott, ‘John Crouch: a royalist journalist in Cromwellian England’, Media History, 10, 3 (Dec. 2004), 139–55. 78 Cust, Charles I, p. 393. 75 76

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church. We have seen from their willingness to attack Montrose after his execution that the authors knew the struggle to achieve their goals was difficult enough without digging up corpses which had already been consigned to the grave. Instead, the newsbooks chose to stress the reverence of the royalists for the ancient laws of the kingdom and the liberties of the subject, and the dependence of these laws and liberties upon the person of the king. This argument was obviously calculated to appeal to Presbyterian sensibilities, but the prominence given to these ideas suggests that the authors believed they would have near universal appeal among their readers. In 1648, for example, Edward Hyde wrote to George Digby, that ‘whilst wee keepe ourselves upon the old foundacon of the established governm[en]t, and the good knowne Lawes, how weake soever wee are in power, wee shall bee strong in reputacon’.79 The newsbooks argued that Charles I was ‘the life of the Law of the Land’. After the regicide, they were at pains to stress that Charles II was ‘the only preserver of the Lawes, Liberties and Freedomes of his people’. It was true that Charles I and his followers had taken up arms, but it had been done with great reluctance in order to maintain the ancient laws of England against the innovations of the rebels. After his military defeat Charles was held prisoner because he would not agree that ‘the fundamentall lawes (the sinnews of Monarchicall Government) should be cut in pieces’. For the newsbooks, Charles I was determined to die rather than permit the alteration of England’s laws and thereby deliver his family and his people into the ‘hands of ungodly and unconscionable men’.80 In contrast to the king, the rebels were determined to rule by ‘Arbitrary Jurisdiction over both Lives and Fortunes of a Free-borne People’. Life under them, without the protection of the laws, would be nasty, brutish and short. The rebels would never disband the army that protected them from the vengeance of the people. There was, therefore, no prospect of a return to political stability or a reduction in the crippling taxes needed to feed, clothe and maintain that army. Pragmaticus argued that the people of England ‘may expect the same favour from our new Masters, as the Indians receive from the Spaniards, to live and digg, to feed those two insatiable Monsters, Ambition and Avarice with gold and silver’. The future would be one of almost continual conflict because the army would need to invent internal and external enemies in order to justify its existence: ‘Vsurped power is a Salamander that cannot likely live but in the

Bod. Lib., Clarendon MS 31, fol. 319v; Wormald, Clarendon, p. 197; Robert Ashton, ‘From Cavalier to Roundhead tyranny, 1642–9’, in John Morrill (ed.), Reactions to the English Civil War, 1642–1649 (1982), p. 206. 80 Pragmaticus, no. 3, 28 Sept.–6 Oct. 1647, p. 23; Pragmaticus, no. 18B, 11–18 Jan. 1648, sig. 1v; Pragmaticus, no. 30, 17–24 Oct. 1648, sig. 3v; Pragmaticus, no. 37, 8–15 Jan. 1650, sig. 2v. 79

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fire.’ ‘Robbery, rapes, and Warres’ were all that England could expect until the Stuarts returned to their rightful place at the head of the nation.81 One must wonder whether anyone was ever convinced by these arguments. Many readers must have been aware of the extent of Charles I’s devotion to the ancient laws and the liberties of the subject during the 1630s. Readers who lived in areas which had been under the control of the king during the First Civil War were also likely to be unimpressed by the royalists’ professed concern for liberty and constitutional propriety.82 On the other hand, the royalist newsbooks probably calculated that people can have remarkably short political memories. They are usually less concerned with the rights and wrongs of past conflicts than with issues which directly affect them in the present. The royalists’ arguments may also have been more plausible in areas that had never been under royalist control, or had only been held for a short period by the royalists. London, in particular, had only ever been occupied by the army raised by Parliament, and had only ever paid taxes to maintain this force. In such areas, the newsbooks’ mantra about the insatiable greed of the rebels, and Charles’s concern to return the kingdom to ‘plenty, peace and tranquillity’, may have been more plausible to a greater number of readers. The newsbooks provided no guarantees for Charles I’s future good behaviour: readers were simply expected to trust him. In the light of past experience, many readers must have remained suspicious or unconvinced. During the early 1640s some royalists had argued that Charles’s self-interest and self-preservation would force him to rule constitutionally in the future. These men argued that they would take the king’s repudiation of his promises as a grievous insult. Such a breach of faith would cause ‘his old enemies . . . [to] . . . rise once more and, in the face of such barefaced treachery, his old friends would either join them [i.e. the rebels] or stand aside’.83 The royalist newsbooks of the later 1640s, however, never addressed the question of what would happen if the king did not keep his word. This silence may have been due to a genuine belief that Charles would never break a solemn promise. It is more likely, however, that they avoided the question because even to have entertained the possibility that Charles might renege on his promises could have reinforced the popular perception that he was not to be Melancholicus, no. 31, 27 Mar.–3 April 1648, p. 181; Elencticus, no. 16, 8–15 Mar. 1648, p. 120; Elencticus, no. 45, 27 Sept.–4 Oct. 1648, p. 375; Pragmaticus, no. 20, 25 Jan.–1 Feb. 1648, sig. 2v; Elencticus, no. 1, 24 April–1 May 1649, p. 2; Bellicus, no. 6, 29 Feb.–7 Mar. 1648, sig. 1v; Elencticus, no. 6, 29 Dec. 1647–5 Jan. 1648, p. 44; Elencticus, no. 32, 28 June–5 July 1648, p. 245. 82 G.A. Harrison, ‘Royalist organisation in Wiltshire, 1642–1646’ (University of London Ph.D., 1963), pp. 363, 434–5; CW, iii, pp. 144–5; Macray, Rebellion, iv, pp. 12–13, 54, 83, 104; Ian Roy, ‘The English Civil War and English society’, in Brian Bond and Ian Roy (eds), War and society: a yearbook of military history (1975), pp. 24–43, at 36–42; Ronald Hutton, The royalist war effort, 1642–1646, 2nd edn (2003), pp. 92–3, 97–8. 83 Daly, ‘Could Charles I be trusted?’, p. 40. 81

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trusted. A reliance on the integrity of Charles I was certainly a weakness of the royalist propaganda effort. Yet, the authors evidently hoped that the widespread desire for peace, the length of time that had elapsed since the Eleven Years’ Rule, the illegal actions of Parliament during the 1640s, and the crippling burden of maintaining the New Model Army would encourage their readers to see Charles I as the only hope for a return to normality. One suspects that many of those who remained suspicious of the king would still have accepted the newsbooks’ claims that, even at his worst, Charles I had never been as oppressive or as arbitrary as Parliament and the army. How, then, was the 18-year-old youth who became Charles II at the moment of the regicide presented by the royalists during 1649 and 1650? He was certainly less problematic as a figurehead in that he was not tainted with his father’s perceived popery, the illegality of the 1630s, or the king’s manifest lies and dissembling during the 1640s. In this sense, then, there is a temptation for scholars to see the removal of Charles I as an opportunity rather than a problem.84 Yet it would be myopic to see the death of Charles I as anything other than an unmitigated disaster. The balance of power in England shifted fundamentally with the trial and execution of the king, and all of Charles II’s potential strengths could not possibly hope to compensate for the death of his father. One entirely unforeseen consequence of the regicide for the royalists was that they gradually lost what they believed to be their trump card, the link between monarchy, stability, law and order. During the initial, turbulent year of 1649 the republic began to put down roots – albeit shallow ones – in English society and, despite the hopes and predictions of many contemporaries, it managed to erect a stable, ordered government which could guarantee a degree of social, cultural and economic stability not seen for almost a decade. Very few English men and women were enthusiastic about their new masters, but it soon became clear that the greatest threat to the state of equilibrium which had been achieved in England now came from the royalists who sought to incite internal disorders in the army and foreign invasions of English soil. The irony is that the one argument which the royalist polemicists deployed with consistency from their first appearance in September 1647 – law, order and stability – became the most compelling argument against royalist politics and allegiance in the wake of the regicide.

Sean Kelsey, ‘ “A No-King, or a New”. Royalists and the Succession, 1648–1649’, in Jason McElligott and David L. Smith (eds), Royalists and royalism during the English Civil Wars (Cambridge, 2007); Raymond, ‘Popular representations of Charles I’, p. 74; Laura Lunger Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell: ceremony, portrait and print, 1645–1661 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 21.

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4

Authors, Shifting Allegiances and the Nature of Royalism

AUTHORS, SHIFTING ALLEGIANCES

Rethinking royalism and political allegiance

The nine known authors of the royalist newsbooks are John Berkenhead, John Cleveland, John Crouch, John Hackluyt, Marchamont Nedham, Martin Parker, Samuel Sheppard, John Taylor and George Wharton. There may have been a number of other men involved in a peripheral way in the writing of these serials, but the desire of the authorities in London to track down the culprits, the particular skills necessary to write and edit a newsbook, the size of the egos necessary to undertake such a dangerous task, and the benefits to be gained after the Restoration by identifying oneself as a royalist partisan during the 1640s suggest that these nine men constituted the essential nucleus of the royalist propaganda effort. Some of these men were more active than others, and the activity of all of them varied greatly over time as they became enthused or disappointed by events, were forced to spend long periods in hiding, or were captured and imprisoned by their enemies. The age of the famous ‘water poet’ John Taylor (he was over 70 in the late 1640s) may have ensured that he was less active than some of his younger comrades, and it is possible that the famous royalist balladeer Martin Parker actually played little or no part in the production of the royalist newsbooks. Parker’s biographical details are vague, but there are some unsubstantiated suggestions that he died some time in 1646 or 1647, and the association of his name with the newsbooks may have been no more than an attempt to link them with a famous author who was known to have produced best-selling works in the past. On the other hand, there are a number of contemporary suggestions that Parker did participate in the writing of the newsbooks. We simply know too little about the lives and careers of most of these men, an unfortunate state of affairs due partly to their humble status as mere writers and propagandists, and partly to their understandable desire to leave as few clues as possible as to their identity and movements. None of these men confined themselves solely to writing newsbooks in the service of the crown; they all produced other forms of royalist propaganda, whether almanacs, ballads, pamphlets, plays or poems. Both John 93


Crouch and Marchamont Nedham wrote a number of satirical pamphlets published in the form of plays, a deliberate snub to the Puritans who were so antagonistic to the culture of the London stage, and an attempt to appropriate that culture for the royalists. John Cleveland was perhaps the most famous poet of his day and his work could be courtly, comic or crude in form, depending on his intended audience. Modern readers might be struck by some of his more bawdy poems such as ‘A Faire Nimph scorning a Black Boy Courting her’, but his most famous, and critically acclaimed, composition was the lengthy poem ‘The Rebell Scot’.1 George Wharton was best known as the author of a series of astrological predictions during the 1640s about the prospects for the success of the royalists and the defeat of their enemies. Martin Parker was perhaps the most famous composer of street ballads of his day, and his ‘When the King Enjoys His Own Again’ was the unofficial anthem of the royalists of the Civil Wars and of the Jacobites in exile after 1688.2 This chapter will sketch the careers of these nine men, paying particular attention to those four (John Crouch, Samuel Sheppard, John Hackluyt and Marchamont Nedham) who went over to the royalist side from neutral or pro-Parliament positions at different times during 1647. The careers of these four men tell us something very useful about both the shifting nature of political allegiances during the Civil Wars, and the very essence of what it meant to be a royalist. The nature of the propaganda effort in which these nine men were engaged makes it impossible for us to discern precisely why each of them risked their lives in the cause of a humiliated and enfeebled monarch. We can never know precisely why they became royalists and why they wrote what they did, merely why they said they became royalists and why they said they wrote what they did. As we shall see, they were a diverse group with no common religious, social, economic or geographical background. This surprising diversity, combined with the fact that a number of the authors adhered to the king only from the summer of 1647 and fell away from the cause at various points during the first years of the Commonwealth, suggests that royalism in the late 1640s was a heterogeneous creed which could attract people from a variety of different religious and political backgrounds. Royalism was not a monolithic movement limited to a small number of ideologues committed to a particular pre-determined idea or series of ideas. It was a fluid and dynamic allegiance which could appeal to people Brian Morris and Eleanor Withington (eds), The poems of John Cleveland (Oxford, 1967), pp. 22–3, 29–32. 2 Harry Rusche, ‘Merlini Anglici: astrology and propaganda from 1644 to 1651’, EHR, 80, 315 (April 1965), 322–3; J. Andrew Mendelsohn, ‘Alchemy and politics in England, 1649–1665’, P&P, 135 (1992), 30–78; Bernard Capp, ‘George Wharton, Bellum Hybernicale, and the cause of Irish freedom’, EHR, 112 (June 1997), 671–7; Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 54; Dagmar Freist, Governed by opinion: politics, religion and the dynamics of communication in Stuart London, 1637–1645 (1997), p. 82. 1

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with a range of different opinions on religious and political matters. The ‘broad church’ nature of royalist allegiance was a considerable source of strength during the first half of 1648 when it looked as if the king might succeed in defeating his enemies on the field of battle, but it was a definite hindrance during the dark days after the regicide when differences of emphasis, priority and policy between comrades came to the fore. A more narrowly defined, more ideologically pure, more programmatic royalism might have been less successful in winning adherents during the first six or so heady months of 1648, but it would surely have been less susceptible to the defections, defeatism and demoralization exhibited by these authors during 1649 and 1650. The broad appeal of royalism during the late 1640s, its ability to subsume within itself men, like these authors, of such different temperaments and beliefs, forces us to re-consider what we mean by the term ‘royalist’. The question of royalist allegiance has traditionally been seen in terms of a polarity between two religious, political and temperamental extremes, the ‘absolutists’ and the ‘moderates’. Brian Wormald, for example, saw the royalists as a group of bloodthirsty ‘absolutist’ extremists who had been spoiling for a fight long before the outbreak of hostilities. He defined all of those who counselled moderation and the need to come to terms with Parliament as parliamentarians, an argument which led him to the extraordinary position that Charles I’s trusted adviser Edward Hyde was never a royalist.3 For James Daly, on the other hand, the only ‘genuine’ (his phrase) royalists were those ‘moderate’ members of the ‘mainstream’ who embraced ideas of limited monarchy. David Smith has recently argued for a variant of this moderate mainstream in the form of the ‘constitutional royalists’, a group of reasoned, pragmatic moderates who were committed to ideas of law, order, and, above all, the compatibility of royal power and constitutional government.4 These categories have provided useful ways of examining royalism, and, in particular, David Smith’s constitutional royalists seem to have been an important and influential group for much of the decade. Yet the construction and maintenance of a strict dichotomy between ‘absolutists’ and ‘moderates’ is problematic because it tends to ignore a whole spectrum of rich and variegated opinion between these theoretical extremes. It also presupposes the same penchant for intellectual clarity, consistency and logical thinking among the supporters of the king as is expected of modern scholars. Only a relatively small number of royalists could ever have experienced the traumas

Brian Wormald, Clarendon: politics, historiography and religion, 1640–1660 (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 158–62. 4 J.W. Daly, ‘Could Charles I be trusted? The royalist case, 1642–1646’, JBS, vi, 1 (1966), 23–44, at 25, 30–1; J.W. Daly, ‘John Bramhall and the theoretical problems of royalist moderation’, JBS, xi, 1 (1971), 26–44; J.W. Daly, ‘The implications of royalist politics, 1642–1646’, HJ, 27, 3 (1984), 725–55, at 752; David L. Smith, Constitutional royalism and the search for settlement, c.1640–1649 (Cambridge, 1994). 3

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of the 1640s without borrowing bits and pieces of ideological baggage from the theoretical extremes of ‘absolutism’ and ‘moderation’ at different times, or perhaps even at the same time. The strict demarcation of two theoretical extremes also leads to a remarkably static view of political allegiance which expects one to accept that people took fixed positions at the start of the conflict which they never altered during the terrible events of the following years. Rather than seeing royalist identity as a choice between two mutually exclusive extremes, we need to see political allegiance as a broad spectrum of opinion between these pure, unsullied ideological positions. If one accepts that the royalist political spectrum is divided between a whole series of bands of different colours which represent different political, religious and cultural positions, then one must also accept that each distinct band of colour shades into and is, to some extent at least, overlapped by the positions on either side of it.5 The metaphor of political allegiance as a beam of light which seems to be a single unified entity of one particular colour but which can actually be subdivided into a number of distinct entities of differing hues provides a useful way of conceiving royalist political ideas and arguments in the context of a propaganda war. This is because the sole aim of the propagandist is to convince his audience. There is no requirement for him to be intellectually consistent, honest or logical over a period of time. In fact, such a requirement might conceivably hinder the deployment of ideas and positions best suited to winning an argument at any particular point in time. Our authors were not limited to one part of the broad spectrum of royalist political ideas. They found it possible, and even desirable, to inhabit different parts of this spectrum at different times. An author might write in favour of the highest possible claims for the royal prerogative, or stress the king’s heartfelt desire to rule with Parliament in the interests of law and property; he could at different times praise or condemn Roman Catholics and Presbyterians as circumstances required; and he might try to charm the citizens of London, only to threaten them with fire and sword a few weeks later. He could, in other words, deploy any permutation or combination of the ideas and positions which constituted the royalist political spectrum. So, for example, John Berkenhead’s career on the royalist newsbook Mercurius Aulicus between 1643 and 1645 has been taken to demonstrate his attachment to absolutist positions on the nature of government,6 yet his propaganda of the late 1640s limited itself to moderate arguments about Charles’s key role in restoring the law, order and security which many people then craved. If the strict division into binary opposites within royalism is both an I borrow this metaphor for political allegiance from Arthur Koestler’s The Yogi and the Commissar and other essays (1945), p. 9. 6 Peter W. Thomas, Sir John Berkenhead, 1617–1679: a Royalist career in politics and polemics (Oxford, 1969), p. 74; Jerome de Groot, Royalist identities (2004), pp. 42, 50, 51–3. 5

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unhelpful way to understand something as complex as allegiance and a misrepresentation of the way in which many royalists thought and acted during the 1640s, then one may begin to wonder whether the traditional image of an unchanging and unchangeable polarity between ‘royalism’ and ‘parliamentarianism’ is also problematic. There were undoubtedly men and women who never changed their minds during the 1640s and 1650s, but there were very many men and women who moved between royalism and parliamentarianism, or vice versa, on one (and sometimes more than one) occasion. In fact, when one begins to look for people who changed sides during the conflict one is struck by the names of a host of men from disparate social, cultural, intellectual and religious backgrounds. For example, even a cursory examination of the nobility shows that there were those who sided with the king after a period as supporters of Parliament or the Scots Covenanters,7 and that there were those who followed the opposite political trajectory into the none too tender embrace of Parliament.8 There were also a number of noblemen who changed sides on more than one occasion.9 Even among Charles I’s leading advisers there were men (such as John Digby, 1st Earl of Bristol, and Edward Hyde, later 1st Earl of Clarendon) who had initially sided with Parliament.10 If changes of allegiance were not unknown at this level of society then it is likely that similar recantations may have been even more common in the various ranks of society below the nobility. In this context perhaps the careers of soldiers such as Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (d.1668), Sir Edward Massey (d.1674?) and Sir Trevor Williams (d.1692) were not as atypical as they might seem at first glance. Cooper initially fought for the king but changed sides in 1644, while Massey started the war on the side of Parliament and ended in arms for Charles. In the context of the lengthy argument rehearsed below about the zig-zag political career of the propagandist Marchamont Nedham, the choices of Sir Trevor Williams are of particular interest: he began the war as a royalist colonel, became governor of Monmouth for Parliament in 1645–6, and finally went back to the king in 1648. The changing of sides by soldiers may have been relatively common. At the end of the First Civil War, for example, the defeated royalist troops were These included John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale and Alexander, 1st Earl of Leven. See GEC. 8 These included Algernon Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland; William Ogle, 1st Viscount Ogle of Catherlough; William Paget, 6th Lord Paget; Henry Pierrepont, 2nd Earl of Kingston-Upon-Hull; and William Monson, 1st Viscount Monson of Castlemaine. See GEC. 9 Two such ‘turn-coats’ were George Goring, styled Lord Goring, and William, 6th Baron Paget. See GEC. 10 Wormald, Clarendon, pp. 78–84; Ian Roy, ‘George Digby, Royalist intrigue and the collapse of the cause’, in Ian Gentles, John Morrill and Blair Worden (eds), Soldiers, writers and statesmen of the English revolution (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 68–90, at 70. 7

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either disarmed and sent home or offered an opportunity to join the New Model Army. So many men took up this offer that when, at the Putney Debates in late 1647, it was proposed to enfranchise every soldier who had served Parliament in the ‘late wars’, the offer was restricted to those who had joined before the battle of Naseby. The complaint of a demoralized royalist in Ireland in August 1650 that there were ‘too many’ former Cavaliers in Cromwell’s army suggests that the flow of men out of the royalist ranks continued in the aftermath of the regicide.11 If members of the nobility and soldiers who had risked their lives for one side or another were willing and able to change their allegiance (whether through compulsion, conviction or opportunism), then surely the shifting allegiances of the four writers described at length in this chapter are less remarkable than has previously been thought. As will be argued below, the choices of these authors suggest that political allegiance was much more complicated and contingent than has traditionally been thought, and that a sudden realignment of politics took place during 1647. How else could men from such different backgrounds as Crouch, Sheppard, Hackluyt and Nedham have decided to begin writing for the king at roughly the same time? These four writers may stand as archetypes of the possibly hundreds or thousands of men and women who, for various reasons, changed sides during the conflict. Before examining in detail the careers of the men who wrote the royalist newsbooks it might be useful to point out one of the broader issues raised by these shifting patterns of allegiance. This relative fluidity of belief, or, perhaps more accurately, the mutability of the public positions which men adopted, may explain why all attempts to find pre-determining factors for political allegiance during the Civil Wars have failed. There was, quite simply, no single, fixed, pre-determined allegiance but a conscious choice to adhere to one side or the other which was dependent on a whole series of entirely contingent factors which differed from time to time, from place to place, and from person to person. What is more, scholars have not been sufficiently aware of the fact that for many people we have to explain not one but two, or perhaps even three or more, changes of allegiance. The number of permutations and combinations of factors determining allegiance was enormous, but when one factors changing allegiances into the equation there was never any prospect of finding pre-determining reasons for particular political stances because the choice which an individual made at the start of the conflict was not necessarily one to which he remained wedded in the troubled years ahead.

John Morrill, ‘The Drogheda massacre in Cromwellian context’, in David Edwards, Padraig Lenihan and Clodagh Tait (eds), Age of atrocity: violent death and political conflict in Ireland, 1547–1650 (Dublin, 2005), fn. 6; BL, Egerton MS 2534, fol. 34.

11

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Writing cheap print The status of authors in the seventeenth century was extremely low and payments were usually ‘non-existent or miserably small’.12 John Berkenhead apparently received forty shillings apiece for writing scurrilous pamphlets such as Col. Pride and The Last Will and Testament of Philip Earle of Pembroke.13 Assuming that this was the standard fee for such items, it is clear that although it was not an insignificant amount, the physical danger associated with writing for the royalist cause probably ensured that it was not enough to tempt those whose only motivation for appearing in print was financial gain. The authors who produced the royalist newsbooks were certainly not indifferent to any payments they might receive, but they were undoubtedly motivated primarily by political considerations. They frequently complained that writing a weekly newsbook was a task of unremitting drudgery,14 yet they continued to write at great personal risk for relatively little reward because they believed that their efforts could be of some use to the royal cause. The author of The Man in the Moon may not, therefore, have been exaggerating when he claimed that he would be happy if he earned enough money to pay the printer. His sole intention was, he wrote, ‘to scratch out the very eyes of rebellion with my sharpened pen’.15 We know very little about the actual process of writing the royalist newsbooks but scholars have traditionally relied on a number of historical sources to attribute several of the most prominent serials to particular authors. It has usually been accepted that John Crouch wrote The Man in the Moon, Samuel Sheppard penned the Mercurius Aulicus of 1648, John Berkenhead was responsible for Mercurius Bellicus, John Hackluyt compiled Mercurius Melancholicus, and Marchamont Nedham was behind Mercurius Pragmaticus. However, many of the newsbooks, particularly the short-lived ones, have not been attributed to any person, and there are one or two titles which it is commonly acknowledged were produced by two or more collaborators. So, for example, John Cleveland, Samuel Sheppard and Marchamont Nedham have been suggested as the co-authors of the more than fifty issues of Mercurius Pragmaticus (NS 369) which appeared between September 1647 and May 1649.16 This book accepts the traditional attributions of the newsbooks as they Marjorie Plant, The English book-trade: an economic history of the making and sale of books, 3rd edn (1974), p. 73; Adrian Johns, The nature of the book: print and knowledge in the making (Chicago, IL, 1998), p. 175. 13 O.L. Dick (ed.), Aubrey’s brief lives (1972), p. 23. Thomas, Berkenhead, p. 34; Joseph Frank, Cromwell’s press agent: a critical biography of Marchamont Nedham (Lanham, MD, 1980), p. 29. 14 For example, Mercurius Elencticus, no. 10, 26 Jan.–2 Feb. 1647 [i.e. 1648], pp. 69–70. 15 The Man in the Moon, no. 2, 16–23 April 1649, p. 16. 16 See details in NS, no. 369. 12

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are based on sound historical and bibliographical sources and methods, but it avoids any attempt to identify the authors of the unattributed newsbooks.17 It also rejects recent attempts to suggest specific individuals as the authors of particular issues of newsbooks which were produced by two or more men: a process which invariably consists of nothing more than trying to guess which newsbooks were written by Marchamont Nedham. Such attempts at attribution display a misunderstanding of the nature of authorship at the time and a lack of familiarity with the mechanics of producing weekly underground serials in conditions of strict censorship. Authorship can never be proved on internal evidence alone, and, as a general rule, one should always be suspicious of a methodology which is both unprovable and tends to produce the required answer; no historian or literary scholar ever seems to make an attribution which undermines their broader, pre-determined argument, even if that attribution is based on nothing more solid than a series of possibilities, likelihoods or ‘maybes’.18 Any attempt to find the actual author of a pamphlet from this period misses the fact that the process of writing was often a collaborative one, both at the initial stage of composition and editing and when the manuscript was subsequently brought to the printer. There were certainly texts (such as, say, poetry and learned books of theology or history) which were more likely to be written by one man and one man alone, but, particularly when a politicized appeal to public opinion was being made, the number and variety of books and pamphlets which were produced by two or more men is striking. In the 1520s and 1530s, for example, the books and pamphlets which claimed to have been written by Henry VIII were actually written by the king in conjunction with a number of trusted scholars and scribes. Henry provided the core set of ideas, which were then worked-up by his team, before being passed back to him for final additions, corrections and deletions.19 Charles I adopted much the same way of working during the 1640s, when the printed proclamations and texts which bore his name as author I have relied upon Carolyn Nelson and Matthew Seccombe (eds), British newspapers and periodicals, 1641–1700 . . . (New York, 1987), the sole authoritative source on all matters relating to the attribution of these items. 18 See Jason Peacey, ‘ “The counterfeit silly curr”: money, politics and the forging of royalist newspapers during the English Civil War’, HLQ, 67, 1 (2004), 27–57, at 50–1; and Jonathan Scott’s treatment of Nedham in Commonwealth principles: republican writing of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2004). More generally, see Jason P. Rosenblatt, ‘Ink and vinegar: the authorship of A Survay of That Foolish, Seditious, Scandalous, Prophane Libell, The Protestation Protested’, PBSA, 97, 3 (2003), 351–65; and Jill Stern, ‘The rhetoric of popular Orangism, 1650–72’, Historical Research, 77, 196 (May 2004), 202–24, at 214. 19 J.J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 112; G.R. Elton, Policy and police: the enforcement of the Reformation in the age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972), p. 176; Virginia Murphy, ‘The literature and propaganda of Henry VIII’s first divorce’, in Diarmaid MacCulloch (ed.), The reign of Henry VIII: politics, policy and piety (Basingstoke, 1995), pp. 135–58. 17

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were invariably first penned by one or more of his leading advisers in consultation with the king, and then, depending on the time available (or, after 1646, the freedom which his captors would allow him at any point in time), worked and re-worked either by the king alone or in conjunction with his advisers. Even the Eikon Basilike, which purported to be Charles’s personal meditations on his ‘Solitudes and Sufferings’, underwent a similar process; the book started life as a manuscript written by Charles, the text of which was edited and added to by a trusted royalist named John Gauden, who then arranged for it to be passed back to the king for further re-working and final approval. This process of collective authoring continued even after the regicide as a number of printers supplemented subsequent editions of the Eikon with material which they claimed came from the pen of the king.20 The same process of collaboration is also evident in the production of William of Orange’s highly influential 1688 Declaration of Reasons for his invasion of England. This text was the product of often heated debates between William’s Dutch and English advisers during the summer of 1688, and after several months’ work its drafters had an agreed version of the Declaration, which was polished and vetted by William’s close Dutch associate Gaspar Fagel before being passed to the native English-speaker Gilbert Burnet, who removed any errors of language and foreign-sounding inflections.21 The collaborative process of writing was not confined to princes and monarchs, who, one might reasonably object, might have been too busy with more important matters to concern themselves with the often onerous task of writing books and proclamations. We know much less about writers lower down the social scale, and much of the fragmentary evidence which does survive is spread very thinly across the entire period. It is known, however, that the satirical anti-episcopal Marprelate tracts of the late 1580s were a collaborative enterprise. There was probably a principal author, but a number of other men donned the mask of ‘Martin Marprelate’ at various times.22 We also know that John Milton worked in a collaborative fashion on some of his prose texts, and it is now clear that the Leveller manifesto of late 1647, The Case of the Armie Truly Stated, was the product of a group of

Joan E. Hartman, ‘Restyling the king: Clarendon writes Charles I’, in James Holstun (ed.), Pamphlet wars: prose in the English Revolution (1992), pp. 45–59; F.F. Madan, A new bibliography of the Eikon Basilike of King Charles the First (1950), pp. 126–31, 141; Jason McElligott, ‘Roger Morrice and the reputation of the Eikon Basilike in the 1680s’, The Library, 7th ser., 6, 2 (June 2005), 119–32. 21 Lois Schwoerer, ‘Propaganda in the Revolution of 1688–9’, AHR, 82, 4 (1977), 843–74; Tony Claydon, William III and the godly revolution (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 25, 29–30. On the cumulative, collaborative authorship of the Prayer Book imposed upon Scotland in 1637 see Mark Kishlansky, ‘Charles I: a case of mistaken identity’, P&P, 189 (Nov. 2005), 73–4. 22 Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering in early-modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003), p. 42. 20

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like-minded soldiers.23 There were at least two men involved in writing the first issues of the royalist Mercurius Aulicus at Oxford in 1643, and its sparring partner, the London Mercurius Britanicus, also had a staff of more than one. According to a tract published in London in 1644, the royalist writers John Taylor, George Wharton and John Berkenhead were in the habit of meeting together on a weekly basis to ‘muster up whole Regiments of Lies, Slanders, and ridiculous quibbles against the Parliament’.24 Further confirmation of the often collaborative nature of this genre of writing is provided by a royalist pamphlet against the Solemn League and Covenant entitled Certain Disquisitions and Considerations (1644). The royalist spy John Barwick apparently wrote this piece in conjunction with his fellow Cambridge royalists William Lacy, Isaac Barrow, Seth Ward, William Quarles and Peter Gunning. Each of these men brought their particular part of the manuscript to Gunning’s college rooms where they ‘conferr’d and agree’d upon the whole’.25 This tendency to collaborate on the writing of political and politicized tracts may have been strengthened by the conditions in which the royalist newsbooks were produced during the late 1640s. There were strong bonds (sometimes of friendship, sometimes of deference and social obligation) between a number of the royalist authors, and even some of those who had not previously known each other developed a sense of camaraderie in the face of a common enemy.26 The overriding concern of the royalists was not the fate of individual writers, but the continued production of the newsbooks in the face of severe harassment. The royalist authors frequently collaborated on several titles simultaneously, but sometimes moved from one newsbook to Stephen B. Dobranksi, ‘Licensing Milton’s heresy’, in Stephen B. Dobranksi and John P. Rumrich (eds), Milton and heresy (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 139–41, 145–54; John Morrill and Phil Baker, ‘The case of the army truly re-stated’, in Michael Mendle (ed.), The Putney Debates of 1647: the army, the Levellers, and the English state (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 103–24. 24 Thomas, Berkenhead, p. 39; A.N.B. Cotton, ‘London newsbooks in the civil war: their political attitudes and sources of information’ (Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1971), p. 76; John Booker, No Mercurius Aquaticus ([19 July] 1644), p. 3; Robert Wilcher, The writing of royalism, 1628–1660 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 241–2, 262, 275; David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: poetry, rhetoric and politics, 1627–1660 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 174. 25 G.F. Barwick, The life of Dr John Barwick, Dean of St. Paul’s (1724), pp. 39–40. For more on the collaborative nature of authorship see Dobranksi, ‘Licensing Milton’s heresy’, pp. 139–41, 145–54; Stephen B. Dobranksi, Milton, authorship, and the book trade (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 15–20, 29–30, 138–9, 179–80, 189; Paulina Kewes, Authorship and appropriation: writing for the stage in England, 1660–1710 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 9–11, 128–9, 228–31; Margaret J.M. Ezell, Social authorship and the advent of print (Baltimore, MD, 1999), passim; Joseph Lowenstein, The author’s due: printing and the prehistory of copyright (Chicago, IL, 2002), pp. 1–26; Marcus Nevitt, Women and the pamphlet culture of Revolutionary England (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 85–6, 91–2. 26 Relations between the authors were not always fraternal and comradely, but the general point about the ability of many of them to work together towards a common goal holds true. 23

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another between intervals of hiding or imprisonment; their involvement with a particular title could fluctuate greatly from week to week depending on a number of factors, such as their fear of arrest, personal disputes with colleagues, or the need to perform other tasks of benefit to the royal cause. Whenever a man was arrested for involvement in a newsbook, a colleague invariably stepped into the breach and claimed that the wrong man had been arrested and he should be released.27 The fact that the royalist newsbooks shared a common stock of arguments, jokes and motifs28 negates any attempt to attribute authorship based on the occurrence and recurrence of particular words, tropes and ideas.29 It was not unknown for different authors to use exactly the same phrases and patterns of words.30 Martin Parker wrote the famous ballad ‘When The King Enjoys His Own Again’, but this does not mean that every reference to it in the newsbooks is proof of Parker’s involvement with that serial – particularly as he may, or may not, have been dead by the late 1640s. To take another example, knowing that John Crouch adopted the persona of ‘The Man in the Moon’ in his serial of the same title one might well attribute some or all of the other newsbooks which refer to this folk-tale or other closely related pieces of moon-lore to Crouch. On this basis one would have to adopt the absurd position of attributing issues of Mercurius Aulicus, Mercurius Bellicus, Mercurius Elencticus, Mercurius Melancholicus and Mercurius Pragmaticus to Crouch.31 It is important to understand that references to ‘The Man in the Moon’ occur in other newsbooks not necessarily because Crouch wrote them but because, in his writing his title, Crouch was merely drawing on a shared cultural tradition and a store of culturally significant references from which all of the authors could – and did – borrow.

Hyder E. Rollins, ‘Samuel Sheppard and his praise of poets’, in Studies in Philology, xxiv (1927), 509–55, at 524; Frank, Cromwell’s press agent, p. 47; Jeffrey K. Sawyer, Printed poison: pamphlet propaganda, faction politics, and the public sphere in seventeenth-century France (Berkeley, CA, 1990), p. 53. 28 Thomas, Berkenhead, pp. 39, 105, 113; Bernard Capp, The world of John Taylor the water-poet, 1578–1653 (Oxford, 1994), p. 165. 29 Peacey, ‘ “The counterfeit silly cur” ’, pp. 27–57; Scott, Commonwealth principles, passim. In contrast, for acceptable practice on attribution see Harold Love, Attributing authorship: an introduction (Cambridge 2002), and for a fine example of analytical bibliography see Gary Taylor, ‘Middleton and Rowley – and Heywood: “The Old Law” and new attribution technologies’, PBSA, 96, 2 (June 2002), 165–217. For a devastating critique of dubious attributions to Daniel Defoe based upon internal evidence of style and favourite phrases see P.N. Furbank and W.R. Owens, ‘On the attribution of periodicals and newspapers to Daniel Defoe’, Publishing History, XL (1996), 83–98. 30 Rosenblatt, ‘Ink and vinegar’, p. 363. 31 See Aulicus, no. 1, [7 Aug.] 1648, p. 2; Aulicus, no. 2, [14 Aug.] 1648, p. 12; Aulicus, no. 3, [22 Aug.] 1648, p. 21; Bellicus, no. 22, 20–27 June 1648, p. 2; Elencticus, no. 22, 19–26 April 1648, p. 166; Elencticus, no. 52, 15–22 Nov. 1648, p. 508; Melancholicus, no. 7, 9–16 Oct. 1647, p. 39; Melancholicus, no. 30, 20–27 Mar. 1648, p. 172; Melancholicus, no. 43, 12–19 June 1648, p. 255; Pragmaticus, no. 21A, 15–22 Aug. 1648, sig. A5v. 27

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There is yet another complicating factor about which aficionados of attribution are often blissfully unaware: individual words, groups of words, or even whole lines of text were often altered or deleted by the compositor in the process of setting the text in the print-shop.32 In order to set the text, the compositor in the print-shop picked up individual letters of type from a large wooden case as he read through the manuscript. These letters were then set in a small tray called a composing stick (which would resemble the tray that holds the letters in a modern game of Scrabble), and the compositor separated each word with spaces, which consisted of blank pieces of type. Each line, as it was completed, was made to come to an even margin by the alteration of the amount of space between the words, a process known as justification. The compositor would also change the spelling of words and insert contractions in order to make it fit on the page; he might also add or delete words and phrases in order to make the text fit the page, or to improve the clarity of the text. Under normal conditions the author, or one of the authors, would usually be on hand to oversee any changes to the manuscript, but the men responsible for the royalist newsbooks are unlikely to have brought the manuscript personally to the printer, and if they did take the risk, they are unlikely to have waited around to supervise any changes to their work.33 In these circumstances the compositor or the master-printer may very well have made significant changes to the contents, syntax or spelling of the manuscript without recourse to the author or authors.34 The royalist newsbooks are, therefore, probably best understood not as texts written by one easily identifiable author, but as the composite products of men with access to a communal arsenal of arguments, ideas and metaphors. These men subsumed their identity into a collective, and often took on the particular persona of the title they were writing: Melancholicus tended, of course, to be sad and weary, while Bellicus tended to present a pugnacious front. The authors were often consciously trying to throw the authorities off their scent, and the product of their labours could often be changed after it had been delivered to the printer. In such circumstances, any attempt to go beyond the broad outline of authorial responsibility sketched above (Crouch and The Man in the Moon, Hackluyt and Melancholicus, Nedham and Pragmaticus, etc.) is unwise. The following account of print-shop practice is based on Philip Gaskell, A new introduction to bibliography (Oxford, 1972), pp. 40–55. 33 DWL, Morrice MS P370. 34 For indications of how significantly the actions of printers and publishers might change the text, context or meaning of a piece see A.B. Worden (ed.), The Voyce from the Watch-Tower, 1660–62, Camden Society, 4th ser., 21 (1978); and David Norton, A textual history of the King James Bible (Cambridge, 2004), chapters 4 and 5. For indications of minor tensions between the authors and printers of the royalist newsbooks see Elencticus, no. 59, 2–9 Jan. 1649, p. 557; Pragmaticus, no. 39, 19–26 Dec. 1668, sig. 2v; Pragmaticus, no. 10, 19–26 June 1649, sig. 1v. Note that the tensions seem to have been exacerbated by the poor state of the royalist cause. 32

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There is something unsatisfying about having to accept such broad and necessarily crude ideas about the responsibility for particular titles; after all, The Man in the Moon continued to be produced even after the printer, Edward Crouch, and the recognized author, his kinsman John Crouch, were arrested and imprisoned.35 It would obviously be of great interest to know who else formed part of Crouch’s team, but the simple truth is that we shall never know. Any attempt to reconstruct the process by which these titles were written or to suggest which individual really wrote a particular newsbook (or even who wrote a specific issue of a newsbook) is anachronistic guesswork which ignores the realities of writing and printing politicized tracts at this time. As hard as it may be for us in the modern world to accept, the collective network which produced the royalist newsbooks is much more important than any individual who may or may not have written particular issues of specific titles. The attribution of underground newsbooks from this period relies on dubious assumptions and a methodology so flawed that it borders on a pathology. For the purposes of this book it has been assumed that most, if not all, of the unattributed titles were written by some (or all) of the nine individuals who are the subject of this section. This is a big assumption, but it is not an unreasonable one because the number of authors in London who could write clear, concise prose to strict deadlines, and who were prepared to risk imprisonment or death every week for the royalist cause, must have been small. Royalist ‘turn-coats’ and consistent royalists What do we know about the backgrounds of the men who wrote the royalist newsbooks? Two of them were born in the west of England, in Worcestershire and Gloucester. One each came from Cheshire, Cumbria, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire, London and Oxfordshire. George Wharton was ‘richly possess’d with Lands and Inheritances’,36 but all of the other authors for whom the evidence survives came from relatively modest backgrounds. Five of the authors were in their late twenties or early thirties in the late 1640s. One was in his early twenties, two were in their late forties and one was in his seventies. Of the five known to have attended university, only one had attended Cambridge and the others had been members of various Oxford colleges. Samuel Sheppard and John Hackluyt seem to have been clergymen of a Presbyterian inclination but no record survives of their enrolment in any university in Britain. Three of the men, John Crouch, Martin Parker and John Taylor, did not attend university and may have had limited formal Jason McElligott, ‘Edward Crouch: a poor printer in seventeenth-century London’, Journal of the Printing Historical Society, n.s. 1 (2000), 49–73; idem, ‘John Crouch: a royalist journalist in Cromwellian England’, Media History, 10, 3 (2004), 139–55. 36 Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, ii, pp. 683–4. 35

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schooling. John Taylor, for example, left school at the age of 11 to begin an apprenticeship at the humble trade of ferrying passengers across the Thames, and John Crouch had certainly left school by the age of 14.37 Four of the authors earned their living from learned professions: two were clergymen and the other two were academics, one at Oxford and one at Cambridge. The other five followed or had followed trades as diverse as inn-keeper, bookseller, teacher, ferryman and astrologer. It is notoriously difficult to determine the nature and zeal of an individual’s spiritual convictions in the past, particularly when one is dealing with propagandists whose sole aim was to win an argument, but John Berkenhead seems to have enjoyed the patronage of Archbishop Laud during the 1630s and may reasonably be categorized as a ‘Laudian’, at least during the early years of his career. John Hackluyt and Samuel Sheppard may have been Presbyterian ministers, but it is doubtful whether Marchamont Nedham ascribed to any particular religious creed.38 John Taylor wrote a life of the Virgin Mary and has been described as a ‘prayer-book Anglican’. The remaining five men may also have been loyal to the traditional ‘Jacobethan’ church; John Crouch, for example, never failed to mark the events and rites of the Anglican church calendar.39 The balladeer Martin Parker was the only one of the five authors who had joined the king’s side early in the conflict who resided in London during the First Civil War: the other four all spent at least part of the war in Oxford.40 John Berkenhead, a Fellow of All Souls’ College, and George Wharton had been in the city at the outbreak of hostilities, but John Taylor fled to the city from London early in 1643 and John Cleveland travelled from St John’s College, Cambridge at about the same time. All of these men penned propaganda in a variety of formats during their time at Oxford, and they probably knew each other well; it has been noted above that a pamphlet written in 1644 suggested that Berkenhead, Taylor and Wharton met once a week in a tavern in Oxford to ‘muster up whole Regiments of Lies, Slanders, and ridiculous quibbles against the Parliament and City [of London]’. Berkenhead’s role as licenser of the press also meant that he oversaw most, if not all, of the material produced at Oxford during the war.41 This act of licensing often involved significant editorial intervention by Berkenhead in the work of The sources for this survey are, in the first instance, the relevant biographies in the Oxford DNB and the sources listed in chapter 3 of my Ph.D. dissertation, ‘Propaganda and censorship: the underground royalist newsbooks, 1647–1650’ (Cambridge, 2000). 38 Worden, ‘Nedham and the beginnings of English republicanism’, p. 47; Worden, ‘Wit in a roundhead’, p. 309. 39 Capp, John Taylor, pp. 126, 33 For the use of ‘Jacobethan’ to describe the Church of England under Elizabeth I and James I see Smith, Constitutional royalism, pp. 23–5; McElligott, ‘John Crouch’, pp. 148–9. 40 Hyder E. Rollins, Cavalier and Puritan: ballads and broadsides illustrating the period of the Great Rebellion, 1640–1660 (New York, 1923), p. 23. 41 See footnote 6 above. 37

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other authors, a process which may have been facilitated and enhanced by the evident willingness of these men to co-operate with each other in the production of propaganda.42 The other four authors (John Crouch, John Hackluyt, Samuel Sheppard and Marchamont Nedham) had much more heterogeneous political backgrounds and seem to have only gone over to the king at various points during 1647, a strange and unpromising time to side with Charles I. The first of the men, John Crouch, set up in business as a bookseller in Smithfield soon after he became a freeman of the Stationers’ Company in 1639. It has not been possible to identify any work written, published or sold by him before he emerged as a royalist writer with a counterfeit edition of Mercurius Melancholicus in late 1647. Crouch was a pugnacious, belligerent and particularly raucous writer, but he was strangely quiet about his political allegiances earlier in the decade. In May 1649 he hinted in The Man in the Moon that he had initially believed that Parliament had legitimate grievances against Ship Money, High Commission and the bishops. The absence of any claim on his part to have been a royalist in the first half of the 1640s may be very telling, although this does not necessarily mean that he had actively supported Parliament in the past by taking up arms or contributing money to its cause. Crouch was arrested in June 1650, the last of his peers to be captured, and he remained in prison until after the defeat of the royalist and Covenanting forces at Worcester in September 1651. After his release, and perhaps it was a precondition of his freedom, he wrote a short-lived pro-army and anti-Charles II newsbook entitled Mercurius Bellonius. With his reputation among his former comrades suitably sullied, the authorities were content to leave Crouch to his own devices and he produced a series of newsbooks between the spring of 1652 and the summer of 1655. An examination of these titles demonstrates that during 1653 Crouch gradually moved from occasional guarded critiques of the regime to a public acceptance of the de facto legitimacy of the state. With the memory of the destruction caused by the Thirty Years’ War in Germany still fresh in men’s minds, he came to see the stability of the British regime as a very important argument, and perhaps the only argument, in its favour. When royalist plots broke out in 1655, this man, who had once proclaimed that he would lay down his life for Charles II as willingly as he had jumped into his matrimonial bed on the first night of his marriage, attacked his former comrades as ‘Feinds’ and ‘Locusts’ and declared his hatred of ‘all treason’ against the Lord Protector. Crouch’s recantation inevitably led to condemnation from his former colleagues,43 but, given the balance of forces at the time, his disavowal of royalism was as reasonable, rational and sensible as the adoption of that creed had been in

42 43

No Mercurius Aquaticus ([19 July] 1644), p. 3. Samuel Sheppard, The Weepers (1652), p. 6. 107


the late 1640s, when Charles I seemed to many people to offer the only reasonable guarantee of law, order and stability. The three remaining individuals, John Hackluyt, Samuel Sheppard and Marchamont Nedham, are noteworthy because we can definitely say that they changed their allegiance from Parliament to the king during the summer or autumn of 1647. In anticipation of the argument developed below about the nature of royalism, it is important to stress that Hackluyt, Sheppard and Nedham were not what one might call ‘fair-weather royalists’. In choosing to write royalist polemic at this time they placed themselves in considerable personal danger in the service of a vanquished king and cause which few objective observers could possibly have believed would be in a position to shower them with favours and fortune. Their personal sufferings while on the run and during their regular periods of imprisonment varied from harsh to very severe. Like John Crouch, all three men eventually came to terms with the regicides at various points during 1649 and 1650, but their defeat and eventual public recantation should not take away from the significance of their public stance in the two or so years after late 1647. These three men came from different political and religious backgrounds (Hackluyt and Sheppard seem to have been Presbyterians, and Nedham detested Presbyterianism) and the fact that they became partisans of Charles I at about the same time suggests a number of important and hitherto largely unremarked upon facts about politics in this period.44 The first observation prompted by their careers is that political allegiances shifted markedly between the summer and late autumn of 1647, so much so that men from very different backgrounds who had opposed the king could now line up beside each other on his side. Royalism at this time was not a party united around binary ideas of ‘absolutism’ or ‘constitutionalism’, it was a broadbased movement which could attract men and women from right across the political spectrum, and it did so because it made a conscious attempt to be all things to everybody. In addition, recent work on royalism has tended to present the supporters of the king as being uncomfortable with, and unsympathetic to, the emerging print culture of the 1640s. By way of contrast, this book argues that the willingness of the royalists to utilize the skills of these ‘turn-coats’ suggests that the supporters of the king were both comfortable with the need to win public opinion and confident of so doing. John Hackluyt’s life and career are mysterious. He claimed to hold a doctorate in divinity, but no record survives of his attendance at any English or Scottish university. Judging from a couple of asides in contemporary newsbooks, he seems to have been ‘a Minister in Gloucester for the ParliaThere is an intriguing suggestion by Nedham in The Case of The Kingdom that he had taken the Covenant at some point (2nd edn, sig. 2r, 3rd edn, sig. 1v). If this is true it undermines assertions about his consistent hatred of Presbyterianism. It may, however, have been nothing more than a propaganda argument designed to help him to convince Presbyterians of his godly credentials, or perhaps even a joke.

44

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ment’ during the early 1640s and then to have acted as a chaplain to Major General Massey, the Presbyterian army officer who played a leading role in the defeat of the royalist armies in the west of England during the First Civil War.45 The only surviving item attributed to Hackluyt (apart from his journalism) is a short pamphlet entitled An Alarm for London, which George Thomason bought on or before 20 July 1647.46 This is one of dozens of pamphlets printed at this time which urged Londoners to repent their pride, blasphemy and neglect of the Sabbath lest God should inflict further punishment on the capital. It contains many references to the forthcoming wrath of God, but does not make clear whether any future punishments would be the result of the iniquities of the royalists, Presbyterians or Independents. Even more disappointingly, it provides no clue as to how, or why, he came to write the first royalist newsbook in September 1647. Hackluyt was arrested for writing Mercurius Melancholicus at an unspecified date in late 1647. He was freed some time soon after his arrest, however, and returned to writing the newsbook. He was re-arrested on 11 March 1648 and sent to Newgate, from which he quickly escaped before being recaptured two weeks later in Grays Inn Lane. Remarkably, he escaped yet again, but was re-arrested on 20 July 1648.47 He was again at liberty by 1 January 1649, when he wrote the first of three issues of a revived Melancholicus. He was soon arrested, however, and was imprisoned for ‘many moneths . . . in Peter-house’.48 Many of Hackluyt’s fellow royalist prisoners may initially have been suspicious of his religious affiliations, but his repeated escapes and dogged determination to attack the ‘rebels’ in print must have convinced many of his integrity. According to one of the men imprisoned with him, he received ‘Charity’ and ‘encouragement’ from his fellow inmates and other unnamed members of ‘the Kings-party’. He became a hate-figure, however, after a petition which he had drawn up to the Council of State was discovered ‘about his Bed’ by another prisoner. This petition, written some time between January and May 1649, evidently recanted his royalism and condemned his erstwhile comrades as ‘Heathenish and Blasphemous Cavaliers’. He then penned an anti-royalist newsbook entitled Mercurius 45 Perfect Occurrences, no. 81, 14–21 July 1648, p. 591; Elencticus, no. 9, 18–25 June 1649, pp. 66–7; J.B. Williams, A history of English journalism to the foundation of the Gazette (1908), p. 82. For the incomplete nature of the relevant surviving records see Ann Lawrence, Parliamentary army chaplains, 1642–51 (Woodbridge, 1990), p. 1. In contrast to all of the other sources, however, a counterfeit edition of Melancholicus claimed in July 1648 that Hackluyt was ‘a small Sequestered Minister’. Melancholicus, no. 48, 17–24 July 1648, p. 123. 46 John Hackluyt, An Alarm for London Partly delivered in a Sermon the last Fast, neere by Bishopsgate in London ([20 July] 1647). 47 Perfect Occurrences, no. 63, 10–17 March 1648, p. 517; no. 73, 19–26 May 1648, p. 525; no. 81, 14–21 July 1648, p. 591; Melancholicus, no. 48, 17–24 July 1648, p. 123; Williams, English journalism, pp. 94–6. 48 Pragmaticus, no. 9, 12–19 June 1649, pp. 68–9.

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Militaris,49 and was released (probably in early June 1649) ‘upon testimony given of his so long pennance in Sack-cloath and Ashes, and of his hearty sorrow, and unfeigned repentance, with promise of his future amendment and faithfulnesse to the State.’ Thereafter, Hackluyt is never heard of again.50 Nothing is known of Samuel Sheppard’s opinions during the early 1640s. The first pamphlet which can be positively attributed to him, The Yeare of Jubile, published in July 1646, was a celebration of the successes of the New Model under Lord General Fairfax from the battle of Naseby in June 1645 to the surrender of Oxford almost exactly one year later. In it, Sheppard claimed that Fairfax’s name was ‘a terror to the enemies of Christ’, and the royalists had fought only to ‘mayntain and uphold . . . their pleasure and rapine, their debaust and luxurious living, to which they are so accustomed and bewitcht’.51 By the summer of 1647, however, Sheppard had switched his allegiance to the king. This change of heart was heralded in July 1647 by the publication of The Committee-Man Curried, a two-part play which attacked the iniquities of the London regime in the strongest terms. Sheppard now hoped that Charles might ‘take Root againe’, and that the blood of those royalists who had died in the conflict would be repaid ‘drop for drop, and ounce for ounce’.52 He threw himself into the writing of royalist newsbooks almost from their first appearance in September 1647. He collaborated with Marchamont Nedham and John Cleveland on Mercurius Pragmaticus, penned an edition of Mercurius Elencticus, and brought out a few counterfeit issues of Mercurius Melancholicus. At various times he also wrote Mercurius Dogmaticus, The Royall Diurnall, and two separate editions of a newsbook which he styled Mercurius Aulicus. He was imprisoned in Peterhouse Prison in June 1648, but soon escaped and returned to writing newsbooks. He was arrested and escaped on at least two further occasions before he was consigned to Newgate in April 1649. He later wrote that he had ‘languished . . . almost fourteene months [in Newgate] where my best musick was the ratling of cheines the gingling of Irons, & the groanes of men destind for destruction’.53 In the early summer of 1650, with the royalist press all but dead, the Council of State ordered that Sheppard be examined by the Committee of Examinations and released, if it saw fit. Sheppard evidently satisfied the Committee that he would not revert to his former attacks on the regime, and he was released from custody in June 1650. Over the next five years, before his death some time in 1655, he avoided any unfavourable comments on the regime. His recantation went Elencticus, no. 9, 18–25 June 1649, pp. 66–7; NS, p. 228; Frank, Newspaper, p. 193. Williams, English journalism, p. 113. S[amuel] Sheppard, The Yeare of Jubile ([6 July]1646), sig. A4v, p. 21. S[amuel] Sheppard, The Committee-Man Curried ([16 July] 1647), sig. A2v; Nigel Smith, Literature and revolution in England, 1640–1660 (New Haven, CT, 1994), p. 79. 53 Rollins, ‘Samuel Sheppard’, p. 528. 49 50 51 52

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further than strict neutrality, however. In 1651 he penned lines ‘To his Excellency, the Lord Generall Cromwell’, and in the following year he wrote a verse which made plain the debt he felt for his release to the Secretary of State, John Thurloe.54 Sheppard, like Crouch and Hackluyt, joined the ranks of the royalists in the late 1640s, suffered greatly for his beliefs, but eventually fell by the wayside when it became clear that the chance of a royalist settlement had gone. The strange case of Marchamont Nedham This was also the political trajectory followed by Marchamont Nedham, who has been described as the most famous journalist of his day, a towering figure in the early history of English journalism, and one of the most important thinkers in the development of early-modern British political thought.55 Nedham first came to public attention in 1643 after he and another man were given the task of writing Mercurius Britanicus, a pro-Parliament newsbook specifically designed to attack the Mercurius Aulicus produced by the royalists at Oxford. Nedham’s aptitude for the task was so great that he soon became the sole editor of Britanicus, and the highly entertaining weekly duel between him and Aulicus became one of the most notable features of the pamphlet wars of the 1640s. Britanicus leaned towards the war party at Westminster, and consistently attacked those who wanted to negotiate a speedy end to the war as ‘traitors’ and ‘back-sliders’. It was also notorious for its personal attacks on the king. As early as December 1643 Britanicus intimated that Charles was a Machiavellian prince, and in 1645 it asserted that he should abdicate in favour of his eldest son.56 In the aftermath of the battle of Naseby, Nedham published a ‘Hue and Cry’ after Charles which promised to reward any man who ‘can bring any tale or tiding of a wilful king, which hath gone astray these four years from his parliament, with a guilty conscience, and bloody hands, a heart full of broken vows and protestations’. A ‘Hue and Cry’ was the traditional means of alerting subjects to the fact that a criminal or traitor was on the run, and this article caused further scandal by daring to make fun of Charles’s speech impediment. The House of Lords imprisoned Nedham’s printer and licenser for this outburst; Parliament still held tenaciously to the fiction that it was waging war not against the king, but against the evil counsellors who had led him astray. Nedham quickly wrote an apology and Ibid., pp. 528–9. Joad Raymond (ed.), News, newspapers and society in early-modern Britain (1999), p. 125; Raymond, Pamphlets, pp. 62, 154; J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian moment: Florentine political thought and the Atlantic republican tradition (Princeton, NJ, 1975), pp. 379–84, 394–5. 56 Worden, ‘Wit in a roundhead’, p. 315. 54 55

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Britanicus reappeared after only one week’s absence. In May 1646, however, Nedham found himself in trouble again after he wrote that ‘a strict account be required [of Charles I] for the blood of all the saints’. This remark earned him two weeks in the Fleet Prison. He was released only after he entered a bond for his future good behaviour, and undertook not to write any more pamphlets without the permission of the House of Lords.57 At this point in time he seems to have retired from writing and to have begun to practise as a physician in London. Nedham could not remain quiet for long, however, and in May 1647 he wrote The Case of the Kingdom Stated, a lively and engaging pamphlet which claimed to lay bare the essential interests of all participants to the conflict and, in doing so, argued for an anti-Presbyterian understanding between the king and Nedham’s ‘Friends’ among the Independents in the Commons. This pamphlet was published a month after Nedham wrote it and was bought by George Thomason on or before 12 June; a second, much more explicitly anti-Scots, edition was published from a different printing press at an unknown date later that same summer.58 All of this was entirely consistent with Nedham’s earlier political and religious beliefs, but he then did something remarkable which, as we shall see below, has created serious impediments to a full and proper understanding of his political importance. At some point early in September 1647 Nedham had an audience at Hampton Court with the captive king whom he had earlier disparaged. According to Anthony Wood, ‘he then and there knelt before him, and desired foregiveness for what he had written against him and his cause: which being readily granted, he kiss’d his majestys hand’.59 Earlier in the summer Nedham’s fierce opposition to Presbyterian intolerance had led him to argue for a deal between Charles and the Independents and, if one examines the Hampton Court meeting in isolation, it is possible to view Nedham’s royal audience in this light. If, however, one looks at Mercurius Pragmaticus, the newsbook which Nedham began to write a few weeks after Worden, ‘Wit in a roundhead’, pp. 315–16; Warks CRO, CR 2017/C10/115. The text of this second edition of The Case of the Kingdom Stated was identical to the first edition apart from the inclusion of a final section of about 1,500 words which focused on the influence and interests of the Scots. 59 Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, ii, p. 626; Joad Raymond, ‘Popular representations of Charles I’, in Thomas N. Corns (ed.), The royal image: representations of Charles I (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 47–72, at p. 61; W.D. Macray (ed.), The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England Begun in the Year 1641, 6 vols (1888), iv, p. 231; Robert Bell (ed.), Memorials of the Civil War: comprising the correspondence of the Fairfax family, 2 vols, (1849), i, pp. 391–2; Philip Warwick, Memoires of the Reign of King Charles I (1702), pp. 301–3; Richard Cust, Charles I: a political biography (Harlow, 2005), pp. 43–43. Thomas Herbert, Memoirs of the Two Last Years of the Reign of King Charles I (1815), pp. 47–53. There is no mention of Nedham in the memoirs of the men who acted as Charles’s negotiators with the army at this time, John Ashburnham and John Berkeley. See A Narrative by John Ashburnham of his attendance on King Charles the First, 2 vols (1830), ii, pp. 88–101; and John Berkeley, Memoirs of Sir John Berkeley (1699). 57 58

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Figure 6. A letter from Marchamont Nedham addressed to the Earl of Denbigh, dated 28 May 1646. Nedham thanks Denbigh for facilitating his attempts to extricate himself from the Fleet Prison. It is clear that Nedham at this point in time considered Sir Henry Mildmay and Sir John Lenthall to be his ‘honored friends’. Reproduced by kind permission of Warwickshire County Record Office. 113


his royal audience and which he continued to pen over the next two years despite the excruciating twists and turns of royal policy, then it is hard to envisage Nedham as a propagandist who adopted a royalist ‘guise’ in order to further the interests of the Independents.60 This explanation for Nedham’s meeting with the king and subsequent production of Pragmaticus is particularly problematic after the breakdown of talks between the king and the Independents in late 1647, when Nedham continued to write royalist propaganda despite the fact that Charles had opened negotiations with the Scottish Presbyterians for military assistance in order to regain his throne. Viewed from this broader perspective, Nedham’s introduction to the king in the late summer of 1647 was the result either of a prior conversion to the royalist cause, or of a belief among at least some of the royalist leaders that he was amenable to being converted to that cause.61 What could have caused such a dramatic change of heart? Even in early July 1647, after the kidnapping of the king, Nedham was prepared to offer ‘an Apology for the Army’ which commended their ‘Honourable policy’ which would ‘indeare them to the present, and shall innoble them to all future generations.’ By mid-September, however, he had gone over to the royalists, and the only rational explanation, always assuming of course that his decision was rational, is that some event, possibly the army’s occupation of London and the purging of Parliament, shocked him and convinced him that the terms of the final settlement should be dictated by Charles to the army rather than vice versa. It is unclear who obtained this audience for Nedham. It may have been organized by one or more of the king’s advisers, for example Ashburnham, Berkeley, Southampton or Richmond. There is a small possibility that it was the result of the actions of James Harrington, the future author of the republican Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) who at that time was serving as a gentleman of the bedchamber to the captive king.62 The desire of the See footnote 87 below. The similarity to the process by which Edward Hyde began to write for the king in 1642 is striking. See Hartman, ‘Restyling the King’, p. 50. We do know that Hyde was in favour of providing gracious receptions for leading supporters of the Parliament who decided to go over to the king during the Civil War. See Cust, Charles I, pp. 380–1. 62 James Harrington played no part in the First Civil War but some time during 1647 he became a gentleman of the bedchamber to the captive Charles I, and remained with the king until shortly before the regicide. Might he have been the person who secured Nedham’s introduction to the king? Nedham and Harrington certainly knew each other in the 1650s and Harrington’s Commonwealth of Oceana of 1656 is, like much of Nedham’s work after 1653, a republican tract which takes issue with the less than glittering reality of the Protectorate. The similarity of the political careers of Nedham and Harrington (conversion to royalism in the late 1640s, a subsequent commitment to republicanism and vociferous complaints about the Protectorate) is intriguing, but the poor survival of records concerning Charles I and his circle in 1647 means that we will never know for certain whether the two men knew each other before Nedham’s audience with the king and, if they did, whether Harrington actually arranged this meeting. See Oxford DNB; J.G.A. Pocock (ed.), The political works of James Harrington (Cambridge, 60 61

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royalist leaders to see Nedham in their ranks is eloquent testimony to his skill as a propagandist and of their desire to use the press to influence events (and, equally importantly, the public’s perception of events) during the complex negotiations between the parties to the conflict. The meeting may have been arranged with the connivance of the army grandees who held Charles captive, presumably because they believed Nedham to be well disposed to an agreement between the king and the army. On the other hand, Nedham may have met the king without the army’s knowledge; contemporaries certainly remarked upon the accessibility of the king at Hampton Court and the ‘resort of all sorts of people to him . . . no Gentleman is debarred the liberty of kissing the King’s hand, yet no stranger stays long’.63 If the meeting between Nedham and Charles I was indeed facilitated by the army in order to improve the chances of an agreement based on the proposals they had presented in August 1647 to Charles, then they made a serious error of judgement which they must have regretted on numerous occasions over the next few years. Less than three weeks after his audience with the king, Nedham began to write the great royalist newsbook Mercurius Pragmaticus. The short gap between these two events suggests that the influential royalist politician or politicians responsible for his introduction may have taken the liberty of arranging a safe location for Pragmaticus’s secret printing press before Nedham was introduced to Charles. The wit, intelligence and superior sources of Pragmaticus made Nedham ‘known to, and admired by’ the royalist party.64 It also made him one of the most wanted men in England, though he continued to write Pragmaticus until the efforts of the searchers forced him to flee London in the first weeks of 1649. According to Wood, Nedham was sheltered at this time by the prominent royalist clergyman and sometime creature of Archbishop Laud, Peter Heylyn, in his home at Minster Lovell, six miles from Nedham’s native town of Burford.65 Nedham evidently returned to London before or during April 1649, when he wrote several issues of Pragmaticus. He continued to write this title until June 1649, ignoring the draconian Treason Act of May 1649 which made it High Treason to write, print or openly declare that ‘the Commons in Parliament assembled are not the Supreme authority of this Nation’.66 In June 1649 1977), pp. 1–5; J.G.A. Pocock (ed.), The Commonwealth of Oceana and a system of politics (Cambridge, 1992), pp. viii–ix. We shall see in the following chapter, however, that Harrington also had personal links to William Dugard, a royalist printer who followed the same political path as Nedham during the late 1640s and 1650s. 63 Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, ii, p. 626; Hyde, History, p. 231; Ashburnham, Narrative, p. 88. 64 Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, ii, p. 626. 65 Worden, ‘Wit in a roundhead’, pp. 324–5; J.P. Sommerville, Royalists and patriots, 2nd edn (1999), p. 200; ‘Peter Heylyn’ in Oxford DNB. 66 ‘An Act Declaring what Offences shall be adjudged Treason’ [May 14 1649], in C.H. Firth and R.S. Rait (eds), Acts and Ordinances, vol. ii, pp. 120–1, 193–4. 115


Nedham was betrayed to the authorities by a friend named James Thompson and imprisoned in Newgate, but he escaped from custody two months later and lived in dire poverty until he was again imprisoned in November 1649.67 The circumstances of his recapture are, to say the least, intriguing. The letters which Nedham wrote at the time to his friend Henry Oxinden suggest that he returned from an unknown location to London in early November in order to arrange favourable terms for his surrender.68 He was evidently tired of life on the run, and intended to use his earlier acquaintance with John Bradshaw, the President of the Council of State, to secure a pardon for his offences.69 The initial negotiations for his surrender were carried on by a friend of Nedham’s, and soon after 8 November he gave himself up to the authorities. He took the Engagement to the Commonwealth on 14 November and was freed at some point before the nineteenth, when he wrote to Henry Oxinden that Bradshaw’s ‘favour hath once more turn’d the wheele of my fortune; who upon my single letter hath been pleased to indulge me at my liberty’.70 As part of Nedham’s rapprochement with the regime he allegedly agreed to ‘deliver up all papers of Transaction or Intelligence, together with their ciphers, which came into his hand in the year 1648 and 1649. Together with a list of all persons with whom he at that time entertained any Correspondence.’71 These nuggets of intelligence must have been greatly prized by the regicides, and may have played an important part in the successful suppression of the rest of the royalist press over the following months. There is no indication that Nedham intended to write for the Commonwealth at this point in time, although the possibility must have occurred to Bradshaw, who had interceded for him, and the other regicides, who were prepared to ignore the vocal royalism of his previous two years. It was only in May 1650, a full six months after his release, that his distinctively elegant and learned republican tract, The Case of the Common-Wealth, Stated, was published and he was voted an annual salary of £100 ‘whereby he may subsist while endeavouring to serve the Commonwealth’.72 In June 1650 he was appointed editor of the main government newsbook, Mercurius Politicus. According to Anthony Wood, this title ‘flew every week into all parts of the Nation for more than ten years’, and had a ‘very great influence upon numbers of inconsiderable Persons, such who have a strange Dorothy Gardiner, The Oxinden and Peyton Letters, 1642–1670 (1937), p. 161; BL, Add MS 28,002, fol. 170. 68 Gardiner, Oxinden and Peyton Letters, pp. 160–1; BL Add MS 28,002, fols 170, 172. 69 For Nedham’s friendship with Bradshaw see Worden, ‘Nedham and the beginnings of English republicanism’, p. 63; Worden, ‘Milton and Marchamont Nedham’, p. 161; John Cleveland, The Character of Mercurius Politicus (1650), pp. 7–8. 70 Gardiner, Oxinden and Peyton Letters, p. 161; BL Add MS 28,002, fol. 172. 71 The Character of Mercurius Politicus (1650), p. 5. 72 The authorities did not quite trust Nedham as payment was for one year ‘by way of probation’. SP 25/64/385. 67

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presumption that all must needs be true that is in print’. Nedham’s defection and decision to write for the regicides were so detrimental to the royalist cause that ‘the generality for a long time, especially the most generous Royalists, could not believe that that intelligence could possibly be written by the same hand that wrote M. Pragmaticus’.73 Politicus was the most important vehicle for officially sanctioned news during the 1650s and it was distributed widely across Britain and the rest of Europe. Nedham’s editorial skill, business acumen and superior access to intelligence in Politicus have been commented upon, but scholars who have read the title have been particularly impressed by the series of brilliant editorials which Nedham penned between September 1650 and the summer of 1652. These learned but beautifully written and surprisingly accessible pieces argued for the creation of a commonwealth of free, informed and active citizens based on ‘the popular possession of arms and the rapid succession . . . of the representatives and magistrates’ elected by the people.74 For Nedham’s admirers these editorials demonstrate his centrality to the development of republican thought in seventeenth-century England and establish his claim to be a grandfather (or great-grandfather) of the republicanism of the Enlightenment on both sides of the Atlantic.75 This period of radical republican proselytizing came to an end as Nedham became increasingly concerned at the perceptible difference between the ideal of the English Commonwealth and its often disappointing reality.76 In the autumn of 1653 he hinted that a stronger government might be needed to counteract the religious radicals who were influential in the Nominated Parliament, and who seemed to him intent on establishing a theocracy. In 1654 he publicly accepted the Protectorate, whatever his private opinions on Cromwell and the new regime. He was astute enough to negotiate the shifting political sands of the 1650s and even wrote ‘the fullest formal defence of the Protectorate’, his 1656 A True State of the Case of the Common-wealth.77 His prestige and power were so great at this time that for about four years from the autumn of 1655 he enjoyed a financially advantageous monopoly on the production of printed news in England. He naturally opposed the return of Charles II in 1660, fled to the Netherlands in April of that year, and only returned to England after he had secured a pardon under

Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, ii, p. 626. Pocock, Machiavellian moment, p. 382. Jonathan Scott, ‘What were Commonwealth principles?’, HJ, 47, 3 (Sept. 2004), 613; Scott, Commonwealth principles, pp. 84, 264, 283–4; Worden, ‘Nedham and the beginnings of English republicanism’, pp. 47–80. 76 On the grubby and uninspiring nature of the republic see Sean Kelsey, Inventing a republic: the political culture of the English Commonwealth, 1649–1653 (Manchester, 1997). 77 Norbrook, Writing the English Republic, p. 328 73 74 75

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the Great Seal ‘for money given to a hungry Courtier’.78 Once back in England he reprinted a number of verses which he had written in Pragmaticus between 1647 and 1650, but this rather transparent and half-hearted attempt to reinvent himself as a royalist was unsuccessful. He retired from political writing, resumed his practice as a physician and died eighteen years after the Restoration, ‘much hated by the Royal party to his last’. Nedham as republican hero Nedham’s changing allegiances led Anthony Wood to label him as a ‘weather-cock’ who valued ‘money and sordid Interest rather than Conscience, friendship or love to his Prince’, and Samuel Butler condemned him as ‘a Mercury with a winged conscience, the Skip-Jack of all fortunes, that like a Shittle-cock drive him which way you will, falls still with the cork end forwards’.79 These unflattering assessments stood for centuries as Nedham’s unofficial epitaph, but in recent years he has undergone a remarkable resurrection as one of the most important republican thinkers in early-modern Britain: a man as noteworthy for his ability to reach a wide popular audience as for his consistent attachment to classically derived notions of a democratic republic of free citizens. The story of Nedham’s gradual rehabilitation (and such a remarkable change in his reputation and standing could only have been achieved in a series of incremental steps) begins, as with so much in the intellectual history of the period, with J.G.A. Pocock’s The Machiavellian moment. Pocock noted Nedham’s ability to shuffle ‘the dominant concepts of the Civil War and Rump years with a brilliance if anything enhanced by what seems to have been a signal lack of sincerity or consistency’, but, in his view, Nedham’s moral flexibility could never take away from the importance of the republican editorials which he wrote in the first years of Mercurius Politicus. They were important contributions to English thought in his own day and inspired thinkers and politicians in the American colonies before and after the break with Britain over a century later. Even though ‘the trend of Nedham’s de facto arguments would carry him to advocating submission to any power exercising effective authority’, he was remarkable and noteworthy in Pocock’s eyes for producing ‘the first sustained English exposition of republican democracy in classical and Machiavellian terms’.80 A number of other scholars, including David Norbrook, Jonathan Scott

Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, ii, p. 626. Ibid., p. 540, 627; Butler quoted in Joad Raymond, ‘ “A Mercury with a Winged Conscience”: Marchamont Nedham, monopoly and censorship’, Media History, 4, 1 (1998), 7–18, at 8. 80 Pocock, Machiavellian moment, pp. 381–3. 78 79

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and Nigel Smith, have examined Nedham’s republican writings,81 but the most far-reaching and influential reassessments of Nedham’s political importance, consistency and integrity have been sketched by Joad Raymond and Blair Worden. Raymond sees Nedham as a man who was both a pioneer in the development of English journalism and a key figure in the history of republicanism.82 He notes the innovative nature, political importance and classic status of the editorials which Nedham wrote in Mercurius Politicus and accepts that he eventually compromised his avowed republicanism by writing in defence of the Protectorate.83 Yet, unlike Pocock, Raymond does not see Nedham’s public support for the increasingly compromised regimes of the mid-1650s as evidence of a man with a lack of sincerity and consistency. Politicus may have been forced to prudently accept the Protectorate, but Nedham did not abandon overt republican positions; rather, he confined them to non-serial publications and used the reporting functions of the newsbook to open Politicus to a variety of emphases, interpretations and positions, some of which were antagonistic to the Lord Protector and his regime. Raymond believes that throughout this seemingly un-heroic period of his life Nedham remained consistently attached to ideas of freedom of religious conscience, and the need to separate church and state as well as the legislative and executive functions of government.84 Worden goes even further than Joad Raymond in stressing the political consistency and intellectual integrity of Nedham. In his view Nedham was an unwavering adherent to classical models of republicanism from the summer of 1647 until at least the time of the Restoration. He may have compromised in public by writing in favour of the Protectorate, but in private he clung doggedly to his true beliefs throughout the Interregnum.85 This is a challenging and very persuasive account of Nedham’s personal character and political beliefs.86 Yet, in rescuing the republican Nedham of Norbrook, Writing the English Republic, pp. 99, 174–5, 218, 222, 223; Scott, Commonwealth principles, pp. 136–8, 156–8, 257–8; Smith, Literature and revolution, pp. 32–4, 57–60, 67–9. 82 Raymond, News, newspapers and society, p. 125; Raymond, Pamphlets, pp. 62, 154; Raymond, The invention of the newspaper: English newsbooks, 1641–49 (Oxford, 1996), p. 31; Raymond, ‘Marchamont Nedham’, in Oxford DNB. 83 Raymond, ‘Mercury with a Winged Conscience’, p. 8; Raymond, Pamphlets, p. 249. 84 Raymond, ‘Mercury with a Winged Conscience’, p. 9; Scott, Commonwealth principles, p. 140. 85 Worden, ‘Nedham and the beginnings of English republicanism’, pp. 45, 62, 80; ‘Worden, ‘Wit in a roundhead’, pp. 320–1, 324. Worden, ‘John Milton and Oliver Cromwell’, in Ian Gentles, John Morrill and Blair Worden (eds), Soldiers, writers and statesmen of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 261, 262–3. Jonathan Scott’s claim that Nedham was a committed republican and Leveller fellow-traveller from as early as the closing months of 1644 is unconvincing. Scott, Commonwealth principles, p. 242. 86 For an unfashionable scepticism about Nedham’s importance as a political thinker see Kevin Sharpe, Remapping early-modern England: the culture of seventeenth-century politics (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 403–4. 81

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the 1650s from the condescension and hostility of previous generations, a terrible disservice has been done to the exciting and innovative royalist pamphlets, plays and newsbooks which he wrote between 1647 and 1649. Each and every scholar who has contributed to the rehabilitation of Nedham over the past three decades or so has, in fact, been anxious to ignore, minimize or dismiss the strength of his attachment to the royalist cause. Jonathan Scott, drawing on the work of Blair Worden, asserts that Nedham was a ‘crypto-republican’ when he was in the royalist camp, and Nigel Smith has claimed that he only ‘sounds ostensibly [like] a Royalist’. Joad Raymond sees Nedham’s royalism as a ‘guise’, and both J.G.A Pocock and David Norbrook have dismissed his allegiance to the king as a ‘phase’, a word inevitably loaded for modern readers with connotations of the impetuous, ill-thoughtout actions of attention-seeking teenagers which it is always best to ignore.87 Those scholars who have gone beyond this rather unconvincing strategy for dealing with Nedham’s royalism have universally explained his actions by reference to his ‘consistent anti-Presbyterianism and intense Scotophobia’, beliefs which are supposed to have led him to change sides or, perhaps more accurately, appear to change sides in the hope that Charles would work with the army against the Scots and the Presbyterians.88 The most eloquent statement of this position comes from Worden, who dismisses Nedham’s actions between 1647 and 1649 as unimportant because they never produced a ‘political or constitutional theory to match those of his Roundhead and republican writings’. For Worden, Nedham is at his most incisive ‘when he is at his most radical’ and his royalism ‘never becomes, as his republicanism does, a sustained exercise in political argument . . . only to his radical and republican writing does he bring intellectual vigour, and it is in those writings that, if he has any true sympathies, they must lie’.89 Nedham’s royalism is not that of an instinctive monarchist, but of an instinctive anti-Puritan, and Worden even goes so far as to wonder whether Nedham was ‘ever comfortable with Royalism of any kind’.90 Nedham as a royalist There are a number of obvious problems with this interpretation of Nedham’s career as a royalist or apparent royalist, some of which have been 87 Scott, Commonwealth principles, p. 246; Smith, Literature and revolution, pp. 55, 151; Pocock, Machiavellian moment, pp. 381–2; Norbrook, Writing the English Republic, p. 223; Raymond, Invention of the newspaper, p. 151, fn. 101. 88 Worden, ‘Wit in a roundhead’, pp. 320–1; Raymond, Invention of the newspaper, pp. 55–6, 67–8; Raymond, Pamphlets, pp. 62, 204–5; Norbrook, Writing the English Republic, pp. 175, 223. 89 Worden, ‘Nedham and the beginnings of English republicanism’, p. 80. 90 Worden, ‘Nedham and the beginnings of English republicanism’, p. 80; Worden, ‘Wit in a roundhead’, p. 324.

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alluded to above but which it is important to reiterate as strongly as possible. This model cannot explain why Nedham did not jump ship after the breakdown in relations between the king and the army in late 1647, or why, if he joined the king’s party because of his hatred of the Presbyterians and the Scots, he continued to act as a royalist polemicist throughout the period of Charles’s Engagement with the Scottish Presbyterians for military assistance. It cannot explain Nedham’s correspondence with elements of the royalist court in exile,91 his sojourn in the house of the royalist cleric Peter Heylyn in the weeks before and after the regicide, or the fact that Nedham only came to terms with the king’s enemies late in 1649 when the future seemed hopeless and he found himself in mortal danger. It also ignores the fact that the motto which appeared on the first page of every issue of Mercurius Pragmaticus, ‘Nemo Me Impune Lacessit’, is that of the royal crown of Scotland and is to be seen on the Scottish royal coat of arms. This motto was a specifically royalist warning to the Scottish Covenanters and their English Presbyterian allies but it was also a statement of belief in royal power in the northern kingdom. It was a very strange motto indeed for a cryptorepublican to have adopted. The suggestion that Nedham was anything other than a royalist partisan in the two years after his meeting with Charles I at Hampton Court in September 1647 is predicated on a rather simplistic (and unsympathetic) assessment of what it meant to be a royalist. The dismissal of Nedham’s royalist writings because they never advanced any ‘political or constitutional theory to match those of his Roundhead and republican writings’92 is eloquent testimony to the disdain felt by many modern scholars for royalism, and to their belief, whether consciously or unconsciously held, that no intelligent commentator would knowingly place themselves in the camp of the king. Scholars of republicanism tend to be drawn to their topic by the undoubtedly startling intellectual constructs of great thinkers drawing on the works of earlier great thinkers, who in turn, drew on the works of even earlier thinkers. Royalism, on the other hand, is evidently seen by some scholars as an inferior ideology, a reflexive creed based not upon a rational understanding of important texts but on a series of widely held simple, simplistic and un-intellectually demanding ideas. Republicanism is a grand political theory, whereas royalism is at best an ideology, and at worst a series of unthinking (and unthinkable) prejudices.93 The fact that Nedham’s arguments in favour of the king do not exhibit the intellectual rigour which he used when arguing for republicanism (which This correspondence is discussed in Jason Peacey, ‘Marchamont Nedham and the Lawrans Letters’, BLR, XVII, 1 (April, 2000), 24–35. 92 Worden, ‘Wit in a roundhead’, p. 324. 93 Jonathan Scott sees royalism as so far removed from the impressive intellectual acrobatics of the republicans whom he admires that he has referred to royalism as a ‘dementia’. Scott, Commonwealth principles, p. 242. 91

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really amounts to a complaint that Nedham did not quote learned precedents in his royalist books and newsbooks) does not mean that his royalism was not sincerely and keenly felt. It only suggests that book-learning and intellectual sophistication were superfluous to the requirements of royalist propaganda. Nedham’s royalist writings certainly give the impression that he was an instinctive anti-Puritan, rather than an instinctive monarchist. Yet, the First Civil War had proved that an appeal to committed royalists and instinctive monarchists was not enough to defeat the king’s enemies. A central strand of the royalist propaganda of the late 1640s was an appeal to those in London and the localities who had not previously supported the king, but had grown tired of the dislocation and high taxes occasioned by the maintenance of the army. Another important element of this paper war was, as we have seen in a previous chapter, an attempt to deflate the self-image of the Puritans as godly Christians by directing sexual innuendo at them in order to sully them as hypocrites, liars and debauchees unfit to govern England. This emotional, un-intellectual and simplistic propaganda was consciously designed to strike a chord with the greatest possible number of readers. To say that Nedham’s writings of this period portray him as an instinctive anti-Puritan is, therefore, only to say that he was a royalist propagandist in the closing years of the 1640s. The early years of the decade had seen the publication of a number of important texts of royalist political theory. Thomas Morton’s The Necessity of Christian Subjection (1643) might, for example, stand as the archetype of divine right theory, and both Charles I’s Answer to the XIX Propositions (1642) and Henry Ferne’s The Resolving of Conscience (1642) are key texts for an understanding of the concept of mixed monarchy or moderate royalism.94 Yet, this willingness to theorize the royalist position wilted as the balance of the war began to tilt decisively in favour of Parliament, and the printing presses in London continued to issue volley after volley of innovative political ideas to answer the royalist case. By the end of the First Civil War royalist propaganda consisted largely of accounts of the tyranny of Parliament and its army, and the renewed royalist propaganda campaign of the late 1640s consciously shied away from theories which might stimulate the interest of modern scholars of political thought. Instead, it relied on emotional and emotive assertions about the dangers of upsetting the natural order, the evils of rebellion, and the tyranny and hypocrisy of the king’s enemies. Royalist writers such as John Berkenhead and John Cleveland were highly educated men of considerable reputation and intellectual ability, yet they worked in conjunction with a number of men from a variety of educational and intellectual backgrounds to produce printed items which were deceptively simple and simplistic. It would be a serious mistake to dismiss 94 Thomas Morton, The Necessity of Christian Subjection (Oxford, 1643); Charles I, Answer to the XIX Propositions (1642); Henry Ferne, The Resolving of Conscience (York, 1642).

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their output as unworthy of merit or analysis; the style and content of their propaganda were determined by the nature of their intended audience and the type of arguments which they believed, rightly or wrongly, would influence the largest possible number of readers. Propaganda is at its most effective when it is most simply put, and at least part of the reason for the enormous popularity of the Eikon Basilike was its lack of originality and its conventional, almost formulaic, piety.95 The qualities which modern scholars often prize in an early-modern text are precisely those which left the vast majority of potential readers and listeners cold. One must say that, learned references and allusions aside, Nedham’s royalist writings were part of a strategic campaign which, in propaganda terms at least, was every bit as sophisticated as his republican writings. We are dealing here with the ephemeral world of serial newsbooks so perhaps the most effective metaphor to describe the difference between Nedham’s royalist and republican periods might come from the equally ephemeral world of fashion. During the 1650s Nedham was forced to weave a glittering cloak of arguments, precedents and learned authorities in order to mask the uninspiring reality of the republic, but as a royalist he merely fitted himself into a pre-existing suit of clothes which, although it may not have been as flamboyant as his republican attire, was serviceable, suitable to the climate in which he found himself, worn by many other people, and readily available to anybody who wished to don it. Dedicated followers of fashion may look askance at Nedham’s choice of clothes in the late 1640s if they wish, but surely there is no need to pretend that the plain, simple garments of these years were actually sumptuous republican haute couture? The arguments advanced by Nedham in Mercurius Pragmaticus were typical of those presented by the other royalist newsbooks of the period. All of the newsbooks for the king produced between August and November 1648 preferred the terms offered by the army to those offered by Parliament. Indeed, it is important to realize that many of Charles’s most prominent advisers, including Richmond, Southampton, Dorset, Hertford, Ormond and Seymour, were in favour of negotiating a settlement on the basis of the terms offered by the army.96 If one accepts that Nedham’s attitude to the army’s Heads precludes him from being a royalist, then one is surely forced to adopt the ludicrous position that Charles’s closest and most trusted advisers were not royalists. One might also conclude that even Charles I himself was not a

95 Elizabeth Skerpan Wheeler, ‘Eikon Basilike and the rhetoric of self-representation’, in Thomas N. Corns (ed.), The royal image: representations of Charles I (Cambridge, 1999), p. 128; Harry Rusche, ‘Merlini Anglici: astrology and propaganda from 1644 to 1651’, EHR, 80, 315 (April, 1965), 322–3; Harry Rusche, ‘Prophecies and propaganda, 1641 to 1651’, EHR, 84 (Oct., 1969), 761; James A. Epstein, Radical expression: political language, ritual, and symbol in England, 1790–1850 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 10, 26, 28. 96 Smith, Constitutional royalism, pp. 134–6.

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royalist in the summer of 1647.97 Pragmaticus certainly made noises in favour of the army’s Heads, but in early 1648 it (like all of the other royalist newsbooks) threw itself behind Charles’s Engagement with the Scots, despite Nedham’s personal antipathy to Presbyterianism in general, and the Scots Covenanters in particular. One should also note that his dislike of the Covenanters and the English Presbyterians was shared by many, many men who had impeccable royalist credentials. During the summer of 1648, all of the royalist newsbooks supported the royalist military adventure known as the Second Civil War. They then reverted, in the wake of the New Model’s victory over the insurgents, to demands for a negotiated settlement on the best possible terms for the king. After the execution of the king, however, they were forced to revert to a military strategy which envisaged the return of the Stuarts at the head of a military force. If, as was argued in the introduction to this book, one’s self-image or categorization of one’s own actions is important in determining one’s political allegiance, then it is of the utmost significance that Nedham proclaimed himself a royalist week-in and week-out from the autumn of 1647. Furthermore, if, as was also argued in the introduction, the assessment of one’s claims by one’s peers is also important, then it is of considerable consequence that his declarations of allegiance were accepted by both his enemies and other men who defined themselves as royalists. Nobody at the time believed that the author of Pragmaticus was a crypto-republican operating under deep cover.98 Recent scholars have minimized or ignored the significant personal risks which Nedham faced because of his decision to write for the king, but his actions were not without negative consequences. They brought him infamy, loneliness, physical discomfort and poverty, and might very well have seen him swing from the end of a rope.99 Despite these very real discomforts and dangers he continued to write for the king and played a game of cat and mouse with the authorities in London for almost two years. It should also be noted that Nedham never later claimed to have in fact been a republican or crypto-republican while he wrote Mercurius Pragmaticus. Instead, the preface to The Case of the Common-Wealth, Stated acknowledged that the production of this republican tract had involved a change of allegiance: ‘Perhaps thou art of an opinion contrary to what is here written. I confess that for a time I myself was so too, till some causes made me reflect with an impartial eye upon the affairs of this new government.’100

Narrative by John Ashburnham, ii, pp. 44, 88. Some royalists were, undoubtedly, suspicious of Nedham between 1647 and 1649. See, for example, Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys MSS, State Papers, iii, fol. 887; Raymond, ‘Popular representations of Charles I’, p. 71, fn. 53; Bod. Lib., Clarendon MS 31, no. 2764, fol. 56v. 99 Gardiner, Oxinden and Peyton letters, pp. 160–1. 100 M. Nedham, The Case of the Common-Wealth of England stated (1650), p. 1. 97 98

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The key to Nedham’s thoughts and actions during the twists and turns of the 1640s and 1650s, and the justification of his actions to himself, seems to have been his consistent opposition to religious persecution, and a belief in the need to separate both church and state and the legislative and executive functions of government. He evidently believed these safeguards were necessary to protect the ‘public good’, a concept based on an idea of legal and constitutional government in opposition to the unfettered will of one person or a clique of people. Nedham as author of Pragmaticus certainly desired an ordered commonwealth, but, as Jonathan Scott has recently shown, there was no necessary correlation of commonwealth and republic. The word ‘commonwealth’ was ubiquitous and uncontroversial. To invoke ‘commonwealth principles’ was merely to subscribe to the Platonic and Aristotelian commonplace that, whatever its constitutional form, government must be directed to the public good. Before the seventeenth century, most English defenders of commonwealth principles assumed their compatibility with monarchy. It was quite possible to have a well-ordered and lawful monarchical commonwealth, and almost every thinker before the outbreak of the English Revolution had equated the commonwealth, or common good, with a lawful, ordered monarchy.101 Nedham remained true to his ideals of the ‘public good’, but as the political ground moved beneath him in the seismic months of 1647 he evidently found that the royalists began to converge with him. In this rapidly changing political landscape, the royalists made a simple and convincing argument that Charles alone offered the best possibility of protecting freedom of conscience and re-establishing legal government with proper constitutional safeguards. They had always made these points, but their arguments may have been much more credible after the occupation of the capital by the army in the summer of 1647, the attempt to arrest the Eleven Members, the rise of the Agitators in the army, and the first stirrings of Leveller activity in the army and the capital. It was a royalist commonplace that the king was the best defender of the laws, liberties and freedoms of England, and that the only way to settle the conflict was to return the king to the throne on the best possible terms that he could attain. The royalists did not only argue this position, they genuinely believed it to be true. Charles’s speeches at his trial speak to his genuine belief that he would die a martyr in the service of all that was best in English society and history.102 What is more, it is clear that this argument was credible enough to be believed by many contemporaries from different political and religious backgrounds; the fact that men from such different back101 Scott, ‘What were Commonwealth principles?’, pp. 596–7; Scott, Commonwealth principles, pp. 34–8. See also an example from Ireland in Raymond Gillespie, Reading Ireland: print, reading and social change in early-modern Ireland (Manchester, 2005), pp. 37, 57. 102 Cust, Charles I, pp. 436–65.

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grounds as Nedham, Hackluyt, Sheppard and Crouch went over to the king at approximately the same time suggests that, entirely independently of each other, many men came to believe that the royalists offered the best and most legally sound way to avoid the catastrophe of further, potentially endless, cycles of civil war followed by fruitless negotiations and yet more civil strife. Indeed, the choice of name for Nedham’s Mercurius Pragmaticus may have been a conscious evocation of his desire to cling to the royalist ship of law and order while navigating the dangerous straits upon which were perched the monstrous Scylla of army radicalism and potential anarchy, and the equally horrendous Charybdis of Presbyterian intolerance: a pragmaticus in classical Rome was a person skilled in the law who furnished orators and advocates with the principles on which they based their speeches.103

103 Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary; Thomas Blount, Glossographia: Or A Dictionary, Interpreting all such Hard Words . . . as are now used in our refined English Tongue (1656).

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5

Printers, Publishers and the Royalist Underground

PRINTERS, PUBLISHERS AND THE ROYALIST UNDERGROUND

Reconstructing the underground

The previous chapter has shown that it is possible to reconstruct something of the motivations and concerns of the men who wrote royalist propaganda, but we know significantly less about the arguably much more important men and women behind the printing and publishing of this material. Authors, as we have seen, were in relatively plentiful supply and could easily move around the capital in order to avoid detection, but printing presses were bulky, immovable pieces of equipment which required the attention of skilled workers. The letter-type which was essential to the operation of the press was also bulky, took up a large amount of space, and was expensive. The detection of a printing press would always be a much more important blow to the royalist propaganda effort than the arrest of an author who, no matter how skilled he was, could always be replaced by another. Our ignorance about the royalist printers and their networks is partly due to their understandable desire not to come to the attention of the authorities, and partly due to their traditionally low status as ‘mere’ tradesmen with some degree of technical or business knowledge. Yet, if we are to appreciate the wider significance of royalist polemic during these years, we need to know more about these men and women and their role in sustaining the networks which produced these pamphlets. An examination of these printers and publishers will also have the benefit of helping to provide a more rounded picture of royalist activism in London during these years than one which concentrates solely on famous authors and prominent royalist politicians. We can identify sixteen men and women arrested in connection with the production of royalist print in the capital during these years.1 It is not I have chosen to rely on historical rather than bibliographical identification because when dealing with this type of ephemeral underground material one can never entirely discount the fact that a typographical match between two titles is due to the borrowing or sharing of material between printers. In addition, those involved with dangerous material must, whenever possible, have carefully avoided the use of distinctive typographical marks. One can never be sure, therefore, that any typographical matches found were not designed to lay a false trail and throw the searchers off the scent of the real printer.

1

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possible to provide any direct testimony from these men and women as to how and why they engaged in such a potentially dangerous activity, but an examination of their personal and professional contacts, combined with an analysis of the other books and pamphlets which they printed or sold over a period of time, will help to establish whether they were committed loyalists or mere opportunists out to make money. The vast majority of an individual’s personal and professional contacts will not be recorded in the historical sources, and those links which we can trace using the surviving fragmentary evidence may not be significant. Clyve Jones has rightly warned those scholars of the early eighteenth century who find evidence of support for the exiled Stuarts in the most unlikely of places that a man cannot be classified as a Jacobite merely because he happened to know, or dine with, a Jacobite. Even Sigmund Freud, that master of innuendo, assumption and tenuous links, is said to have realized that ‘sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’.2 Keeping these caveats in mind about the dangers of drawing too many conclusions from too few facts, it is possible to use the items printed, published or sold over a period of time by the arrested royalists to sketch something of their religious and political motivations and beliefs. The key to using business connections to examine a person’s political beliefs is that there should be a discernible pattern. A single link between a royalist-inclined author and a particular printer or publisher is not in itself significant, but a variety of personal and professional links over a period of time can be very telling.3 The members of the network, or overlapping networks, of royalist printers and publishers were, as one might expect, largely confined to the areas which housed the official and legitimate members of the book and printing trades – St Paul’s Cathedral, Ludgate and Smithfield – but the actual business of illegal printing took place on secondary, secret presses established as far away from the legitimate trade interests of these men as possible. It is noteworthy that those involved in royalist propaganda came from different social and economic backgrounds: these men and women were involved in this activity because they believed in what they were doing. By no means all of the printers or publishers were detected, but it seems safe to assume that those who were arrested were a representative sample of all those other men and women who were involved in the endeavour.4 A number of prominent publishers and booksellers were involved with Clyve Jones, ‘1720–3 and All That’, Albion, 26, 1 (1994), 45n. This saying has often been attributed to Freud but the modern edition of his collected works suggests, alas, that he never actually said it. 3 Mark Knights, ‘John Starkey and ideological networks in late seventeenth-century England’, in Joad Raymond (ed.), News networks in seventeenth-century Britain and Europe (Abingdon, 2006); Mark H. Curtis, ‘William Jones: Puritan printer and propagandist’, The Library, 5th ser., 19 (1964), 38–66. 4 Michael Treadwell, ‘Lists of master printers: the size of the London printing trade, 1637–1723’, in Robin Myers and Michael Harris (eds), Aspects of printing from 1600 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 141–70, at 144–5. 2

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the production of loyalist propaganda to varying degrees, but it will be suggested that the only person with the necessary money, experience, contacts and motivation to play a leading role in establishing and maintaining the royalist propaganda effort was a bookseller named Richard Royston. It would be wrong, however, to give the impression that the royalist underground was centrally controlled by one or more prominent royalists in either London or the exiled court. Even during the First Civil War the royalist headquarters at Oxford often found it impossible to exert any control over the armies fighting for the king, and the problems of communication and co-ordination were, if anything, even worse during the Second Civil War.5 It is simply incorrect to imagine that the newsbooks of the late 1640s were controlled by prominent royalists who dictated from the centre the political line which they took on a whole host of issues.6 The sheer disarray of the supporters of the crown, the limited facilities for communication, and the dangers involved in leading the searchers to the presses and their authors seem to have ensured that there was very little direct communication between the propagandists and the royalist leaders. Rather, it seems that a number of like-minded printers, booksellers and publishers, who may or may not have been known to each other, were encouraged and facilitated by others who could organize the construction of secret printing presses, the delivery of printing type and a regular supply of ink and paper. As if to make things even more nebulous for the historian, it is conceivable that a number of authors and printers who were not linked to these organizers may have been inspired to begin royalist activity by the example of those who were aided and encouraged by the initial organizers. These organizers, who, in all likelihood, were either leading booksellers in the capital or linked to these men, may have had greater opportunities for communication with various senior loyalists, but even here the surviving evidence suggests that these contacts were fleeting and indirect, rather than sustained and direct.7 There was, in other words, no equivalent of the twentieth-century Comintern which kept a close eye on Communist Parties outside the Soviet Union and could impose complicated twists and turns of policy upon national parties at very short notice.8 If one considers the royalist propagandists as a weapon of war one might compare them to the fire ships used in seventeenth-century naval engagements; some or all of the 5 Richard Cust, Charles I: a political life (Harlow, 2005), p. 376; David Scott, Politics and war in the three Stuart kingdoms (Basingstoke, 2004), p. 175. 6 For this suggestion see Jason Peacey, ‘The hunting of the Leveller: the sophistication of parliamentarian propaganda, 1647–53’, Historical Research, LXXVIII, 199 (Feb. 2005), 15–42, at 29, fn. 89. 7 For examples of such fleeting, indirect contacts see Elencticus, no. 37, 2–9 Aug. 1648, p. 287; SP 29/63/144; Geoffrey Smith, The Cavaliers in exile, 1640–1660 (2003), p. 47; Bod. Lib., Clarendon MS 34, fols 7r–v, 12r–13v, 17r–20r, 72r–74r, 86r–87r, 88r–v. 8 See, for example, William J. Chase, Enemies within the gates? The Comintern and the Stalinist repression, 1934–1939 (New Haven, CT, 2001).

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newsbooks and other printed items were certainly planned and prepared in general terms by senior royalists, but the actual deployment of the weapon was left to trusted lieutenants who could push them in a certain direction but who, faced with the ebb and flow of politics and political allegiances, were unable to control each and every turn which the propagandists would make in order to reach their target. Royalist propaganda, in other words, was not a tightly controlled medium for the various factions among the royalist leaders which have captivated and beguiled so many scholars of royalism.9 This loose organizational structure may help to explain why the newsbooks managed to survive for so long; arresting one person might lead to information on his or her immediate colleagues but it could not provide evidence against other like-minded individuals with whom he or she had never had any direct contact. Leading members of the network might be arrested from time to time, but they were invariably released quite quickly because they would never have involved themselves directly in the actual act of either printing or selling.10 This lack of direct supervision and control by the grandees of the royalist movement may help to explain the extraordinary vitality of royalist print-culture at this time. The material produced in London in the late 1640s contrasts sharply with the staid, formal and ritualistic propaganda produced by Samuel Browne under the auspices of the royal court at The Hague at exactly the same time. For example, in the weeks after the regicide, what remained of the loyalist press in London howled, screamed and threatened terrible revenge for the murder of a man they presented as the most wise, charitable, kind, prudent and Christ-like man in the world. By contrast, Le Mercure Anglois, a French-language newspaper produced by Samuel Browne at his print-shop in the vicinity of the royal court at The Hague, was a remarkably formal and restrained title which referred to Charles as ‘le roi defunct’, a strangely officious, almost administrative, description (‘the former king’) which conveys none of the raw emotion of the London royalist press.11 Rounding up the usual suspects Other than the nine authors discussed in the previous chapter, we know of sixteen people arrested in connection with the printing, publishing or distribution of newsbooks or other forms of royalist propaganda during the years For a refreshing interpretation of royalist politics which views factional politics as an unimportant and misleading sideshow see Smith, Cavaliers in exile, pp. 25, 27, 70–1, 115, 116–19, 125. 10 F.F. Madan, A new bibliography of the Eikon Basilike (Oxford, 1950), p. 165. 11 Le Mercure Anglois, no. 8, 19–26 Febvrier 1649, p. 29. I am grateful to Professor Marika Keblusek for providing me with copies of this rare newsbook from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. The first issue appeared on or after 2 January 1649 and the last surviving issue, no. 15, appeared on or after 26 April. 9

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under review. The first of these was a youth named Cook who was detained on 17 September 1647 for his alleged role as a messenger between the author and printer of Mercurius Melancholicus. On 16 October the Commons ordered that a bookseller named Richard Lowndes should be committed to Newgate for selling Mercurius Pragmaticus, and three days later the unnamed printer of Mercurius Melancholicus was brought before the Committee of the Militia of London, forced to pay a fine of 20 shillings, and had his printing press broken. This man may have been Edward Crouch, who, as we shall see, was arrested on a number of subsequent occasions.12 One might expect 1648 to have brought a greater number of arrests, but, although, as we have seen in the previous chapter, a number of authors were detained during the year, the printers and sellers of the newsbooks seem to have operated relatively freely.13 The year 1649 brought a greater number of arrests. In late February or early March 1649 a book-binder named Mumford in the parish of St Pancras was wounded in ‘foure or five places’ during a raid by ‘Sectarian Raga-muffin Souldiers’ acting on information that he was involved in the binding of some copies of the Eikon Basilike. Mr Mumford was likely to have been working for the prominent London bookseller and publisher Richard Royston, a man whom we shall consider in some detail later in this chapter.14 On 16 April 1649 the Council of State named the printer of Elencticus as William Wright and ordered his arrest.15 Towards the end of June the Council of State ordered that the bookseller Nathaniel Butler be committed to Newgate for dispersing unspecified treasonable and scandalous books, and in the middle of the following month Francis Heldersham and Martha Harrison were arrested for selling ‘a seditious libel called Pragmaticus’.16 In October, Richard Royston and his long-term associate, the printer John Grismond, were questioned about the printing of ‘a virulent and seditious pamphlet’, probably George Bates’s Elenchus Motuum Nuperorum in Anglia.17 December 1649 saw a relatively large number of arrests; the regicides were now closing-in quite successfully on the remnants of the royalist press. On the first day of the month the Council of State issued a warrant for the arrest of a bookseller named Thomas Walkley who had allegedly dispersed copies

Perfect Occurrences, no. 37, 10–17 Sept. 1647, p. 250; LJ, ix, p. 472, 7 Oct. 1647; CJ, v, p. 335, 16 Oct. 1647; CSPD, 1645–7, p. 602; Melancholicus, no. 12, 13–20 Nov. 1647, p. 69. 13 Perfect Occurrences, no. 63, 10–17 Mar. 1648, p. 517; Perfect Occurrences, no. 66, 31 Mar.–7 April 1648, p. 474; CJ, vi, p. 80. 14 Pragmaticus, no. 46C, 27 Feb.–5 Mar. 1649, sig. 2r–v; F.F. Madan, A new bibliography of Eikon Basilike, p. 165; Ellic Howe, A list of London book-binders, 1648–1815 (1950). 15 SP 25/62/196. 16 SP 25/62/482; SP 25/62/530. 17 SP 25/63/174; F.F. Madan, ‘A bibliography of George Bates’s Elenchus Motuum Nuperorum in Anglia’, in The Library, 5th ser., vi (1951), 189–99. 12

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of Charles II’s declaration from the island of Jersey.18 The hapless Edward Crouch was again imprisoned on 17 December 1649, this time for his part in ‘dispersing’ the ‘scandalous and seditious’ The Man in the Moon.19 On Christmas Day the Council ordered that a bookseller named John Williams be committed to the Gatehouse ‘for printing and publishing scandalous and seditious pamphlets’, and two days later the bookseller Henry Seile was questioned ‘as to his printing and publishing’ Dr Thomas Bayly’s The Royal Charter Granted unto Kings, by God Himself.20 On 1 February 1650, the Council of State ordered the imprisonment of William Dugard, the headmaster of the Merchant Taylors’ School in Suffolk Lane, for printing ‘severall scandalous and seditious bookes’. The Council ordered the seizure of the four presses which he had erected in the school premises and his dismissal from the position of headmaster. One of the two correctors to his press, a Mr John Armstrong, was also arrested at this time and questioned by the Council.21 By the early summer of 1650 there was next to nothing left of the impressive network that had existed only two years previously, and what was left was destroyed when a Mr William Ellis was ordered to be ‘committed prisoner to Newgate’ for printing Mercurius Pragmaticus.22 Royalist printers Leaving aside minor incidental figures such as young master Cook the messenger, Mr Mumford the book-binder and Mr Armstrong the presscorrector, this chapter will consider, in turn, the printers, sellers and publishers of these items. It will be argued that these men and women were committed activists, not opportunists motivated by financial gain, and that they came from a variety of social and political backgrounds. All of these individuals must have been working with and for other more important and prominent men. A number of the booksellers arrested in connection with this material were prominent royalists with impressive contacts among the royalist elite, and it will also be suggested that we can detect the outlines of a hierarchy of responsibility or culpability among these men. We know of five men arrested for printing royalist material between 1647 and 1650: William Wright, William Ellis, Edward Crouch, John Grismond and William Dugard. The first of these men, William Wright, was arrested in

SP 25/63/338. SP 25/63/403; SP 25/63/427. Whitlocke, Memorials, p. 419; SP 25/63/427; SP 25/63/435. SP 25/63/578 & 586; Merchant Taylors’ Court Book, 1 Feb. 1649 [i.e. 1650], fols 338–338b; Leona Rostenberg, ‘William Dugard, pedagogue and printer to the Commonwealth’, PBSA, 58 (1958), 179–204, at 187. The other corrector was a mysterious ‘Hooker’ about whom nothing is known. 22 SP 25/64/416. 18 19 20 21

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April 1649 as the printer of Mercurius Elencticus, but much of his career is shrouded in obscurity. As one so often finds when trying to identify obscure individuals, there was more than one man of this name in the same trade: a William Wright became a printer in October 1605 and another William Wright became a bookseller in October 1614.23 One of these two men was living in ‘Distaffe Lane’ when he published two editions of a short pamphlet on the progress of the Irish Rebellion in 1642.24 The only other surviving items to carry the name ‘William Wright’ are an account of the situation in Ireland in 1643, and an officially licensed broadside which lists the judges of the High Court of Justice who tried a number of leading royalists for treason in early 1649.25 The second of these five men – William Ellis – was arrested in June 1650 as the printer of Mercurius Pragmaticus. He was the son of a plumber from Glastonbury in Somerset. He was bound to a woman named Lucretia East in June 1626, but was subsequently transferred to the printer Miles Flesher and was freed by him in July 1633.26 Ellis operated a small print-shop in Thames Street in the late 1640s and early 1650s, but the eleven books that he is known to have printed give no indication that he held any strong political or religious opinions.27 He did, however, have personal and business links to some of the most prominent royalist printers and booksellers in London. His second master, Miles Flesher, was a prominent royalist, and Ellis shared much of his work with a royalist printer named John Grismond (who will be examined below) who had also been an apprentice in the shop of Miles Flesher. Edward Crouch, who was arrested on at least three, and possibly as many as four, occasions, was the son of a yeoman from Standon in Hertfordshire. He became a freeman of the Stationers’ Company after serving a ten-year apprenticeship to a Smithfield-based bookseller. Edward’s move from bookselling into printing is curious but not unique. His print-shop was located in Hosier Lane on Snow Hill, an area of Smithfield which was home to many other members of the book trade and in which he seems to have had a number of close relatives.28 Among these relatives was John Crouch, with whom he produced a number of royalist newsbooks, including an edition of Mercurius Melancholicus in 1648 and the eminently readable The Man in the Moon, for which he was arrested in December 1649. Edward was a classic D.F. McKenzie, Stationers’ Company apprentices, 1605–1640 (Charlottesville, VA, 1961), pp. 28, 92. 24 Newes from the West of Ireland (1642). 25 John Peters, A trve relation of the present estate of Ireland (1642[3]); A List of the Names . . . (1649). 26 McKenzie, Apprentices, 1605–1640, pp. 14–16. 27 D.F. McKenzie, Stationers’ Company apprentices, 1641–1700 (Oxford, 1974), p. 52. Wing Indexes, p. 318. 28 Jason McElligott, ‘Edward Crouch: a poor printer in seventeenth century London’, JPHS, n.s. 1 (2000), 49–73. 23

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case of a small-scale printer surviving almost hand-to-mouth on the jobs which came his way from publishers; during his spell of imprisonment Edward claimed that his young family were in such desperate financial straits that they were in very real danger of starving. There may well have been an element of exaggeration to the claims about his family’s sufferings, but their penury might explain why Edward petitioned the Council of State for his release after three months in Newgate. He gained his freedom in mid-April 1650 after lodging bail in the enormous sum of £500 with two sureties of £200 each and agreeing not to ‘doe any thing that shall be prejudiciall to the Commonwealth and present Government thereof.’29 During the 1650s Edward retreated from political comment and seems to have survived by printing and publishing around a dozen cheap pamphlets divided almost equally between works of popular piety and bawdry. He was the publisher of these items in the modern sense as he seems to have financed their production and owned the copyright to them, as well as doing the actual printing himself. Edward played no part in the surge of royalist printing in the months before the Restoration, but he and his kinsman John Crouch re-invented themselves as ultra-loyalists after the Restoration. They were both evidently angry at Charles II’s prudent policy of forgiveness to all but the most prominent of his enemies, and bitter that they did not share in any of the material benefits enjoyed by many of the well-connected former members of the royalist underground, such as Sir John Berkenhead and John Cleveland. Edward’s surviving imprints suggest that, at least before he slipped into poverty during the 1660s, he worked with a small number of like-minded close family members independently of any prominent bookseller or publisher. This independence and relative isolation might help to explain why he found himself consigned to the resentful wing of those marginalized Cavaliers who complained that the Restoration had brought them nothing but poverty, misery and isolation.30 It may also help to explain the strikingly unique and idiosyncratic nature of his longest-running newsbook, The Man in the Moon. This lack of patronage and protection might also explain why Edward, who does not seem to have been a key player among the royalists in the capital, was arrested on so many more occasions than anyone else. In other words, the frequency of his arrests may owe less to his centrality or importance to the loyalist propaganda effort than to the fact that he could not avail of the protections afforded by prominent men with money and influence. The fourth of the five printers arrested during these years was John Grismond, who was summoned before a sub-committee of the Council of State on 24 October 1649 ‘as to the printing a virulent and seditious

29 30

McElligott, ‘Edward Crouch’, p. 64. McElligott, ‘Edward Crouch’, pp. 68–73. 134


pamphlet’.31 Grismond was unlike any of the other printers arrested in connection with the production of royalist material, in that he was both commercially successful and a committed royalist throughout the entire period of the Civil Wars and Interregnum. He was born the son of a yeoman from Aston in Herefordshire and was apprenticed to the printer Miles Flesher for seven years from February 1634. His name appears on more than 300 books and pamphlets which he printed at his premises in Ivy Lane in the parish of Christchurch between 1641 and his death in 1666.32 The order for Grismond’s arrest does not mention the royalist newsbooks, but there are at least two reasons for suggesting that he may have been complicit in the production of some of these titles between 1647 and 1650. First, Grismond printed numerous books written by royalists between the outbreak of conflict in the early 1640s and his death in 1666. These included titles by Elias Ashmole, John Tradescant, Sir James Ware and George Wharton. Wharton, as we have seen, wrote several royalist newsbooks, and the strength of Grismond’s connection to him is shown by the fact that he printed eighteen of Wharton’s hugely successful almanacs between 1651 and 1666. Second, Grismond had personal and business dealings with William Ellis (who was arrested in June 1650 for printing Pragmaticus), and the royalist booksellers Miles Flesher and Richard Royston. The link with Royston was particularly strong: Royston had served his apprenticeship in Grismond’s father’s shop; Royston and the younger Grismond both operated shops in the same street near St Paul’s Cathedral; and Grismond printed the majority of the works published by Royston during the Civil Wars and Interregnum.33 The fifth and final printer arrested for royalist material was William Dugard, who was born the son of Reverend Henry Dugard of Worcester in January 1606.34 He became a member of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1622 and was awarded a BA in 1626 and an MA four years later. He was accomplished in Latin, Greek and French, and taught at Stamford and Colchester before being made headmaster of the Merchant Taylors’ School in May 1644. He had personal links to a number of sectaries and republicans, including John Milton, but he may have favoured the royalist cause as early

SP 25/63/175. Wing Indexes. Miles Flesher seems to have avoided the attention of the authorities and to have thrived financially during the 1650s. For evidence of his involvement in property speculation see London Metropolitan Archives ACC/0315/694. 34 Oxford DNB; Rostenberg, ‘William Dugard’, pp. 179–204; F.F. Madan, ‘Milton, Salmasius and Dugard’, The Library, 4th ser., iv, 2 (1923), 119–45; TNA, PROB 11/309/153; F.M.W. Draper, Four centuries of Merchant Taylors’ School, 1561–1961 (1962), pp. 61–8; Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, iv, p. 733; and J.A. Strype, A survey of the cities of London and Westminster, 2 vols (1720), i, p. 203; Oxford DNB; Matthew Davies and Ann Saunders, The history of the Merchant Taylors’ Company (Leeds, 2004), pp. 193, 195–6. 31 32 33

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as 1642.35 He was admitted a freeman of the Stationers’ Company in February 1648 and acted as a corrector of the schoolbooks published by the Company.36 Soon after he became a freeman he purchased a supply of type and a number of printing presses from the estate of a deceased printer who had been inclined to the royalist side. During 1648 and 1649 Dugard printed or published twenty-three books; these were mainly pedagogical works, but they included five important works in support of the royalist cause, among which were George Bates’s Elenchus Motuum, the Eikon Basilike and Defensio Regia, the influential denunciation of Charles’s execution penned by the French scholar Claude de Saumaise.37 He was sufficiently well-connected or well-known to receive a letter from the continent in April 1649 from the royalist Secretary of State Edward Nicholas asking him to print a book. Dugard evidently felt he had to decline, probably for reasons of security, and it is not clear whether this letter was sent to him directly or whether it was addressed to a third party who conveyed it or its contents to him.38 The fact that Dugard printed a number of royalist books – including the Eikon Basilike - which were also printed by the royalist printer Samuel Browne at The Hague also demonstrates some degree of contact with royalist publishing circles on the continent, but the frequency and exact nature of these contacts are unknown.39 The order of 1 February 1650 for Dugard’s imprisonment came within a few days of the appearance of his edition of Defensio Regia.40 Dugard’s wife and six children were turned out of their tied quarters and he himself spent a little over a month in Newgate before he agreed to subscribe to the Oath of Engagement, and entered a recognizance of £1,000 and two sureties of £500 each for his future good behaviour.41 On 5 April 1650 he entered another recognizance of £900 for the return of his printing presses.42 After the Restoration Dugard, like Edward Crouch, claimed that if he had not recanted he would have been ‘tried for his life by an high Court of injustice’. Dugard’s claim, which might otherwise be dismissed as weasel words designed to ingratiate himself with England’s newly triumphant royalists, is given some Rostenberg, ‘William Dugard’, p. 188; Nigel Victor Sleigh-Johnson, ‘The Merchant Taylors’ Company of London’, pp. 226–7, 233; Parker, Milton: a biography, i, p. 395, ii, p. 973. 36 SCCB, C251 (10 Feb. 1648). 37 Madan, ‘A bibliography of George Bates’s Elenchus Motuum Nuperorum in Anglia’, pp. 189–99. 38 SP 29/63/144. 39 See details on Elenchum Motuum and Apophthegmata in Keblusek, ‘Boekverkoper in ballinschap’, i, p. 47; Marika Keblusek, ‘Samuel Browne’, in Oxford DNB. 40 SP 25/63/578; Johns, Nature of the book, p. 130; J.A. Strype, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, 2 vols (1720), i, p. 203; Marcus Nevitt, ‘Women in the business of revolutionary news’, in Joad Raymond (ed.), News, newspapers and society in early modern London (1999), pp. 105–6. 41 SP 25/64/67; SP 25/120/18. 42 SP 25/120/21; SP 19/98/80. 35

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credence by the fact that he named the person who intervened on his behalf as James Harrington. Harrington, as we saw in the previous chapter, was a republican during the 1650s, but had been a groom of the bedchamber to the captive Charles I in 1647 and 1648 and may have been responsible for facilitating Marchamont Nedham’s introduction to the king at Hampton Court.43 Dugard suffered significant financial distress as a result of his imprisonment, and this may help in part to explain why he recanted his royalism and was appointed as the official printer to the Council of State in April 1650. Five months later John Bradshaw wrote on behalf of the Council of State to secure his reinstatement as the headmaster of the Merchant Taylors’ School.44 Over the next four years Dugard printed numerous defences of the regime, including John Milton’s Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (1651), John Selden’s Mare Clausum (1652) and the French translation of Milton’s Eikonoklastes (1652). His appointment as official printer was terminated some time after 1654 and thereafter his output consisted almost wholly of learned non-political works, most notably the grammars of the classical tongues which he wrote for use in schools. The warrant for Dugard’s arrest which was issued in February 1650 seems to refer only to his involvement with the five royalist books mentioned above. It does not suggest that the authorities suspected him of involvement in the printing of newsbooks or other similar items.45 Indeed, one might argue that the list of learned books which he printed and published between 1648 and his death in 1662 would suggest that he was unlikely to have been involved in the production of anything as ephemeral as newsbooks. On the other hand, Dugard did have some links with the publisher Richard Royston who, it will be suggested below, may have been behind many of these serials.46 He was also briefly employed by the republic after April 1650 as the printer of an official newsbook entitled A Briefe Relation, and he acted as the translator and printer of the regime’s French-language newspaper Nouvelles Ordinaries de Londres from its inception in June 1650 until the Restoration.47 There was evidently no strict demarcation between the production of ephemeral news and learned tomes when one entered into the maelstrom of civil war politics, and it is entirely possible that one or more of Dugard’s presses may have printed royalist newsbooks or other ephemera. Leona Rostenberg has written that it is difficult to reconcile Dugard’s SP 29/63/144: Qui Chetat Chetabitur: Or, Tyburne Cheated (1661). Dugard returned the favour by sheltering the fugitive Harrington at the time of the Restoration. When Harrington was finally discovered and arrested, Dugard stood bail for him to the tune of £5,000. Davies and Saunders, Merchant Taylors’, p. 196. 44 SP 25/9/85; Merchant Taylors’ Court Book, 11 Sept. 1650, fol. 361. 45 SP 25/63/578 & 586. 46 See Rostenberg, ‘William Dugard’, pp. 188–9; Madan, ‘Bibliography of Elenchus Motuum Nuperorum’, p. 109. In addition, see the title-pages of Wing E267A and E305A. 47 SP 25/64/152–3. Jean Sgard, Dictionnaire des Journaux, 1600–1789, 2 vols (Paris, 1991), ii, pp. 970–2. 43

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devotion to the Stuarts with his later position as ‘Printer to the State’. She wonders whether Dugard was a mere political opportunist and suggests that ‘The political antitheses presented in the books which bear his imprint cast aspersion upon the sincerity of his character. His rapid switch in party loyalty brands him as a turncoat.’48 This view is, of course, remarkably similar to the traditional assessment of the twists and turns of the author Marchamont Nedham during these years. Indeed, the similarity of the choices made by Nedham and Dugard is striking: both men only began to work for the royalist cause in the late 1640s; were arrested and imprisoned for a period of time before agreeing to write for the republic; became vigorous supporters of that republic, but appear to have fallen out of love with England’s new masters during the Protectorate; and were friends of the prominent republicans James Harrington and John Milton.49 The similarities are so numerous and so strong that it is highly likely that both men became royalists in the late 1640s (whether independently of each other or not is unclear) for the same reasons. They must also have had broadly similar views on events during the 1650s. If this is true, then the model outlined in the previous chapter to explain Nedham’s shifting allegiances may also be usefully applied to Dugard. We know very little about Dugard’s reasons for his actions because he, unlike Nedham, did not write anything and we are forced to reconstruct his politics from the surviving imprints which bear his name. It is, however, possible to suggest that he, like Nedham, may have been motivated by a concept of the ‘public good’ and the ‘commonwealth’ which during the late 1640s (in his case, the decision to support the king seems to have come some time in 1648) came to see the royal cause as the best hope of protecting freedom of conscience and re-establishing legal government with proper constitutional safeguards. He was not easily shaken from this belief, as the period he spent in prison in 1650 shows, but his eventual decision to write for the regicides may have been conditioned by a realization that the loyalists had lost decisively and that the best way to secure what he saw as the ‘common good’ was now to work with this de facto state which proclaimed itself a republic and a commonwealth in order to hold it to its promises of liberty and freedom. The outward shifts in Dugard’s politics may therefore be best understood not as the actions of a turncoat or a renegade but as the tactical shifts necessary in changing times to remain constant to his core beliefs. This explanation, if accepted, might help to explain an intriguing motto on the title-page of a pamphlet which Dugard printed in July 1651: ‘It is better one man should perish, then the whole bee destroied.’ This was Rostenberg, ‘William Dugard’, pp. 179, 188, 202–3. See also W.R. Meyer, ‘William Dugard’, in Oxford DNB; John Barnard, ‘London publishing, 1640–1660: crisis, continuity, and innovation’, Book History, 4 (2001), 1–16, at 4. 49 Nedham’s links with James Harrington have been mentioned in the previous chapter. For his links with John Milton see Parker, Milton, i, pp. 355, 394, ii, pp. 948–9. 48

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intended as a defence of the execution of the Presbyterian plotter Christopher Love, but it may provide an insight into a pragmatic approach to politics which led him to retrospectively justify the regicide and champion the republic once it became clear that the loyalists had been comprehensively defeated.50 Dugard, Nedham and the other ‘turncoats’ examined in this book, therefore, have much more in common with the experiences of more intellectual commentators such as Thomas Hobbes than has previously been realised. The careers of Dugard and Nedham also suggest that the development of republican political theory in the 1650s owed more to circumstance, pragmatism and reluctant accommodation than it did to principled conviction based on either classical history or religious experience.51 Booksellers and publishers It is unlikely that the five above-named men were the only printers who worked on royalist material during the late 1640s. They do, however, represent a sizable portion of the forty or so printers operating in London at the time and it seems reasonable to assume that they were broadly representative of any other royalist printers who managed to escape detection.52 The arrested printers had no common social, economic or geographical background: Wright, Ellis and Crouch were evidently quite poor, but Grismond and Dugard appear to have enjoyed some degree of financial success.53 As was the case with the authors examined in the previous chapter, however, the printers can be divided into those (like John Grismond) who were committed royalists throughout the entire period, and those (like William Dugard and Edward Crouch) who seem to have adhered to the king in the late 1640s and who fell away from the cause at various points during the early 1650s. The careers of the printers, like those of the authors, suggest that royalism was a broad church which could attract men of varying social, economic, cultural and political backgrounds. The financial rewards associated with printing illegal material were quite meagre, probably no more than about forty or fifty shillings per thousand quarto pamphlets.54 It seems reasonable, therefore, to conclude that the printers’ primary motivation for their actions was ideological rather than A Short-Plea for the Common-wealth (11 July 1651). Jonathan Scott, Commonwealth principles: republican writings of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2004), passim. 52 The other possible royalist printers operating at this time were Francis Ash, Henry Featherston, John Marriot, Richard Norton, Leonard Lichfield and Richard Coates. None of these men, however, fell foul of the authorities during these years. It is impossible therefore to tell whether they were never involved with royalist printing or whether they were involved but escaped detection. 53 SP 19/98/80; SCCB C278v (25 April 1653). 54 TSP, iii, pp. 149, 738. 50 51

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financial. None of the printers identified above would have had the experience, capital or contacts to organize the publication and distribution of the royalist newsbooks alone; even the most successful of them – John Grismond and William Dugard – printed most of their titles for a number of wealthy London booksellers. In what follows, therefore, the men and women arrested for selling or dispersing the royalist books and pamphlets will be examined in order to determine whether any of them might have done more than sell individual items. Is it possible, in other words, to suggest the identity of at least some of the men responsible for organizing, financing and distributing royalist propaganda? In order to reconstruct the politics and allegiance of these booksellers we are forced to rely on the surviving imprints of books which they published. There are a number of problems with this approach. We cannot reconstruct the many items which they stocked in their shops but did not publish; we are ignorant as to books which they published but did not put their names to; and one cannot merely assume that individual books and pamphlets reflect the politics of their publishers. Despite these potential pitfalls, however, it is possible to deduce a bookseller’s politics from the list of books he published when there is a discernible pattern. The publication of a single book by a royalist-inclined author does not necessarily have any significance, but the publication of several or many items from one particular side of the conflict over a sustained period of time is very suggestive as to the publisher’s politics. The seven booksellers who will now be examined are: Martha Harrison, Richard Lowndes, Nathaniel Butler, Thomas Walkley, John Williams, Henry Seile and Richard Royston. The July 1649 warrant for the arrest of Martha Harrison and Francis Heldersham, for ‘printing and publishing’ Mercurius Pragmaticus, cannot be accepted at face value. Martha Harrison was the wife of John Harrison, a bookseller who owned a shop at the ‘Sign of the Lamb’ in St Paul’s Churchyard.55 Mrs Harrison may have been a royalist, but she could not have been the ‘printer’ of Pragmaticus because neither she nor her husband owned a printing press.56 It is also unlikely that this woman from the lower echelons of the book trade was the ‘publisher’ of the newsbook in the modern sense of the word. It is likely that she published Pragmaticus only in the sense of offering it for sale at the family shop, or otherwise dispersing it, perhaps through the network of hawkers which had spread throughout the City during the 1640s.57 Her co-defendant Francis Heldersham is completely Plomer, Dictionary, p. 96. SP 25/120/1–15. John Harrison died in 1653 and Martha continued to sell books at the Lamb during her widowhood. She published seven books between 1653 and 1657, among which were two histories by the royalist cleric Thomas Fuller. See Wing Indexes; SCCB, C271; C274; C279; C283; C292v; D5; D19v; D19v; D20. 57 Booksellers’ wives often played a key role in the shop, tending accounts, handling correspondence and selling books. See Johns, The nature of the book, p. 114; and Geraldine 55 56

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unknown apart from the warrant issued for his arrest. He does not seem to have worked as either a bookseller or printer, and it is possible that he was arrested while hawking the incriminating title around the streets of London for Martha Harrison. Richard Lowndes, who was arrested in October 1647 for selling Mercurius Pragmaticus, was the son of a grocer from Cheshire and from 1631 served an eight-year apprenticeship with the bookseller Henry Seile. In 1641 and 1642 he published more than forty books and pamphlets some of which were written by prominent opponents of the king such as William Prynne, Fairfax and John Pym. However, most of his titles from these two years suggest a man of a loyalist inclination with a strong attachment to episcopal government in the church who identified himself as being in favour of ‘God, the Protestant Religion, the lawes of the land, and the liberty of the subjects’.58 Between 1643 and 1650 the number of titles he published declined sharply, but almost all of them were distinctly royalist. In 1648 he published only four items, but three of them were declarations by Charles I and the fourth was a sermon strongly in favour of divine right which had been preached by James Ussher in the presence of the king. His imprints after 1660 are predictably ultra-royalist, but during the 1650s, and particularly during the first few years of the republic, he moved away from publishing loyalist authors in favour of various defences of the new regime. Most notably, he was one of the publishers of Nedham’s pro-republic The Case of the Common-Wealth, Stated in 1650. Lowndes seems to have been a committed royalist from the start of the conflict, and his seeming accommodation to the political realities of the Interregnum was a choice which he made in common with many of his comrades, as we have seen in the previous chapter. He was not, however, a key figure in royalist circles in the capital; his arrest in September 1647 was probably not for publishing Pragmaticus, which had only appeared for the first time a few weeks earlier, but merely for selling it at his shop on Ludgate Hill.59 The striking absence of any other bookseller detained between September 1647 and the summer of 1649 suggests that most copies of the royalist newsbooks were sold by hawkers about the town rather than from booksellers’ stalls. Towards the end of June 1649 the Council of State ordered that the bookseller Nathaniel Butler, who traded near St Austin’s Gate in St Paul’s Churchyard, be committed to Newgate for dispersing unspecified treasonable and scandalous books. These books might have been Leveller material, Sheridan, ‘Women in the booktrade in eighteenth century France’, British Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies, xv (1992), 51–69. 58 See the title-page of J.B., The Oxonian Antippodes (1644). 59 McKenzie, Apprentices, 1605–1640, p. 116; McKenzie, Apprentices, 1641–1700, p. 103; Wing Indexes. That the author and one of the publishers of the republican Case of the Common-Wealth had previously been arrested for royalist activity supports the point made in the previous chapter about the frequency of changes of side during the conflict. 141


which seems to have circulated quite widely at the time, but this is unlikely because the only books published by Butler between 1644 and 1659 were by the royalist cleric Joseph Hall, bishop of Norwich, with whom he seems to have had a close business relationship. All of these items were printed by Miles Flesher, who, as we saw above, had links to William Ellis, the man arrested for printing Pragmaticus in the summer of 1650. It is not entirely certain that Butler’s alleged crime related to royalist books, but even if it did there is nothing to suggest that he did anything more than sell the offending items; he was probably nothing more than a marginal, occasional dabbler in this material. At least two of the three booksellers arrested during December 1649 (Henry Seile, Thomas Walkley and John Williams) seem to have been more influential figures in royalist life in the capital. Perhaps the least important of the three was Henry Seile, who was questioned early in the month in connection with Dr Thomas Bayly’s The Royal Charter Granted unto Kings, by God Himself.60 Seile, from Oslaston in Derbyshire, began trading as a bookseller in 1617. His shop was at the sign of the Tiger’s Head in St Dunstan’s Church in Fleet Street from 1641. He published twenty-one items in 1641 and 1642, mostly of a strong royalist inclination but he seems to have moved away from publishing during the course of the Civil Wars in favour of bookselling. His surviving imprints provide no clue as to his activities later in the decade, but one tantalizing glimpse of a possible connection to loyalist material is that one of the three apprentices he bound during his career, Richard Lowndes, was, as described above, arrested for selling Mercurius Pragmaticus in 1647. Lowndes and Seile seem to have worked together during the 1640s61 and it is just possible that they were involved in some way with the royalist underground. On the basis of the surviving historical evidence, however, one would have to categorize Seile’s involvement in illegal publishing as marginal. John Williams, who was committed to the Gatehouse on Christmas Day 1649, ‘for printing and publishing scandalous and seditious pamphlets’, seems to have been a more important figure than Henry Seile. Williams was from a family of Cambridge stationers and he traded as a bookseller in the capital from 1634. He published almost 200 books between 1641 and his death in 1669. He was a committed loyalist who published books by a number of royalist laymen and clerics including Francis Quarles, Kenelm Digby, George Bates, Ralph Herrick, Lionel Gatford, Thomas Bayly and Thomas Fuller. He was, in fact, Fuller’s publisher of choice from about the end of the First Civil War, a strong indication of a possible close personal, political and religious association between the two men. Williams’s shop at the sign of the Crown in St Paul’s Churchyard seems to have dealt mainly in Whitlocke, Memorials, p. 419; SP 25/63/427; SP 25/63/435. See the title-page of Joshua Poole, The English Accidence (1646); McKenzie, Apprentices, 1605–1640, pp. 58, 94; McKenzie, Apprentices, 1641–1700, p. 149; Wing Indexes.

60 61

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religious material, but he also published at least four editions of the Eikon Basilike towards the close of 1649, dramatic proof of his willingness to engage others to print dangerous material for him in support of the king’s cause. The exact degree of his involvement with illegal royalist printing is, however, unclear. The Eikon was a bestseller with strong religious overtones, and there is no surviving evidence to suggest that Williams concerned himself in any way with the less high-minded and more ephemeral propaganda which is the subject of this book.62 The third bookseller arrested in December 1649, Thomas Walkley, was questioned for allegedly dispersing copies of Charles II’s Jersey Declaration.63 Walkley was from Gloucester and became a bookseller in 1618 after serving an eleven-year apprenticeship.64 He published twenty-six items of a strongly royalist nature in 1641 and 1642, including the speeches of John, Lord Digby (later Earl of Bristol) and Viscount Falkland, and the poems of Thomas Carew and John Denham. He published very little from 1643, and much of that which he did publish was focused on events in Scotland, particularly in the years between 1647 and 1649. The context of Williams’s arrest is provided in a letter written by Lord Hatton to the Secretary of State Edward Nicholas in exile on the continent. According to this letter, a copy of the Jersey Declaration was sent from the continent to London where it was secretly printed. A certain Mr Parker was entrusted with the distribution of the printed declaration, and he ensured that it was ‘pasted upon the Exchange and other places by and did take care by ye posts and all the carriers of that weeke to send packets of those declarations into all partes of England’. Walkley may have been centrally involved in distributing this declaration. He certainly had prior connections with Secretary Nicholas and several prominent royalists; shortly before the outbreak of civil war in 1642 he petitioned Nicholas for a place in Charles’s chamber and claimed that he had ‘performed special service’ for Charles I and Henrietta Maria ‘for which he lost his estate’. He also claimed to have earlier undertaken certain unspecified services for James I and his queen.65 The combination of Walkley’s apparent connection to a royal declaration which was smuggled into London, printed in secret and distributed widely across the country, and his earlier connections with Edward Nicholas, who played an important role in overseeing royalist print on the continent, suggests that Walkley may have been an important figure in the royalist underground. There may well have been direct contacts between Walkley and members of the exiled royal court, but it is more likely that the myste62 McKenzie, Apprentices, 1605–1640, p. 46; McKenzie, Apprentices, 1641–1700, pp. 181–2; Wing Indexes; Barnard, ‘London publishing, 1640–1660’, p. 8. 63 SP 25/63/338. For more on Walkley’s career see Timothy Raylor, ‘Moseley, Walkley, and the 1645 editions of Waller’, The Library, 7th ser., 2, 3 (2001), 236–65. 64 McKenzie, Apprentices, 1605–1640, pp. 37, 51; Wing Indexes. 65 Nicholas Papers, i, p. 158; SP 18/493/54.

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rious ‘Mr Parker’ acted as an intermediary between the royal court and Walkley and his unknown colleague or colleagues.66 None of the arrested royalist booksellers, including Thomas Walkley, seem to have had the money, contacts, experience and motivation to be centrally involved in the organization, direction and maintenance of the royalist propaganda effort in the capital. The only individual at work in London during the 1640s who was in a position to provide the necessary leadership was the wealthy bookseller Richard Royston. He was born the son of a prosperous Oxford tailor in 1601 and bound to the type-founder and printer John Grismond in June 1619. This John Grismond was the father of the man of the same name whom Royston used to print many of his titles during the 1640s and 1650s. Royston became a freeman in August 1627 and published almost one thousand titles during his career. His bookshop was located at the sign of the Angel in Ivy Lane between 1641 and 1666. After this date he traded at the same sign in St Bartholomew’s Hospital (1667–9), St Paul’s Churchyard (1670–5) and at Amen Corner (1675–86).67 During the Civil Wars and Interregnum he had close personal and business relations with prominent lay and clerical royalists including Henry Hammond, Jeremy Taylor and John Barwick, and he seems to have been in contact with Charles I himself in the autumn of 1648.68 In July 1645 he was denounced to the House of Lords as ‘the constant factor for all . . . scandalous books and papers against the proceedings of Parliament’, and was incarcerated in the Fleet Prison.69 He was freed after penning a grovelling apology to the Lords, though he continued to publish royalist titles after his release.70 It seems useful to divide the books which he published into three distinct groups: legal, semi-legal and illegal titles. Royston published a number of books which received a licence and were entered in the Stationers’ Register prior to publication, in accordance with the various press regulations of the period.71 Such titles adhered to the letter of the law, and were unlikely to land him in trouble unless an individual or group took exception to the contents of that work. The majority of Royston’s output, however, was neither licensed nor entered in the Stationers’ Register. He may have wanted to keep his involvement with such titles SP 25/63/282–4; His Majesties Declaration To all His Loving subjects in His Kingdome of England and Dominion of Wales (31 Oct. 1649), p. 3. 67 McKenzie, Apprentices, 1641–1700; Wing Indexes; Lois Potter, Secret rites and secret writing: royalist literature, 1641–1660 (Cambridge, 1989), p. 8, 213; W.P. Williams, ‘Richard Royston’, in Oxford DNB and DLB 170, pp. 219–30. 68 Madan, New bibliography of the Eikon Basilike, pp. 152–3; Potter, Secret rites, pp. 8–12. 69 HMC, 6th report (1877), pp. 71–2. 70 LJ, vii, p. 518; HMC 6th report (1877), p. 74a; House of Lords Records Office, Main Papers, HL/PO/JO/1/191. 71 For Royston’s titles entered between March 1646 and March 1650 see Arber, Stationers’ Company Register (1913), i, pp. 221, 227, 230, 244, 255, 257, 264, 265, 269, 270, 275, 276, 304, 334, 340. 66

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out of the public domain, but it is also possible that he was reluctant to pay the 6d fee for entering titles in the Register. These titles were not strictly legal, but unless they contained some particularly offensive or outrageous material there was every chance that they would not stand out amongst the mass of unlicensed printed material circulating in London. One would have to be particularly unlucky, as he found to his cost in 1666, to be censured for dealing in this sort of material.72 However, Royston also dealt in much more dangerous books, which openly supported the royalist cause, appealed to a socially diverse readership, and called, either explicitly or implicitly, for resistance to the usurpers of the king’s power. For example, between 1643 and 1645 he regularly smuggled books from the royalist headquarters at Oxford using a network of ‘adventurous women’ who loitered ‘at Places agreed upon’ to bring printed matter into the capital. Among the titles that Royston smuggled into London was the newsbook Mercurius Aulicus, which he sometimes managed to reprint in a second edition. This network was used for more than transporting books; it was also apparently used by John Barwick, a royalist spy in London, for ‘communicating to his Majesty [in Oxford] all the Designs and Endeavours of the Rebels, and conveying his Royal Orders and Commands [to London]’ during the First Civil War.73 Barwick was also a key figure in organizing and facilitating communications between Charles I and his supporters in the capital after the fall of Oxford, and he communicated with the king’s ministers in exile through his brother Edward who collected letters from the Post Office addressed to a fictional Dutch merchant named James Van Delft. The brothers were betrayed by a former colleague in the Post Office and arrested in April 1649.74 During the course of the previous October Royston had received orders ‘to have all Things in readiness requisite for publishing’ the Eikon Basilike, the immensely successful book which purported to be the meditations and reflections of Charles I. The manuscript was delivered to him by the king’s chaplain Edward Symmons on 23 December 1648, and a proof copy was ready by the second week of January 1649. The authorities had, however, become aware of the preparations to print the Eikon, and these proofs were seized and destroyed. Royston then printed two thousand copies of the book on a press which he moved to a secret location outside the city expressly for that purpose.75 On the appearance of the Eikon, Royston was summoned

SP 29/173/115. Thomas, Berkenhead, pp. 50, 54; Potter, Secret rites, pp. 12, 41; G.F. Barwick (ed.), The life of Dr John Barwick, Dean of St. Paul’s (1724), pp. 46–7, 61–2; Jason McElligott, ‘John Barwick’, in Oxford DNB. 74 Life of Dr John Barwick, pp. 70–1, 85–6, 94–7, 105; McElligott, ‘John Barwick’, in Oxford DNB. 75 Madan, New bibliography of the Eikon Basilike, pp. 131–65; Jason McElligott, ‘Roger Morrice and the reputation of the Eikon Basilike in the 1680s’, The Library, 7th ser., 6, 2 72 73

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before the President of the Council of State, John Bradshaw, and pressed to deny that Charles had indeed written the book. Royston refused and spent fifteen days in custody before being released.76 In May 1649 Royston was again called before the Council of State, this time for his part in printing the exchange of letters between Charles I and the Presbyterian Alexander Henderson. In October of the same year, he and John Grismond were summoned before the Council ‘as to the printing a virulent and seditious pamphlet’.77 He was forced to enter a large bond ‘not to print or sell any unlicensed books or pamphlets’, but was arrested in 1653 for publishing pamphlets hostile to Oliver Cromwell.78 Royston continued to be a thorn in the side of various regimes throughout the 1650s, and after the Restoration he was made bookseller to the king and granted the monopoly of publishing the works of Charles I. In 1663 the king personally intervened to secure his admission to the Livery of the Stationers’ Company, and three years later Charles presented him with £300 to make good the losses he had suffered as a result of the Great Fire. The evident goodwill of the king may also have been behind his election to the Mastership of the Company in 1673 and 1674.79 Royston was a well-connected and committed royalist. He had extensive experience of the mechanics of secret printing, and was certainly the only man in the business during those years with experience and expertise in bookselling, printing and type-founding. He was also personally close to a number of senior lay and clerical royalists in England who had contacts with royalist soldiers, politicians and courtiers on the continent. It is tempting to suggest, therefore, that he may have been the central figure in the network or networks of royalist booksellers and printers in London. It would, however, be inaccurate to represent Royston as a protospymaster who controlled a vast network of subversive authors and printers across London, and no attempt will be made to suggest that he was directly involved in all, or even the majority, of the newsbooks. This is partly because, as suggested above, such constant and direct control must have been impossible for practical, organizational, technical and security reasons. Instead, it seems that a number of like-minded printers, booksellers and publishers, who may or may not have been known to each other, were encouraged and facilitated by one or more people who could oversee the construction of secret printing presses, the delivery of printing type and a

(June 2005), 119–32. This press was probably located in the vicinity of St Pancras; see footnote 14 above. 76 Madan, New bibliography of the Eikon Basilike, p. 165. 77 CSPD, 1649–50, p. 362. 78 SP 25/120/13. 79 Nottinghamshire Archives, DD/P/6/1/20/76; SCCB D72 (23 June 1662); SCCB D80v (6 May 1663). For his wealth and influence at death, see his will at TNA, PROB 11/385/154; DLB, 170. 146


regular supply of ink and paper. The surviving evidence and the number of times he was arrested would suggest that Richard Royston was a key figure in facilitating this work. He may have worked with other established royalist publishers, or there may have been a number of distinct groups which were organized by different publishers. It is quite possible, for example, that one or more of the royalist booksellers mentioned above may have produced some of the newsbooks independently of Royston; John and Edward Crouch apparently produced the long-running The Man in the Moon (1649–50) without the aid of Royston or any other bookseller.80 We do know that there were pre-existing commercial rivalries between, to take only one possible example, Royston and John Williams, who, as we have seen, was imprisoned for his involvement with the Eikon Basilike in late 1649.81 We do not and cannot know whether the royalist printers and booksellers of London put aside all of their pre-existing rivalries, tensions and disputes in order to work towards their common goal. One suspects that they did endeavour to work together as best they could, but that the increasingly desperate situation during 1649 must have created and nurtured mutual animosities, fears and suspicions. The surviving sources are simply too fragmentary to describe exactly what happened in the secret print-shops which produced these items, and the exact nature of the relationships between these men, or how these relationships changed and evolved over time. The most that will be claimed for Royston is that his extensive experience of publishing subversive material makes it likely that he was behind some of the more established royalist newsbooks, and that he may have organized and facilitated the work of others. Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about Royston during these years is not the number of times he was arrested, but how quickly he was released after questioning. The authorities certainly knew of his activities and kept him under observation, but he had obviously learned enough to ensure that there would be no evidence to link him directly to illegal printing and publishing, activities which seem to have been carried on as far as possible from his legitimate business premises. Joining the dots We have examined the careers of sixteen men and women arrested for involvement in the production of royalist propaganda during the late 1640s. There were undoubtedly others who escaped detection and arrest, but it seems reasonable to assume that the historical sources provide us with the details of some of those who were most centrally involved in producing and

80 81

McElligott, ‘John Crouch’, 144. SCCB C236v, 17 Aug. 1646. 147


distributing the Stuarts’ message in the capital. It also seems reasonable to assume that those who were arrested were broadly representative of any fellow conspirators who may have escaped interrogation and imprisonment. The five printers whom we have examined were a fairly sizeable percentage of the total number of about forty printers at work in the capital in the late 1640s. They, like the authors examined in the previous chapter, came from a variety of backgrounds and were divided between those who had adhered to the royal cause from the start of the ‘troubles’ and those who only came over to the king in the eighteen months or so before the regicide. Only one bookseller, Richard Lowndes, was arrested during the course of 1647 and 1648 in connection with this material, a fact which suggests that the booksellers did not usually retail it from their business premises. They probably preferred to rely on hawkers who could move about the capital at will and flee from the authorities at the first sign of trouble. The large number of royalist booksellers arrested during the final weeks of 1649 suggests that by this time the networks which had sustained the loyalists in the capital were under severe strain. Three booksellers with strong royalist pedigrees were arrested during this period, of whom Thomas Walkley was the most likely candidate to have been involved in the production and distribution of the material which he sold. It has been suggested, however, that if there was one man who was centrally involved in the publishing effort it must have been Richard Royston. There is no reason to believe that the London royalists who risked their freedom, and, on occasion, their lives, for the Stuarts during these years were aware of the petty internecine squabbles of the exiled courtiers which have so fascinated many modern scholars. Even if they had known about the squabbles at court it is not clear that any of the London royalists would have chosen to side with a particular faction, or that they would have been able to consistently voice the policies of that faction over a period of time. In other words, Royston and his fellow conspirators were not the mere puppets of prominent royalist politicians on the continent that some have imagined them to be. Practical matters of organization and communication, as well as security considerations, probably ensured that the London royalists had (or were soon forced to develop) a relatively loose, decentralized structure. Most of the members of a particular group or cell would have been known to each other. It is possible that some of the different groups or cells were not known to each other, but in the relatively small world that was London royalist activism it must have been well nigh impossible to maintain complete anonymity between the various groups or to avoid some degree of overlap of personnel between various titles. No attempt has been made to link particular authors with particular printers or booksellers, and this chapter has sketched only the most general sort of relationship between individual printers and booksellers. Any attempt to go beyond this broad framework would be unwise. There were nine known authors and sixteen known printers, publishers or booksellers. Any attempt to describe the details of their interactions with each other 148


would be like trying to solve a complex algebraic equation with more than two dozen parts without knowing any of the values which would help to solve the equation. In addition to the twenty-five people sketched in this and the previous chapter there were undoubtedly an unknown number of compositors, correctors, messengers, paper-dealers, hawkers, etc., who would have been required to facilitate the production of royalist propaganda. There were also go-betweens, such as the mysterious Mr Parker who facilitated the importation and distribution of the Jersey Declaration, and the Barwick brothers who seem to have operated a spy-ring which availed of a source in the Post Office to send and receive letters from the continent. One might suggest, therefore, that even at a conservative estimate there must have been at least three dozen men and women involved at various times, and to differing degrees, in the production of royalist propaganda in London. In a sense it is disappointing not to be able to provide more information on these men and women, and on the nature of the relations between them, but we can draw at least one important conclusion from this study. The surprisingly large number of men and women involved, their widely differing social, cultural and religious backgrounds, and the lack of centralized control over their propaganda suggests that the royalist newsbooks may afford us a glimpse of a vibrant, committed and hitherto un-suspected popular royalism in the capital.

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6

Hunting the Royalist Press

This chapter will examine in detail the efforts of the authorities to detect and suppress the underground royalist newsbooks. Historians have been struck by the general state of disorder in London and throughout England during the late 1640s, and have accordingly taken a dim view of the ability of the authorities to impose their will upon the press during these years. Joseph Frank wrote that censorship had ‘completely broken down by late 1647’, and Joad Raymond claims that the central authorities were ‘complacent’ about the dangers of the royalist press and that the Stationers’ Company, the traditional first line of defence against unlicensed printing, ‘disintegrated during the 1640s’. Such comments echo the great Samuel Gardiner’s claim in his History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate that ‘unlicensed presses easily kept themselves in existence’ in the wake of the Printing Act of September 1649.1 The central contention of this chapter, by way of contrast, is that even during these chaotic years there was no complete breakdown of censorship. The authorities possessed a variety of mechanisms which, when properly deployed and supervised, were able to tame the press. Although the individual searchers, or ‘bloodhounds’ as the royalists called them, unleashed by the regime arrested many individual authors, printers, booksellers and hawkers, they were initially unable to inflict any serious damage on the network or networks that sustained and produced the royalist newsbooks. There were several reasons for this failure: the unprecedented volume and variety of unlicensed and seditious material spewing from the presses during these years made any attempts at regulation extremely difficult; the searchers may sometimes have been hindered by the difficulties of co-ordinating the activities of the various individuals and organizations charged with regulating the press; and one should not underestimate the commitment, deterHUNTING THE ROYALIST PRESS

Joseph Frank, Cromwell’s press agent: a critical biography of Marchamont Nedham, 1620–1678 (Lanham, MO, 1980), pp. 46–7; Joseph Frank, The beginnings of the English newspaper, 1620–60 (Cambridge, MA, 1960), p. 177; Joad Raymond, The invention of the newspaper: English newsbooks, 1641–1649 (Oxford, 1996), p. 53; Joad Raymond (ed.), News, newspapers and society in early-modern Britain, p. 125; Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering in early-modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003), p. 68; S.R. Gardiner, CP, i, p. 174. 1

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HUNTING THE ROYALIST PRESS

mination and courage of the men and women involved with the royalist newsbooks, or the effectiveness of the measures that they took to ensure their security. Even when the searchers did manage to arrest a royalist author or printer, another individual invariably stepped forward to take his place and proclaim that the wrong man had been arrested. These problems were accentuated by the fact that the authorities, who were busy fighting a war and struggling with the problems of administering a strife-torn country, usually only concerned themselves sporadically with the question of unlicensed or seditious printing. The army and Parliament also suffered from bitter internal divisions as to the best way forward for their cause, and these divisions hampered their efforts against the press, at least until one particular faction seized power in late 1648 and settled the question of what should be done with Charles I. Finally, even when those involved in the production of royalist newsbooks were caught, the punishments they faced were hardly likely to dissuade them from future opposition. The Ordinance against ‘Unlicensed or Scandalous Pamphlets’ issued in September 1647 decreed that the authors of such works were liable to a fine of forty shillings: failure to pay this fine might mean imprisonment for up to forty days. Offending printers risked a twenty shilling fine or twenty days’ imprisonment and the seizure and destruction of their presses, while booksellers and stationers faced a fine of ten shillings or up to ten days in prison.2 Such punishments must have seemed inconsequential in a conflict which many contemporaries saw as an apocalyptic struggle between Christ and Antichrist. By the summer of 1650, however, the regicides had managed to destroy the royalist newsbooks. This was partly due to the royalists’ demoralization in the wake of the king’s execution, the crushing of unrest in the army, the striking successes of the expeditionary force to Ireland, and the increasingly evident failure of Charles II to rally support on the continent. Despite these enormous setbacks it is hard to believe that the royalist propaganda effort would inevitably have imploded of its own accord; it is important to realize that the silencing of the royalist presses was the result of decisions taken by, and measures implemented by, the regime in Whitehall. By the summer of 1649, with the future of the republic on a securer footing, the regime was able to devote more time and effort to less immediate dangers such as printed material. During these months the Council of State and the Rump spent a considerable amount of time preparing ‘An Act against Unlicensed and Scandalous Books and Pamphlets’. This Act was the last of no less than eight pieces of legislation designed to tame the press during the 1640s. It was also the most effective. The extraordinary effectiveness of this Act was a result of three inter-

2 An Ordinance . . . against Unlicensed or Scandalous Pamphlets, and for the better Regulating of Printing (30 Sept. 1647), p. 5.

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related factors. First, the authorities had by now realized that they needed to divert their efforts away from the royalist propagandists in general to the small number of men who printed the offending items. Printing presses were large, dirty and slow machines which could not be easily moved without drawing attention to their presence. Finding the printing press used by a group of royalists was a much more effective way of silencing the polemicists than searching for the elusive authors and hawkers who fed the press and distributed its products. This is not to say that the authorities did not continue to arrest and severely punish the authors and hawkers of offensive material after September 1649, but there was a clear attempt to re-orientate the searches away from the mobile personnel involved in production and distribution towards the static printing presses and their operatives. The second reason for the success of the Act was that the primary responsibility for implementing its provisions was given to the Stationers’ Company. Finally, and this was the crucial factor without which the first two factors could not have been as effective, the Council of State appointed a ‘Committee for the Suppression of Scandalous Pamphlets’ to oversee and direct the rigorous and sustained implementation of the Act. The work of this committee, under the dynamic supervision of the Commonwealth’s director of intelligence, Thomas Scott, and the President of the Council, John Bradshaw, was the crucial factor in destroying the royalist press. When properly organized and supervised the state possessed a formidable army of searchers with which to hunt and destroy the royalist press. This chapter provides a week-by-week and sometimes even a day-by-day account of the interaction of the royalist newsbooks and the authorities between September 1647 and June 1650. The great advantage of examining the attempts to regulate weekly serials over a period of thirty-three months is that it enables us to move away from impressionistic ‘snapshots’ of censorship provided by studies of individual books or pamphlets, and enables us to trace the waxing and waning of the struggle between the combatants, and the different strategies utilized by both sides in response to changing circumstances. It does not allow for the flowing narrative of modern film but creates a moving picture of the situation akin to the end-of-pier ‘what the butler saw’ machine, with a series of stationary images passing the eye at speed. Another advantage of such an examination is that it provides a real sense of the brutal and squalid nature of the state of war which existed between the searchers and their quarry. To be sure, the royalist authors may well have occasionally exaggerated the dangers they faced and the brutality of their opponents, but there can be no doubt that the process of raiding print-shops and secret ‘holes’ was a million miles away from the polite world of words and ideas inhabited by modern academics who too often imagine earlymodern censorship merely as a metaphorical battle, a battle of ideas, or as a rhetorical act or performance.3 A blow-by-blow account of censorship in the 3

See Cyndia S. Clegg, Press censorship in Jacobean England (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 89, 152


late 1640s allows us to put the fists, boots and blood back into the history of censorship. There are a number of disadvantages to an examination of the practice of censorship which confines itself to the royalist newsbooks. It may give the impression that the authorities were concerned only with this material and not with stemming, say, the considerable amount of Leveller propaganda distributed in London and within the army during this period. Pressures of space preclude an examination of the fate of the Leveller press apart from when it is of direct relevance to the royalist propaganda effort, but that does not mean it went unmolested. Indeed, on a number of occasions, such as February and March 1649 and again in August and September of that year, the main target of the authorities was the Leveller rather than the royalist press. These two periods coincided with the publication of important pieces of polemic by Lilburne and his associates and Leveller attempts to foment mutiny in the ranks of the New Model Army.4 The danger that printed items might encourage soldiers to act against the regime meant that dealing with the Levellers became a priority for the regicides. It is also important to recognize that the authorities regulated a wide variety of printed and written material across the spectrum of religious, moral and political opinion, and tried to regulate oral and visual forms of expression such as illustrations, pictures, sermons, plays, songs and conversations. Furthermore, the authorities responded to the royalist newsbooks both by unleashing the searchers onto the streets and by engaging in a propaganda war against their arguments. This chapter’s focus on the efforts to track down the newsbooks should not detract from the animated, informative and often highly entertaining spats which occurred between the royalist and parliamentary propagandists. Finally, one should also be aware that not every royalist newsbook which ceased production did so as a result of the attention of the authorities. The disappearance of a newsbook may often have had more to do with poor sales figures or the changing personal circumstances of the author, printer or publisher than with any external threat. Phase 1: September 1647 to December 1648 Historians have long been aware of the explosion in printing material which occurred after the abolition of the courts of Star Chamber and High 91, 122–3, 189, 196. For reductio ad absurdum of this approach, the re-imagining of the trial and execution of Chares I as a piece of theatre, see Sean Kelsey, ‘Staging the trial of Charles I’, in Jason Peacey (ed.), The regicides and the execution of Charles I (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 71–93. 4 The offending Leveller tracts in the early part of 1649 included Englands New Chains Discovered and The Hunting of the Foxe, while those which were considered particularly noxious in August and September 1649 were The Outcry of the Apprentices and A Charge of High Treason Exhibited against General Cromwel. 153


Commission in the summer of 1641, with more than 3,500 titles printed in England during 1642. Thereafter, the amount of printing decreased markedly, the number of titles printed in 1644 being roughly one-third of the total printed two years previously. The volume of printed material gradually increased during the last year of the war, and rose sharply after the fall of Oxford as each side jockeyed for position in the negotiations which, it was hoped, would lead to a final settlement of the conflict.5 The years 1646 and 1647 were, even by the standards of the decade as a whole, a period of great turmoil and uncertainty. Although Parliament had won the Civil War, Charles was determined not to bow to the demands of his enemies. As such, he played a dangerous game of treating with Parliament while negotiating terms on which he could form an alliance with the Scots and crush the rebellion. The negotiations, combined with growing anger in the army over arrears of pay, led to an upsurge of printing, much of which was unlicensed. On 9 March 1647, amid growing alarm at the amount of unlicensed material in circulation, the Commons dismissed the man responsible for licensing the press, John Rushworth. Thereafter, Parliament and its various committees took charge of the attempts to restore some semblance of order.6 Parliament did have some successes against individual titles but was unable to halt the flood of unlicensed printing. Indeed, the amount of unlicensed printing in general, and royalist material in particular, increased sharply after the kidnapping of the king in June 1647. As early as July 1647, therefore, the Commons was convinced of the necessity of introducing an Ordinance, which, it was hoped, would be more effective than all previous attempts at regulating the press.7 On 3 September 1647 the House ordered three MPs to ‘prepare and bring in an Ordinance’ empowering the Committee of the Militia of London to suppress ‘all Libels, Pamphlets, Diurnals, and the like’.8 Coincidentally, the first of the underground royalist newsbooks was published on the following day. On 6 September, the Ordinance received two readings in the House and was committed to the consideration of five MPs and some of the leading citizens of London and Southwark. These men were ordered to discuss the Ordinance that afternoon and to report back to the House on the following morning.9 It was ten days, however, before a slightly amended Ordinance Maureen Bell and John Barnard, ‘A provisional count of Wing Titles, 1641–1700’, Publishing History, xliv (1998), 89–97; Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering, pp. 164, 184, 195. 6 F.S. Siebert, Freedom of the press in England, 1476–1776 (Urbana, IL, 1952), pp. 211–12; CJ, v, p. 167, 11 May 1647; CJ, v, p. 224, 26 June 1647. 7 CJ, v, p. 257, 24 July 1647. On the development of the use of Ordinances during the 1640s see Firth and Rait (eds), Acts and Ordinances, i, p. xiii; and David L. Smith, The Stuart Parliaments, 1603–1689 (1999), pp. 47, 56, 58, 122, 130. 8 CJ, v, p.290. 9 CJ, v, p. 292. 5

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was brought back to the House. The Ordinance was then sent back to the committee, along with a letter the Commons had received from Lord General Thomas Fairfax complaining about the volume of unlicensed printing.10 Four days later the Commons approved the final draft of the Ordinance and ordered that it should be ‘sent unto the Lords for their concurrence’.11 The Lords received the Ordinance the following day and committed it to a committee of eleven peers. On the same day the Lords received a letter from Lord General Fairfax complaining about a number of pamphlets which he believed were ‘very scandalous and abusive to this Army in Particular . . . [and] . . . to the whole Kingdom in general’. He urged the Lords to pass the Ordinance and asked that the ten non-seditious newsbooks on the streets of London should be replaced by ‘Two to Three’ licensed newsbooks. Fairfax wanted these new newsbooks to be licensed by Gilbert Mabbott, who had served as deputy to the previous licenser of the press, John Rushworth, and, perhaps more importantly, had been supplying Fairfax with letters of intelligence from London. The army was not merely concerned about stamping out the perceived licentiousness of the press; it wanted its nominee to control the weekly news produced in the capital.12 On 27 September an impatient Commons reminded the Lords of the Ordinance and the next day sent a messenger to the Lords ‘to acquaint them with the necessity of passing’ it. The Ordinance finally passed both Houses on 28 September 1647, and was published two days later.13 The Ordinance did not suppress all existing newsbooks but it did decree that all printed material should be licensed by ‘both or either House of Parliament’, and Mabbott was appointed licenser of the weekly pamphlets, a position he held until May 1649.14 Under the terms of the Ordinance, the author of an unlicensed work was liable to a fine of forty shillings or forty days’ imprisonment. Offending printers risked a twenty shilling fine or twenty days’ imprisonment and the seizure and destruction of their presses. Stationers who sold unlicensed material faced a fine of ten shillings or up to ten days in prison. The harshest punishments were, however, reserved for hawkers, peddlers and ballad-singers. These men and women were to forfeit all ‘Books, Pamphlets, and printed papers exposed to sale, and also to be whipt as a Common Rogue in the Liberty or Parish where the said Offender shall be apprehended’. All mayors, JPs and constables throughout England and Wales were required to execute the Ordinance. The primary responsibility for its implementation was, however, delegated to the committees of the militias of London, Middlesex and Surrey, because it was within these CJ, v, pp. 305–6. CJ, v, p. 309; Whitlocke, Memorials, p. 272. LJ, ix, pp. 440–1, 21 Sept. 1647; HLMP, 30 Sept. 1647. CJ, v, p. 318, 27 Sept. 1647; CJ, v, p. 318, 28 Sept. 1647; LJ, ix, p. 451, 27 Sept. 1647; LJ, ix, p. 452. 14 LJ, ix, p. 456, 30 Sept. 1647; Siebert, Freedom, p. 213. 10 11 12 13

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jurisdictions that almost all printing took place. In practice, the militias were aided by troops, the Stationers’ Company, searchers of the Parliament, and a motley crew of informers, spies and agents provocateurs which included the astrologer and pro-Parliament writer William Lilly and the journalist Henry Walker, who was accused of baiting ‘his mouse-traps at every corner of the City to catch Pamphlets’.15 The authorities did have some early successes against the royalist newsbooks. On 17 September a youth named Cook was detained in connection with Mercurius Melancholicus. This youth was employed, according to the author of the pro-Parliament newsbook Perfect Occurrences, as a messenger between the author and the printer of Melancholicus. Similarly, on 16 October the Commons ordered that a bookseller named Richard Lowndes should be committed to Newgate for selling Mercurius Pragmaticus, and on 19 October the printer of Mercurius Melancholicus was ‘brought before [the Committee of] the Militia of London’. This unnamed printer was forced to pay a fine of twenty shillings, and ‘the Company of Stationers [was] ordered to break his press’.16 Despite these successes, the author of another newsbook, Elencticus, boasted that he was unconcerned by the threat of ‘a Forty shillings fine . . . [or] . . . a Forty dayes Captivity’, and Melancholicus dared Parliament to do its worst because ‘her hate will make my Booke lov’d better’.17 There was obviously an element of bravado to these comments, but the royalist newsbooks had a number of good reasons not to be unduly concerned by the Ordinance. It was a fairly blunt instrument designed to discourage all unlicensed printing, not merely seditious or royalist material which happened to be unlicensed; there seems to have been little or no co-ordination between the central authorities and the searchers on the streets; the identities of most (if not all) of the royalist authors, printers and publishers would still, at this early stage, have been unknown to the authorities; and even those who were unlucky enough to be apprehended were unlikely to suffer more than a relatively light fine. The army and its friends in Parliament were the guiding hands in the operation of censorship and there was still the prospect, however remote, of a negotiated settlement between them and the king, hence the relatively light hand used against the royalist press during this period.18 Pragmaticus, no. 4, 5–12 Oct. 1647, sig. 3v; Melancholicus, no. 7, 9–16 Oct. 1647, p. 43; Melancholicus, no. 5, 25 Sept.–2 Oct. 1647, pp. 23–9 [i.e. 23–4]; Melancholicus, no. 6, 2–9 Oct. 1647, pp. 31–2; HLMP, 27 Sept. 1647. 16 Perfect Occurrences, no. 37, 10–17 Sept. 1647, p. 250; LJ, ix, p. 472, 7 Oct. 1647; CJ, v, p. 335, 16 Oct. 1647; CSPD, 1645–47, p. 602; Raymond, Invention of the newspaper, pp. 53–6. 17 Elencticus, no. 1, 29 Oct.–5 Nov. 1647, p. 1; Melancholicus, no. 4A, 18–25 Sept. 1647, p. 18. 18 This helps to explain the surprise of at least one newly returned royalist exile from the continent at ‘the safety & freedome wch we finde here [in London]’ in October 1647. Raymond, Invention of the newspaper, pp. 53–4. 15

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On 27 November 1647 the Commons appointed a committee to find and punish the authors of Mercurius Pragmaticus, Mercurius Elencticus, Mercurius Melancholicus, and ‘other pamphlets scandalous to the Parliament’. This committee of ten MPs was asked to ensure that the offending authors, printers and publishers were ‘apprehended and imprisoned’. It was also expected to seize and burn all ‘seditious . . . scandalous . . . and unlicensed Pamphlets’ and ‘to destroy and take away the Presses and Letters’ used to print such material. In order to complete its task, the committee was given power to ‘send for Parties, Witnesses, Papers, Records; and to employ such Persons in these Services as they shall think fit; and to meet when and where they please’.19 The newsbooks were initially unconcerned by the creation of this committee but within a few days Pragmaticus felt the need to warn two of the committee’s leading members that he would print ad hominem attacks on them if the searchers were not called off.20 The five weeks between the inception of this committee and the end of the year were an uncomfortable period for the royalist newsbooks and the situation became more difficult for them in the first two months of 1648. The increased attention of the searchers to the printed word in general, and the royalist newsbooks in particular, was probably a response to the deteriorating political situation. With the attempted escape of the king from custody in November and his far from secret negotiations with the Scots, it became clear that royalist propaganda might be used to argue not for an accommodation with the army or Parliament but in support of a Scottish military adventure that would, the royalists evidently hoped, end with slitting the throats of those in power in London. However, although the searchers continued to harass the newsbooks during the first half of 1648, the central authorities only concerned themselves sporadically with the question of unlicensed printing during these months. The suppression of the unlicensed press and the royalist newsbooks in particular was not, at that time, a central concern of state. This lack of attention is perfectly understandable when one considers that various groups and factions within the Houses of Parliament and the army were divided over the final nature of the political settlement and how best to respond to Charles I’s machinations. The fact that these mutually suspicious factions also had to organize a strong military response to the imminent Scottish invasion and the likely royalist risings in support of the invaders also helps to explain why the central authorities spent relatively little time on the control of the press. The lesson of 1648 was that the searchers were eminently capable of tracking and arresting individual authors, printers and publishers but they required the supervision of a competent central body to use their skills and energy effectively. This body, when it was formed in October 1649, CJ, v, p. 371; Whitlocke, Memorials, p. 282. Pragmaticus, no. 11B, 23–30 Nov. 1647, p. 81; Pragmaticus, no. 12, 30 Nov.–7 Dec. 1647, sig. 1v.

19 20

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acted like the pistons in a steam engine, channelling diffuse energy into an effective, useful force that could propel the war against the subversive press. Early in January 1648 a royalist pamphlet entitled A Treatise of Magistracy was brought to the attention of the Commons. This pamphlet caused the House to order that the printing committee should ‘constantly sit, and take Course, according to the Powers given them, to remedy the Abuses in Printing’.21 On 11 January the Commons ordered the committee ‘to employ such Person or Persons as they shall think fit, to prosecute at Law, such Printers and Publishers of libellous and scandalous Pamphlets’.22 Two days later Dogmaticus lamented that the authorities were ‘determined to wring the neck of any poore Parrat that hath learned but so much by roate as to cry Treason’.23 On 15 January Melancholicus complained that Parliament’s ‘Dogges’ were continually ‘yelping . . . up and down the streets’ after he and his comrades. In the following week Melancholicus reported that the writers Samuel Sheppard and John Hackluyt had been arrested in connection with the royalist newsbooks, even though they were ‘as innocent as the day’.24 Elencticus was extremely worried by the searchers: ‘since I know the Woolfs Eare hath taken the Wind of mee, I shall crave the Readers pardon, if I be not so lowd as usuall, for I may as well Whisper as Proclaime a Truth’.25 On 2 February the Lords ordered the Stationers’ Company to find the author, printer and publisher of ‘a scandalous and blasphemous Paper’ entitled The Parliaments X Commandments. This single-sheet broadside contained a parody of the commandments as they might have been written by a greedy, lecherous, self-serving and hypocritical Puritan, as well as an article of faith which began ‘I Beleeve in Cromwell, the Father of all Schisme, Sedition, Heresy and Rebellion, and in his onely Son, Ireton, Our Saviour . . .’.26 On the same day Elencticus complained of the number of spies and informers employed to ‘Listen and Eavesdrop the City’.27 On 5 February a member of the Derby House Committee was appointed to examine and report upon the contents of two Leveller pamphlets, The Earnest Petition and The Mournful Cries, and on the same day Melancholicus taunted the ‘settingdoggs and blood hounds’ who hunted after him, declaring they would never find him.28 On 19 February both Houses of Parliament and the Derby House Committee issued orders concerning irregular printing. The Lords and Commons were concerned with arresting those responsible for a ‘scandalous CJ, v, p. 420, 6 Jan. 1648. CJ, v, p. 427. Dogmaticus, no. 1, 6–13 Jan. 1648, p. 1. Melancholicus, no. 20, 8–15 Jan. 1648, p. 116; Melancholicus, no. 21, 15–22 Jan. 1648, p. 120. 25 Elencticus, no. 8, 12–19 Jan. 1648, pp. 53–4. 26 LJ, x, p. 14, 2 Feb. 1648; [Henry Elsynge], The Parliaments X Commandments, [25 Jan. 1648]. 27 Elencticus, no. 10, 26 Jan.–2 Feb. 1648, p. 76. 28 SP 25/9/14–8; Melancholicus, no. 23, 29 Jan.–5 Feb. 1648, p. 133. 21 22 23 24

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and blasphemous Pamphlet’ entitled Ecce The New Testament, and the Derby House Committee ordered ‘that a warrant be issued for searching for the books entitled Pragmaticus, Melancholicus, Elencticus, and to apprehend the persons of the printers, seller, and authors’.29 The result of this warrant was, according to Melancholicus, that the searchers were ‘continually peering and peeping into every corner, seeking opportuinity when, where and whom they may devoure’.30 Parliament and its various committees paid little attention to the press during March 1648 but the searchers seem to have remained very active.31 The effectiveness of these searchers was severely limited by their lack of co-ordination and the concentration of the central authorities upon much more pressing matters as it became increasingly clear that another civil war was inevitable. On 11 March, Perfect Occurrences reported that the printer of Mercurius Pragmaticus had been arrested and would be tried ‘at the Gaole delivery at Newgate, the next Session’. On the following day, the author of Elencticus, George Wharton, was arrested. According to Wharton’s later testimony, he was betrayed by ‘a crooked Instrument’ and ‘surprized in my bed by a party of Troopers . . . commanded by one Capt. Elsemore’. Elsemore then brought Wharton before the Committee of Examinations where he was questioned ‘twice or thrice over’ before being consigned to Newgate. On the thirteenth of the month Melancholicus claimed that Parliament’s ‘Dogges’ were so active that ‘honest people cannot walke the streets, but the damb’d Curres bites ‘em by the Shins’, and Pragmaticus warned the ‘Tormentors of the Committee [for Suppressing Pamphlets]’ to leave him alone.32 On 20 March Melancholicus claimed that the ‘Parliaments Blood-hounds’ and ‘Bitches’ were hunting ‘damnable close’. He claimed that ‘one or two of these Mungrells’ had recently followed one of his co-conspirators ‘from house to house, thinking to finde his Master’, but ‘the honest Dogge...led them about from place to place a long time, so that they scaped his Master, and then turning up his tayle, [he] made a signe unto them what they should doe, and instantly betook him to his leggs’.33 Melancholicus escaped on that occasion, but his printer was arrested on 4 April. The fact that the arrest of the printer did not disrupt the publication of Melancholicus suggests that the publisher could rely on the services of more than one printer.34 Towards the end of April Elencticus complained that he CJ, v, p. 469; LJ, x, p. 64; SP 25/9/23–5. Melancholicus, no. 26, 19–28 Feb. 1648, pp. 150–1; Aulicus, no. 4, 17–24 Feb. 1648, 3r CJ, v, p. 493; LJ, x, pp. 111–12; CClSP, p. 415. Perfect Occurrences, no. 63, 10–17 Mar. 1648, p. 517; George Wharton, Hemeroscopeion: A Meteorologicall Diary and Prognostication for the yeere of Christ 1651 (1651), sig. A4r; Melancholicus, no. 28, 6–13 Mar. 1648, p. 167; Pragmaticus, no. 26, 7–14 Mar. 1648, sig. 1v; Elencticus, no. 16, 8–15 Mar. 1648, p. 117; Elencticus, no. 17, 15–22 Mar. 1648, p. 127. 33 Melancholicus, no. 29, 13–20 Mar. 1648, pp. 168–9. 34 Perfect Occurrences, no. 66, 31 Mar.–7 April 1648, p. 474. 29 30 31 32

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was being pursued by a number of individuals, including the stationers Joseph Hunscott and Richard Bostock. At about the same time, Veridicus resolved ‘to be a constant Guest [on the streets of London]; if I can but avoid Hunscot and Lewis, those Committee-hackneyes’.35 Early in May Elencticus mocked the stationer George Lewis for his inability to track him down, but on the nineteenth of the month Perfect Occurrences reported the arrest in Grays Inn Lane of John Hackluyt, who had previously escaped from custody.36 Three days later Melancholicus complained about the number of ‘knaves and fooles’ trying to uncover the royalist newsbooks.37 The outbreak of the Second Civil War boosted the confidence of the royalist newsbooks immensely. The number of royalist weeklies increased in direct proportion to the difficulties of Parliament and the army, and by June there were more than a dozen increasingly pugnacious titles in production. It is little wonder, then, that Joseph Frank has described the spring and early summer of 1648 as the high-water mark of royalist journalism.38 On 14 June Elencticus taunted the astrologer William Lilly that he should use a crystal ball to discover his whereabouts. ‘Alas’, he wrote, ‘I can but pity the poore sneaking Peasants, to see how heartily they envy mee, because they cannot injure me.’39 On 26 June, Melancholicus claimed to have recently escaped from prison. He mocked the female searcher nicknamed ‘Parliament Joan’ and sent his regards to his friends, including the writer Samuel Sheppard, who were still in custody. The tone of his remarks makes it reasonable to assume that Parliament Joan had been responsible for his arrest.40 On 27 June, the Commons turned its attention to the question of unlicensed printing for the first time in more than three months.41 Pragmaticus claimed that the debate in the House was occasioned by his recent scurrilous attacks on the members of the Derby House Committee, but it was actually brought about by a complaint from Major General Skippon concerning the publication of a ‘scandalous and seditious’ pamphlet entitled A Motive to all loyall Subjects.42 Skippon had complained to the House about this pamphlet because it claimed that he had been involved in a plot allegedly hatched by his son-in-law to murder the king. Skippon was the bête noire of the royalists because, as commander-in-chief of the London Militia, he was responsible for maintaining order in the capital and preventing the London royalists Elencticus, no. 22, 19–26 April 1648, p. 166; Veridicus, no. 2, 21–27 April 1648, sig. 1r. Elencticus, no. 23, 26 April–3 May 1648, pp. 173–4; Perfect Occurrences, no. 73, 19–26 May 1648, p. 525. 37 Melancholicus, no. 39, 15–22 May 1648, p. 231; Melancholicus, no. 40, 22–29 May 1648, p. 237. 38 Frank, English newspaper, p. 142. 39 Elencticus, no. 29, 7–14 June 1648, pp. 221–2. 40 Melancholicus, no. 44, 19–26 June 1648, p. 265; Psitacus, no. 3, 21–26 June 1648, sig. 1r. 41 CJ, v, p. 613. 42 Pragmaticus, no. 13, 20–27 June 1648, sig. 1r–v. 35 36

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from giving armed assistance to their comrades in Kent and Essex.43 As a result of Skippon’s complaint, the House ordered the Committee for Scandalous Pamphlets to consider ‘How, and [in] what manner, these scandalous Pamphlets may be suppressed; and the Makers, Printers, and Publishers thereof may be punished.’44 Pragmaticus was convinced that this order meant that the committee would draw up a new Ordinance against all ‘wicked Tell-troths [i.e. truths], and malignant Pamphlets’.45 However, Parliament does not seem to have made any attempt to implement a new Ordinance or undertaken any new measures to regulate the press during the second half of the summer. Indeed, the number of references in the press to the searchers decreased markedly during this period.46 It is possible that the searchers continued to harass the newsbooks during these months but the authors, for whatever reason, failed to comment on the continued game of cat and mouse. It is, however, much more likely that the decline in the number of references to the searchers reflects a decrease in their activities. If this is true, there is only one convincing explanation for the lack of attention to the royalist newsbooks in the late summer of 1648: the serious internal disorders in London and the need to secure the capital against significant internal and external royalist military threats probably ensured that the detection of the royalist newsbooks became a matter of secondary importance.47 This period of relative safety for the newsbooks came to an end after the surrender of the royalist garrison at Colchester to the New Model Army in late August 1648. At precisely this time the licenser Gilbert Mabbott presented the Commons with a number of proposals which he believed would prove effective against unlicensed pamphlets. The nature of Mabbott’s recommendations is unknown. F.S. Siebert suggests that he may have requested that he be given complete authority over all licensing, but it is also possible that it was Mabbott who proposed the deployment of the Provost Marshall, who took to the streets in the following month. The Commons did, however, order that Mabbott and the Committee for Scandalous Pamphlets should consult with the Stationers’ Company ‘touching some effectual Course for Suppressing of scandalous Pamphlets’.48 On 5 September the Commons again ordered the Committee for Scandalous Pamphlets to ‘advise with’ the Stationers’ Company and ‘bring in their Robert Ashton, Counter revolution: the Second Civil War and its origins, 1646–8 (New Haven, CT, 1994), pp. 195, 293–4, 355. 44 CJ, v, p. 614, 27 June 1648; CJ, v, p. 630, 10 July 1648; Whitlocke, Memorials, p. 315. For more on the royalist attitude to Skippon see Oxford DNB, and Ian Gentles, ‘The struggle for London in the Second Civil War’, HJ, 26, 2 (1983), 277–305, at 277–8, 291. 45 Pragmaticus, no. 13, 20–27 June 1648, sig. 1r–v. 46 Parliament Kite, no. 8, 29 June–13 July 1648, p. 42; Melancholicus, no. 48B, 17–24 July 1648, p. 123; Psitacus, no. 4, 21 June–3 July 1648, sig. 1r; Psitacus, no. 6, 10–17 July 1648, sig. 1r; Perfect Occurrences, no. 81, 14–21 July 1648, p. 591. 47 Gentles, ‘The struggle for London in the Second Civil War’, pp. 294–5. 48 CJ, v, p. 695, 31 Aug. 1648. 43

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Report’.49 Both Pragmaticus and Bulstrode Whitlocke suspected that the result of these discussions would be another Ordinance against printing, but instead Parliament decided upon the appointment of a Provost Marshall for London. A Captain Bethan was appointed Provost Marshall on 13 September with an allowance of five shillings per day. His deputy received 3s. 6d. per day, and his twenty assistants were each provided with 1s. 6d. per day. These men were given wide-ranging security duties in the capital, including the arrest of all royalists who had fled to the capital after the fall of Colchester, the suppression of plays, and the arrest of all ballad-singers and ‘Sellers of Malignant Pamphlets’.50 It is noteworthy that at this particular point in time the suppression of the underground press was only one of the many tasks delegated to the Provost Marshall and his men. The royalist newsbooks initially scoffed at the appointment of the Provost Marshall. Elencticus, for example, warned Captain Bethan: ‘I’le rip thee and thy whole Generation up to the very Backs, and throw the Guts in thy Face to blind the pursuit.’51 Pragmaticus joked that he would make the new searchers ‘all of my Faction’ by offering them ‘a six penny Advantage in Salary’; and Melancholicus claimed that the Provost Marshall and his men were a waste of money. He advised Parliament to: Leave off your Treasons, and your King restore, And I will cease to lash you, not before.52

Despite their bravado, however, the royalist newsbooks found themselves increasingly on the defensive during the closing months of 1648. The defeat of the Scottish invasion and the failure of the royalist risings in Wales, Essex and Kent demoralized the authors greatly. The royalists’ failure in battle also ensured that the authorities had more time to deal with less immediate threats, such as the unlicensed and seditious press. In addition, the creation of the office of Provost Marshall added twenty more people to the already sizeable number of searchers who were trying to hunt them down.53 The combination of these factors ensured that several of the newer royalist newsbooks were discontinued and that fewer new ones were produced. It had been almost unknown for a royalist newsbook to miss an issue before October 1648. After that month, however, it became increasingly difficult for the surviving titles to appear without interruption. Melancholicus, for example, had appeared regularly for more than a year between 4 September 1647 and 9 October 1648. After 9 October, however, it disapPragmaticus, no. 24A, 5–12 Sept. 1648, sig. 1v. Whitlocke, Memorials, p. 332; Pragmaticus, no. 25, 12–19 Sept. 1648, sig. 3v. Elencticus, no. 43, 13–20 Sept. 1648, pp. 343–4. Pragmaticus, no. 25, 12–19 Sept. 1648, sig. 3v; Melancholicus, no. 56, 18–25 Sept. 1648, p. 178. 53 Parliament Porter, no. 4, 18–25 Sept. 1648, p. 3; SP 25/10/201–3. 49 50 51 52

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peared for five weeks. Somebody managed to publish one final issue of the newsbook on 21 November, but thereafter it never again appeared on the streets of London.54 The publication of Pragmaticus also became erratic during this period. The attentions of the Provost Marshall and his men evidently forced Pragmaticus to withdraw from the fray in the first week of November, and when it reappeared on 16 November it informed its readers that, in future, the title would contain eight rather than twelve pages; the author and printer evidently hoped to increase their chances of avoiding detection by reducing the amount of time taken to print and proof the title.55 On 18 November the Commons ordered that a Mr ‘Crouch’, probably the royalist printer Edward Crouch, was to be interrogated by the Committee for Printing.56 Three days later Pragmaticus claimed that the beadles who had been ‘hunting up and downe’ after him had arrested some unfortunate man (who was, needless to say, entirely innocent) and brought him to the House of Commons.57 The activities of the searchers forced Pragmaticus to remain silent during Pride’s Purge in early December, and on 12 December Elencticus claimed that he had been particularly lucky to avoid the ‘Blood-hounds’ the previous week.58 Pragmaticus missed another issue in early January 1649, and very soon thereafter Nedham, the principal author of the title, was forced to flee London for the relative safety of Burford in Oxfordshire. A number of men then took the place of the original author but they too soon found themselves harassed and pursued by the searchers. Phase 2: January 1649 to 19 September 1649 In early December 1648 the army purged Parliament and occupied Whitehall. The army had played a leading role in political affairs since the end of the First Civil War but Parliament had always been the source of authority and legitimacy. Pride’s Purge stripped away any lingering vestiges of parliamentary authority and showed that the army and a faction of the Commons, and a small faction at that, had seized power. There could no longer be any doubt that the army was the supreme arbiter of England’s destiny. The army leaders initially envisaged that Charles could be ‘persuaded’ to abdicate in favour of one of his sons, but it soon became clear that the king was not prepared to negotiate away his crown. The army was, however, determined to reach a settlement and became convinced that the best way to remove Charles’s veto on events was to sever his head from his neck. Both the Rump and the army were very sensitive to any criticism of the proposed trial of the 54 55 56 57 58

Elencticus, no. 50, 1–8 Nov. 1648, pp. 485–8. Pragmaticus, nos. 32 and 33, 31 Oct.–14 Nov. 1648, sig. 1r–v, 3v. CJ, vi, p. 80. Pragmaticus, no. 34, 14–21 Nov. 1648, sig. 3v–4v. Elencticus, no. 55, 5–12 Dec. 1648, p. 525. 163


king. As such, the Rump ordered on 5 January that William Prynne, the author of a denunciation of the forthcoming trial, should be arrested and interrogated. On the same day, the House also asked Lord General Fairfax to command the Marshal General of the army to execute the provisions of the September 1647 Ordinance against unlicensed printing.59 The evident disorientation of the royalists was increased by the execution of the king on the penultimate day of January. At the regicide there were only four royalist newsbooks in production, and these titles often appeared irregularly or were forced to vary their day of publication. Their evident discomfort was a far cry from the situation which had pertained only six months previously during the summer of 1648. The newsbooks’ howls of outrage at the execution and their dark threats of what would befall its perpetrators were at odds with the increasingly clear evidence of their powerlessness to influence events. 1649 was a difficult year for those who conspired to produce unlicensed or seditious material. In the nine months between the start of the year and the promulgation of the Printing Act of 20 September the question of unlicensed printing became a major concern of state. This concern was largely due to the fear that propaganda might encourage readers to rise in support of those who wanted to overthrow the new regime by force of arms, but it was also at least partly due to the fact that after Pride’s Purge and the regicide the great questions that had divided the army and Parliament – how best to proceed against Charles I and what sort of government should replace him – had been settled decisively: for the first time in years one faction was in control in London. This is not to say that there were no differences of opinion or policy between the regicides during 1649, but the constant, draining in-fighting of the king’s opponents that had characterized the previous years had been superseded and rendered redundant by force of arms and the executioner’s axe. During 1649 the quantity of unlicensed material fluctuated greatly, and readers found it increasingly difficult to buy specific titles on a regular basis. The searchers arrested many of those involved with the royalist newsbooks, but they were unable to inflict any lasting damage on the network (or networks) which organized the publication of these titles. Indeed, a number of royalist titles made their first appearance in the months after the execution of the king. Most of these titles were short-lived, but one of them, The Man in the Moon, was published for more than a year after its first appearance in April 1649. In other words, the removal of the divisions between Independents and Presbyterians at the centre of government did not in itself lead to the destruction of the royalist press. There was nothing inevitable about the demise of these newsbooks. The taming of the press was, as we shall see, the result of the sustained and determined implementation of the Printing

CJ, vi, p. 111; A Warrant of the Lord General Fairfax to the Marshall Generall of the Army ([18 Jan.] 1649), p. 3.

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Act under the supervision of a centralized and motivated committee of the Council of State. On 13 February 1649 the Rump passed an Act for the establishment of a Council of State, which was given responsibility for the execution of all matters relating to defence, trade, the army and foreign policy.60 This Act also delegated much of the responsibility for regulating the press to the Council, and, from this date onwards, the history of Interregnum censorship is largely the history of the various Councils of State. On 20 February Pragmaticus complained that ‘the Parliament Kennell are abroad, their Masters have lately so flesh’d them with the Blood of the Lords Anointed, that they bite all they meet, they hunt down Right, and so close, that naked truth can hardly scape them’. He claimed that not a Presse dares wagge her tayl, but one of these scumms of Raskality come with a Warrant; (God bless us) to seize on our goods, and commit our persons to their stinking Dungeons; others come in the Night, breake open doores, with naked swords, holding them to the throats of Women and Children, menacing, and frighting them, whilst others of their crew break open Chests, Boxes and the like, stealing what everthing of value they can lay their theevish fingers on.61

One week later, two competing editions of Pragmaticus were published. One edition complained that the ‘zealous ratt-catchers . . . State-Ferrets, Setting Doggs, Bitches, [and] blood-hounds’ were hunting him ‘day and night’, and the other wrote that he had recently been ‘Routed’ out of his ‘lodgings and acquaintance by Parliament Beagles: and whole squadrons of rebellious Mermidons [i.e. soldiers] & forc’t to build my nest in another angle where now I am’.62 There may well have been an element of exaggeration in these accounts of the searchers’ aggression but they do provide us with a sense of the air of menace and danger involved which contrasts sharply with accounts of censorship which tend to ignore the violence, menace and disorder inherent in acts of suppression.63 During early 1649 the authorities had managed to seize and destroy a set of page-proofs for the Eikon Basilike. This delayed publication of the book and forced the publisher, Richard Royston, to erect another printing press outside the city. Two thousand copies of the book were eventually published and on 5 March Pragmaticus noted that the authorities were ‘using more than usuall violence’ in daily searches of ‘all book-sellers and printing houses’ in

Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances, ii, pp. 2–5; CJ, vi, p. 139; SP 25/62/9–13. Pragmaticus, no. 45, 13–20 Feb. 1649, sig. 3r. Pragmaticus, no 46A, 20–27 Feb. 1649, sig. 2r; Pragmaticus, no. 43 [sic], 20–27 Feb. 1649, sig. 1r–v. 63 See the following chapter for a detailed critique of this and other weaknesses in the recent historiography of censorship in early-modern Britain. 60 61 62

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London in an attempt to stop its dispersal. A number of people were arrested by the authorities in connection with various editions of the Eikon, including the publisher of the first edition, Royston, the printer of several later editions, William Dugard, and a book-binder named Mr Doe who was wounded in ‘foure or five places’ during his arrest.64 On 20 March the President of the Council, John Bradshaw, was authorized to sign warrants in the absence of the rest of the Council for the arrest of ‘persons who compose or print scandalous pamphlets’.65 In the closing days of the month a Mr Holden was issued with a warrant to seize any ‘scandalous and seditious books’, and the government moved to suppress the Leveller book entitled The Second Part of Englands new Chains discovered.66 On 14 April the Council issued a warrant to Captain Michael Bland to ‘search for seditious books and papers against the Government, and apprehend the parties’.67 Two members of the Stationers’ Company were issued with a warrant on 16 April for the arrest of Samuel Sheppard and William Wright, who were, at that time, writing and printing Mercurius Elencticus.68 Ten days later the Sergeant-at-Arms to the Council of State, Edward Dendy, was issued with a warrant for the arrest of the authors and publishers of Pragmaticus and The Man in the Moon.69 On 30 April Pragmaticus reported that a woman had recently been arrested for distributing a Leveller pamphlet which encouraged troops not to volunteer for service in Ireland.70 The Council of State devoted a great deal of attention to the question of unlicensed printing during May, almost certainly in response to concerns about the effects of Leveller propaganda upon the army. This increased attention of the authorities also had serious consequences for other types of unlicensed material, including the royalist newsbooks. On the first day of the month Pragmaticus complained that the Beagles were ‘a hunting again’, and, in a striking phrase, likened Bradshaw’s warrant for the suppression of unlicensed printing to ‘a flie-flap in the shambles’.71 On 5 May the Council of State thanked two soldiers for arresting three men who had dispersed unspecified ‘seditious papers’ at Towcester in Northamptonshire.72 Two days later the Council decided that one of its members, Sir Henry Mildmay, should ask the Rump to dismiss Gilbert Mabbott for his part in licensing Francis Madan, A new bibliography of the Eikon Basilike (Oxford, 1950), pp. 131–65; Pragmaticus, no. 44 [sic], 27 Feb.–5 Mar. 1649, sig. 2r–v; CJ, vi, p. 166; DWL, Morrice MS Q195–6. 65 SP 25/62/95. 66 SP 25/87/414; SP 25/62/119; SP 26/87/34–6; SP 25/62/135; SP 25/62/116; CJ, vi, p. 174, 27 Mar. 1649. 67 SP 25/62/188. 68 SP 25/62/196. 69 SP 25/62/230. 70 Pragmaticus, no. [blank], 23–30 April 1649, sig. 2r–v, 3v–4r. 71 Pragmaticus, no. 2, 24 April–1 May 1649, sig. 1r. 72 SP 25/94/145. 64

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‘divers dangerous books’. Mildmay was also delegated to ask the House ‘that care be taken to suppress such books and pamphlets’, especially the Levellerinclined newsbook entitled The Moderate.73 On 12 May the Council gave John Bradshaw the task of bringing in an Act to prevent the printing of ‘invective and scandalous pamphlets against the Commonwealth’.74 In the meantime, however, the Rump passed a draconian Treason Act which declared: if any person shall maliciously or advisedly publish by Writing, Printing, or openly Declaring, that the . . . government is Tyrannical, Usurped or Unlawful; or that the Commons in Parliament assembled are not the Supreme authority of this Nation; or shall Plot, contrive or endeavour to stir up or raise Force against the Present Government, or for the subversion or alteration of the same, and shall declare the same by any open deed, That then every such Offence shall be Taken, Deemed and Adjudged, by the authority of this Parliament, to be High Treason.75

The contrast between the severity of this Act and the provisions of the Printing Ordinance of September 1647 is best explained by the precarious existence of the new regime. In May 1649 the regicides faced the prospect of a Leveller rising in the army, a brutal campaign in Ireland, and invasions from Scotland and the continent. The Rump evidently felt that the punishment for writing or speaking against the regime during this period should be directly proportional to the mortal danger in which the state found itself. It should be noted, however, that the authorities never used the Treason Act against the press. Instead, the Council continued to employ the searchers while they carefully prepared another Printing Act, which they evidently believed would deliver the coup de grâce to unlicensed printing. Be this as it may, the authorities probably used the Treason Act to intimidate at least some of those who were arrested for writing, printing or publishing offensive material. After 1660 both Edward Crouch and William Dugard claimed that they had recanted their royalism only when faced with the threat of execution. Crouch and Dugard had an obvious motive after the Restoration for exaggerating the danger they faced, but we do know that in June 1650 the Council of State asked the Attorney General to decide whether the printer of Pragmaticus, William Ellis, should be tried at the sessions or stand trial for his life at the High Court of Justice. Similarly, in September 1649 the Commons explicitly envisaged the use of the Treason Act against those involved with the Leveller tract Outcry of the Apprentices. SP 25/62/267. SP 25/62/294. Masson, Life of Milton, iv, pp. 94, 116–18; Parker, Milton: a biography, i, p. 354. 75 ‘An Act Declaring what Offences shall be adjudged Treason’ [14 May 1649], in C.H. Firth and R.S. Rait (eds), Acts and Ordinances, vol. ii, pp. 120–1, 193–4. 73 74

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The printer of this item, Thomas Newcombe, was at that time languishing in Newgate and the prospect of being tried under the Treason Act may have helped to focus his mind and persuade him to co-operate with the regime and agree to provide information against John Lilburne. Newcombe was subsequently employed as the printer of the regime’s official Mercurius Politicus, edited by the former royalist author Marchamont Nedham. When one considers that the royalist printer Dugard worked as printer to the Council of State during the 1650s, one realizes how heavily the propaganda effort of the Cromwellian regime could rely on former enemies.76 At first glance it is hard to explain why the authorities never tried any of the royalist authors, printers or publishers for their lives, especially as they frequently referred to such activities as ‘treasonous’ or ‘seditious’. It is clear, however, that the regicides were extremely sensitive to accusations of tyranny, and they may perhaps have believed that they should create as few martyrs as possible. They may also have believed that the most effective way of combating the royalist press was to force those responsible for it to come to terms with the regime and publicly recant their support for the Stuarts. In all probability, however, the regicides’ reluctance to put ‘malignant’ propagandists on trial was due to a fear that jurors – who would inevitably represent a range of opinions across society and not be drawn merely from the relatively small minority of people who supported the new republic – would be likely to acquit men facing serious or disproportionate charges for merely writing against the regime. The ‘wrong’ verdict from a jury could be counterproductive, leaving the authorities open to ridicule and undermining their power, prestige and self-confidence, as they found to their cost when the Leveller leader John Lilburne turned his October 1649 trial for printing against the republic into a harangue against England’s new rulers. His acquittal by the jury clearly shocked the regicides and thereafter they seem to have realized that it was usually better to either ignore one’s enemies or use extra-legal harassment and intimidation against them. This calculus of disregard versus intimidation was a complex equation which fluctuated wildly depending on a number of objective and subjective factors, the most important of which, we shall see, was the perceived danger to the state. The preparations for this new Printing Act were first made public on 22 May. On that day Henry Mildmay made a speech in the Commons ‘touching the printing of dangerous books and Pamphlets’. As a result of Mildmay’s speech, the Rump resolved that Gilbert Mabbott should be discharged from his position as licenser and that it should be ‘referred to the Council of State, to prepare, and bring in, an Act for preventing the Printing of Scandalous Books and Pamphlets’.77 Why did the regicides bother to draw up a Printing SP 25/64/416; CJ, vi, p. 293, 11 Sept. 1649. CJ, vi, p. 214, 22 May 1649. I trace the progress of, and modifications to, this bill in order to demonstrate the correctness of S.R. Gardiner’s statement that it was a response to royalist and Leveller propaganda (CP, i, p. 173). The origins of this legislation are not

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Act when they already had the draconian Treason Act on the statute books? Part of the reason must have been a desire on the part of the regime to replace the babble of ordinances, declarations and warrants issued during the 1640s with a comprehensive Act of Parliament which might help to nullify the royalist argument that an ordinance was ‘a law still-born, dropt before quickened with the royal assent. Tis one of Parliament’s bye-blows, an Act only being legitimate.’78 The royalists were never going to accept that an Act promulgated without reference to the king was legal, but it was probably hoped that the use of such traditional terminology might help to convince the wider populace of the legitimacy of the legislation passed by the Rump, and of its agreement with the ancient, fundamental laws of England. On the other hand, Pragmaticus thought that there was a more specific reason why the regime was busying itself with a Printing Act: There is one Crack after another, and all to as much purpose as if the Rebells threw feathers against the wind . . . why would not the act shewing it to be Treason to speake or write against their government, serve without this aditionall device[?] Why by this [i.e. the new Printing Act] it appears they intend to set padlocks upon the presses, and make Treason-trap to catch the Printers.79

In other words, Pragmaticus was convinced that the new Printing Act would, unlike previous legislation of the 1640s, concentrate on trying to catch those who printed unlicensed or seditious material. This was a clever strategy because the printers were, in many ways, the weakest part of any network that produced illicit material. It was always possible for authors and hawkers to vary their movements in order to avoid detection. It was very easy to replace an arrested hawker and it was even possible, more often than not, to find somebody to take the place of an arrested author, particularly as newsbooks were often written by two or more collaborators. Printers and their presses were, however, neither mobile nor easily replaced. The relatively small number of printing presses and the fact that printing was both a noisy and a slow business made it sensible for the authorities to focus their attention on the means of producing subversive material. After the Restoration the notorious Tory judge Sir William Scroggs made this point clearly and succinctly in a libel trial of the early 1680s: ‘it is hard to find the author . . . it is not hard to find the printer’.80 ‘hazy’ and have nothing to do with the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland or the infamous slaughter at Drogheda in the second week of September 1649 (Raymond, Invention of the newspaper, pp. 74–5; Peacey, Politicians and pamphleteers, pp. 227, 244). 78 John Cleveland, The Character of a London Diurnal (1645), p. 4. 79 Pragmaticus, no. 6B, 22–29 May 1649, sig. 3r–v. 80 Timothy J. Crist, ‘Francis Smith and the opposition press in England, 1660–1688’ (Cambridge Ph.D. dissertation, 1977), p. 134; Timothy J. Crist, ‘Government control of the press after the expiration of the Printing Act in 1679’, Publishing History, 5 (1979), 169


The Star Chamber Decrees of 1586 and 1637 had attempted to regulate the number of printing presses and their output, and this is such an obvious way of proceeding against undesirable printed matter that one has to wonder why the various ordinances and declarations of the 1640s concerning the press did not focus primarily on denying the means of production to prospective undesirable books and pamphlets. Perhaps the Parliament did not want to be seen to be re-imposing hated aspects of the Elizabethan and earlyStuart system of censorship, or perhaps there were influential commercial individuals or groups who ensured that the authorities did not target the printing presses. It is also possible that the energy expended in fighting two civil wars and trying to control the interminable internecine squabbles of the various Roundhead factions meant that there was never enough time to sit and plan the most effective way of rooting out undesirable books. Whatever the reason for the previous lack of attention to printing presses, the change in tactics during 1649 was a wise decision which enabled the regime to finally tame the London book trade. The five months between May and September 1649 were characterized by the continued activities of the searchers and the patient preparation of the new Printing Act. The searchers had a number of successes against the underground press, most notably the arrest of the prominent royalist author Marchamont Nedham. The most significant feature of this period was, however, the amount of time that the Council devoted to the progress of the proposed legislation. This interest contrasted sharply with the sporadic and haphazard attention which all previous official bodies or executive committees had paid to the question of the press during the 1640s. The control of the press was now one of the most important concerns of state. On 29 May the Sergeant-at-Arms to the Council, Edward Dendy, was ordered to suppress Elencticus. He had previously arrested the author of Elencticus, Samuel Sheppard, but an unknown royalist had taken over the task of writing this title, much to the annoyance of the Council.81 On the last day of May the Council ordered two prominent London Aldermen, Isaac Pennington and Thomas Atkins, to arrest and interrogate the author of the recently published ‘papers which [had] passed at Newcastle’ between Charles I and the Presbyterian cleric Alexander Henderson in 1646. In early June the Council ordered two army officers to interrogate the unnamed prisoners arrested by the Sergeant-at-Arms ‘for printing and publishing scandalous books’. At about the same time Pragmaticus complained that the ‘Marshalls, 49–78, at 49; Neil H. Keeble, The literary culture of nonconformity in later seventeenthcentury England (Leicester, 1987), p. 120. For the importance attached to this maxim by the Bourbon regime in the century and a half before the French Revolution see Carla Hesse, Publishing and cultural politics in revolutionary Paris, 1789–1810 (Berkeley, CA, 1991), pp. 167–8, 209–36. 81 SP 25/62/369. Hyder E. Rollins, ‘Samuel Sheppard and his praise of poets’, Studies in Philology, xxiv (1927), 525. 170


informers and Blood-hounds’ were arresting ‘all malignant and dangerous men of Honesty that dare but peep within the Lines of Communication’.82 On 16 June the Council of State asked the Lord Mayor of London ‘to pursue all persons selling or printing pamphlets against the state’. On the same day the Council also asked that a draft of the proposed Printing Act should be brought before it.83 Two days later the Council asked the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest Marchamont Needham for his part in writing Pragmaticus ‘and other libels’. Nedham was arrested very soon afterwards, and spent a number of weeks in jail before he managed to escape.84 On 20 June the Council delegated one of its members to present to the House of Commons a list of ‘such things as are already prepared by Council . . . as needful to be passed [by the Commons] before the [summer] adjournment’. Among the thirteen items on this list were the proposals for regulating the press.85 The Council of State continued its clampdown with an order, dated 27 June, for the arrest of a bookseller named Nathaniel Butler who had allegedly sold ‘treasonable and seditious books’.86 July 1649 was a particularly difficult month for the three main royalist titles still in circulation. At the start of the month Pragmaticus complained that ‘they hunt me and watch after me, as a Cat after a Mouse’. He affected to be unconcerned by these efforts: ‘they’le never find me; I have set a padlock upon their Noses as big as Lady Fairefaxes B____s and that both dazles their eyes; and spoyles their smelling, by which meanes I sleepe securely, and discharge a good conscience’. However, the fact that the first, and most important, author of Pragmaticus had recently been arrested ensured that this bluster had a decidedly hollow ring to it.87 In mid-July two individuals were arrested for selling Pragmaticus, and The Man in the Moon was forced to skip publication for one week. It reappeared the following week with the words, ‘Nay, you have not lost me yet; I am come again: I have been but gathering my Hatt full of stones [to throw at the regime].’88 Throughout July Elencticus complained that three individuals, Mr Thomson, Mr Verney and a London goldsmith named Alexander Holt, were tracking him. Elencticus was particularly incensed by the activities of Verney who, he claimed, was related to the leading royalist Edmund Verney who had been killed while carrying the king’s standard at Edgehill in 1642.89 Bradshaw presented the Council with draft versions of two bills on 2 SP 25/62/380; Pragmaticus, no. 7A, 29 May–5 June 1649, sig. 1v; Pragmaticus, no. 7B, 29 May–5 June 1649, sig. 1v. 83 SP 25/62/441. 84 Pragmaticus, no. 10B, 19–26 June 1648, sig. 1–2v; CSPD, 1649–50, p. 204. 85 SP 25/62/455. 86 SP 25/26/480–3. 87 Pragmaticus, no. 11, 26 June–3 July 1649, sig. 1v. 88 SP 25/62/530; Man in the Moon, no. 14, 11–25 July 1649, p. 115. 89 Elencticus, no. 13, 16–24 July 1649, pp. 97–8; no. 14, 23–30 July 1649, pp. 110–11; no. 16, 6–13 Aug. 1649, pp. 121–2; no. 17, 13–20 Aug. 1649, p. 130. 82

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August. The first was concerned with verbal utterances and written letters, while the second was directed specifically against the printed word. The choice was between a generalized attempt to regulate political and religious discourse, and a much more focused attempt to throttle the press.90 By 6 August the Council had finalized the proposals and it was decided to inform the Commons of this fact.91 Three days later Sir John Danvers presented the two bills to Parliament, and a committee of twenty-one was chosen to consider them and ‘report the result of their Debates with speed’. It was over a month before the committee finally reported to the House, and when they did so the bill against verbal and written remarks had been dropped in favour of an exclusive emphasis on the regulation of the printed word. This decision to focus exclusively on the printed word was vindicated by subsequent events.92 In the first week of August ‘four-score scurrilous Pamphlets’ that had been sent through the post were intercepted by a soldier stationed in Exeter, and on Monday 13 August, according to a newsbook called Great Britaines Paine-Full Messenger, Marchamont Nedham, who had been incarcerated in Newgate, was brought to appear before the Council of State ‘and notwithstanding the Keeper that attended him, and the lock of the chamber door where he was brought, made a Spring away’. One can only imagine the incandescent rage of Bradshaw and Scott at the escape of such an important prisoner. On the following day, 14 August, the Commons and the Council of State ordered the arrest of the author of the Leveller newsbook, The Moderate, and on the fifteenth the Sergeant-at-Arms was ordered to arrest the royalist author John Taylor ‘for keeping up a correspondence with the enemy’. Taylor’s recent journey into the West Country had led the authorities to suspect that he was somehow operating as a royalist spy. However, he quickly convinced the authorities of his innocence and was released without charge three days later. Taylor was by now in his seventies, and from this date until his death in 1653 he retreated from any involvement in anti-Commonwealth propaganda.93 On 31 August the Sergeant-at-Arms to the Council and the Master and Wardens of the Stationers’ Company were ordered to ‘seize all seditious books and pamphlets they can find and apprehend the printers’.94 Some time in August, according to Pragmaticus, John Bradshaw organized a meeting with all the printers of London at a tavern called ‘the Mouth neere Aldersgate’. This meeting was designed to ‘treate with and engage the Printers of London to assist them in suppressing of those they call scandalous

SP 25/62/586; CJ, vi, p. 275; CJ, vi, p. 276. SP 25/62/598; A Modest Narrative, no. 19, 4–11 Aug. 1649, pp. 150–1. CJ, vi, p. 276; The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer, no. 324, 7–14 Aug. 1648, p. 1458. The Impartiall Intelligencer, 8–15 Aug. 1649, pp. 191–2; Great Britaines Paine-Full Messenger, no. 1, 9–16 Aug. 1649, pp. 6–7; SP 25/62/630; Capp, John Taylor, pp. 158–9; Bernard Capp, ‘John Taylor’, in Oxford DNB. 94 SP 25/63/34. 90 91 92 93

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and seditious Pamphlets’. Bradshaw tried to enlist their support ‘with the promise of any Acts of Grace and favour . . . [he] . . . could doe them, for advancement of their Mistery in defyance of the Stationers’. However, this meeting does not seem to have been successful because only the leading printers bothered to attend. This group of printers then apparently chose four of their number to ‘treat with Bradshaw’ about the Act.95 There is no independent confirmation of Pragmaticus’s story, but if it is true it is significant because it demonstrates that the authorities believed the involvement of the Stationers’ Company, or, more accurately, a particular interest group in the Company, was essential for the proper regulation of the press. It also shows that the authorities were aware of, and tried to exploit, the sharp divisions between the booksellers and printers in the Stationers’ Company. It is interesting to note that Roger L’Estrange also proposed a scheme after the Restoration which was designed to enhance government supervision of the industry by exploiting the commercial antagonisms between the booksellers and the printers.96 Bradshaw and L’Estrange seem to have favoured the printers because this relatively small group of men owned and controlled the essential tool for producing all printed matter. On 1 September the printer Thomas Newcombe was committed to Newgate for his part in producing the Leveller Outcry of the Apprentices; he was released three weeks later after he promised not to print any more scandalous or seditious books and to be ready to give evidence against the Leveller leader John Lilburne.97 On 11 September the Commons ordered that those responsible for writing The Outcry of the Apprentices should be arrested and punished. Twenty-four hours later, the Council of State ordered three of its members to ‘examine and dispose of a prisoner . . . who carried some seditious books to disperse at Warwick’. On 14 September the Commons heard a number of amendments that the committee (which had been appointed more than a month earlier, on 9 August) had made to the printing bill. The bill was then ordered to be engrossed.98 On 19 September warrants were issued for the arrest of those who had publicly declared their agreement with two Leveller tracts, and on 20 September the House finally passed the Printing Act.99 Phase 3: 20 September 1649 to June 1650 The Act against ‘Unlicensed and Scandalous Books and Pamphlets, and for better regulating of Printing’ contained more than twenty clauses and ran to 95 96 97 98 99

Pragmaticus, no. 18, 14–21 Aug. 1649, sig. 2v. Johns, Nature of the book, p. 106. SP 25/63/35. CJ, vi, p. 296. SP 25/63/88–90; SP 25/63/91; CJ, vi, p. 298. 173


nearly 5,000 words.100 Its stated aim was to suppress ‘Pamphlets, Papers and Books’ produced ‘by the Malignant party at home and abroad’. The main provisions of the Act were as follows. The authors of offending works were to pay a £10 fine or suffer forty days in jail. All offending printers would face a £5 fine or twenty days in jail, and the bookseller or stationer would face a fine of forty shillings or ten days in custody. Anyone who bought such material was obliged to report the seller to the civil magistrate or face a fine of one pound for every item purchased. All hawkers and ballad-singers were to be arrested, have their stock confiscated and ‘be whipt as common Rogues’. Henceforth, all books and pamphlets were to be licensed, and all former licences granted by either House were declared ‘void and of no further effect’. The Clerk of the Parliament and the Secretary of the Army would, in future, license all newsbooks, the titles of which were to be entered in the register book of the Company of Stationers. It was further ordered that the Company ‘make diligent search in all places where they shall think meet’ for all unlicensed material. Anybody who distributed ‘unlicensed News . . . or . . . seditious or scandalous Papers, Pamphlets, Books or Pictures’ in the posts or by carrier would be fined forty shillings for every item sent. Printing was to be strictly limited to London, York, the two universities, and the press at Finsbury which printed Bibles and Psalms. The Stationers’ Company was ordered to confiscate and destroy all printing materials owned by any printer who produced unlicensed material. It was further enacted that all printers were to enter a bond of £300 (with two sureties) for their future good behaviour; all books were to carry the name of the author and licenser; no dwelling-house was to be let to a printer without notice being given to the Stationers’ Company; and no parts of a printing press were to be constructed without similar notification.101 The provisions against the importation of books were equally severe: all imported books had to pass through London and be inspected by the Stationers’ Company. The fine was to be the enormous sum of £5 for every copy imported illegally. Finally, all items seized under the terms of this Act were to be ‘delivered to the Secretary to the Council of State, to be disposed of to the fire, or otherwise, as that Council shall direct’.102 Shortly after the Act was passed the author of The Perfect Weekly Account wrote that, although he did not have a licence for his newsbook, he would seek one for the next issue.103 The Perfect Weekly Account was, however, quickly suppressed, along with all of the other half-dozen or so non-seditious newsbooks which had openly been sold on the streets of London. The authorities apparently suppressed these titles because they considered them to be ‘defective in putting before the People the righteousnese and Justice of 100 101 102 103

Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances, ii, pp. 245–54. SP 25/120/1–13. Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances, ii, pp. 245–54. Perfect Weekly Account, no. 80, 19–26 Sept. 1649, p. 616. 174


the Juncto . . . and added not such Comments to their Intelligence as might render the Kings affaires so meane and despicable, and their owne so prosperous and formidable as they expected’.104 The suppressed titles were replaced with a number of official newsbooks produced under the direction of leading members of the regime.105 The regime’s firm grip upon the press also extended to other forms of print, such as ballads, books, and pamphlets. The royalist newsbooks mocked when the London newsbooks, their sworn enemies, were suppressed. They were, at least outwardly, confident that the Printing Act would have little or no effect upon them. Pragmaticus boasted that the rebels would ‘find us multiply when they indeavour most to destroy us’. In a similar vein, Elencticus wrote: are they so simple as [to] imagine that I, or any else, that really intend the service of his Majesty, and the welfare of his abused Subjects, can bee dismai’d or startled at such a bug-beare as this thing (they miscall) an Act is? Doe they think the Printers and Stationers so cowardly and cold in their affections to the kings service that this paper-squib can deterre them: Will the Founders and smiths be so silly as to undervalue their Persons and callings, as to acquaint the Master and Wardens [of the Stationers’ Company] with all they cast or forge that are no waies concerned in it? And will the People (so desirous of Truths) be satisfyed with Lies and falsehoods devised on purpose to delude them?106

This confidence was entirely misplaced. Only three of the five royalist newsbooks in production during the first weeks of September 1649 continued to appear after the Printing Act came into force, and even these titles found it increasingly difficult to appear in print. The Man in the Moon did not appear for the week of 26 September to 3 October; Pragmaticus was forced to skip two issues in October and November; and Elencticus was discontinued in early November. At least one of Pragmaticus’s absences was caused by the author’s arrest, but he apparently managed to escape from custody before the ‘Lowzie-States’ questioned him ‘for his loyalty’ to the king.107 During the first few months of 1650, however, both of the surviving titles, Pragmaticus and The Man in the Moon, began to disappear for a number of weeks with increasing regularity. They were joined by The Royall Diurnall and a new edition of Elencticus, but both of these new titles were abandoned after only a few weeks in production. Pragmaticus and The Man in the Moon were finally suppressed within days of each other, in late May and early June 1650 respectively.

Elencticus, no. 25, 15–22 Oct. 1649, pp. 193–5. Raymond, Invention of the newspaper, pp. 69–76. Elencticus, no. 23, 24 Sept.–1 Oct. 1649, pp. 177–80; Pragmaticus, no. 23, 18–25 Sept. 1649, sig. 4r. 107 Pragmaticus, no. 29, 13–20 Nov. 1649, sig. 1–2v. 104 105 106

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It is true that the royalist newsbooks had become increasingly demoralized during 1649, but there was nothing inevitable about their demise in the months after the promulgation of the Printing Act. They had, after all, survived numerous previous setbacks and clampdowns. The unprecedented success of the Printing Act was, in fact, the result of three inter-related factors. First, the Act delegated the primary responsibility for unearthing ‘scandalous’ material to the Stationers’ Company, or individuals acting under the aegis of that company. The authorities did issue warrants to other individuals and bodies in the weeks and months after 20 September 1649, but the surviving records demonstrate that members of the Stationers’ Company played the leading role in the successful clampdown on the press. Some of these men may have performed their duties out of a sense of political and/or religious opposition to those who flouted the law. Others may have done so to settle scores with old enemies, to ingratiate themselves with the authorities, or to avail themselves of the significant financial rewards that were granted to those who unearthed offensive material. In a sense, however, the internal motivation of these men is of little importance. What matters is that the authorities believed they would be effective and that the members of the Company proved their worth in the battle against unlicensed material. The Act deliberately targeted the printers as the weak link of the networks which produced illegal material. The Act contained a number of detailed clauses which were designed to make it extremely difficult for printers to erect presses in secret ‘holes’. It was also designed to reward printers who operated within the law,108 and to increase greatly the financial punishments for those who chose to contravene the Act. The September 1647 Ordinance had stipulated that offending printers would be liable to a fine of twenty shillings and the confiscation of their printing materials. The September 1649 Act also allowed for the confiscation of a printer’s equipment, but the financial penalties for failing to observe the law were increased by a factor of more than three hundred. Henceforth, any printer who produced offensive material risked a fine of £5 and the loss of the £300 bond which he had been forced to lodge for his future good behaviour. The combination of greatly increased financial penalties and the actions of the searchers must have been a great incentive not to engage in unlicensed or seditious printing. It also ensured that those who were caught could be offered the choice of punishment (which would deter others from following their example) or clemency and recantation (which would undermine their previous actions and arguments, thereby deterring others from following their example). The third factor contributing to the decline of the royalist newsbooks was the active interest the Council of State took in the rigorous and sustained 108

Elencticus, no. 23, 24 Sept.–1 Oct. 1649, p. 176. 176


implementation of the Act in London and the provinces. On 13 October the Council established a six-man ‘Committee for the Suppression of Scandalous Pamphlets’. This committee’s brief was to ‘consider of the best means of putting the late Act . . . into effectual and present execution’. It was mandated to receive information as to breaches of the Act and to ‘give order to the justices of the peace and others concerned in the execution of the Act for discharge of their several duties therein’.109 The committee’s members, headed by the tireless director of intelligence, Thomas Scott, and the President of the Council, John Bradshaw, co-ordinated and encouraged the efforts of the various individuals and institutions charged with taming the press. They also attempted to eliminate (or at least minimize) the corruption, inefficiency and negligence that had hampered previous efforts to exert a strict discipline over the press. When the Council of State ensured that the searchers under its control were properly organized and supervised, they were able to mould a formidable force which hunted and destroyed the royalist press within a matter of months. The attempts to enforce the Printing Act began, significantly enough, with a summons on 24 September to the master printers of London to appear in the Hall of the Stationers’ Company. The Act was then read to these men so they could not plead ignorance of its provisions if they were later arrested for unlicensed or seditious printing.110 On 2 October the Council of State wrote to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London asking them to publish the Printing Act in the Common Council, and ‘give special charge to their Marshals to search for all the guilty and to proceed against them without respect of persons’.111 On the following day the Council ordered the Sheriffs of the various counties to distribute a number of declarations, including the Printing Act, among the parishes in their respective counties. The declarations were to be read by the minister of each parish church on the following Sunday. The Council also asked to be informed of the names of any who hindered, or refused to obey, these orders.112 On 13 October, as mentioned, the Council of State established the ‘Committee for the Suppression of Scandalous Pamphlets’. From this date onwards the royalist newsbooks found it increasingly difficult to avoid the searchers or to appear with any degree of regularity; Pragmaticus complained that the regime was now ‘trampling upon the necks’ of all the hawkers and ballad-singers who sold ‘Malignant Inke’ about the streets of London.113 On 16 October the Council of State asked the vice-chancellors of Cambridge and Oxford and the Mayor of York to ensure that the printers SP 25/63/137–8. SCCB C259, 24 Sept. 1649. SP 25/94/465. SP 25/94/468. Elencticus, no. 24, 8–15 Oct. 1649, pp. 185–6; Pragmaticus, no. 25, 9–16 Oct. 1649, sig. 1r–v. 109 110 111 112 113

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working in their towns paid the bonds of £300 due under the Act. One week later Edward Dendy was ordered to arrest the authors and printers of Pragmaticus, Elencticus, The Man in the Moon, ‘or any other treasonable works’. On 24 October the royalist bookseller Richard Royston and the printer John Grismond were questioned by the Committee for Suppressing Scandalous Pamphlets concerning George Bates’s royalist account of the conflict of the 1640s, Elenchus Motuum Nuperorum in Anglia.114 Two days later, the Wardens of the Stationers’ Company were ordered to appear before the Council of State ‘to answer questions about their own business’. The wording of this summons is vague but it is likely that the Wardens were asked to explain what measures they had taken against unlicensed and seditious printed material.115 November and December proved to be the worst period that the royalist newsbooks had so far experienced. The disappearance of Elencticus after 5 November left only two royalist newsbooks in production. A few days later, Marchamont Nedham, the most prominent of the royalist propagandists and the former author of Pragmaticus, surrendered himself to the authorities in London. As discussed in Chapter 4, Nedham had fled the capital in late 1648 and returned to London before or during April 1649, when he wrote several issues of an edition of Pragmaticus. He continued to write this title until June, when he was betrayed to the authorities by a friend named James Thompson and imprisoned in Newgate.116 Nedham somehow managed to escape from custody yet again, but the experience of dire poverty and constant danger led to him becoming disenchanted; in despair, he handed himself in to the regime. Nedham’s decision to co-operate with his jailers meant that he was in a position to provide them with the names and addresses of many of those involved with the newsbooks, and valuable intelligence about the wider royalist movement.117 On 10 November John Bradshaw ordered the Master and Wardens of the Stationers’ Company to make searches ‘weekly, or oftener, as occasion shall require’. These searchers were authorized to go on board any ship and search for and seize all ‘imported books, pamphlets, pictures, and papers . . . inhibited . . . by the . . . Act, and bring them to the Common Hall of the Stationers’ Company, there to be disposed of as directed by the late Act’. In case of any opposition, they were ordered to ‘break open any doors, locks, or chests, and certify the names of such as shall obstruct you; and send your information in writing to the Council, that directions may be given for 114 CSPD, 1649–50, p. 362; F.F. Madan, ‘A bibliography of George Bate’s Elenchus Motuum Nuperorum in Anglia’, The Library, 5th ser., vi (1951), 189–99. 115 SP 25/63/174; SP 25/94/492; SP 25/87/96–7; SP 25/63/174–5; SP 25/63/185; SP 25/63/172. 116 Dorothy Gardiner, The Oxinden and Peyton Letters, 1642–1670 (1937), p. 161; BL Add MS 28,002, fol. 170. 117 Gardiner, Oxinden and Peyton Letters, p. 161; BL, Add MS 28,002, fol. 172.

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prosecution’. On the same day, the Council also issued warrants to a former Leveller named John Harris and ten individual members of the Stationers’ Company. The warrants to the stationers authorized them to ‘aid and assist the Master and Wardens of the Stationers’ Company in executing the Act against unlicensed books and pamphlets’.118 Harris’s warrant, on the other hand, authorized him to ‘search carriers for unlicensed and scandalous books and pamphlets, seize such as he finds, and prosecute the owners’.119 Nine days later, the Provost Marshall was asked to attend the Council to receive instructions on the effective discharge of his duties.120 On 20 November, Sir Henry Mildmay and Thomas Scott were ordered to examine a certain Mrs Ratcliffe who had been arrested for hawking ‘some scandalous and treasonable pamphlets’. On the same day, the Council ordered that the packs of all carriers to the provinces should be searched for ‘the declaration of Charles Stuart’. This was almost certainly Charles’s famous declaration from Jersey expressing his ‘grief of heart’ at the murder of his father and his promise to be ‘a severe Avenger of his Innocent blood’. It is therefore likely that Mrs Ratcliffe had been arrested in connection with the Jersey Declaration.121 Two days later, George Wharton, author of the now-defunct Mercurius Elencticus, who had managed to avoid capture since his escape from prison in August 1648, was committed by the Council of State to Newgate upon ‘suspicion of treason’, a charge which carried the death penalty.122 Towards the end of the month, the Council wrote to the Customs’ Commissioners and the Master and Wardens of the Stationers’ Company informing them that intelligence reports indicated a ‘scandalous’ book entitled Defensio Regia was about to be sent from the Netherlands to England, possibly through Yarmouth. They were ordered to ‘send up [to the Council] such as they may find, and not allow any to get dispersed’.123 The Council issued a warrant on the first day of December for the arrest of a stationer named Thomas Walkley, who had allegedly dispersed copies of Charles II’s declaration of intent to exact a bloody revenge upon the regicides.124 A few days later both the author and printer of The Man in the Moon were arrested by the stationer Joseph Hunscott acting on information supplied by a ‘knavish bookebinder’ named Mr Doe, probably the same man who had been injured during his arrest in connection with the Eikon Basilike during the previous January.125 The author, John Crouch, was released

SP 25/63/244. SP 25/63/242. SP 25/63/277. SP 25/63/282–4; His Majesties Declaration To all His Loving subjects in His Kingdome of England and Dominion of Wales (31 Oct. 1649), p. 3. 122 SP 25/63/294. 123 SP 25/63/325. 124 SP 25/63/338. This was the ‘Jersey Declaration’ referred to above. 125 SP 25/63/395. If it was the same man, then the fact that he too had been ‘turned’ by 118 119 120 121

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without charge on 17 December, but the printer, Edward Crouch, spent almost four months in prison before he was released.126 The royalist propaganda effort sustained another serious blow when, on 18 December, a consignment of books and pamphlets which had been imported from the continent was intercepted at Coventry. Given the diligence of the authorities, the fact that the consignment had been transported so far from its presumable point of entry at London or on the south or east coasts of England is impressive. On Christmas Day the Council ordered that the prominent royalist publisher John Williams be committed to the Gatehouse ‘for printing and publishing scandalous and seditious pamphlets’, among which was the Eikon Basilike. Two days later the Council of State ordered the arrest of the royalist cleric Dr Thomas Bayly for writing ‘a seditious and treasonable book’ entitled The Royal Charter Granted unto Kings, by God Himself; at the same time, the much-reviled Thomas Scott was ordered to examine the bookseller Henry Seile ‘as to his printing and publishing the before-mentioned book’.127 The increasing number of references in late 1649 and early 1650 to the seizure or attempted seizure of royalist material which was printed on the continent is eloquent testimony to the difficulties of producing such material in London, and to the high quality of the intelligence being received by the regime. One cannot but suspect that at least some of this intelligence was provided by one or more of the numerous royalist authors, printers or hawkers who were in custody at this time. The authorities continued their offensive against what remained of the royalist press during the first half of 1650. On the first day of the year, Pragmaticus complained that Bradshaw ‘hath left no meanes unasay’d to passe my doome’.128 A few days later the Council issued a warrant to a London stationer named John Dorrington empowering him to search for illegal and seditious material.129 Dorrington and the other searchers may have been spurred on by the fact that the reward for the capture of the royalist newsbooks had apparently risen from £30 to £50.130 On 16 January The Man in the Moon reported that two women had been imprisoned in connection with the royalist Declaration and Protestation of the Governor and Inhabitants of Virginia. One of these women was the wife of Edward Crouch, the imprisoned printer of The Man in the Moon, and it was claimed that there was a very real possibility that their impoverished children would starve in the absence of both parents.131 On 31 January The Man in the Moon claimed

the Cromwellians indicates how complete the disintegration of the royalist underground was by this time. 126 SP 25/63/400–4. 127 Whitlocke, Memorials, p. 419; SP 25/63/427; SP 25/63/435. 128 Pragmaticus, no. 35, 25 Dec. 1649–1 Jan. 1650, sig. 1v. 129 SP 25/63/483. 130 Pragmaticus, no. 38, 15–22 Jan. 1650, sig. 2v. 131 Man in the Moon, no. 38, 9–16 Jan. 1650, pp. 303–4. 180


that ‘a new Couple of beagles, male and female’, probably Parliament Joan and John Harris, had recently joined the hunt for him at the direction of the director of intelligence, Thomas Scott.132 Early in February ‘Parliament Joan’ arrested the royalist printer William Dugard and found four presses at the Merchant Taylors’ School in Suffolk Lane. On the second day of the month George Wharton, the author of Elencticus who had been imprisoned in August 1648, was released from custody after he agreed to ‘write nothing thenceforth against the parliament or state’.133 The eighteenth of February brought a letter from the Council to the Commissioners of Customs warning them that ‘several copies’ of Salmasius’s Defensio Regia were to be imported from Leiden into England. The Commissioners were asked to ‘give order to all your subordinate officers for discovery and seizure of those books’. At about the same time The Man in the Moon again complained about the attentions of Parliament Joan and John Harris, and the newly founded Royall Diurnall reported that Harris and a certain ‘Jack Daw’ were attempting to find him.134 The imprisoned royalist printers Edward Crouch and William Dugard both came to terms with the regime in early March and were released from custody; towards the end of the month a hawker named Ellen Brabin was arrested while distributing presumably royalist ‘traitorous pamphlets’ within the City of London.135 The activities of the searchers forced Pragmaticus to miss an issue in late March, and The Man in the Moon skipped a week in early April. On 30 April the Sergeant-at-Arms and a stationer named Peter Cole were issued with a warrant to ‘search for and seize all scandalous and unlicensed books, pamphlets, and papers that they may find’.136 These efforts bore fruit with the arrest of William Ellis as the printer of Pragmaticus some time soon after the fifty-fifth issue appeared on 28 May.137 Mercurius Elencticus and The Man in the Moon were now the only royalist newsbooks in production. The seventh and final issue of Elencticus appeared on 3 June, and very soon afterwards John Crouch was arrested and imprisoned in the Gatehouse; he spent more than two years in prison before he recanted and wrote a short-lived pro-army newsbook in return for his liberty. The state never missed an opportunity to parade the fact that its former enemies had changed sides, and in the second week of June the regime performed a propaganda ‘spectacular’ which greatly undermined not just the production of underground propaganda, but the entire royalist cause in England. From 13 June 1650 the former royalist author Marchamont

Man in the Moon, no. 40, 23–31 Jan. 1650, p. 319. SP 25/63/547; SP 25/63/586. SP 25/93/3; SP 19/98/90; Man in the Moon, no. 43, 13–20 Feb. 1650, p. 343; Man in the Moon, no. 48 [sic], 13–20 Mar. 1650, p. 374. 135 SP 25/64/67–8; SP 25/64/141. 136 SP 25/64/282; SP 25/64/386. 137 SP 25/64/415. 132 133 134

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Nedham began to write and edit the newly established government newsbook Mercurius Politicus, a task which he undertook for almost a decade until the Restoration. According to Anthony Wood, Nedham’s decision to write for the regicides whom he had previously attacked was so shocking that ‘the generality for a long time, especially the most generous Royalists, could not believe that that intelligence could possibly be written by the same hand that wrote M. Pragmaticus’.138 The royalist press was moribund within weeks of the Printing Act, but it was consigned to the grave with the ‘turning’ of Marchamont Nedham in June 1650.

138

Athenae Oxonienses, ii, p. 626. 182

7

The Theory and Practice of Censorship

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF CENSORSHIP

Strong and effective censorship?

Until relatively recently it was generally thought that the early-modern English state exerted such a strict control over what was written and printed that the system of censorship could be likened to that of modern totalitarian states. The most important exponent of this idea was Frederick Siebert, whose highly influential (and staunchly Whig) Freedom of the Press in England, 1476–1776 first appeared in the United States at the height of the Cold War in 1952. Siebert likened government control of the press in early-modern England to that in Communist Russia, and for him it was axiomatic that successive governments had wished to control or suppress anything which interfered with or undermined their authority, and the struggle between this oppressive state apparatus and the brave men who risked life and limb to publish political and religious truth played a central part in the emergence of a free, prosperous and democratic society in Britain.1 Siebert’s account of early-modern censorship influenced numerous scholars over several generations, among whom perhaps the most prominent figure was the Marxist historian Christopher Hill. He believed that Tudor and Stuart control over the press was tantamount to modern attempts at ‘thought-control’, and the strict control of the press was, he wrote, designed to ‘prevent the circulation of dangerous ideas among the masses of the population’. To Hill, although censorship was omnipresent before 1640, the strictness of the system increased during the 1630s and reached its zenith following the promulgation of a decree by the infamous Court of Star Chamber in 1637. When this imposing edifice collapsed in 1641 it ‘opened the floodgates’ on a wealth of hitherto suppressed radical literature which was only brought under control with great difficulty during the 1650s. This brief period of freedom was so frightening that one of the first things that the restored monarchy did in 1660 was to reinstate a strict control of the press. For both Siebert and Hill, one of the keystones of the edifice of censorship was the Stationers’ Company, the joint-stock company incorporated by

1

F.S. Siebert, Freedom of the press in England, 1476–1776 (Urbana, IL, 1952). 183


Royal Charter in 1557, and which exerted a fearsome and diligent control over the output of the press.2 This model of censorship has been modified by a number of non-Marxist scholars, most notably Annabel Patterson, whose Censorship and interpretation provides a more theoretical account of censorship which explains the absence of large numbers of book burnings or executions by reference to a theory of what she calls ‘functional ambiguity’. She believes that authors developed codes of communication in order to be able to write what they wanted without directly provoking or confronting the authorities. Both authors and the state were fully aware as to how much an author could write concerning contentious issues, and how an author could encode his or her opinions so that nobody would be required to make an example of him or her. Functional ambiguity was, therefore, ‘the cultural code . . . by which matters of intense social and political concern continued to be discussed in the face of extensive political censorship’. Notorious incidents such as the trial and mutilation of William Prynne were merely signs that the codes governing socio-political communication had been transgressed by either the author or the state.3 Janet Clare’s important study of the stage argues forcefully that the Elizabethan and Jacobean governments operated a ‘coherent and systematic attack on the freedom of expression’ of dramatists, and that all the plays of this period were written in the shadow of the censor, even if individual works escaped his attention. She differs from Patterson not merely in her choice of subject material – Patterson concentrates on the more privileged genre of poetry, while Clare focuses on drama, a much more dangerous and topical form of literary production – but also in that she does not detect any universally understood rules as to what would invoke the wrath of the authorities, or any generalized understanding of what needed to be done in order to ensure that one did not fall foul of the censor. The regulation of drama was, in her view, an unpredictable and unstable process which illustrates the problematic nature of the alliance between rulers and writers.4 In addition to these literary scholars, a number of historians who could never be described as either Whigs or Marxists have reiterated the presence and importance of censorship, particularly under the Laudian regime of the See Christopher Hill, ‘Censorship and English literature’, in The collected essays of Christopher Hill, vol. i (Brighton, 1984), pp. 32–71; The century of revolution, 1603–1714, 2nd edn (1997), pp. 66, 128, 149; Antichrist in seventeenth-century England, 2nd edn (1990), p. 40; The world turned upside down: radical ideas during the English Revolution, 4th edn (1991), pp. 17–18; The experience of defeat: Milton and some contemporaries, 2nd edn (1994), p. 19; Intellectual origins of the English Revolution revisited (Oxford, 1997), pp. 14, 293. 3 Annabel Patterson, Censorship and interpretation: the conditions of reading and writing in early-modern England (Madison, WI, 1984), pp. 10–11, 17, 44–6. 4 Janet Clare, ‘Art Made Tongue-tied by Authority’: Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic censorship, 2nd edn (Manchester, 1999), passim; ‘Censorship and negotiation’, in Andrew Hadfield (ed.), Literature and censorship in Renaissance England (2001), pp. 17–30. 2

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1630s. Anthony Thompson’s examination of the career of G.R. Weckherlin, a licenser of the press between 1627 and 1638, demonstrates incontrovertibly that from the late 1620s the crown increasingly began to restrict the publication of all forms of news.5 Anthony Milton is wary of Christopher Hill’s account of Laudian censorship, and is at pains to stress that overt censorship was only one of the ways that the Laudian regime exerted an influence over the press. For example, licensers often toned down the more extreme sentiments in religious texts in order to ensure that they would be published. This essentially benign form of censorship was designed to ensure that comparatively few authors were forced to resort to the extreme measure of having their titles printed in secret in England or abroad. Milton does, however, point out that in the fifteen years before 1640 ‘well over thirty religious books were reported as interfered with or stopped at the press’, and suggests that this figure may well represent ‘the tip of an iceberg of petty intrusiveness by licensers’. During the 1630s there was, he believes, ‘a widespread consciousness of restrictions on the expression of religious views’. He argues that in the ‘increasingly polarized atmosphere’ of the 1630s, licensing and censorship ‘could be (and were) used as weapons to block texts and embarrass opponents’.6 Milton’s arguments are supported by Arnold Hunt’s examination of the mechanics of licensing books for publication, which detects a gradual tightening of controls over the press in the eighty years before 1640. Hunt argues that as late as the mid-1620s a licenser like Daniel Featley saw himself ‘not merely as a censor but also as a collaborator, helping to ease the passage of books into print, and acting almost as a sort of literary agent’. Licensing became much more aggressive and interventionist during the 1630s, however, when ‘religious censorship had a marked effect on the output of the London printing presses, significantly narrowing the range of opinions allowed into print’.7 The ‘new orthodoxy’ on censorship and its weaknesses Impressive as the work of scholars such as Thompson, Milton and Hunt undoubtedly is, they have been swimming against the tide of generally accepted opinion. Over the last twenty or so years it has become something of a received wisdom that the early-modern state lacked any effective tools to enforce its will upon the press, and, more importantly, that the authorities Anthony B. Thompson, ‘Licensing the press: the career of G.R. Weckherlin during the Personal Rule of Charles I’, HJ, 41, 3 (1998), 653–78. 6 Anthony Milton, ‘Licensing, censorship and religious orthodoxy in early Stuart England’, HJ, 41, 3 (1998), 625–51, at 626, 633 and 644–5. 7 Arnold Hunt, ‘Licensing and religious censorship in early-modern England’, in Andrew Hadfield (ed.), Literature and censorship in Renaissance England (2001), pp. 127–46. 5

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were not particularly interested in censoring what modern commentators might assume was offensive. Some scholars have argued that the existence of censorship in early-modern Britain is nothing more than an invention of modern liberal academics, while others have conceded that censorship did exist but have tried to downplay its importance in regulating the oral, literary or printed culture of society. It is tempting to call the proponents of this view ‘revisionists’, but such a label would be unhelpful because it would conflate these scholars with the generation of political historians who, in the mid-1970s, posited new, more contingent and less deterministic causes for the outbreak of the First Civil War, and it would blur the important differences in sources, methodology and argument between the men and women who have sought to question the traditional assumptions about the nature of early-modern censorship. It would certainly be a mistake to ignore the important differences of emphasis between these scholars as to the importance and effectiveness of censorship, but, taken as a whole, they have contributed to a fundamental rethinking of the nature of censorship in early-modern society. The arguments of these recent commentators are so pervasive and so widely accepted that they represent a new orthodoxy. This chapter will summarize the most influential works of this new orthodoxy, before pointing out some of the logical flaws in these arguments. It will finish with a detailed analysis of the practice of censorship during the 1640s, a task which undermines recent claims about the absence of any mechanisms by which the state might impose its will upon the press. One of the key arguments of this discussion of the new orthodoxy on censorship is that the injudicious use of cross-disciplinary approaches has created a terrible intellectual muddle which distorts the political and social realities of the society which it purports to describe. It is not an argument against cross-disciplinary or multi-disciplinary work per se, but it does suggest that such work must be undertaken with a degree of care and rigour which has sometimes been absent from the recent literature on early-modern censorship. Some scholars, it will be suggested below, have unwittingly taken the weakest parts of disciplines other than their own and knotted them together to create a seriously misleading view of censorship in the early-modern period. The main weaknesses of the new orthodoxy include a naive reification of manuscript sources, particularly manuscripts generated by the central authorities; a blind faith in the absolute truth of numbers and percentages, which gives rise to a belief that the power and effectiveness of censorship can be measured by simply counting the number of items censored or authors punished; a quaint assumption that the administration of law or justice (the two concepts are not always coterminous) in early-modern England consisted of men being subjected to a legal process which ensured that they had their day in court in front of juries of their peers; the idea that for censorship to have been effective the authorities must at all times have implemented the letter of the law to the fullest extent possible; a remarkable level of abstraction which often chooses to ignore or minimize the often 186


brutal treatment of those who fell foul of the law; and a surprising ability to analyse texts in isolation from what one might term a ‘sociology of power’, or, put more simply, the political realities of the society in which they circulated. Each of these objections to the new orthodoxy is important in its own right, but when considered together they are fatal. Giving them enough rope: the new orthodoxy and its adherents The earliest reassessments of the Whig and Marxist model of censorship were prompted by an examination of Renaissance drama. Blair Worden acknowledges that individual plays and dramatists were censored and admits that for every intervention by the censor there may have been countless occasions when a playwright omitted material rather than risk trouble. Yet he believes that, ‘when we observe the breadth of political exploration which did secure untroubled presentation on the stage, we must suspect that the government lacked not merely the power, but the inclination, to impose conditions of writing that can helpfully be called repressive’.8 Kevin Sharpe believes that the myth of widespread censorship needs to be dispelled, and that efforts were only made to control particular authors or titles deemed to be extremely offensive. He notes that the authorities had only very limited success in controlling the circulation of offensive books because ‘there were no adequate institutions or mechanisms through which to exercise it [censorship]’. These comments relate to the press in general, but most of Sharpe’s work on censorship concerns itself with the theatre which, he believes, enjoyed a ‘virtually unbounded’ freedom provided it did not obviously reflect topical controversy. This freedom, he argues, stems from the role theatre played as one of the safety valves through which criticism could be expressed and contained in early Stuart England. He admits that there is no shortage of examples of playwrights punished for ill-advised references or allusions to controversial events. But such cases were, he believes, usually of transparent topicality and may have been prosecuted for abusing ‘the acknowledged licence of play to comment and criticize provided that it did so indirectly and obliquely’.9 Richard Dutton has also argued that the censorship of English Renaissance drama ‘was neither as totalitarian nor draconian as it is often held to Blair Worden, ‘Literature and political censorship in early modern England’, in A.C. Duke and C.A. Tamse (eds), Too mighty to be free: censorship and the press in Britain and the Netherlands (Zutphen, 1987), pp. 45–62. 9 Kevin Sharpe, Politics and ideas in early Stuart England (1989), p. 9; The personal rule of Charles I (New Haven, CT, 1992), pp. 653–4; Criticism and compliment: the politics of literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 36–8, 296–7; Remapping earlymodern England: the culture of seventeenth-century politics (2000), pp. 46–7, 419, 423; Reading revolutions: the politics of reading in early-modern England (New Haven, CT, 2000), pp. 254, 627, 637. 8

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be’. Dutton believes that ‘early-modern readers (including theatre audiences) read plays and other texts analogically, often “applying” quite exotic fictions to contemporary persons and events’. Censors were quite aware of the fact, but usually chose to ignore it unless they deemed the ‘application’ to be too transparent or provocative. He says that ‘politically-charged analogical reading was normal, the usual conditions of writing and reading in the period’. For him, the flash-points of early-modern censorship were not primarily products of intensive attempts to police political and religious ideology, but rather moments of breakdown when the usual accommodations failed to protect the privileged classes who expected to be shielded from demeaning public scrutiny. These arguments may, at first glance, seem to complement those of Annabel Patterson, but in Dutton’s view, the Master of the Revels – the official in charge of licensing and censoring plays – was both the regulator and protector of the actors and playwrights. The Master could on occasion be strict but in general he adopted a patrician attitude and deigned not to notice what did not strictly require to be noticed. He was less a censor than an intermediary between the court and the playwrights and performers, whose role was to arbitrate between various factions and interests to ensure that a legitimate political process could take place. It was, therefore, the general goodwill of the court towards the actors that it patronized which ensured that the Renaissance stage was so intellectually, socially and politically vigorous.10 The tendency to play down the ability or inclination of the state to impose censorship in any meaningful sense has gone furthest among those scholars interested in the printed word. One could cite many writers, but the most far-reaching and comprehensive reassessment of the nature of press censorship has been provided in two books written by Cyndia Clegg. Her 1997 analysis of Elizabethan censorship acknowledges that the government had a general desire to control the products of the printing press, but argues that censorship was less a product of prescriptive (and proscriptive) Tudor policy than a pragmatic situational response to an extraordinary variety of particular events. Clegg discounts the notion of effective pre-publication review and claims that the conflicting interests of those charged with licensing printed matter ‘created a porous system of press control that enabled the printing of a high proportion of texts that received either partial pre-publication scrutiny or none at all’. Elizabethan censorship was a ‘crazy quilt’ of orders and institutions ‘patched together by the sometimes common and sometimes competing threads of religious, economic, political and private interests’. In contrast to Annabel Patterson, Clegg argues that authors and publishers never had a clear idea of what would be considered 10 Richard Dutton, Mastering the revels: the regulation and censorship of English Renaissance drama (1991), p. ix; Licensing, censorship and authorship in early-modern England (2000), pp. 3–14; ‘Receiving offence: a game at chess again’, in Andrew Hadfield (ed.), Literature and censorship in Renaissance England (2001), pp. 50–71.

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transgressive by the authorities. The mechanisms for press control were usually invoked only in response to particular texts which were deemed offensive. Press censorship was ‘less a part of the routine machinery of an authoritarian state than an ad hoc response – albeit authoritarian – to particular texts that the state perceived to endanger the exercise of its legitimate and necessary authority’. Although Clegg occasionally suggests that the Elizabethans possessed ‘ineffectual’ mechanisms for imposing their will on the press, the general tenor of her book is not to deny the ability of the government to punish works to which it took exception; rather, she argues that the state was slow to rouse to anger and that the instances of censorship which undoubtedly did take place do not constitute a pro-active, all-encompassing system of press regulation.11 In 2001 Clegg published a second instalment in her broader ‘revisionist’ (her phrase) project to re-write the history of press censorship in the Tudor and early-Stuart period. Press censorship in Jacobean England reiterates her central point that although the state had, on paper at least, a variety of forceful laws against transgressive printing and a number of potentially fearsome bodies with which to enforce these laws, the reality was decidedly less menacing and intimidating: the theory and practice of censorship were entirely different things. Fewer than 1 per cent of the books published in England during the reign of James I inspired any ‘efforts to suppress them or punish their authors or printers’. Clegg follows Anthony Milton in arguing that censorship could sometimes be a benign process of tweaking a text in order to make it acceptable for publication, but shows that authors could never be entirely sure that they would (or perhaps more importantly, would not) get into trouble for writing any particular item. Licensing during this period was as porous and open to abuse as it had been in Elizabeth’s days, but the bodies charged with enforcing the laws on printing were, if anything, less effective than they had been in the previous reign. This was because they had become further institutionalized and ‘in the course of this institutionalization, these agencies committed themselves more and more to their own institutional agendas’ rather than to the hegemony of the state. For Clegg, the ‘uncontrollable’ nature of the Stationers’ Company and its tendency to wink at illegal printing go ‘a long way toward explaining why even the more rigorous censorship that James’s government would perhaps like to have effected in the 1620s’ failed to materialize. There were more instances of press censorship during James’s reign than had occurred under Elizabeth, but Clegg chooses to emphasize the personal rather than the political significance of much of this regulation. In other words, many of the acts of suppression sought by the most powerful people in the kingdom, including the king himself, are seen not as acts of state but as non-political attempts to

11 Cyndia S. Clegg, Press censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 5, 30–1, 66, 73, 217, 221.

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preserve individual or family reputations. In this re-reading of the evidence Clegg glosses over the obvious point that personal attacks on the king, leading clerics, officers of state and noblemen were political acts in themselves. Instead, she argues that these acts of censorship provide evidence not of an arbitrary and authoritarian state, but of how individuals ‘could appropriate established institutions in an arbitrary and seemingly authoritarian way to protect personal interests’. Those acts of incontrovertibly political censorship, such as the public burning of several books at St Paul’s Cross, are minimized by explaining them as rhetorical acts or dramatic performances. James I ruled ‘more by a rhetoric of authority than by the exercise of sheer absolute power’ and acts of Jacobean censorship are best imagined, Clegg argues, as a ‘kind of performance engaged in constructing the fiction of royal authority’. Press control was not a physically threatening reality but a ‘propagandistic act that put an exclamation point on a statement of royal opinion’. When James I burned books ‘he did so not to control public access to the ideas censored writers expressed, but to attract attention to how distant their ideas were from his own’.12 In an important essay published posthumously in The Cambridge history of the book, 1557–1695, Don McKenzie attacks the ‘fiction’ that the system of state licensing had a deeply inhibiting effect upon printed publication. For him, the Acts passed against the press during the Restoration period were largely ineffective and of little significance to the book trade as a whole: pre-publication licensing was widely, and safely, evaded. To support his argument that fear of the courts had virtually no impact on the book trade, he points out that ‘of the 100,000 or so titles or editions of titles between 1641 and 1700 there are only 400 references in official sources to censorship, a figure representing about 0.4% of the trade’. Furthermore, only the tiniest fraction of these 400 books led to a criminal charge, let alone a conviction or punishment. He has argued, using a striking metaphor, that the book trade, like the development of the motor-car, may be more completely understood by studying the mechanisms of the engine rather than the brake.13 Sheila Lambert is probably the most pugnacious of all of the scholars who have questioned the traditional notion of an all-pervasive censorship. She dismisses the notion of strict censorship as ‘a necessary part of the liberal account of the irresistible march of liberty and also of the Marxist version of events. Since not too much overt evidence seemed to be found in historical sources of public demand for a new political order, it had to be assumed that

Cyndia S. Clegg, Press censorship in Jacobean England (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 9, 17, 41, 59–60, 65, 67, 89, 91, 122–3, 189, 196; Cyndia S. Clegg ‘The Stationers’ Company of London’, in DLB 170, pp. 275–91. 13 CHB, pp. 560–1, 566–7; D.F. McKenzie, ‘Stationers’ Company “Liber A”: an Apologia’, in Robin Myers and Michael Harris (eds), The Stationers’ Company and the book-trade, 1550–1990 (Winchester, 1997), p. 41. 12

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such opinions existed but were suppressed.’14 Lambert acknowledges that the governments of Elizabeth, James and Charles had a concept of censorship but asserts that seventeenth-century monarchs had ‘no desire or inclination to suppress all printed opposition to the crown’. The simplest proof, for her, that the government never intended full control of everything that was printed is that no attempt was ever made to control the importation of paper. If the authorities had invoked this simple measure, the argument goes, it would have been easy to identify all buyers of paper, to monitor the rate of production in all printing houses, and to move against any individual suspected of buying, storing or using paper for illicit purposes.15 The well-known cases of censorship, such as the mutilation and imprisonment of Prynne, Burton and Bastwick, are special cases from which it is foolish to extrapolate, and she believes that censorship was primarily an economic matter. The 1637 Star Chamber Decree was not imposed by the government for political reasons but was sought by the relevant trade organization, the Stationers’ Company, in order to restrict printing, publishing and bookselling to its membership. Indeed, Lambert has even questioned whether the Stationers’ Company – the trade guild responsible for regulating the press, which was sometimes compared to the Cheka or the Gestapo by Whig and Marxist historians – was ever more than a distinctly feeble group of ‘a couple of hundred squabbling small tradesmen’ with no interest in upholding the hegemony of the state.16 The weaknesses of the new orthodoxy The following pages analyse some of the conceptual and factual weaknesses of the new orthodoxy on censorship, before disproving one of its key arguments – that the early-modern state could not call upon any effective mechanisms or institutions to impose its will upon the press.17 This is not an attempt to revive the model of an all-pervasive state censorship; it is necessary to embrace the aspects of the new orthodoxy which stress the ad hoc, reactive, and sometimes chaotic nature of early-modern censorship. This is not the same as saying, however, that the early-modern state could not Sheila Lambert, ‘State control of the press in theory and practice: the role of the Stationers’ Company before 1640’, in Robin Myers and Michael Harris (eds), Censorship and the control of print in England and France, 1600–1900 (Winchester, 1992), pp. 1–32. 15 Lambert, ‘State control of the press’, pp. 7–8. 16 Sheila Lambert, ‘The printers and the government, 1604–1637’, in Robin Myers and Michael Harris (eds), Aspects of printing from 1600 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 1–2; ‘Richard Montague, Arminianism and censorship’, P&P, 124 (1989), 36–68; ‘State control of the press’, pp. 2, 16, 22. 17 Jerome de Groot, Royalist identities (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 48–9, 109; Kathleen M. Noonan, ‘ “The Cruell Pressure of an Enraged, Barbarous People”: Irish and English identity in seventeenth-century policy and propaganda’, HJ, 41, 1 (1998), 151–77, at 173. 14

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impose conditions upon the press which might be called repressive. If, as will be argued, the key institutions responsible for bringing the press to heel in the late 1640s were in place as early as the reign of Elizabeth and as late as the reign of William III, then the explanation for the relative freedom of the press during these years must be sought in other factors, such as the lack of a belief that print should be a central concern of state, or the lack of a diligent individual to oversee the sustained use of these bodies against the press. There are a number of obvious objections to this approach. Most (but by no means all) of the examples in this book are drawn from the 1640s and 1650s, whereas the majority (but by no means all) of the recent work on censorship is confined to the four decades before 1640. One might reasonably wonder whether any meaningful conclusions can be drawn from a comparison of such startlingly different periods of history. After all, the abolition of the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission in 1641 were not insignificant matters. Neither were the explosion of unlicensed printing and the outbreak of civil war, the use of the new standing army against the press during the 1640s, and the creation of the office of the Surveyor of the Press in the 1660s. Cyndia Clegg is surely right to warn against the danger of facile generalizations from specific incidents and periods. She has also pointed out the need to be aware of the very real discontinuities between different periods in early-modern history; so, for example, at least part of the reason for the differences between, say, the day-to-day practice of press censorship in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods was due to contingent and largely unpredictable factors such as the prickliness of the monarch about material reflecting upon his or her family or ancestors, or a desire at particular times not to alienate potential or actual diplomatic allies in Europe.18 One must also be attuned to the internal developments within the structure of organizations and the changing roles which they were called upon to perform at different times, depending on the policies and priorities of the central authorities. It would be a mistake to suggest that the various mechanisms and organizations charged with censorship remained static over long periods of time.19 Be this as it may, one must be aware of continuity as well as changes, and one cannot but be struck by the remarkable degree of continuity in the bodies called upon to control the press during the 150 years before 1695. Historians of the book trade, censorship and the press, far from accepting the neat little parcels of twenty, thirty or forty years into which historians of 18 Clegg, Press censorship in Jacobean England, pp. 162–84. See also Mark Bland, ‘ “Invisible Dangers”: censorship and the subversion of authority in early-modern England’ PBSA, 90, 2 (June 1996), 151–93, at 155; and Matt Jenkinson, ‘Nathaniel Vincent and Confucius’s “Great Learning” in Restoration England’, Notes & Records of the Royal Society, 60, 1 (Jan. 2006), 10, fn. 8. 19 Cyprian Blagden, ‘The Stationers’ Company in the Civil War period’, The Library, 5th ser., XIII, 1 (March 1958), 1–17.

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politics often divide the seventeenth century, should see the period between the incorporation of the Stationers’ Company in 1557 and the end of pre-publication censorship in 1695 as a unified whole. During this period of almost 140 years the Stationers’ Company had nationwide powers of search and seizure, and for all but nine of these years the authorities operated a system of compulsory pre-publication licensing and entry in the Register of the Company.20 This chapter will demonstrate conclusively that the now generally accepted model of how censorship operated does not hold true for the 1640s and 1650s, and it will suggest that this model is also an inaccurate representation of the situation which pertained before 1641 or after 1660. The new orthodoxy on censorship is not without its benefits. It has suggested that readers in the twenty-first century should discount all ahistorical ideas of an Orwellian Big Brother when considering this topic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is now possible to view earlymodern censorship not as an evil to be condemned, but as a useful way of determining where power resided in a society and how that power was utilized, and for what ends. It is also clear that the relationship between successive regimes and the book trade was not defined solely in terms of repression; even during periods of strict censorship there was a great deal of commercial, non-political co-operation or symbiosis between the two. Furthermore, there was often a huge discrepancy between the harsh penalties on the statute books and the reality of how the state interpreted and implemented these laws. Enforcement often fell far short of intention, and harsh laws were often merely a cloak, and a threadbare cloak at that, to hide inadequate administration. It is also clear that there were changes in the practice of censorship over time.21 The idea of an all-pervasive, allencompassing censorship which stifled any and all dissent is no longer tenable, but this does not mean that we must accept all of the arguments put forward in recent years about the limited nature and effectiveness of censorship in the early-modern period. Many of the more strident claims put forward by proponents of the new orthodoxy are undermined by a number of serious conceptual and methodological weaknesses. For example, the claim that any government which was truly interested in regulating the press would have controlled the supply of paper is disproved by the Printing Act of September 1649.22 There can be no doubt that the Cromwellians intended this piece of legislation to smother all unlicensed and seditious printing, and it did successfully facilitate this task. None of its numerous clauses, however, contain any mention of a desire to control the paper trade. At least one underground royalist author felt that Johns, Nature of the book, p. 234. Clegg, Press censorship in Jacobean England, pp. 18–19; Press censorship in Elizabethan England, p. 5; Peter McCullough, ‘ “Making Dead Men Speak” Laudianism, print, and the works of Lancelot Andrewes’, 1626–1642, HJ, 41, 2 (1998), 423. 22 Lambert, ‘State control of the press’, p. 8. 20 21

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this was a fatal flaw which would render the Act as ineffective as all the earlier legislation of the decade, but the subsequent weeks and months proved him wrong.23 The strict control of the press in late 1649 and early 1650 demonstrates that one did not need to control paper sales, thereby perhaps alienating powerful commercial interests whom the state would have to rely upon in order to impose its will, in order to eradicate unlicensed and seditious printing. Indeed, the example of the French, who did control paper sales but were never entirely free from unlicensed or seditious printing, demonstrates that the control of paper was not the panacea that one might expect it to have been. One could make a series of similar points against various tenets of the new orthodoxy, but this chapter will confine itself to a few of the most important: its naive attitude to manuscript sources; its blind faith in numbers and percentages; the belief that for censorship to have been effective the authorities must at all times have implemented the letter of the law to the fullest extent possible; and an over-intellectualization of specific incidents of censorship which ignores the often brutal treatment of those who fell foul of the law. Many of the recent writers on early-modern censorship exude a certain degree of satisfaction that they, unlike Siebert and Hill who relied almost exclusively on printed sources, have spent time in archives and dirtied their hands on contemporary manuscripts. They have found very few instances of censorship in these archives and therefore conclude that earlier scholars have afforded it too central a place in early-modern culture. Print, it seems, is a medium which distorts the true facts, while manuscripts are in some mystical way more inherently reliable when one is trying to discover what ‘actually’ happened. Yet, manuscript sources are no more likely than print to give a true and faithful account of events; they often tell us not what happened but what the people of high status who wrote or read the manuscripts in question believed to have happened, were told had happened, or wanted to believe had happened. Official sources also tend to stress consensus and compromise and to underplay the frequency and severity of conflict in society.24 The commercial records generated by the book trade and the Stationers’ Company, the type of archive sources upon which the new orthodoxy has chosen to build its foundations, are probably the least likely type of source to record instances of political conflict and censorship. As a striking comparison, the records of the Paris Book Guild from the start of the French Revolution until the dissolution of the guild in 1791 contain no references to any of the monumental events which tore France apart in the years after 1788. The guild records for 14 July 1789, the day on which the Parisian masses stormed the Bastille, detail the admission of a new printer, Pragmaticus, no. 24, 25 Sept.–2 Oct. 1649, sig. 3v. Johann Sommerville, Royalists and patriots: politics and ideology in England, 1603–1640, 2nd edn (1999), p. 216; Ian Archer, The pursuit of stability: social relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 16, 40, 100–2.

23 24

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and the other eighty-seven meetings of the guild during the Revolution are equally disappointing for students of French politics.25 A reliance on book trade records might lead one to believe that the French Revolution never took place. The example is revealing because a number of commentators, most notably Sheila Lambert, have noted the relative absence of references to censorship in the records of the English Stationers’ Company. One could certainly use the records of the Stationers’ Company during the late 1640s to construct an image of a benign, ramshackle organization which was only interested in defending the financial interests of its members (there is only one brief reference in the Company records of this period to the regulation of the press),26 but, as we saw in the previous chapter, when one uses other contemporary sources, such as ephemeral printed material, one finds dozens of references to the involvement of booksellers and printers in regulating the press. The widely accepted lack of interest in, or aptitude for, censorship on the part of the Stationers’ Company owes less to historical reality than to the inherent weakness of the sources favoured by proponents of this new orthodoxy. It is mistaken to believe that all instances of censorship will show up in the historical record and that one merely has to count each and every incident to arrive at the sum total of censorship in any society. Arnold Hunt has rightly noted that the most effective censorship is that which leaves no trace, and it is worth pointing out that there must have been many incidents of censorship which were not recorded by contemporaries or which were recorded at the time in sources which have subsequently been lost or destroyed. It would, in other words, be naive to believe that the surviving historical sources tell us everything that we would like to know about the past. In addition, the nature and effectiveness of censorship are not dependent on the number of instances of censorship but on the quality, importance and reputation of the items censored and on the severity of the punishment meted out to individuals. Censorship is a qualitative rather than a quantitative process, and some instances of censorship are more important than others. The execution of one printer, the mutilation of one author or the imprisonment and bankruptcy of one bookseller can be much more significant than a ritualistic adherence to the letter of the law which insists that all unlicensed books and pamphlets must be pursued to the full extent of the law. It is hard to imagine any category of crime at any point in human history for which the most rigorous implementation of the law against all potential suspects all of the time has been carried out. Furthermore, the argument that censorship was not an important factor in society because very few items which attracted the attention of the authorities ended with a trial, let alone a conviction, is a peculiarly Whiggish argument which assumes that Carla Hesse, Publishing and cultural politics in Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1810 (Berkeley, CA, 1991), pp. 33–4. 26 SCCB C 247v (6 Sept. 1647), which is discussed below. 25

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law-enforcement in England has always been about having one’s day in open court.27 The numerous incidents of censorship between 1647 and 1650 which were recounted in the previous chapter demonstrate that attempts to control and gag the press rarely, if ever, needed to end with a trial in a court-room. There were much more effective, extra-judicial, ways of achieving one’s goals than trying somebody at the Old Bailey. The number of men and women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who were imprisoned or suffered corporal or capital punishment for abuse of the press was relatively small, but only a few people needed to be imprisoned, flogged, mutilated or executed in order for the state to send a message to potential wrongdoers. In 1567 Francis Bacon thought that making an example of ‘half a dozen’ would ‘sufficently warn half a hundred’, and although fewer than half a dozen people were mutilated under Charles I for offences concerning printing one cannot ignore how seriously these mutilations were viewed by contemporaries. Having one’s ears chopped off was not a matter of indifference to the poor soul who suffered the punishment. One might go further and say that Charles II, James II and William III each executed the optimum number of subversive printers in order to frighten individual malefactors but still maintain good relations with the book trade as a whole: one. The effect of such isolated but severe punishment could be very great; the case of John Stubbes was still of interest to the Presbyterian diarist Roger Morrice in the early 1680s, more than one hundred years after Stubbes lost his hand for publishing a book which dared to advise Elizabeth I on her intended marriage.28 The familiar list of those mutilated, imprisoned or executed in early-modern England for abuse of the press (Stubbes, Prynne, Burton, Bastwick, Twyn and Disney) is not merely the product of the interests of modern historians; these were names of great importance to early-modern commentators, and were seen at the time as important markers or turning points in each reign. In the normal course of events only a particularly unlucky or obstinate person would find themselves brought to trial for infringements of the laws concerning printing. England’s rulers were sophisticated enough, or pragmatic enough, to realize that there were some offensive books which should be studiously ignored. They also seem to have believed that it would be counter-productive to punish some books and pamphlets, thereby publicizing them and giving them a certain ‘cachet’ that they might not otherwise have enjoyed. In 1649, for example, the regicide Henry Marten opposed the execution of the royalist writer David Jenkins because history showed that ‘sanguis martyrum est semen ecclesiae’ (the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church).29 The various administrations of the early-modern period seem to have opted for trials only when they believed that not to act would under27 28 29

Clegg, Press censorship in Jacobean England, p. 22; CHB, pp. 560–1, 566–7. DWL, Morrice MS P386. Aubrey, Brief lives, p. 173. 196


mine their authority and when they were almost certain of securing a conviction.30 The prospect of the accused walking free was so detrimental to the prestige and authority of the government that threats and low-level harassment seem to have been a much more prevalent way of controlling the press than formal trials in open court. The trouble and expense involved in constant arrests and detention could be as effective in ruining a man’s health and business as a conviction at law.31 When one considers the fiasco that was the trial and acquittal of John Lilburne in 1649 for writing against the Republic, one can understand why few, if any, other authors, printers or publishers of the late 1640s and early 1650s were brought to trial and why the regime preferred to raid premises and detain men and women for indeterminate periods of time before releasing them on large bonds for good behaviour. It is likely that each of the three printers executed in England between 1664 and 1693 could have escaped the death penalty had they pleaded guilty, expressed remorse for their actions, and been willing to provide information about their fellow conspirators.32 It was the unusual intransigence and bravery (or foolhardiness, depending on one’s opinion) of these men which led to their executions; determining the presence or absence of censorship by counting the number of legal processes necessarily ignores the many men and women who were threatened with prison or execution but decided not to become martyrs. An agreement to provide information about one’s colleagues had the added benefit for the authorities of destroying bonds of friendship, and creating enmity and suspicion between former comrades. Those who were prepared to recant their opinions in the light of this harassment were sometimes found some form of official or semi-official employment and were often given a greater degree of latitude than other men and women in what they were allowed to publish. If malefactors who formally or publicly accepted the authority of the state and the rules governing publishing often found themselves in a relatively privileged or protected situation, those who were not persuaded by quasi-legal harassment to re-think their actions often found themselves in very difficult circumstances. In the 1680s, for example, the Baptist bookseller Francis Smith emigrated to New England because he was ‘so often and daily harassed . . . that he became delirious and ill’. Smith calculated his financial losses at the hands of the searchers at £1,400 over a

30 Mark Knights, Representation and misrepresentation in later-Stuart Britain. Partisanship and political culture (Oxford, 2005), pp. 262–3. 31 Laurence Hanson, Government and the press, 1695–1763 (Oxford, 1936), pp. 29, 67. 32 Melinda Zook, ‘Nursing sedition: women, dissent, and the Whig struggle’, in Jason McElligott (ed.), Fear, exclusion and revolution: Roger Morrice and Britain in the 1680s (Basingstoke, 2006), ch. 11, fns 62–6; Paul Monod, ‘The Jacobite press and English censorship, 1689–95’, in Eveline Cruickshanks and Edward Corp (eds), The Stuart court in exile and the Jacobites (1995), pp. 125–42, at pp. 138–40.

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period of twenty years.33 Most of those who were arrested for unlicensed or seditious printing seem to have assumed that they could, all things being equal, avoid arrest, and, if arrested, could avoid the severest sanctions of the law. They could never, however, be entirely sure that this would be so, and the inherent uncertainty and precariousness of their situation must have been a constant source of concern. It is important not to over-intellectualize specific incidents of censorship, or to present the process as merely a rhetorical act or public performance designed to draw attention to the opinions and beliefs of those who ruled society. Censorship involved many more fists, boots and broken bones than we have recently been led to believe.34 Finally, it must be said that some of those who have attacked the idea of a ‘hegemonic’ censorship in early-modern England are unclear as to precisely what they understand by the term ‘hegemony’. Cyndia Clegg, for example, imagines that in a hegemonic society the state does not tolerate any dissent and is anxious (and able) to suppress and punish those who speak or write against that hegemony or power. The fact that individual transgressive items were published in early-modern England, and that relatively few people suffered punishment under the law, therefore supposedly disproves any notion of the existence of hegemonic censorship in that society.35 Hegemony is not, however, merely, or even mostly, about the application of brute force, and it is certainly not predicated upon the removal of all forms of dissent. According to the originator of the concept of hegemony, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, the state is at its most powerful or hegemonic when the populace has internalized and accepted its policies and ideological positions as normal, commonsense ways of seeing the world. The use of force against one’s opponents may therefore signify a weak rather than a strong hegemony, because it testifies to the fact that there are individuals or groups who do not share the dominant or hegemonic ideas underpinning society. It also suggests that these individuals or groups cannot be persuaded that they, and not the state, or society in general, are in error. The fact that Gramsci developed his ideas on hegemony and state power in a series of notebooks and letters written while imprisoned in fascist jails between 1929 and 1935 points to the fact that even in a modern dictatorial state with secret police and torture chambers it is not possible to control, regulate or punish all forbidden thoughts, words or actions. Gramsci’s ability to formulate his thoughts in prison and the survival of his writings does not mean that the 33 BDBR, iii, p. 185; An Account of the Injurous Proceedings . . . against Francis Smith (1680); Leona Rostenberg, ‘Robert Stephens, messenger of the press: an episode in seventeenth-century censorship’, PBSA, 49 (1955), 131–52, at 138; Timothy J. Crist, ‘Government control of the press after the expiration of the Printing Act in 1679’, Publishing History, 5 (1979), 49–78, at 49, 60–1. 34 For examples of cruel and vindictive behaviour by officials searching private dwellings in the 1640s and 1680s see Pragmaticus, no. 44 [sic], 27 Feb.–5 Mar. 1649, 2r–v; and CUL Add MS. 7519.1, fols 7v–8r. 35 Clegg, Press censorship in Jacobean England, pp. 67, 124–5.

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Italian fascist state was unable to impose repressive conditions on society; it does, however, show that even in the most repressive regimes there will always be spaces in which dissent can survive. This brief discussion of Gramsci’s ideas is not an attempt to liken early-modern England to Mussolini’s Italy. Nor is it an attempt to relate the concept of hegemony to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. It is, however, a way of pointing out that it is, at best, dubious for scholars who wish to question the importance of early-modern censorship in England to invoke the concept of hegemonic censorship. Stationers, censorship and the state This section will examine the role of the Stationers’ Company in the practice of censorship in the late 1640s and early 1650s. It will demonstrate that although the Civil War period was characterized by political, religious and financial chaos within the Company, it was still called upon to play a central role in the suppression of unlicensed or seditious printing. The Stationers’ Company was not the toothless, ramshackle body obsessed only with the financial well-being of its members that has been described by many recent scholars. It is, of course, important to see the Stationers’ Company as a trade guild, in other words to realize that it played a role in the economic and civic life of the city.36 But such recontextualization must not ignore the key role which the Stationers’ Company was expected to play, and which it did indeed undertake, in the detection and suppression of unlicensed and/or seditious material. Sheila Lambert is unwise to accept Christopher Hill’s model of an efficient and ubiquitous system of censorship in modern totalitarian systems, and to judge the Stationers’ Company against this benchmark. For Hill, the Stationers’ Company was as brutal, efficient and diligent as the Gestapo or Cheka. For Lambert, on the other hand, the Stationers’ Company was not as brutal, efficient or diligent as the Gestapo or Cheka, ergo it could not have been an efficient arm of government. Both Hill and Lambert mistakenly assume that the Gestapo and the Cheka were paradigms of efficiency, ruthlessness and political motivation. Individual members of these organizations may well have been efficient and ruthless, but there is little doubt that the history of these institutions could also be written in terms of incompetence, laziness, stupidity, venality, corruption and opportunism. It is also necessary to understand that both sides of the coin – efficiency and incompetence, corruption and diligence, venality and political motivation – can (and often do) exist simultaneously in the same organization. It is even possible for an individual to exhibit these strengths and weaknesses simultaneously or on different occasions over a period of time. Ian Gadd, ‘ “Being like a field”: corporate identity in the Stationers’ Company, 1557–1684’ (Oxford D.Phil., 1999).

36

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In an age in which a man such as Samuel Pepys could oversee the efficient reorganization and supply of the Royal Navy while simultaneously enriching himself through the judicious acceptance of gifts and fees from contractors, one must not expect those entrusted with searching for unlicensed or seditious material to have behaved in the way modern civil servants are expected to behave. So, for example, Robert Stephens, who acted as a Messenger of the Press between 1676 and 1697, may well, as his enemies suggested, have accepted bribes, stolen from premises he searched and turned a blind eye to certain unlicensed books. This does not negate the fact that he was hated and feared by the members of the book trade and that his activities led directly to the execution of the printer William Anderton for treason in 1693. Similarly, the royalist and Anglican publisher Richard Royston may well have been a ‘lazy’ Warden of the Stationers’ Company who occasionally accepted bribes and re-sold unlicensed books and pamphlets that he had seized. Royston was, however, most definitely Charles II’s man in the Stationers’ Company and he took a very firm line against seditious (rather than merely unlicensed but non-seditious) material which attacked the Church or state. John Twyn was very anxious to ensure that Royston be excluded from the jury at his trial for treasonous printing in 1664. His failure to exclude him, combined with Royston’s royalist zeal and knowledge of the mechanics of printing, ensured that Twyn was unable to plead ignorance of what had been printed in his shop. He was hanged, drawn and quartered. Royston’s service to the crown on this occasion is surely infinitely more important than the fact that he sometimes used his position of authority to enrich himself and protect his friends.37 It has often been argued that the Stationers’ Company was much too blunt and inefficient a tool to deal with unlicensed printing, and it must be acknowledged that the records of the Company sometimes give the impression that it may have been too unprofessional and amateurish to be of any use in the detection of suspect printed matter. For example, on 6 September 1647 the Court of the Company ordered the man who was responsible for detecting unlicensed material, Joseph Hunscott, ‘not to keepe any Poultery in the hall or garden’ of the Company. It was also ordered that Hunscott should ‘forthwith dispose of his henns and Chickens’ and that in the future no poultry should be kept in the hall or garden by any member of the Company.38 One cannot be entirely sure, of course, but one suspects that the

Leona Rostenberg, ‘Robert Stephens, messenger of the press’, pp. 131–52; Johns, Nature of the book, p. 206; T.B. Howell and T.J. Howell (eds), Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials, 34 vols (1809–28), vi, pp. 513–39; ‘John Twyn’, in Oxford DNB. 38 SCCB C 247v, 6 Sept. 1647. Hunscott was elected Beadle of the Company in 1641. The Beadle was an officer of the Stationers’ Company. He issued notices of meetings, kept records, looked after workmen, acted as a referee in commercial disputes and was responsible for regulating unlicensed and seditious printing. Siebert, Freedom, pp. 68, 176–7; Johns, Nature of the book, pp. 199–200. 37

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headquarters of the CIA, the KGB and MI5 have never reverberated to the sound of clucking chickens. It would, however, be incorrect to assume that merely because Mr Hunscott spent a portion of his time at Stationers’ Hall in the time-consuming, quiet and harmless task of keeping chickens he could not be zealous and effective in tracking down unlicensed matter. On the contrary, he diligently sought out ‘wicked and pernicious persons, that molest the State in printing and venting most malicious, false, and traiterous Books or Libels, against both the Honourable Houses of Parliament’.39 For example, in the mid-1640s he arrested a woman selling tracts by John Lilburne on the streets of London and raided the bookshop of her father, a Mr Browne, where he found a ‘great store’ of similar books. Browne was bailed to appear before the Committee of Examinations, but he failed to turn up and ‘kept out of the way for halfe a year’ before Hunscott managed to arrest Browne and his daughter. Incredibly, Browne then contrived to escape from custody and was only re-arrested when Hunscott spotted him several days later about the town. Later in the decade, Hunscott was also a constant source of irritation to the royalist newsbooks and was responsible for apprehending both the author and printer of The Man in the Moon.40 These are not the actions of an incompetent, inefficient and uninterested official. The Stationers’ Company may not have been as effective as it could theoretically have been but it is hard to think of any organization in history which has ever been as efficient or productive as it could or should have been. To use a metaphor from the study of the natural world, in evolutionary terms no organism develops into the most efficient that it could be, it merely evolves sufficiently well to enable it to function and survive. There is no such thing as an efficient organization per se. Even the most powerful and well-funded of modern organizations are dependent on the actions, diligence and sense of responsibility of individuals, and the management of any institution is the key factor in determining its efficiency or otherwise. The Stationers’ Company of the seventeenth century may not be frightening to modern historians when it is compared to Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany but this is to miss the point entirely. The Beadle and searchers employed by the Company often successfully detected those responsible for unlicensed printing, and the constant danger of discovery was a serious matter for the author, printer or publisher concerned. The efficiency of the Stationers’ Company in hunting down objectionable material certainly varied from time to time and from place to place, but, as we saw in the previous chapter, the experience of the late 1640s proves that even in a time of chaos and disarray, in both the Company and society in general, a system of close management

39 Joseph Hunscott, The humble Petition and information of Ioseph Hunscot, to both the Honourable Houses of Parliament, [1646], p. 2. 40 Hunscott, The humble Petition, pp. 3–5; SP 25/63/420; SCCB C214, 7 Feb. 1645; C269v, 16 Aug. 1652.

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by the central authorities could fashion the Company into a vital weapon of state. It must be stressed that the Stationers’ Company as a whole did not undertake the detection and suppression of unlicensed material. Any collective attempt by a group of several hundred people (then as now) to discover such material would be doomed to failure. In fact, the responsibility for overseeing regulatory activities such as searches fell not to the entire Company, but to the two Wardens of the Company.41 The effectiveness of the Company in dealing with unlicensed printing therefore depended greatly upon the diligence and motivation of the individual Wardens. This could be a great weakness if the Warden was unconcerned with, or tempted to turn a blind eye to, such material. Yet, the fact that two new Wardens were elected every July ensured that corrupt, inefficient or incompetent Wardens would have enjoyed no more than twelve months in office. In addition, the day-to-day responsibility for regulating printing fell to the Beadle of the Company, who operated under the auspices of the Warden. It was possible for the Beadle to detect and suppress unlicensed material without the support or encouragement of the Wardens. For example, the royalist bookseller Miles Flesher was elected as one of the Wardens of the Company in July 1649. It is unlikely that Flesher would have been anxious to track down the royalist newsbooks which appeared on the streets of London at this time – he may even have published some of them – but they were suppressed during the period of Flesher’s Wardenship thanks, in no small measure, to the fact that the Beadle of the Company, Joseph Hunscott, performed his duties diligently. Apart from the Beadle, the state also made use of various individual members of the Company to regulate the press. Not all of those charged with unearthing unlicensed and seditious material were members of the Stationers’ Company, but many of the most competent and experienced searchers were freemen of the guild. During the 1640s and 1650s, for example, the booksellers George Bishop and Peter Cole were frequently engaged in searching out the authors, printers and publishers of unlicensed material. Bishop and Cole seem to have made regular searches over a lengthy period of time, but the authorities also occasionally availed of the expertise of other members of the Company for specific tasks. For example, in June 1650 the Council of State issued a warrant to a bookseller in Leicestershire which authorized him to arrest any hawkers and to seize any unlawful presses which he might find in that county.42 It was only natural that booksellers and printers would play a leading role in the detection and suppression of unlicensed printing. Such men were familiar with the trade and ‘the methods that are and must be observed in the discovery’ of such material.43 It is also unwise to suggest that the Stationers’ Company was a commer41 42 43

Johns, Nature of the book, pp. 205–6. SP 25/64/414. TSP, iii, p. 149. 202


cial body only concerned with restricting printing which infringed upon the financial interests of the Company as a whole or its individual members.44 This argument is based upon a near-universal assumption by modern commentators that efficient law enforcement must be undertaken by fulltime professionals wearing a uniform and a cap, upon which there must be an official badge of some sort. Mark Goldie’s examination of the Hilton Gang, a private group of thugs, extortionists and informers who made a considerable sum of money by arresting and fining the Nonconformists of London during the early 1680s, provides an interesting counterpoint to these assumptions. According to Goldie, the detection of crime and the near-monopoly of indictments by professional state functionaries were largely creations of the nineteenth century. At the close of the twentieth, however, it is no longer obvious that this was an irreversible characteristic of the transition to modernity. There is today increasingly a privatized market in law enforcement services, an expansion of private policing, a burgeoning of vigilantism and informer phone lines. . . . Paradoxically, the pattern of early modern law enforcement now seems less alien than it did during the era of universal state provision.45

As we move further away from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rigid polarities which the Cold War imposed upon commentators, it is increasingly evident that the proponents of the new orthodoxy have a surprisingly anachronistic and Whiggish view of the nature of policing and state power in early-modern Britain. The Stationers’ Company often acted decisively against individuals who infringed upon copyrights or patents46 but it also took firm action (sometimes on its own initiative) against material which was considered offensive on moral, religious or political grounds. It could hardly have acted in any other way so long as its members shared the prevailing assumptions of the society in which they lived. For example, in March 1641 the Stationers’ Company presented the House of Lords with a report which implicated more than twenty individuals in the printing and distribution of unlicensed and/or seditious material. Three months later the Company informed the Commons that ‘a volume of Speeches supposed to be’ made by MPs, and an unauthorized account of the trial of the Earl of Strafford, were being printed ‘to the scandal and dishonour’ of the House.47 Similarly, on 17 August 1646 Robin Myers, The Stationers’ Company archive, 1554–1984 (Winchester, 1990), p. xvii. 45 Mark Goldie, ‘The Hilton Gang and the Purge of London in the 1680s’, in Howard Nenner (ed.), Politics and the political imagination in later Stuart Britain (Woodbridge, 1997), p. 45. 46 Examples during the 1640s include SCCB C196, 21 Jan. 1643; C201v, 6 May 1644; C227v, 6 Oct. 1645; C239v, 14 Dec. 1646; C240v, 18 Jan. 1647; C241, 1 Feb. 1647. 47 HLMP, 4 Mar. 1641; SC Liber A fol. 132, 5 June 1641. 44

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the Master of the Company brought The Parliament of Women, a pamphlet ‘very lewdly written, and tending to corrupt youth’, to the attention of the monthly Court held in Stationers’ Hall. The Court then ordered that all copies of the pamphlet be seized from the offending printer, who was forbidden ‘to print them any more’.48 The potential reach of the state An examination of the enforcement of the regulations concerning the press during the 1640s and 1650s should focus on the Stationers’ Company but should not ignore the multitude of other bodies and individuals which the authorities called upon at different times to regulate the press. All of those who held any legal or quasi-legal office, whether local or national, civil or military, were expected to take action against any unlicensed printed material or illegal presses they came across. The constables of the 109 City parishes and the beadles of the twenty-three wards were the first line of defence against unlicensed printing in London. These positions were, more often than not, unpaid and were usually rotated among the most influential inhabitants of each parish or ward. The rotation of these posts and the absence of any remuneration have contributed to the traditional stigmatization of the incumbents as inefficient, corrupt, ignorant and mercenary.49 There is no doubt that some constables and beadles fitted this stereotype perfectly, but there were others who performed their duties diligently.50 There was always the danger that unpaid local officials would turn a blind eye to offences committed by their friends, neighbours, employers or business customers, and that they would be unduly lenient upon these people should they actually fall foul of the law. On the other hand, the particularly strong animosities which are often generated by local disputes may often have ensured that constables and other part-time officials pursued matters against malefactors more vigorously than an anonymous, depersonalized bureaucracy might have done. A heady mix of commercial rivalries, political antagonisms, religious differences, and personal dislikes must have made at least some constables and beadles interpret the law in a more rigorous way when they were dealing with wrongdoing on the part of their peers, neighbours and economic competitors. Even if the majority of officials in a particular area did happen to be particularly lax in the exercise of their duties, or, perhaps more likely, if some officials decided SCCB C236v, 17 Aug. 1646. For other examples of commercially motivated censorship see SCCB C227v, 6 Oct. 1645; SCCB C196, 21 Jan. 1643; C201v, 6 May 1644. 49 David M. Loades, ‘The press under the early Tudors: a study in censorship and sedition’, TCBS, 4 (1964), 28–50, at 50. 50 Robert D. Storch, ‘The old English constabulary’, History Today (Nov. 1999), pp. 43–9. 48

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to be lax in the implementation of certain laws against specific individuals, it only required the presence of one diligent or zealous ‘jobsworth’ for the laws of the land to be strictly observed. Unlicensed printing would ordinarily have been only one of a multitude of offences with which constables and beadles might have concerned themselves, and in the ordinary course of events it is likely that only a minority of these officers would ever have been called upon to deal with such material. It is clear, however, that throughout the entire period under review the holders of these offices were expected to participate in the detection and punishment of unlicensed printing.51 Justices of the Peace often found themselves called upon to enforce the laws against the press,52 and their administrative and legal powers (particularly in the gathering of witnesses and collecting of evidence) were considered so useful in this regard that in the early 1680s the Surveyor of the Press Sir Roger L’Estrange specifically requested that he be given a commission of the peace in order to pursue a more efficient regulation of unlicensed material.53 At a municipal level the Lord Mayor and the Militia of London were expected to assist in the regulation of the press, as were the civic authorities in Middlesex, the City of Westminster, and the liberties of Tower Hamlets and Southwark.54 The sheriff of London was also expected to play a role in the enforcement of the regulations concerning printing,55 as were the Provost Marshall56 and the Sergeant-at-Arms to the Parliament. The Sergeant-at-Arms was employed to execute the orders of Parliament. He served both Houses of Parliament and the executive committees of Parliament, such as the Derby House Committee (1644–8) and the Council of State (1649–60). It would be wrong to suggest that the Sergeant-at-Arms was primarily concerned with the regulation of printed material, but he was frequently called upon to police the authors, printers and booksellers of London. In the nine months from March 1649, for example, the Sergeantat-Arms and the eight men under him were ordered to arrest the author of a pamphlet attacking Lord General Fairfax; detain the man who printed an edition of The Koran; search the posts for copies of the Leveller pamphlet

SC Liber A June 1643, fols 136v–138; SCCB fol. 171r. SC Liber A, fols 136v–138; CJ, v, p. 167, 11 May 1647; CJ, v, p. 246, 16 July 1647; SP 25/62/259; SP 25/63/137–8; SP 25/3, last leaf; SP 25/64/414. 53 Peter Hinds, ‘Roger L’Estrange, the Rye House plot, and the regulation of political discourse in late-seventeenth-century London’, The Library, 7th ser., 3, 1 (March 2002), 3–31, at 4, 24, 25, 30–1; Braddick, State formation, pp. 30–3, 71–2; Lionel K.J. Glassey, Politics and the appointment of Justices of the Peace, 1675–1720 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 21–31; Thomas Skyrme, History of the Justices of the Peace (Chichester, 1994), pp. 330–49. 54 Whitlocke, Memorials of the English Affairs (1682), p. 274; CJ, v , p. 290, 3 Sept. 1647. 55 CJ, v p. 257, 24 July 1647; CJ, v, p. 471, 23 Feb. 1648. 56 On the role played by Provost Marshalls in the maintenance of law and order in the capital see Valerie Pearl, London and the outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (1961), p. 16; and Keith Lindley, Popular politics and religion in Civil War London (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 7–8, 12, 29, 210. 51 52

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Englands New Chaines; apprehend the author of Mercurius Elencticus; detain the printers of a book entitled King Charles’s Trial; and seize ‘certain mad and blasphemous books called The Fiery, Flying Roll’.57 During the 1640s and 1650s the authorities sometimes relied on the army to regulate the press. The army’s primary function was, of course, to defend the regime against internal and external military threats, but troops sometimes undertook other roles which in most modern societies are the responsibility of the civil authorities. One of these roles was the regulation of unlicensed and, in particular, seditious printing. In early January 1649, for example, the House of Commons asked Lord General Fairfax to command the Marshal General of the Army to execute the provisions of the September 1647 Ordinance against unlicensed and scandalous pamphlets.58 Three months later John Lilburne was arrested by an officer at the head of ‘about a hundred or two hundred’ troops for his part in writing The second part of England’s new Chains discovered.59 The army certainly played a role in enforcing censorship during the Civil Wars and Interregnum, but it would be a mistake to assume that troops were more efficient against the press than other individuals or bodies mobilized by the state. For example, late in 1648 a certain Lieutenant Colonel Arrocher (or Arwaker) seized, on his own initiative, the papers of a man named Edward Symmons at his lodgings in Warwick Lane in London. Arrocher knew Symmons to be a royalist because of a previous political disagreement between the two men in the house of a mutual acquaintance. Arrocher allegedly examined Symmons’s papers but ignored one manuscript the title of which was in Greek. This manuscript was the text of Charles I’s Eikon Basilike, and considering the central importance of this book to the royalist cause during the 1650s and beyond into the Restoration, one could reasonably describe Arrocher’s acquiescence in the decision of a superior officer to return Symmons’s papers to him as one of the most important failures of censorship during the entire period.60 Of course, not every soldier was as unreliable as Lieutenant Colonel Arrocher, but the evident discomfort of the republican regime at the use of troops against civilians in 1649, and the wonderfully easy propaganda which this gave to the opponents of the new regime, is one of the main reasons why the regicides were so anxious to replace the draconian Treason Act of 1649 with traditional mechanisms such as a Printing Act which drew on the decrees of Star CJ, vi, p. 168, 19 Mar. 1649; CSPD, 1649–50, pp. 42, 45–6, 534, 555, 560. Whitlocke, Memorials, p. 361; CJ, vi, p. 111, 5 Jan. 1649. John Lilburne, The Picture of the Councel of State ([April 11] 1649), p. 1; SP 25/94/145. Morrice MS Q194–6; Anthony Walker, A True Account of the Author of a Book entituled , or, The Pourtraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings (1692), pp. 3–6, 13–4, 21, 27, 30–1. For similar lucky escapes by people with incriminating items about their person or property see I.D. Brice, ‘Political ideas in royalist pamphlets in the English civil war, 1642–49’ (Oxford B.Litt., 1970), p. 47; and Lois Spencer, ‘The politics of George Thomason’, The Library, 5th ser., 14, 1 (1958), 11–27. 57 58 59 60

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Chamber concerning printing. This desire to embrace traditional forms also explains the Cromwellians’ reliance on a system of pre-publication licensing overseen by the Stationers’ Company. The authorities also relied on information provided by a host of concerned citizens, professional informers, agents provocateurs and spies. A number of individuals provided information on illicit printing solely in the hope of financial reward.61 Others evidently did so out of a sense of obligation or duty. For example, in 1647 the Londoners who informed the Commons that a printer was preparing to produce a declaration which purported to be by the Speaker of the House seem to have been genuinely concerned that it would be ‘very dangerous to the Parliament and City’.62 However, many of those who provided information to the authorities may have had commercial and ideological reasons for doing so. Perhaps the best example of this mixture of commitment and commercial considerations is afforded by the career of Elizabeth Alkin, or ‘Parliament Joan’, as she was known to contemporaries. Her husband had been executed as a spy at Oxford during the First Civil War, and during the late 1640s she took it upon herself to search for the authors, printers and publishers of the royalist newsbooks. In March 1648 she was on the scent of Mercurius Melancholicus, and in May and June of that year Melancholicus and The Parliament Kite referred to her attempts to track them down. In February 1649 Mercurius Pragmaticus claimed that she was an ‘old Bitch’ who could ‘smell out a Loyall-hearted man as soon as the best Blood-hound in the Army’.63 She was responsible for the arrest of the royalist printer William Dugard in February 1650, and The Man in the Moon was extremely concerned by her persistent attempts to detain him.64 Alkin seems to have been personally committed to the anti-royalist cause, but as an impoverished middle-aged widow she was also anxious to claim the significant rewards which were offered for the arrest of those connected with royalist material.65 The various bodies and institutions which had some responsibility for regulating the press have so far been examined in isolation from each other, but they often worked together. For example, in June 1643 Parliament ordered all JPs, captains, constables and ‘other officers’ to assist the Mercurius Elencticus, no. 13, 16–24 July 1648, p. 98. CJ, v, p. 261, 31 July 1647. Mercurius Melancholicus, no. 29, 13–20 March 1648, pp. 168–9; Melancholicus, no. 44, 19–26 June 1648, p. 265; Mercurius Pragmaticus, no. 45, 13–20 Feb. 1649, sig. 3r; The Parliament Kite, no. 2, 16 May–1 June 1648, p. 9; SP 19/98/90. 64 SP 19/98/90; The Man in the Moon, no. 43, 13–20 Feb. 1650, p. 343. 65 Siebert, Freedom, p. 224; Williams, History of English journalism, p. 131. CJ, vi, p. 374, 1 March 1650; CJ, vi, p. 354, 1 Feb. 1650; CSPD, 1649–50, pp. 124, 411. Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering in early-modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 306, 312; Marcus Nevitt, ‘A woman in the business of revolutionary news: Elizabeth Alkin, “Parliament Joan”, and the Commonwealth newsbook’, in Marcus Nevitt, Women and the pamphlet culture of Revolutionary England, 1640–1660 (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 85–119. 61 62 63

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Sergeant-at-Arms in his attempts to detect ‘all presses anyway imployed in the printing of scandalous or unlicensed papers, pamphlets or bookes’.66 In April 1647 the Lords ordered ‘all Constables and other Officers’ to assist a man charged with discovering the author of a book entitled The Unlawfullness of Subjects taking up of Armes against their Soveraigne,67 and in June 1650 the Council of State required all ‘justices of the peace, mayors, constables etc. and [all] officers civil and military’ to assist a member of the Stationers’ Company to arrest hawkers and seize illegal presses in Leicestershire.68 This is not to argue that these individuals and organizations always collaborated with each other. They did not necessarily perform better (or even well) when they co-operated with each other. There must have been numerous personality clashes between individuals, and conflicts of interest between different organizations and officials, a small number of which have been preserved in the historical record.69 Some of the individuals charged with unearthing unlicensed printing were undoubtedly incompetent, corrupt and idle, and enforcement could be geographically variable because of the differing persuasions and temperaments of these officers.70 These observations should not, however, detract from the simple fact that the authorities employed these part-time searchers because they believed they would be effective. Many of these men and women possessed specialized knowledge of the printing trade, the underworld, and the geography of London. They commonly undertook their duties as a result of financial necessity or political conviction. One suspects that those, such as Parliament Joan, who acted out of conviction and in order to stave off poverty might have been particularly diligent in the execution of their duties. The searchers were not always successful, but the surviving evidence demonstrates that they regularly succeeded in tracking down their prey. Sometimes their speed and efficiency were remarkable. For example, the Sergeant-at-Arms arrested the printer and bookseller of The Koran within two days of being ordered to search for the offenders and their printing press.71 In similar fashion, the stationer Peter Cole seized a quantity of unlicensed material on the same day he was issued with a warrant empowering him to search for such material.72 Law-enforcement by part-time private individuals may not seem a particularly efficient way of enforcing the law of SC Liber A, fols. 136v–138. LJ, ix, p. 163, 30 April 1647. SP 25/64/414. CSPD, 1649–50, p. 550; For another example of such disagreements see Michael Mendle, ‘De facto freedom, de facto authority: press and Parliament, 1640–43’, HJ, 38 (1995), 307–32, at 319. 70 H.R. Plomer, ‘Secret printing during the Civil War’, The Library, n.s., v (1904), 374–403, at 390; HMC sixth report (HMSO, 1878), p. 130b; N.H. Keeble, The literary culture of Nonconformity in later seventeenth-century England (Leicester, 1987), p. 74. 71 SP 25/87/30. 72 SCCB C269v, 16 Aug. 1652. 66 67 68 69

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the land to some modern commentators, and there were undoubtedly problems with this mode of operating, but the system of constables, beadles, JPs and magistrates did function sufficiently well to enable the early-modern state to exert its will over the populace. It is clear that the traditional model of an all-pervasive, draconian censorship needs to be replaced with an account which accommodates the ad hoc, reactive, and sometimes chaotic nature of early-modern censorship. It is less clear, however, that this necessarily involves ignoring the dangers faced by transgressive authors, printers and publishers, and discounting the ability of the state to impose its will upon the press when it chose to do so. This chapter has been an attempt to suggest (to borrow and modify Don McKenzie’s striking metaphor) that if the book trade were a motor-car one would have to examine the mechanisms of the engine and the brake in order to understand how it moved forward, rather than merely concentrating on the engine, as much of the recent scholarship on this topic has tended to do. The new orthodoxy on censorship is problematic but it is neither possible nor desirable to revive the old Whig-Marxist analysis of Tudor and Stuart ‘thought control’. The following chapter will, therefore, put forward a number of propositions which may go some way towards creating a new model of press control in England in the 150 or so years before the end of pre-publication licensing in 1695.

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8

A New Model of Press Censorship

The preceding chapters have described the process by which the authorities in London tracked down and suppressed the royalist press in the late 1640s, and suggested that the currently accepted model for the relationship between government and the press in early-modern England is fatally flawed. Having deconstructed the ‘new orthodoxy’ on censorship this chapter will put forward a number of propositions which go some way towards constructing a new model of how censorship of the press operated in the era of pre-publication licensing. These conclusions are based upon a consideration of the way the Cromwellian regime suppressed the royalist press but they have a broader importance for those interested in the development of print-culture and censorship, because this remarkable feat was achieved using a variety of bodies and mechanisms available to the authorities in the 150 or so years before 1695. There are four inter-related points. There was an early-modern state and it could enforce its will upon the press when it chose to do so. Censorship is a qualitative rather than a quantitative process. Censorship is also a pragmatic, contingent and grubby process dependent on the actions of individuals, which often defies idealized, abstract notions of how it should operate. Finally, there were a variety of factors which might make censorship of a particular item more or less likely, but it was almost impossible for contemporaries to judge in advance how any or all of these factors would interact with each other. In other words, there was no generally known and accepted code of ‘functional ambiguity’ which enabled authors to encode their opinions so that nobody would be required to make an example of them.1 Instead, a number of aggravating factors might lead a variety of individuals or organizations to choose to make an example of a particular author or any other member of the book trade connected to the offending item. The book or pamphlet might not necessarily have been subjectively offensive – its author might not have intended it or believed it to have been controversial – but a whole range of factors might conspire to render it objectively provocative.2 A NEW MODEL OF PRESS CENSORSHIP

1 See Annabel Patterson, Censorship and interpretation: the conditions of reading and writing in early-modern England (Madison, WI, 1984). 2 I borrow this distinction between subjective and objective guilt from the mouth of

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A NEW MODEL OF PRESS CENSORSHIP

Once the process of censorship began there were many variables determining how far matters would progress and how serious the punishment would be. All things being equal, the producers of items which fell foul of the law would face a relatively small fine, or be allowed to apologize and promise not to repeat the offence. One could never be sure that this would be the case, however, and it was the capriciousness of censorship and its unaccountable, almost whimsical, nature which gave it its bite. The existence of the state The new orthodoxy on censorship has tended to describe a strange land, a quasi-anarchist utopia in which there were few, if any, mechanisms which could be used to coerce subjects to consent to the desires of their rulers. Instead, one is sometimes left with the impression that English society operated solely on the basis of cultural negotiation and persuasion; as if monarchs attained and maintained power because they wore expensive clothes, consumed and commissioned art, and sometimes participated in public processions and ceremonies. This is not to say that the early-modern state was nothing more than a body of armed men which could impose its will upon the populace.3 There was, as Mark Goldie and others have shown, a widely diffused ‘unacknowledged republic’ of men who held local positions of civic and religious responsibility and power which underpinned the maintenance of law, order and social stability. The early-modern British state relied to a surprising degree on the active participation of unpaid, part-time or local officials who were often drawn from outside the ranks of the elite.4 It is certainly important to be aware of the differences between early-modern and modern states, but it is at least equally important to acknowledge that there is a striking gulf between the work of scholars who have traced the increasing power and reach of the early-modern state and those who deny the ability or inclination of the state to impose repressive conditions upon the populace. There can be little doubt that those who ruled early-modern England desired to regulate the spoken, written and printed word as best they could. This desire was underpinned by the biblical injunction against speaking ill of Gletkin, the Stalinist interrogator in Arthur Koestler’s frightening novel Darkness at Noon (1989 edn), pp. 188–90. 3 This is, of course, the classic Marxist interpretation. See chapter 2 of V.I. Lenin’s characteristically turgid The State and Revolution. 4 Mark Goldie, ‘The unacknowledged republic: office-holding in early modern England’, in Tim Harris (ed.), The politics of the excluded, c.1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 153–94. For these aspects of the state in the early part of the sixteenth century see J.P.D. Cooper, Propaganda and the Tudor state: political culture in the West Country (Oxford, 2003), pp. 3, 51, 211, 251. For the years after 1660 see Mark Knights, Representation and misrepresentation in later Stuart Britain: partisanship and political culture (Oxford, 2005), pp. 13, 38, 85, 97, 109–10, 381. 211


dignitaries and rulers to whom one owed ‘the highest duty and reverence’, and it was supported by the evolving law of libel which applied this concern to the maintenance of religious, political, social and public order.5 This state could force unwilling men to fight in wars, it could extract taxes from the populace, and it possessed the ultimate sanction of the death penalty in a whole range of criminal cases. It was even capable of imposing conditions upon the populace which eventually led to a change in the religious beliefs of the majority of the population. The idea that this state, which clearly had a concept of control, regulation and censorship as well as an ability to enforce its desires upon unwilling subjects, had no power to impose its will upon the press when it chose to do so seems rather strange. It is true that these coercive powers were enforced with variable levels of efficiency and success, but it is seriously misleading to ignore the foundations of political power and focus, as some scholars have sought to do, solely on the outward cultural trappings and symbols of power. We cannot be satisfied with merely examining either the power of the state or the representation of that power: uncovering the relationship between the two is crucial to any proper understanding of the period. An examination of the practice of censorship in the late 1640s and early 1650s demonstrates conclusively that the Cromwellians possessed a variety of long-established mechanisms with which to regulate the press. The Stationers’ Company was not the toothless, ramshackle body so often portrayed in recent writings on early-modern censorship. The 1640s and 1650s were a particularly difficult time for the Company, which was riven by internal commercial, political and religious divisions so serious that they have been likened to a civil war.6 One might expect that it could not have played any role against the press during these years, and an examination of the Company’s archive alone would suggest this was the case, but in reality the Stationers played a central role in the taming of the press during the early years of the new republic. The state could also call upon a variety of other individuals and institutions (such as JPs, mayors, spies and informers) which could, and did, work together to create a surprisingly extensive and effective nexus for imposing the will of the authorities. In the light of the recent arguments about the ineffectiveness of licensing as a form of censorship7 it is important to note that the Cromwellians instituted a complex system of pre-publication licensing but realized that for the system to work it did not have to result in the prosecution of every unli-

Edward Symmons, A Vindication of King Charles I (1648), pp. 20–1, citing Jude 8:9; Philip Hamburger, ‘The development of the law of seditious libel and the control of the press’, Stanford Law Review, 37 (Feb. 1985), 661–765. 6 See Chapter 7 above. 7 See, for example, Sabrina A. Baron, ‘The guises of dissemination in early-seventeenth century England: news in manuscript and print’, in Brendan Dooley and Sabrina A. Baron (eds), The politics of information in early modern Europe (2001), pp. 41–56, at 42–6. 5

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censed item. Indeed, the Cromwellians seem to have believed that any over-zealous attempt to enforce the licensing provisions against the entire book trade would be counter-productive as it would waste considerable amounts of time and effort for comparatively little gain, and lead to the alienation of the individual members of the trade who collectively made up the Stationers’ Company. The licensing laws, like all laws, were not intended to ensure that the crime or offence in question never took place. Instead, they were designed to ensure that the authorities had a way of punishing offenders should they choose to so do. Licensing was not conceived of as a Berlin Wall blocking all potentially offensive material, but as a ‘Keep off the Grass’ sign which would deter most minor transgressors and allow for the selective punishment of those whom the authorities decided to prosecute. Infractions which were judged to be at the more serious end of the scale – usually those with a religious or political rather than merely commercial dimension – could be dealt with not under the licensing provisions, but through the evolving and wonderfully flexible common law of libel. The importance attached to the control of the relatively small number of printing presses upon which each and every item had to be printed, by the various Star Chamber decrees and the legislation of the Cromwellian and postRestoration periods, suggests that those who wish to explain (or explain away) censorship by reference to the porous and highly fallible system of licensing are looking in the wrong place. The Cromwellian regime destroyed printed opposition not by creating new bodies or institutions, but by relying on organizations which were available throughout virtually the entire period between the incorporation of the Stationers’ Company in 1557 and the lapse of the Printing Act in 1695. There were undoubtedly differences in the powers and internal structures of the Company over this long chronological span. There were also a number of bodies with a regulatory role which disappeared at various stages (the Courts of Star Chamber and the High Commission were abolished in 1641), and others (such as the Office of the Surveyor of the Press) which only appeared late in the seventeenth century. Be this as it may, the broad framework for the regulation of the press was remarkably similar throughout the 140 or so years before 1695. The reasons for the varying effectiveness of different regimes in controlling the press during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cannot, therefore, be ascribed to an absence of coercive mechanisms. Rather, they should be sought in contingent factors such as the unwillingness or inability of the state to see print as anything other than a minor irritant, and the presence or absence of talented administrators who could oversee the sustained implementation of the state’s will whenever it did decide to move against the press. Before 1641, in the absence of a developed public opinion which gravitated around printed matter, the danger which could result from unlicensed or seditious printing was something of an abstract, theoretical point. In such circumstances one would not expect to see the state con213


cerning itself with the products of the printing press, except during periods of particular strain and tension such as the closing years of the sixteenth century or the opening years of the 1620s. From the late 1630s, however, the peaks and troughs of publication in Britain began to coincide exactly with the waxing and waning of political and religious crisis.8 It was in those turbulent years that print first became a matter of public importance. From 1641 one can certainly say that print was an important signifier of turmoil and crisis, and that it both contributed to those crises and helped to prolong them. After 1660 nobody could be in any doubt as to the dangers posed by an unfettered press. Charles II and James II were concerned to regulate the press as best they could, and a greater number of individuals fell foul of the law, and were punished more severely for their actions, than had ever previously been the case. However, a whole host of political, religious and economic factors and crises ensured that the restored Stuarts could not bring the sustained and united attention of the state to the problem. No matter how irksome or potentially dangerous the press was believed to be, there were often many more pressing and dangerous matters to which time and attention needed to be devoted. For example, the undoubted desire to crack down on Nonconformist books after 1660 was undermined by the short-term need to unite all Englishmen behind the crown during the second and third Anglo-Dutch Wars, and was also weakened by the terms of the Declaration of Indulgence of 1672. The reigns of the last two Stuarts were full of temporary expedients, policy initiatives and unforeseen crises which interfered with, undermined, or distracted from the interest in exerting a strict control over the press. This ensured that for most of his reign Charles II was not in a position to repeat the remarkable example of the Cromwellians, even though he commanded the loyalty of a creature driven by a rare fanatical zeal against unlicensed printing, the Surveyor of the Press, Sir Roger L’Estrange. During the Tory Reaction of the early 1680s, however, Charles II mobilized all of the resources at his disposal against his religious and political enemies over a sustained period of time.9 Charles II’s destruction of the Whig power base and his triumph over his opponents testifies to the ability of the state to use tried and tested mechanisms to co-ordinate an effective campaign of attrition against its enemies.10 Even though Charles succeeded in taming the press in England he was unable to stop many of his opponents travelling to the continent, where they re-organized and re-grouped, and applied themselves with great vigour to the production and smuggling of printed polemic. The apparent contradiction here – the ability of Charles II and his successor James II to control the press quite tightly, but their impotence in the face of specific items produced at 8 Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering in early-modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 164, 167. 9 Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and his kingdoms, 1660–1685 (2004), pp. 260–328. 10 DWL, Morrice MS P367.

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home and on the continent – was a feature of the entire early-modern period from the first days of the Henrician Reformation, through the Marian period, and into the reign of James I and beyond. If one looked merely at individual books and pamphlets which slipped past the last two Stuart kings then one might be forgiven for believing that censorship had no important effects on printing, the book trade or society in general. If, on the other hand, one were to look at the books which were censored during these years, or focus on the trials and tribulations of men like ‘Elephant’ Smith, William Disney or William Anderton, one might assume that censorship was efficient, all-pervasive and draconian. It is a central argument of this book, however, that one must avoid focusing on individual incidents of censorship or non-censorship because they may or may not be typical of the society in which they occurred. Instead, scholars interested in the relationship between the authorities and the press need to assess the correlation between incidents of censorship and non-censorship over a period of time. This ‘deep contextualization’, to coin a phrase, is the key to assessing the prevalence, effect and intention of censorship. Quantity or quality? It is important not to equate an efficient or effective regime of censorship with one in which all items which contravene the letter of the law are detected and prosecuted to the fullest possible extent. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a situation in even the most totalitarian of modern states in which every malefactor could or would be punished as harshly as the law allows. The degree of censorship in a society depends not on the number of items regulated, but on the quality, importance and reputation of the items censored: it is a qualitative rather than a quantitative process. Consider, for example, the efforts of the Cromwellian regime against English royalist propagandists operating in exile on the continent. In 1649, the exiled royalist Richard Watson, who was then living in the Netherlands, found himself unable to find a printer for two poems which he had written against the regicides, because ‘ye printer confessed he was to print nothing against ye New English state’. Similarly, in 1653 the Cromwellian regime managed to secure the suppression of Noodig, Continueerlick Acht-Dagen-Nieus, a Dutchlanguage newspaper produced by the English royalists at The Hague.11 Against these successes one must weigh the fact that the Cromwellians were unable to stop the publication in cities across the Netherlands of hundreds of other items which reflected negatively upon them. If one considers the remarkably long arm of the Cromwellian state then one cannot but be 11 Richard Watson, The Panegyrike and The Strome (1659), pp. 3–4; Marika Keblusek, Boeken in de Hofstad: Haagse Boekcultuur in de Gouden Eeuw (Hilversum, 1997), pp. 241–6.

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impressed by its ability to intimidate and censor its opponents across the North Sea. Alternatively, if one chooses to examine only the percentage of items that the Cromwellians were able to restrict in the United Provinces one cannot but conclude that their censorship regime was extremely feeble. Censorship was undoubtedly tight in Cromwellian England, but it was not universally tight over the entire eleven-year Interregnum. The most effective enforcement of the law (then as now) relied on targeted campaigns against certain types of crime. Press censorship was at its tightest in the two years after the Printing Act of September 1649, and again in the three years before the death of Cromwell in September 1658. The regime relaxed its grip on the press and moved on to other, more pressing, problems whenever it felt that it had achieved its immediate aim of suppressing printed opposition. So, for example, Richard Royston hid his involvement as the publisher of Jeremy Taylor’s Anglican text Holy Living at its first publication in 1650, but felt free to put his name to the title-page of editions published after 1651.12 This was because the Cromwellian regime had relaxed its overt control of the press during the summer of 1651 in an attempt to rally all patriotic Englishmen, whatever their previous stance during the Civil Wars, against the Scottish invasion. This relaxation of the implementation of the press laws continued after Cromwell’s great victory over the Scots at Worcester in September 1651, a victory which ensured that the republican regime felt much less immediately imperilled than it had since its first rise to power. The combination of the crushing of the opposition press between 1649 and 1651 and the need to move on to other administrative, political and religious problems (such as the first Anglo-Dutch war of 1652–4 or the increasingly bitter disagreements between the key members of the regime over the best way forward in internal politics) meant that from 1652 onwards Royston and other royalists could find a modicum of space in which to operate. This observation does not, however, negate the fact that authors, printers and publishers continued to be wary of provoking the wrath of the Cromwellians. Even during the periods of greatest severity against the press the Cromwellians never sought to punish each and every item which evaded the press regulations or was deemed to be offensive. England’s new rulers were sophisticated enough, or pragmatic enough, to realize that there were some offensive books which should be studiously ignored. They also seem to have believed that it would be counter-productive to punish some books and pamphlets, thereby publicizing them and giving them a certain ‘cachet’ that they might not otherwise have enjoyed. As one knowledgeable contemporary noted, ‘it behoves States-men to know all things, but not to prosecute all things. . . . It is not for new Princes to inflict punishments upon Offenders to the utmost of what they merit: For, so sometimes by such harsh dealings,

W.P. Williams, ‘The first edition of Holy Living: an episode in the seventeenthcentury book trade’, The Library, 5th ser., 28, 2 (1973), 99–107, at 106.

12

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they rather increase their number than suppresse or amend Them.’13 The New Model Army and its supporters in Parliament who seized power in 1649 probably knew better than most that the effectiveness of their enemies’ pamphlets would be directly proportional to their military preparedness: ‘paper bullets’ are never as lethal as lead bullets, although the combination of the two is often very potent.14 There was, in truth, a relatively large amount of royalist-inclined printing or writing in England during the 1650s. For example, Isaac Walton produced The Compleat Angler, ostensibly a fishing manual but also a royalist contemplation of events. There was also an array of books in other genres which openly declared their royalist leanings. The literary publisher Humphrey Moseley was untroubled by the state during the 1650s despite developing a prosperous business specializing in what Lois Potter has called ‘subversion for the polite reader’: poems, plays and romances of a distinctly royalist and anti-Cromwellian bent. His colleague John Playford was also unmolested even though he developed a substantial commercial interest in the publication of royalist songs and airs during the 1650s.15 The relative freedom of Moseley and his fellow-travellers to publish royalist-inclined material is probably best explained not as a lapse of censorship, or as evidence of the ineffectiveness of press regulation in general, but as a product of the type of material they were producing. There was a world of difference between a cultural disposition to monarchy and an active threatening royalism. This difference is apparent in the mutually exclusive strategies of publishing small editions of poems, fishing manuals, gardening books and cookery guides for cultured readers, or being involved in the production of cheap propaganda which called for action against the state from its readers, many of whom were presumed to be from the lower ranks of society. The Cromwellians were well aware that poetry, even very bad poetry, is not a particularly frightening weapon with which to threaten one’s enemies. Moseley and the royalist or royalist-inclined authors, printers and publishers of the 1650s would almost certainly have been punished if they had produced cheap print which incited political or religious trouble, rather

M. Nedham, Certain Considerations Tendered in all humility, to an Honorable Member of the Councell of State (1649), p. 3. 14 Harold Weber, Paper bullets: print and kingship under Charles II (Lexington, KY, 1996). 15 Lois Potter, Secret rites and secret writings: royalist literature, 1641–1660 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 7, 19–22; Robert Wilcher, The writing of royalism, 1628–1660 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 255; John Curtis Read, ‘Humphrey Moseley, Publisher’, Oxford Bibliographical Society: Proceedings and Papers, 2 (1927–30), 57–142; Robert Wilcher, ‘Humphrey Moseley’, in Oxford DNB; Peter Lindenbaum, ‘ Humphrey Moseley’, in DLB 170, pp. 177–83; Paulina Kewes, ‘Give me the Sociable Pocket-books . . .’: Humphrey Moseley’s serial publication of octavo play collections’, Publishing History, xxxviii (1995), 5–21; William P. Williams, ‘The first edition of Holy Living: an episode in the seventeenth century book trade, The Library’, 5th ser., 28, 2 (1973), 99–107; Jonquil Bevan, ‘Izaak Walton and his publisher’, The Library, 5th ser., 32, 4 (1977), 344–59. 13

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than trading in genres which counselled a life of reflection, retreat and political quietude to their well-heeled readers.16 One needs to examine books and incidents of censorship and non-censorship in the context of the society in which they were produced. Why should the Cromwellians have been in the least concerned that a number of royalist poets retreated to the country and wrote verse of variable quality during the 1650s?17 Would one really expect the state to have been concerned by the fact that there was an attack on the Puritan soldiers of the 1640s buried deep in the sixty-eighth book of the royalist physician William Harvey’s 1651 academic treatise De Generatione Animalium?18 Was the state in any way threatened by the positive image of Henrietta Maria put forward in a recipe book published in 1655?19 The non-censorship of these items does not undermine the notion of an effective Cromwellian censorship; it merely suggests that the regime had a sense of perspective and an ability to prioritize the tasks which needed to be undertaken at any point in time. That prioritization was determined, above all else, by the perceived danger to the state. Modern scholars may believe that to write is to act, or that words are best described as ‘speech-acts’, but the Cromwellians evidently knew that some words are more dangerous than others. Perhaps, being more specific, one might say that it is the context of words – to whom they are addressed, the language they use, what they call for, and how they are likely to be received – which renders them more or less likely to annoy and irritate those in authority. For a brief period during the late 1640s royalist printing had attempted to aid and facilitate potential military forces of tens of thousands of soldiers. Printing during those years had been a very real danger to those who styled themselves the godly. During the 1650s, however, the publishing strategies of royalists and royalist sympathizers only served to prove how little threat they actually posed. The grubby pragmatism of censorship If censorship needs to be understood as a process rather than an incident, then it is also important to view it as a pragmatic, practical and often grubby process. There was no grand theory of censorship: its aims, motives and modus operandi could and did change in the light of shifting circumstances.20 Michael Seymour, ‘Pro-government propaganda in Interregnum England, 1649–1660’ (Cambridge Ph.D., 1987), appendix 1, pp. 365–73. 17 See, for example, Raymond A. Anselment, Loyalist resolve: patient fortitude in the English Civil War (Cranbury, NJ, 1988). 18 For this episode see Alan Shepard, ‘ “O seditious Citizen of the Physicall Commonwealth!” Harvey’s royalism and his autopsy of Old Parr’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 65, 3 (1996), 482–505, at 482–3. 19 W.M., The Queens Closet Opened. Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chirurgery, Preserving, Candying and Cookery (1655). 20 For the other side of the equation – the shifting arguments about the need for a free 16

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It was, above all, a process which rarely needed to be played out in the courts of law. The failed attempt to try the Leveller propagandist John Lilburne in 1649 for his life testifies to the dangers inherent in going to law against the press. Lilburne’s use of his court appearances to present his argument about Cromwellian tyranny to a jury of his peers, his acquittal by that jury, and his subsequent acclamation after his release by thousands of citizens outside the Guildhall were propaganda disasters for the regicides. When one considers the large amount of printed material which circulated against the authorities in the late 1640s one is struck by the fact that the state only moved formally against a very small number of the items which they might potentially have censored; and the number of acts of censorship which led to a trial, let alone a conviction, was even smaller. This was not due to an absence of a concept of censorship or the ability to impose repressive conditions. Rather, it was because regular visits to print-shops and book-stalls, or imprisonment for the purposes of interrogation and petty harassment, were often more effective ways of ensuring compliance than trials in open court. Censorship was often a rough business, or one in which there was frequently an implicit threat of violence, a world modern academics are almost uniquely unqualified to recreate, one is tempted to suggest. The press became a central concern of the new republic in the last quarter of 1649 when it was clear that the most pressing dangers to the state, such as the threat posed by the royalist forces in Ireland, had been or were being dealt with. It has been argued that there were three reasons for the success of the Cromwellians in taming the press. Unlicensed and seditious print had become a central concern of state, there was one dominant faction in control of the apparatus of state, and there were a number of talented and diligent administrators who were determined to oversee the sustained and vigorous implementation of the rules against the press. Whenever these three factors were present any administration of the early-modern period was able to exert a significant degree of control over the press if it chose to do so. Perhaps the most important lesson to be drawn from the practice of Cromwellian censorship is that it is often misleading to look at individual acts of censorship or non-censorship, no matter how hard one tries to contextualize that act. Rather than taking one isolated incident, which may or may not be typical of the assumptions and beliefs of the society in which it took place, it is important to understand censorship as a dynamic process which takes place over a period of time. To assess the nature, level and effectiveness of censorship one needs to examine a broad selection of sources over a period of time, noting the incidents of both censorship and non-censorship, and relating these to the power structures in society. The newsbooks which are the subject of this book have provided an ideal opportunity to consider the

press – see Geoff Kemp, ‘Ideas of liberty of the press, 1640–1700’ (Cambridge Ph.D., 2001). 219


reality of censorship because they are precisely the type of items (cheap, populist publications appealing for action from their intended audience) which the state was likely to want to control or eliminate, and they appeared over a comparatively lengthy period of time. Aggravating and mitigating factors There were a number of factors which might make the punishment of books and pamphlets more or less likely. These factors might conspire to render books and pamphlets transgressive which were not intended to be controversial or objectionable and which adhered to the letter of the law. They might also ensure that a book or pamphlet which was intended to bring the secular or religious powers into disrepute never came to the attention of those in power, or was never punished even if it did come under scrutiny. The first and most important factor which might make the punishment of a book more likely was the perceived presence of an immediate threat or danger to the state. Books which might otherwise have been safely ignored, or which would never ordinarily have been likely to come to the attention of the authorities, could become important solely because they appeared at a time when the state felt anxious or insecure and believed that the press might, either consciously or otherwise, serve to undermine the status quo. This perceived danger to the state would be particularly important if one’s book or pamphlet had a large print-run, an intended audience of low-status readers, or put forward some form of call to political or religious action. The pre-existence of personal, religious or political rivalries and animosities against the author, printer or publisher of a particular item might also render it more likely to come to the attention of the authorities. There were, of course, also factors which lessened the chances of an offensive book or pamphlet falling foul of the authorities. The primary factor was, once again, the sense of security or insecurity of those in power and the perceived threat to public order. A confident, self-assured power could enjoy the luxury of choosing to ignore seditious or tumultuous material, and even an unsettled or contingent entity such as the English Republic in the initial months after the regicide might make a conscious decision not to unnecessarily antagonize the public or get itself drawn into battles which it did not need to fight, or would prefer to fight at a later date. Non-censorship might, therefore, be both the conscious strategy of a strong government and a decision forced upon a weak regime.21 Other factors militating against censorship included an intended readership which was small in number, or socially and educationally exclusive. It seems clear that books or pamphlets which 21 M. Nedham, Certain Considerations Tendered in all humility, to an Honorable Member of the Councell of State (1649), pp. 1–3; Leonard L. Levy, Legacy of suppression: freedom of speech and press in early American history (Cambridge, MA, 1960), p. 66.

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contained contentious ideas or arguments which were only likely to circulate among educated men were widely understood to enjoy a broad degree of freedom, as these men were deemed to be immune from the hot-headedness and credulity of the masses. The removal of a number of contentious political books from the sale catalogue of the Earl of Anglesey’s library in the mid-1680s is a case in point. It was considered perfectly in order for the Earl to have owned these books, but the prospect that they would be offered for public sale and possibly be bought by somebody of less distinguished and judicious character was deemed unacceptable.22 All things being equal, one could also be fairly sure that very few items written in Latin or French would fall foul of the authorities, no matter what their subject matter.23 There were periodic surges of printed polemic and controversy during the early-modern period, and authors, printers and publishers often found it easy to hide among the crowds of pamphlets produced during these times. The volume of material produced during these ‘pamphlet surges’24 often meant it was difficult for the authorities to know where to begin any crackdown, and, furthermore, such surges are fairly reliable signals of the type of political and religious turmoil which often ensured that the state had little time or inclination to concentrate on the control of the printing presses. There was an element of safety in the publishing crowd, even if the presence of the reading crowd drew unwanted attention from the authorities. Handwritten manuscripts were usually considered to enjoy a protected status because they had a certain social cachet and their circulation was, in theory, limited to those of higher social status. Algernon Sydney’s execution in 1683 for possession of a manuscript of political theory which he never intended to publish demonstrates that there were limits to this convention – particularly when a vengeful state was determined to execute justice upon its enemies – but nevertheless those involved in the circulation of manuscripts could generally expect to benefit from a set of rules entirely different from those which regulated printed matter.25 There were also public spaces and locations, usually those associated with the leisure-time and pursuits of men and women of high social status, which generally enjoyed a certain degree of privilege when it came to the expression of controversial ideas and opinions. The Puritan diarist Roger Morrice suggested that Tunbridge Wells after the Restoration was one such place.26 DWL, Morrice MS P646. John Morrill, ‘The causes and course of the British Civil Wars’, in N.H. Keeble (ed.), The Cambridge companion to the writing of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 13–14; Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge, 2005), p. 163. 24 Pettegree, Reformation, p. 150. 25 Harold Love, Scribal publication in seventeenth-century England (Oxford, 1993), passim; John Miller, After the Civil Wars: English politics and government in the reign of Charles II (2000), pp. 58–63; Baron, ‘The guises of dissemination’, pp. 41–56. 26 Morrice DWL, MS P478. 22 23

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If an author, printer or publisher did find himself in trouble with the authorities, it was common to call, if one could, upon the assistance of friends, kinsmen or patrons in high places. The writer Vincent Gookin, for example, might well have had cause to regret penning a pamphlet against the Cromwellian policy of transplanting sections of the native Irish to Connaught had it not been for the intervention of Lord Deputy Fleetwood. The Lord Deputy was an old acquaintance who interceded for Gookin and portrayed him as a rather naive man who did not understand the implications of his arguments, and who could be relied upon not to repeat the offence.27 There must have been numerous other interventions throughout the entire early-modern period on behalf of authors, printers or publishers who found themselves in potential peril. If, as we saw in Chapters 6 and 7, censorship was an intensely personal and personalized process, then perhaps the most important factor which determined whether an offensive item would fall foul of the authorities or not was the sheer good luck involved in not coming to the attention of an individual in a position of power who had the time, ability or inclination to proceed against one.28 It is important to note that although those who produced books and pamphlets might hope that they would avoid the attention of someone minded to teach them a lesson, they could never be sure in advance that this would be the case. This unpredictability, this capriciousness, was perhaps the most worrying and frightening aspect of censorship for those involved in the production of printed material during periods of controversy and turmoil. There is a danger that these explanations for the incidents of censorship and ‘non-censorship’ in England between 1649 and 1660 may ascribe too much foresight to the regime. It is certainly dangerous to assume that there must always have been an important, or even knowable, explanation each time a book which might conceivably have fallen foul of the censors circulated freely in society. One cannot assume that anyone ever read a particular book merely because it happens to survive in a modern library. Noncensorship might in certain circumstances merely be the result of an item never having been read, or never having been taken seriously even if it was read by a few individuals. It is also perfectly possible that particular subversive, scandalous or libellous books which did reach members of the public may never have come to the attention of the relevant authorities. Furthermore, even if a particular book or pamphlet was noticed by, or reported to, the authorities, there were often much more pressing tasks to be attended to TSP, iii, pp. 139, 145; Vincent Gookin, The Great Case of Transplantation in Ireland Discussed (1655). See also the protection afforded Andrew Marvell by the Earl of Anglesey as described in Annabel Patterson and Martin Dzelzainis, ‘Marvell and the Earl of Anglesey: a chapter in the history of reading’, HJ, 44, 3 (2001), 703–26. 28 Paul Monod, ‘The Jacobite press and English censorship, 1689–95’, in Eveline Cruickshanks and Edward Corp (eds), The Stuart court in exile and the Jacobites (1995), pp. 125–42, at 131. 27

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by those who held office. If, however, one is attempting to explain an act of ‘non-censorship’ at a time when it is clear that the control and regulation of print was a central concern of the state, one must be aware that there is always a level of incompetence, confusion and inefficiency in any given administration. In addition, there are often competing, contested interests within organizations; administrative practice then, as now, was rarely as efficient, coherent, or ‘joined-up’ as it could or should have been. For example, the Secretary of the New Model Army, William Clarke, was an assiduous collector of the royalist newsbooks from the first appearance of Mercurius Melancholicus in September 1647.29 He collected all of the main royalist newsbooks and many of the short-lived ones, and obviously knew where to find and buy these titles on a weekly basis. At exactly the same time, as we saw in Chapter 6, a large number of men and women in London were exerting a great deal of time and effort trying to track down and eradicate the newsbooks. One assumes that William Clarke might well have saved those searchers much trouble by simply telling them how he came to assemble his impressive collection of royalist material. The searchers might then have rounded up the distributors of the various newsbooks and could then have proceeded to ‘persuade’ them to volunteer the necessary information. Why does this course of action seem never to have occurred to Clarke? It may well be that he knew nothing about the activities of these searchers, although that seems unlikely given his involvement with the army. It is possible that he did know about the searchers but that it simply never occurred to him that the details of where and when he bought his newsbooks could have been of any conceivable interest to anyone else. It is also possible, however, that Clarke did not share his information concerning these titles because, as somebody involved in the inner workings of the army secretariat, he felt that it was less important to arrest these men than to track and understand the development of royalist ideas and policies. At the very least, then, the gap between Clarke’s knowledge and that of the searchers indicates that we should never underestimate the potential for confusion and befuddlement inherent in any organization, and among organizations which purport to have the same or similar interests. Clarke’s silence may also be evidence of the fact that different sections of the same body or institution can have competing interests, or interests which tend to undermine each other. One cannot, in other words, make a series of assumptions as to what a perfect system of censorship should look like, as the proponents of the new orthodoxy have tended to do, and then measure the actual performance of any person, organization or state against that unattainable ideal. If one were to apply the limited (and limiting) methodology of the new orthodoxy on

I am grateful to Dr Joanna Parker of Worcester College Library, Oxford for kindly facilitating my study of these items.

29

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censorship to the Cromwellian period one could quite easily construct a model of a relatively benign, inefficient and ramshackle system of control. If, however, one applies the more sophisticated methodology for measuring censorship advocated in this book one is able to produce a much more nuanced account of events which accommodates incidents of censorship and non-censorship over a period of time and relates them to a sociology of power.

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Conclusion We do not know enough about royalism. This important gap in our knowledge of the Civil Wars is due to the neglect of loyalism by most historians of the period and the conceptual and methodological conservatism of those who are interested in the men who supported the Stuarts. This book cannot plug all of the gaps in our knowledge of royalism but it is intended to sketch a way of approaching the subject which may be of benefit to others. The poorly printed ephemeral royalist newsbooks provide a unique perspective on the political and religious turmoil which engulfed Britain during the late 1640s. The losers of the First Civil War were reinvigorated by a sea-change in public opinion during the course of 1647, and a conscious effort was made to use print to appeal to the people on behalf of the king and his supporters. The newsbooks formed a key part of this propaganda effort. This was a royalism comfortable with the need to court public opinion, and, at least initially, confident of winning the populace to its side. The newsbooks challenge our preconceptions of what it meant to be a royalist. They allow us to abandon the varying prescriptive definitions of royalism – what people must have thought or believed in order to qualify as royalists – in favour of a descriptive definition which examines what actual royalists thought, believed or argued. We can now see that a royalist was simply somebody who, by thought or deed, identified himself or herself as a royalist and was accepted as such by other individuals who defined themselves as royalists. These flimsy newsbooks had an advanced understanding of strategy and tactics, of the best way to appeal to their intended audience. They have been dismissed in the past as nothing more than sub-literate pornographic rags. It has been argued, however, that the outrageous sexual slurs contained in these titles must be read as a conscious strategy to discredit their Puritan enemies as unnatural hypocrites and liars who did not merit respect or obedience. Sexual libel was an effective strategy for attacking one’s enemies, but it was only one aspect of a discourse that could draw on a broad range of culturally significant symbols, allusions, references and metaphors from a variety of fields of human experience and endeavour. The authors eschewed booklearning and intellectual argument in favour of an appeal to the emotions of the reader. This was not a weakness of these titles: it was their great strength. Whatever their personal misgivings or beliefs, the men behind the royalist newsbooks followed the twists and turns of royal policy with a surprising degree of skill and dogged determination. They were willing and able to write in favour of any new royal policy or alliance, no matter how inconsisCONCLUSION

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CONCLUSION

tent with their previous arguments it seemed to be. The authors explicitly envisaged their readers to be male Londoners of the middling and upper sorts, or young men who aspired to attain this status once their apprenticeships were over. They were, however, able to shift their focus from Londoners in general to citizens of particular religious or political groupings in response to changing circumstances. Chapters 4 and 5 looked at the personnel behind the production of these titles. They paid particular attention to those men who went over to the king from neutral or pro-Parliament positions during 1647 or 1648. The careers of these men provide eloquent testimony of the shifting nature of political allegiances during the Civil Wars. The polemicists described in this book had no common religious, social, economic or geographical background. Royalism in the late 1640s was evidently a heterogeneous creed which could attract people from a variety of different religious and political backgrounds. The question of royalist allegiance has traditionally been seen in terms of a polarity between two religious, political and temperamental extremes, the ‘absolutists’ and the ‘moderates’. It has been argued, by contrast, that we need to see political allegiance as a broad spectrum of opinion between these pure, unsullied ideological positions. If one accepts that the royalist political spectrum is divided between a whole series of bands of different colours which represent different political, religious and cultural positions, then one must also accept that each distinct band of colour shades into and is, to some extent at least, overlapped by the positions on either side of it. One implication of this book is that we need a broader history of royalism in the 1640s and 1650s which deploys this more nuanced understanding of political allegiance. A second implication is that a history of the ‘turn-coat’ in the Civil Wars is long overdue. Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England has used the royalist press to question some aspects of the study of print-culture and book history. Print has always been seen as a radical, destabilizing force: an agent of social change, innovation, and revolution. By contrast, this book has demonstrated how lively, vibrant and exciting the use of print as an agent of social stability and cohesion could be. We can never hope to understand the role played by print in the Civil Wars until we know much more about how the royalists (and other conservative forces) approached and used this medium of communication. This book also seeks to rescue the history of print in the 1640s and 1650s from a pernicious methodology which is unduly preoccupied with the factional politics of Parliament. Books and pamphlets were more than simply tools for politicians. The men and women who conspired to produce these newsbooks were not puppets of prominent royalist politicians on the continent. One cannot simply assume that print reflects the interests of great men and that one can read their thoughts and political agendas across a range of cheap books and pamphlets. A key argument of this book is that to properly understand these royalist newsbooks – or any other printed item from the period – it is vital to relate 226

CONCLUSION

them to a sociology of power, to the realities of what was happening in society. We must never lose sight of the fact that the Civil Wars were much more than wars of words. Unless one constantly thinks of a sociology of power, and what is possible or feasible within that framework, it is too easy to take isolated words and phrases out of context. It is a contention of the chapters in this book which examine censorship that an overly text-based approach to print-culture has been facilitated by the injudicious use of cross-disciplinary approaches. The serial nature of the newsbooks – their regular appearance over a period of time – is a great benefit in allowing us to relate print to the society in which it circulated, and the power relations which governed that society. This is because serial publication enables us to trace the waxing and waning of a variety of phenomena – whether they be ideas, allusions, tropes, polemical positions, or the practice of censorship – over a period of time. It enables us to trace patterns in print-culture and polemic which are a better guide to the religious and political realities of the time than individual incidents, words or arguments, which may or may not have been significant. The process of relating print to a sociology of power over a period of time creates a very powerful tool for examining printed works and the society in which they circulated.

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Select Bibliography SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY MANUSCRIPT SOURCES

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Bodleian Library, Oxford Carte MSS 21–28. Ormond correspondence, May 1647–Nov. 1650. Clarendon MSS 7, 21–78, 132. Sir Edward Hyde Papers. John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, 1508–1939.

British Library, London Add MS 4,180. Nicholas Papers. Add MS 15,856. Nicholas Papers. Add MS 17,017. Hyde correspondence. Add MS 19,516. Records of London Major Generals’ Office, 1655–56. Add MS 19,759, f. 34b. Songs by John Taylor. Add MS 22,147, ff. 1–6. Orations by John Cleveland. Add MS 22,603, f. 5. Poem by John Cleveland. Add MS 28,002, ff. 59, 107, 170, 172, 307. Letters written by Marchamot Nedham. Add MS 29,396, f. 50b. Songs by John Taylor. Add MS 29,550. Correspondence of Lord Hatton. Add MSS 34,011–17. Records of London Major Generals’ Office, 1655–56. Add MS 40,883, ff. 15v–16r. Comments by Nehemiah Wallington about various newsbooks. Add MS 46,375. Volume of newsbooks. Add MS 47,112. Satirical verses concerning the Earl of Pembroke. Add MS 41,202A. Nicholas Papers. Add MS 65,487, ff. 51–52v. Verses allegedly written by Marchamont Nedham. Egerton 2,534–38. Nicholas Papers. Egerton MS 2625, f. 141. Letter from J. Chandler to John Cleveland, circa. 1650. Egerton MS 2725, ff. 5–8, 17b, 62, 66b, 154–158b. Poems of John Cleveland, circa 1650. Loan MS 331. Royalist newsletters.

Cambridge University Library, Cambridge Add Ms 79, ff. 24–26. Petition of John Cleveland to Oliver Cromwell, 1655.

Corporation of London Record Office Journals of the Common Council of London, vols 40 and 41 (1640–60).1 I am grateful to Dr Elliot Vernon for providing me with a microfilm copy of these records.

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Dr Williams’s Library, London Morrice MSS P, Q, R. Modern MS, Folio 7.

Guildhall Library, London MS 3149/1. Vestry Minutes, St Sepulchre, 1653–62. MS 3146/1–2. Churchwardens Accounts, St Sepulchre, 1648–83. MS 4251. Vestry Minutes, St Andrew Holborn, 1624–1714. MS 6667/3–4. Baptisms, St Andrew Holborn, 1642–76. MS 6668/1. Marriages, St Andrew Holborn, 1559–1698. MS 7219/1–2. Baptisms, marriages, and burials, St Sepulchre, 1662–1701. MSS 9045/1–3. Index of Wills and Admons in the Archdeaconry Court of London, 1393–1807. MS 9050/9 & 14. Various Wills and Admons in the Archdeaconry Court of London. MS 25,626/8. PCDC Wills, 1684–93. MS 25,801–2/1–2. St Paul’s Cathedral marriage allegations and bonds, 1670–95.

House of Lords Record Office, London2 House of Lords Main Papers.

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Merchant Taylors’ Company, London3 Court Book Minutes.

The National Archives, Kew C5–C10. Chancery Proceedings, 1640–1714. E178–179. Exchequer: King’s Remembrancer (tax records). PROB 11. Various seventeenth century wills. SP 9. Williamson Collection, miscellaneous papers and pamphlets. SP 18. Council of State, orders and papers. SP 19. Committee for the Advance of Money. SP 25. State Papers, Interregnum. SP 29–30. State Papers, Charles II.

St John’s College, Cambridge K.56.542. Various seventeenth-century papers, including poems by John Cleveland.

Stationers’ Hall, London4 Court Books C, D & E (1640 to 1683). 2 3 4

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Printed manuscript sources Abbott, W.C. (ed.), The writings and speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1937–47). Bell, Robert (ed.), Memorials of the Civil War: comprising the correspondence of the Fairfax family, 2 vols (1849). Birch, Thomas (ed.), A collection of the state papers of John Thurloe, Esq., 7 vols (1742). Briscoe, G.E.A. (ed.), A transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, 1640–1708, 3 vols (1913). Bruce, J. (ed.), Charles in 1646: letters of King Charles the first to Queen Henrietta Maria, Camden Society, 1st series, 63 (1856). Cameron, W.J. (ed.), Poems on affairs of state: Augustan satirical verse, 1660–1714, 9 vols (New Haven, CT, 1971). Carte, Thomas (ed.), A collection of original letters and papers concerning the affairs of England,1641–1660, 2 vols (1739). Cary, Henry (ed.), Memorials of the Great Civil War in England from 1646 to 1652, 2 vols (1842). Clark, A. (ed.), The life and times of Anthony a Wood, 5 vols (1891–1900). Cobbett, William (ed.), The parliamentary history of England [1066–1803], 36 vols (1806–20). ——— Cobbett’s complete collection of state trials for proceedings for High Treason and other crimes and misdemeanours, 34 vols (1809–28), vol. v, 1650–1661. Cockayne, G.E., The Complete Peerage, 13 vols (1910) Dale, T.C. (ed.), The inhabitants of London in 1638 (1938). Dick, O.L. (ed.), Aubrey’s brief lives (1962). Ellis, Henry (ed.), Original letters, illustrative of English history, 2nd edn (1827). Firth, C.H. (ed.), The Clarke Papers: selections from the papers of William Clarke . . ., 4 vols (Camden Society, 1891–1901). ——— (ed.), The memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, 2 vols (1894). Firth, C.H. and Rait, R.S. (eds), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, 3 vols (1911). Gardiner, Dorothy (ed.), The Oxinden and Peyton Letters, 1642–1670 (1937). Green, M.A.E. (ed.), Calendar of state papers domestic series, 1649–1660, 12 vols (1875–76). ——— (ed.), Calendar of state papers, domestic series, of the reign of Charles II, 28 vols (1860–1939). Hutchinson, Lucy, Memoirs of the life of Colonel Hutchinson (1965). Isham, Gyles (ed.), The correspondence of Bishop Brian Duppa and Sir Justinian Isham, 1650–1660 (Northants Rec. Soc., xvii, 1951). Jackson, W.A. (ed.), Records of the Court of the Stationers’ Company, 1602–1640 (1957). 231

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY PRINTED MANUSCRIPT SOURCES

Johnson, G.W. (ed.), The Fairfax correspondence: memoirs of the reign of Charles the First, 2 vols (1848). Journals of the House of Commons Journals of the House of Lords Larkin, James F, Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. 2: Royal proclamations of King Charles I, 1625–46 (Oxford, 1983). McKenzie, D.F. (ed.), Masters, Wardens & Liverymen of the Stationers’ Company, 1605–1800 (Wellington, NZ, 1974). ——— (ed.), Stationers’ Company Apprentices, 1641–1700 (Oxford, 1974). ——— (ed.) Stationers’ Company Apprentices, 1605–1640 (Charlottesville, VA, 1961). Milton-French, J. (ed.), The life records of John Milton, 5 vols (New Brunswick, 1949–58). Nickolls, J. (ed.), Original letters and papers of state . . . addressed to Oliver Cromwell (1743). Ogle, O. et al. (eds), Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers, 5 vols (1869–1970). Ornsby, George (ed.), The correspondence of John Cosin, D.D., Lord Bishop of Durham: together with papers illustrative of his life and times, 2 vols (Surtees Society, 1869–72). Peacock, M.G.W. (ed.), An index of the names of royalists whose estates were confiscated during the Commonwealth (1878). Reid, Stuart (ed.), Officers and regiments of the royalist army: being a revised edition of the list of Indigent Officers, 1663, 5 vols (Leigh-on-Sea, 1985–87). Steele, R. (ed.), A bibliography of royal proclamations . . . 1485–1714, 2 vols (1910). Verney, F.P. and Verney, M.N. (ed.), Memoirs of the Verney Family during the seventeenth century, 2 vols, 2nd edn (1907). Warburton, E. (ed.), Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, 3 vols (1849). Warner, G.F. (ed.), The Nicholas papers: correspondence of Sir Edward Nicholas, Secretary of State, 1641–1660, 4 vols (1886–1920). Young, Alan R. (ed.), The English emblem tradition. III. Emblematic flag devices of the English Civil Wars, 1642–1660 (Toronto, 1995).

Newsbooks5 NEWSBOOKS

NS 48, The Colchester Spie (August 1648). NS 248, The Man in the Moon (April 1649–June 1650). NS 252, Martin Nonsense (November 1648). NS 259, Mercurio Volpone (October 1648). NS 261, Mercurius Academicus (April 1648). NS 263, Mercurius Anglicus (July–August 1648). NS 271, Mercurius Aquaticus (August 1648). This is a list of the royalist newsbooks published between 1647 and 1650. In order to facilitate identification I have provided the Nelson & Seccombe number (NS) of each newsbook, its title, and the dates of publication. For details of my reading of more than 3,100 issues of 94 separate titles published between late 1648 and the Restoration see pages 212–16 of my MA dissertation, which is listed in the final section of this bibliography.

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232

NEWSBOOKS

NS 273, Mercurius Aulicus (February–May 1648). NS 274, Mercurius Aulicus (August 1648). NS 277, Mercurius Aulicus (For King Charls II) (August–September 1649). NS 279, Mercurius Bellicus (November 1647–July 1648). NS 294, Mercurius Carolinus (July 1649). NS 301, Mercurius Clericus (September 1647). NS 303, Mercurius Critticus (April–May 1648). NS 309, Mercurius Dogmaticus (January–February 1648). NS 310, Mercurius Domesticus (June 1648). NS 312, Mercurius Elencticus (November 1647–January 1649). NS 313, Mercurius Elencticus (February 1649). NS 314, Mercurius Elencticus (February 1649). NS 315, Mercurius Elencticus (April 1649). NS 316, Mercurius Elencticus (May–November 1649). NS 317, Mercurius Elencticus (May 1649). NS 318, Mercurius Elenticus (For King Charls II) (April–June 1650). NS 321, Mercurius Fidelicus (August 1648). NS 326, Mercurius Gallicus (May 1648). NS 329, Mercurius Hybernicus (August–Sept 1649). NS 333, Mercurius Impartialis (December 1648). NS 335, Mercurius Insanus Insanissimus (March–May 1648). NS 342, Mercurius Melancholicus (December 1648–January 1649). NS 343, Mercurius Melancholicus (For King Charls the II) (May–June 1649). NS 344, Mercurius Melancholicus (September 1647–November 1648). NS 345, Mercvrjus Melancholicvs (July 1648). NS 355, Mercurius Philo-Monarchicus (April–May 1649). NS 360, Mercurius Poeticus (May 1648). NS 364, Mercurius Populus (November 1647). NS 369, Mercurius Pragmaticus (September 1647–May 1649). NS 370, Mercurius Pragmaticus (For King Charls II) (April 1649–May 1650). NS 371, Mercurius Pragmaticus (For King Charls II) (September 1649). NS 375, Mercurius Psitacus (June–August 1648). NS 377, Mercurius Publicus (May 1648). NS 385, Mercurius Scoticus (July 1648). NS 389, Mercurius Urbanicus (May 1648). NS 390, Mercurius Vapulans (November 1647). NS 391, Mercurius Veridicus (April–May 1648). NS 483, The Parliament Kite (May–August 1648). NS 484, The Parliament-Porter (August–September 1648). NS 489, The Parliaments Scrich-Owle (June–July 1648). NS 490, The Parliaments Vulture (June 1648). NS 587, The Royall Diurnall (February–April 1650). NS 588, The Royall Diurnall (July–August 1648). NS 612, The Treaty Traverst (September 1648).

233

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Printed books and pamphlets Books and pamphlets relating to printing, the press and the regulation of the press (in chronological order) PRINTED BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS

An Order made by the House of Commons, 29 Jan., that the Printers doe neither print nor reprint anything without the name and consent of the Author (1641). A Presse full of Pamphlets (1642). Expresse Commands from Parliament . . . That the abuses of printing be . . . reformed ([21 Mar.] 1642). A Declaration of Parliament . . . a speciall Order Concerning Irregular Printing ([26 Aug.] 1642). An Ordinance of Parliament . . . prohibiting the printing or Publishing of any lying pamphlet scandalous to His Majestie or to the proceedings of Parliament, 9 March (1643). An Order of Parliament for the regulating of Printing and for suppressing the great late abuses in Printing unlicensed Pamphlets ([14 June] 1643). An Act of Common Council for the prohibiting of all persons whatsoever, from crying or putting to sale about the streets within this City and Liberties, any Pamphlets, books, or Papers whatsoever ([9 Oct.] 1643). An Ordinance of Parliament for the Prevention of such Books and Writings sequestered or taken by Distresse as are fit to be preserved ([18 Nov.] 1643). An Ordinance of Parliament concerning Sequestered Books, Evidences, records and Writings ([22 Sept.] 1647). An Ordinance of Parliament against Unlicensed or Scandalous Pamphlets and for the better regulation of printing ([28 Sept.] 1647). An Ordinance of Parliament for the relieving of all Persons over-rated by the Ordinance for Weekly Assessements. Also an Order of the Commons prohibiting the printing and publishing of any Pamphlets scandalous to His Majesty or to Parliament ([24 Feb.] 1648). To the Commons. The Petition of firm friends to the Parliament, presenters of the late Large Petition of 11 September 1648. A Warrant of Lord Fairfax to the Marshall Generall of the Army to put in Execution the former Ordinances and Orders of Parliament concerning the regulating of Printing scandalous Pamphlets ([9 Jan.] 1649). By the Major. A Proclamation in accordance with an Act of Parliament against unlicensed and scandalous books, and for better regulating of printing ([9 Oct.] 1649). A Briefe Treatise concerning the Regulating of Printing humbly presented to the Parliament of England ([24 Nov.] 1651). A Beacon set on Fire: or the humble information of certain Stationers concerning the vigilancy of Jesuits by writing and publishing many Popish books ([21 Sept.] 1652). A Second Beacon, fired by Scintilla. Wherein is remembered the former actings of the Papists in their secret plots, and nowe discovering their wicked designes to set up Poery, by introducing pictures to the Holy Bible. Also shewing forth the misery of the Whole Company of Stationers ([4 Oct.] 1652). A Second Beacon Fired. Humbly presented to the Lord Protector and Parliament. ([1 Oct.] 1654). Orders of the Protector for putting into execution the Laws made against Printing Unlicensed Books, ([28 Aug.] 1655). 234

PRINTED BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS

To Parliament. The Petition of the Workmen-Printers, Freemen of the City of London ([14 April] 1659). The London Printers Lamentation, or, the Press opprest and overprest ([3 Sept.] 1660). Atkyns, Richard, The Original and Growth of Printing, collected out of history and the records of this Kingdome, wherein is also demonstrated that printing appertaineth to the Perogative Royal; and is a flower of the crown of England (1664). An Exact Narrative of the Tryal and Condemnation of John Twyn (1664). The Tears of the Press with reflections on the Present State of England (1681). Mechanic Exercises on Printing (1683–4). By James Moxon. Reprinted in Herbert Davis and Harry Carter (eds), Moxon’s Mechanic Exercises on Printing (1962).

Other books and pamphlets6 Anon., Act of the Commons for the relief of the Poor and the punishing of Vagrants within the City of London, An (1649). ——— Bumm-Foder or, waste-paper proper to wipe the Nation’s Rump with, or your own (1659). ——— Description Of the Passage of Thomas late Earle of Strafford, over the River of Styx, with the conference betwixt him, Charon, and William Noy, A (1641). ——— Downefall of Temporizing Poets, unlicenst Printers, upstart Booksellers, trotting Mercuries, and bawling Hawkers, The (1641). ——— Humble Representation of the Sad Condition Of many of the King’s Party, An (1661). ——— Indago Astrologica: or, a brief and modest Enquiry into some Principal Points of Astrology (1652). ——— Knavery of the Rump Lively represented in a Pack of Cards, The [1679]. ——— Late Eclipse Unclasped: or the mistaken Star-gazers unmasked, The (1652). ——— Letter from Ireland, read in the House of Commons 28 Sept., from Mr Hugh Peters, Chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant Cromwell, of the taking of Tredagh. Also the taking of Trim and Dundalke, A (1649). ——— Life and Death of John Atherton, Lord Bishop of Waterford and Lysmore, The (1641). ——— List of Officers claiming to the Sixty Thousand Pounds granted by his Sacred Majesty for the Relief of his Truly Loyal and indigent Party, A (1663). ——— List of the Names . . ., A (1649). ——— Mercurius Hibernicus: Or, A Discourse of the late Insurrection in Ireland, 2nd edn (Bristol, 1644). ——— Merlinus Phreneticus: shewing the effect of the Terrible Eclipse, March the 29. 1652 (1652). ——— Newes from the West of Ireland (1642). ——— New Tom of Bedlam, or, The Man in the Moon Drinks Claret, A (1690). ——— No Mercurius Aquaticus (1644). ——— Orange, The (1688). ——— Petition of divers Inhabitants of London in the behalfe of the poore of this Nation, with the answer thereunto, The (1649). Alphabetically by author, except for anonymous pamphlets which are listed alphabetically by title. An asterik (*) signifies that the individual in question was not the author, but the printer or publisher, of the item or items listed under his name.

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235

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

——— Protestant Almanack, The (1668). ——— Rope for Pol. Or, a Hue and Cry after Marchemont Nedham. The Late Scurrulous Newswriter, A (1660). ——— To the Supreame Authority the Commons in Parliament. The Petition of divers Inhabitants of the County of ___ in the behalfe of the poor of this Nation (1649). ——— True Report of the great Costs and Charges of the five Hospitals in the City of London, in the maintenance of their great number of poore in this present yeare 1650, A (1650). ——— Two letters from the Fleet at Sea Touching the late Fight (1653). ——— Two letters one from Dublin in Ireland and the other from Liverpoole (1649). Ashburnham, John, A Narrative by John Ashburnham of his attendance on King Charles the First, 2 vols (1830). Aucher, John, Arguments and Reasons To prove the Inconvenience & Vnlawfulness of Taking the New Engagement (1650). ——— The Arraignment of Rebellion, or the Irresistibility of Sovereign Powers (1684). B., J., The Oxonian Antippodes (1644). Bartlet, William, Icnogrfia Or, A Model of The Primitive Congregational way (1647). Barwick, G.F., The life of Dr John Barwick, Dean of St. Paul’s (1724). Berkenhead, John, A sermon preached before his Majestie at Christ-Church in Oxford (Oxford, 1644). ——— Nevves from Pembroke & Mongomery or Oxford Manchester’d (1648). ——— Loyalties tears flowing after the blood of the royal sufferer, Charles the I. &c (1649). Berkeley, John, Memoirs of Sir John Berkeley (1699). Brommerton, William, Confidence dismounted; or the Astronomers Knavery Anatomised (1652). Blount, Thomas, Glossographia: Or A Dictionary, Interpreting all such Hard Words . . . as are now used in our refined English Tongue (1656). Cleveland, John, The Character of a Moderate Intelligencer (1647). ——— The hue and cry after Sir John Presbyter (1649). ——— Midsummer-Moone, or, Lvnacy rampant (1648). ——— The Scots apostacy (1647). ——— The Character of a London Diurnal (1645). ——— The Character of a Mercurius Politicus (1650). ——— The Second Character of a Mercurius Politicus (1650). ——— A Character of a Diurnal-Maker (1653). Croft, Robert, The Plea, Case and Humble Proposals Of the Truly-Loyal and Suffering Officers (1663). Crouch, Edward* A dialogue between Mistris Macquerella, a Suburb Bawd, Ms Scolopendria, a noted Curtezan, and Mr Pimpinello, an Usher, &c. Pittifully bemoaning the tenour of the Act (now in force) against Adultery and Fornication (1650). ——— Beware the beare. The strange but pleasing history of Balbulo & Rosina (1650). ——— The Faithful woings of two country lovers (1655). ——— Israel’s Just Jvdge; or, The Maiestrats Brest-plate, Against the Darts of Pride, Envy & Hypocrisie (1657). ——— Certain Considerations Against the Vanities of the World, and The terrors of Death (1658). 236


——— The Tyranny of the Dutch against the English (1660). ——— A Tragicomedy called New-Market Fayre (1661). ——— Qui Chetat Chetabitur: Or, Tyburne Cheated (1661). Crouch, John, The armies Letanie, imploring the blessing of God on the present proceedings of the armie by the author of Mercurius Melancholicus (1647). ——— Craftie Cromwell; or, Oliver ordering our New State. A Tragi-Comedy (1648). ——— Mistris Parliament Brought to Bed of a Monstrous Child Reformation. (1648). ——— Mistris Parliament presented in her Bed after sore Travaile in the Birth of her Monstrous off-spring the Childe of Deformation. (1648). ——— Mrs. Parliament her Gossiping. Full of Mirth, Merry Tales and other Pleasant Discourse. (1648). ——— Mrs. Parliament her invitation to Mrs. London to a Thanksgiving Dinner (1648). ——— The Kentish Fayre; or, the Parliament Sold to their best worth (1648). ——— A New Marriage, between Mr. King and Mrs. Parliament (1648). ——— A Hue and Cry after Religion and Justice Lost in the year 1641 (1649). ——— A Bartholomew Fairing, new, new, new (1649). ——— A Tragi-Comedy Called New-Market-Fayre, or a Parliament Out-Cry of State Commodities set to sale (1649). ——— The Second Part of the Tragi-Comedy Called New-Market Fayre (1649). ——— The Right Picture of King Oliuer, from top to toe. (1650). ——— The Araignment of Hypocrisie: or a looking-glass for murderers and adulterers (1652). ——— The Tyranny of the Dutch against the English (1653). ——— The Gossips Brawle, or, the women weare the Breeches (1654). ——— The Melancholy Cavalier. Or, Fancys Master-Piece. A Poem (1654). ——— A Congratulation, in honour of the annual festival of . . . the county of Hertford (1655). ——— Harry Hangman’s Honour: Or Gloucester-shire hangman’s Request to the Smoakers or Tobacconists in London (1655). ——— *A Funeral Elegy Upon the Death of George Sonds, Esq. (1655). ——— An Elegie upon the death of . . . Anne, Countesse of Shrewsbury (1657). ——— *The Man in the Moone Discovering a Word of Knavery under the Sunne. (1657). ——— Democritus turned Statesman. Or, Twenty Queries between jest and earnest (1659). ——— The Muses Tears for the loss of the illustrious Princ[e] Henry, Duke of Glocester (1660). ——— The Muses Joy for the recovery of that weeping Vine, Henrietta Maria, the Most Illustrious Queen Mother, and Her Royall Branches (1660). ——— A Mixt Poem, partly historicall, partly Panegyricall, upon the happy return of His Sacred Majesty Charles the Second (1660). ——— To his Sacred Majesty: loyall reflections upon his glorious restauration, procession and coronation not forgetting the royal oake (1660). ——— The Wonderfull and miraculous escape of our Gracious King (1660). ——— Flowers strowed by the Muses, against the Coming of the Most illustrious Infanta of Portugal (1662). ——— Portugallia in Portu, Portugall in harbour (1662). ——— AIDRUA´DES . A poem or fancy upon . . . the royal oke (1662). ——— Census Poeticus, the poets tribute (1663). 237

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

——— The Maidens Complaint Against Coffee (1663). ——— An Elegie upon . . . the Right Honourable the Earl of Tiveot, governour of Tangiers (1664). ——— An Elegie upon the death of the Most incomparable Mris Katherine Philips (1664). ——— Belgica caracteristica, or the Dutch character. Being news from Holland. A Poem (1665). ——— The Dutch Embargo, upon their State Fleet; or, News from Holland. A Poem (1666). ——— PohxiouUlupicxon. London’s bitter-sweet cup of tears, for her late visitation: and joy, for the kings return. With a Complement, in the close, to France (1666). ——— Londinenses lacrymae. London’s second tears mingled with her ashes. A Poem (1666). ——— An elegie upon the death of Her Most Illustrious Majestie Heneretta Maria (1669). ——— An elegie upon the right honourable the late Earl of Ossory (1680). ——— An Elegie upon the Marquess of Dorchester, and Earl of Kingston, &c (1680). Culpepper, Nicholas, Catastrophe Magnatum: Or, the fall of Monarchie. A Caveat to Magistrates, deduced from the eclipse of the Sunne, March 29 1652 (1652). ——— Lillyes Lamentations, or England’s feigned prophet Discovered (1652). Dugdale, William, A short view of the late troubles in England (Oxford, 1681). Duncon, John, The Retvrnes of Spiritual comfort and grief in A Devout Soul (1648). Dunton, John, The Life and Errors of John Dunton, Late Citizen of London . . . Together with the Lives and Characters of a Thousand Persons now living in London, 2 vols (1705). Ferne, Henry, The Resolving of Conscience (York, 1642). Fuller, Thomas, Abel Redevivus: or, The dead yet speaking. The Lives and Deaths of the Moderne Divines (1651). ——— The Sovereigns Prerogative, and the Subjects privilege (1657). Gatford, Lionel, A petition for the vindication of the publique use of the Book of Common-Prayer, from some foul, but undeserved aspersions lately cast upon it (1654). ——— A true and faithful narrative of the much to be lamented death of Mr. William Tyrrell (1661). ——— A faithfull and faire warning (1648). ——— To the most reverend, the arch-bishops, and bishops, the reverend deans, arch deacons, and the rest of the learned and much honoured convocation now assembled at Westminster (1661). ——— An exhortation to peace (1643). ——— Englands complaint: or, a sharp reproof for the inhabitants thereof; against that now raigning sin of rebellion (1648). ——— Englands Complaint: Or, A sharp Reproof for the Inhabitants thereof (1648). Gerbier, Sir Balthazar, A Publique Lecture on all the Languages, Arts, Sciences and Noble Exercises which are taught in Sr. Balthazar Gerbier’s Academy (1650). ——— The Academies Lecture Concerning Justice (1650). ——— The Interpreter of the Academie for Forraign Languages, and all noble Sciences and Exercises, To all Fathers of Families and Lovers of Vertue, the first part (1649). ——— To all Fathers of Noble Families, and lovers of vertue (1649). Greenwood, Paul, A Briefe Description of the excellent vertues of that sober and Wholesome Drink called Coffee (1681).

238


Hackluyt, John, An Alarm for London Partly delivered in a Sermon the last Fast, neere by Bishopsgate in London (1647). Hammond, Charles, A Warning-Peece for England . . . June 25 1652 (1652). ——— Englnads [sic] alarum-bell. To be rung in the eares of all true Christians (1652). ——— Israel’s just jvdge; Or, the Maiestrats Brest-Plate (1657). ——— The Loyal Indigent Officer. Being A Brief Description of the Truly Loyal Commissioned Officers (1674/5). ——— The Old English Officer. Being A necessary Looking-glass For a Christian Army. Or A fit Companion for Young Souldiers (1679). ——— The Worlds Timely Warning-piece (1660). ——— Truth’s Discovery; or the Cavaliers Case Clearly Stated by Conscience and Plain dealing (1664). Harper, Richard,* The Complaint of Time against the Tumultuous and rebellious Scots (1639). ——— Late newes from the north: being, a Relation of the Skirmish betwixt the English and Scots neere the River of Tine (1640). ——— A Briefe Relation of the Scots hostile entrance into this Kingdome of England, over the River of Tweed (1640). ——— Bartholomew Faire. Or, Variety of fancies (1641). ——— Distracted Englands Lamentation, Dangerously lying upon her sicke Bed (1646). ——— Zions thankfull ecchoes, from the clifts of Ireland (1649). ——— Wonderfull News from the North. Or, a True Relation (1650). Harris, John, The Puritanes Impuritie (1641). Heath, James, A new book of loyal English martyrs and confessors (1663). ——— The glories and magnificent triumphs of the blessed restitution of his sacred majesty (1662). Herbert, Thomas, Memoirs of the Two Last Years of the Reign of King Charles I (1815). Hunscott, Joseph, The humble Petition and information of Ioseph Hunscot [1646]. ——— To the Right Worshipful John Fowke, Alderman of the Ward of farringdon within . . . The humble Petition of Joseph Hunscot Citizen and Stationer of London (1647). Kaye, William, The Doctrine Of our Martyres remembred (1655). Kirkman, Francis, The Presbyterian Lash, or Noctroff’s Maid Whipt (1661). Lechford, Thomas, Plain Dealing: Or, Newes from New-England (1642). L’Estrange, Roger, The Committee (1681). Lilburne, John, The Picture of the Councel of State (1649). Lilly, William, Easie and familiar Method whereby to judge the effects depending on eclipses, either of the Sun or Moon, An. (1652). ——— Annus Tenebrosus, or the Dark Year. Or Astrologicall Judgements upon two Lunar Eclipses, and one admirable Eclips of the Sun, all visible in England (1652). Lloyd, David, Memoirs of the lives, actions, sufferings and deaths of those noble reverend, and excellent personages that suffered (1668). Long, Thomas, Dr Walker’s True, Modest, and Faithful Account of the Author of the Eikon Basilike (1693). Morton, Thomas, The Necessity of Christian Subjection (Oxford, 1643). Nalson, John, An Impartial Collection of the Great Affairs of State, From the Beginning of the Scotch rebellion in the Year MDCXXXIX. To the Murther of King Charles I, 2 vols (1682). Nedham, Marchamont, Loyalty speakes truth: or, a conference of the grand mercvries (1647). 239

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

——— The Case of the Common-Wealth of England stated (1650). ——— The case of the kingdome stated, According to the Proper Interests of the severall parties Ingaged (1647). ——— The Levellers levell’d. Or, The Independents conspiracie to root out monarchie (1647). Peters, John, A trve relation of the present estate of Ireland (1642[3]). Poole, Joshua, The English Accidence (1646). Quarles, John, An Elegie on the Most Reverend & Learned James Usher L. Archbishop of Armagh, and Primate of Ireland (1656). ——— Divine meditations (1655). ——— Fons Lachrymarum (1648). ——— Gods Love and Mans Unworthiness: Whereunto is anexed a Discourse between the Soul and Satan. With Several Divine Ejaculations (1651). ——— Londons disease, and cure (1665). ——— Rebellion’s downfall (1662). ——— Regale Lectum Miseriae: Or, A Kingly Bed of Miserie (1649). ——— The Citizens Flight With their Re-Call; To which is added Englands Tears and Englands Comforts (1665). ——— The Rape of Lucrece, Commited by Tarquin the Sixt (1655). ——— The Tyranny of the Dutch against the English (1660). Sadler, Anthony, Inquisitio Anglicana: Or The Disguise discovered (1654). ——— Maiestie Irradiant, Or The Splendor Display’d, or Our Soveraigne King Charles (1660). ——— The Subjects Joy For The King’s Restoration (1660). ——— Mercy in a Miracle (1660). ——— The Loyall Mourner, Shewing the Murdering of King Charles the First (1660). Sheppard, S[amuel], The Committee-Man Curried (1647). ——— The Yeare of Jubile (1646). ——— The Weepers. Or, The bed of Snakes broken (1652). Simmons, Edward, A Vindication of King Charles I. Or A Loyal Subjects Duty (1648). Strype, J.A., A survey of the cities of London and Westminster, 2 vols (1720). Swadlin, Thomas, King Charles his funeral (1661). ——— Loyall subjects, or The blessed mans encouragement (1647). ——— The hands of God: or King Davids choice, 2nd edn (1647). Taylor, John, John Taylors vvandering, to see the vvonders of the vvest (1649). ——— Tailors travels from London to the Isle of VVight, vvith his returne, and occasion of his iourney (1648). ——— The Carriers Cosmographie (1637). ——— The Number and Names of all the Kings of England and Scotland from the beginning of their governments to this present (1650). Warwick, Philip, Memoires of the Reign of King Charles I (1702). Watson, Richard, The Panegyrike and The Storme (1659). Webster, John, The Picture of Mercurius Politicus (1653). Wharton, George, Grand Pluto’s progresse through Great Britaine, and Ireland (1647). ——— No Merline, nor Mercury: but a new almanack after the old fashion (1648). ——— Hemeroscopeion: A Meteorologicall Diary and Prognostication for the yeere of Christ 1651 (1651). Whitlocke, Bulstrode, Memorials of the English Affairs: Or, an Historical Account of

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What passed from the beginning of the Reign of King Charles the First, to King Charles the Second His happy Restauration, 2 vols (1682). Winstanley, W., The loyal martyrology, or brief catalogues and characters of the most eminent persons who suffered for their conscience during the late times of rebellion (1665). Wodenote, Theophilus, Hermes Theologus: Or, A Divine Mercurie Dispatcht (1649). Wood, Anthony, Athenae Oxonienses. An exact history of all the writers and bishops who have had their education in the most antient and famous University of Oxford, 3 vols (2nd edn, 1721).

Secondary material Books Achinstein, Sharon, Milton and the revolutionary reader (Cambridge, 1994). Anselment, Raymond A., Loyalist resolve: patient fortitude in the English Civil War (Cranbury, NJ, 1988). Archer, Ian, The pursuit of stability: social relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991). Armstrong, Robert, Protestant war. The ‘British’ of Ireland and the wars of the three kingdoms (Manchester, 2005). Ashton, Robert, Counter-revolution: the Second Civil War and its origins, 1646–8 (New Haven, NY, 1994). Aubrey, P., Mr. Secretary Thurloe: Cromwell’s Secretary of State, 1652–1660 (1990). Auchter, Dorothy, A dictionary of literary and dramatic censorship in Tudor and Stuart England (Westport, CT, 2001). Austen, Brian, English provincial posts, 1633–1840 (1978). Aylmer, G.E., The king’s servants: the civil service of Charles I, 1625–1642 (1961). ——— The state’s servants: the civil service of the English Republic, 1649–60 (1973). Bailey, J.E., The life of Thomas Fuller (1874). Bamford, Francis (ed.), A royalist’s notebook: the commonplace book of Sir John Oglander, 1585–1655 (1936). Barber, Sarah, Regicide and republicanism: politics and ethics in the English Revolution (Edinburgh, 1998). ——— A revolutionary rogue: Henry Marten and the immoral English Republic (Stroud, 2000). Barnard, John and McKenzie, D.F. (eds), The Cambridge History of the book, volume IV, 1557–1695 (Cambridge, 2002). Baxter, Stephen B., William III (1966). Beier, A.L. and Finlay, Roger (eds), London 1500–1700: the making of the metropolis (1986). Belcher, W.F. and Bond, R.P. (eds), Studies in the English periodical press (Chapel Hill, NY, 1957). Bellanger, Claude et al. (eds), Histoire genérale de la presse Française, 5 vols (Paris, 1969–79). Bellany, Alastair, The politics of court scandal in early modern England (Cambridge, 2002). Benett, H.S., English books and readers, 1603–1640 (Cambridge, 1970). Berdan, John M., The poems of John Cleveland (New Haven, CT, 1911). 241

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Berry, Helen, Gender, society and print culture in late Stuart England: the cultural world of the Athenian Mercury (2003). Blagden, Cyprian, The Stationers’ Company: a history, 1403–1959 (California, 1960). Boulton, Jeremy, Neighbourhood and society: a London suburb in the seventeenth century (Cambridge, 1987). Boyce, D. George (ed.), Newspaper history from the seventeenth century to the present day (1978). Braddick, Michael J., State formation in early-modern England c.1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000). Brailsford, H.N., The Levellers and the English Revolution, 2nd edn (1983). Brant, C. and Purkiss, D. (eds), Women, texts and histories, 1575–1760 (1992). Brown, W.J., Jeremy Taylor (1925). Buchan, John, The Marquis of Montrose (1913; reprinted 1996). Burke, Peter, New perspectives on historical writing, 4th edn (1995). Burt, Richard, Licensed by authority: Ben Jonson and the discourses of censorship (Ithaca, NY, 1993). Capp, Bernard, Astrology and the popular press: English almanacs, 1500–1800 (1979). ——— Cromwell’s navy: the fleet and the English Revolution, 1648–1660 (Oxford, 1989). ——— The world of John Taylor the water poet, 1578–1653 (Oxford, 1994). Carlton, Charles, Charles I: the personal monarch (1983). Carty, T.J., A dictionary of literary pseudonyms in the English language (1995). Cavallo, Gughelmo and Chartier, Roger (eds), A history of reading in the west (1999). Chappell, W.M., Popular Music of the Olden Time, 2 vols (1855–7). ——— (ed.), The Roxburghe Ballads, 3 vols (1871–80). Chartier, Roger (ed.), The culture of print: power and the uses of print in early modern Europe (1989). ——— The cultural uses of print in early-modern France (Princeton, NJ, 1989). ——— The order of books: readers, authors and libraries in Europe between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries (1994). Clare, Janet, ‘Art Made Tongue-tied by Authority’: Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic censorship, 2nd edn (Manchester, 1999). Clark, J.C.D., Revolution and rebellion: state and society in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 3rd edn (Cambridge, 1990). Clark, Peter and Slack, Paul (eds), Crisis and order in English towns, 1500–1700 (1972). Clay, C.G.A., Economic expansion and social change: England, 1500–1700, 2 vols (Oxford, 1984). Claydon, Tony, William III and the Godly Revolution (Cambridge, 1996). Clegg, Cyndia S., Press censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1997). ——— Press censorship in Jacobean England (Cambridge, 2001). Clyde, W.M., The struggle for the freedom of the press from Caxton to Cromwell (New York, 1934). Coffey, John, Persecution and toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689 (Harlow, 2000). Colclough, David, Freedom of speech in early-Stuart England (Cambridge, 2005). Coleman, D.C., The English paper industry, 1495–1860 (1958). Collins, Jeffrey R., The allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, 2005). Condren, Conal, The language of politics in seventeenth-century England (1994). SECONDARY MATERIAL: BOOKS

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Cooper, J.P.D., Propaganda and the Tudor state: political culture in the West Country (Oxford, 2003). Corfield, P.J. and Keene, Derek (eds), Work in towns, 850–1850 (Leicester, 1990). Corns, Thomas N., Uncloistered virtue: English political literature, 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1992). Couper, W.J., The Edinburgh periodical press, 2 vols (Stirling, 1908). Craig, Alec, The banned books of England and other countries (1962). Cressy, David, Literacy and the social order: reading and writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1980). ——— England on edge: crisis and revolution, 1640–1642 (Oxford, 2006). Crick, Julia and Walsham, Alexandra (eds), The uses of script and print, 1300–1700 (Cambridge, 2004). Cust, Richard, Charles I: a political life (Harlow, 2005). Darnton, Robert, The forbidden best-sellers of pre-Revolutionary France (1996). ——— The great cat massacre and other episodes in French cultural history (1984). Davies, Godfrey, The Restoration of Charles II, 1658–1660 (Oxford, 1955). Davies, Matthew and Saunders, Ann, The history of the Merchant Taylors’ Company (Leeds, 2004). Davies, M.G., The enforcement of English apprenticeship: a study in applied mercantilism (Cambridge, MA, 1956). Davies, Robert, A memoir of the York press, with notices of authors, printers, and stationers, in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (1868). Davis, Nathalie Zemon, Fiction in the archives: pardon tales and their tellers in sixteenth-century France (Stanford, CA, 1987). ——— Society and culture in early-modern France (Cambridge, 1987). Day, C.L. and Boswell-Murrie, E. (eds), English song-books: 1651–1702: a bibliography (1940). Denbigh, C., Royalist father and Roundhead son: memoirs of the first and second earls of Denbigh, 1600–1675 (1915). de Groot, Jerome, Royalist identities (Basingstoke, 2004). Dobranksi, Stephen B., Milton, authorship, and the book trade (Cambridge, 1999). Draper, F.M.W., Four centuries of the Merchant Taylors’ School, 1561–1961 (1962). Draper, J.W., A century of broadside elegies (1928). ——— The funeral elegy and the rise of English Romanticism (New York, 1967). Dutton, Richard, Mastering the Revels: the regulation and censorship of English Renaissance drama (1991). ——— Licensing, censorship and authorship in early-modern England (2000). Ebsworth, J.W. (ed.), The Bagford Ballads: illustrating the last years of the Stuarts, 4 vols (Hertford, 1876–8). ——— Merry Drollery Compleat. Being Jovial Poems, Merry Songs, &c. (Boston, Lancashire, 1875). ——— The Roxburghe Ballads, vols iv–viii (1883–95). Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., The printing press as an agent of change, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1979). Elton, G.R., Policy and police: the enforcement of the reformation in the age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972). Epstein, James A., Radical expression: political language, ritual, and symbol in England, 1790–1850 (Oxford, 1994). Escott, T.H.S., Masters of English journalism (1911). 243

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Estabrook, Carl B., Urbane and rustic England: cultural ties and social spheres in the provinces, 1660–1780 (Manchester, 1998). Ezell, Margaret J.M., Social authorship and the advent of print (Baltimore, MD, 1999). Fairfield, Leslie P., John Bale: mythmaker for the English Reformation (West Lafayette, IN, 1976). Farrer, J.A., Books condemned to be burnt (1892). Feather, John, A history of British publishing, 2nd edn (2006). Felsenstein, Frank, Anti-semitic stereotypes: a paradigm of otherness in English popular culture, 1660–1830 (Baltimore, MD, 1995). Ferguson, W.C., The loan book of the Stationers’ Company with a list of transactions, 1592–1692 (1989). Fincham, Kenneth (ed.), The early Stuart church, 1603–1642 (1993). Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair (eds), The book history reader (Abingdon, 2002). ——— An introduction to book history (Abingdon, 2005). Finlay, Roger, Population and metropolis: the demography of London, 1580–1650 (Cambridge, 1981). Firth, C.H., The last years of the Protectorate, 2 vols (1909). Fortesque, G.K., Catalogue of the pamphlets . . . collected by George Thomason, 2 vols (1908). Foster, Stephen, Notes from the Caroline underground: Alexander Leighton, the Puritan triumvirate and the Laudian reaction to Nonconformity (Hamden, CT, 1978). Fox, Adam, Oral and literate culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000). Fox, Alistair, Politics and literature in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII (Oxford, 1989). Fox-Bourne, H.R., English newspapers, chapters in the history of journalism, 2 vols (1887). Frank, Joseph, Cromwell’s press agent: a critical biography of Marchamont Nedham, 1620–1678 (Lanham, MO, 1980). ——— The beginnings of the English newspaper, 1620–60 (Cambridge, MA, 1960). Fraser, Peter, The intelligence of the Secretaries of State and their monopolies of licensed news, 1660–1688 (Cambridge, 1956). Freist, Dagmar, Governed by opinion: politics, religion and the dynamics of communication in Stuart London, 1637–1645 (1997). Friedman, Jerome, Blasphemy, immortality and anarchy: the Ranters and the English revolution (Athens, OH, 1987). ——— Miracles and the pulp press during the English revolution: the battle of the frogs and Fairford’s flies (1993). Gardiner, Samuel R., History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 4 vols (1988). ——— History of the Great Civil War, 4 vols (1893–8). Gaskell, Philip, A new introduction to bibliography (Oxford, 1972). Gillespie, Raymond, Reading Ireland: print, reading and social change in early-modern Ireland (Manchester, 2005). Gillett, C.R., Burned books: neglected chapters in British history and literature, 2 vols, 3rd edn (New York, 1964). Gimmelfarb-Brack, Marie, Liberté, egalité, fraternité, justice! La vie et l’oeuvre de Richard Overton, Niveleur (Berne, 1979). Ginzburg, Carlo, The cheese and the worms: the cosmos of a sixteenth century miller (1980). 244


Greaves, R.L., Deliver us from evil: the radical underground in Britain, 1660–1663 (Oxford, 1986). ——— Enemies under his feet: radicals and Nonconformists in Britain, 1664–1677 (Stanford, CA, 1990). ——— Secrets of the kingdom: British radicals from the Popish Plot to the Revolution of 1688–89 (Stanford, CA, 1992). Greaves, R.L. and Zaller, R. (eds), Biographical dictionary of British radicals in the seventeenth century, 3 vols (Brighton, 1982–4). Green, Ian, The Christian’s ABC. Catechisms and catechizing in England, c.1530–1740 (Oxford, 1996). ——— Print and Protestantism in early modern England (Oxford, 2000). Greg, W.W., A companion to Arber: being a calendar of documents in Edward Arber’s transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640 (Oxford, 1967). ——— Some aspects and problems of London publishing between 1550 and 1650 (Oxford, 1956). Griffiths, A., The print in Stuart Britain, 1603–1689 (1998). Halasz, Alexandra, The marketplace of print: pamphlets and the public sphere in early modern England (Cambridge, 1997). Handover, P.M., Printing in London from 1476 to modern times (1960). Hanson, Laurence, Government and the press, 1695–1763 (Oxford, 1936). Harbage, Alfred, Cavalier drama, 2nd edn (New York, 1964). Hardacre, Paul H., The royalists during the puritan revolution (The Hague, 1956). Harline, C.E., Pamphlets, printing and political culture in the early Dutch republic (Dordrecht, 1987). Harris, Bob, Politics and the rise of the press: Britain and France, 1620–1800 (1996). Harris, Tim, London crowds in the reign of Charles II: propaganda and politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge, 1987). ——— Restoration: Charles II and his kingdoms, 1660–1685 (2005). Harth, Philip, Pen for a party: Dryden’s Tory propaganda in its contexts (Princeton, NJ, 1993). Heath-Agnew, E., Roundhead to royalist: a biography of Colonel John Birch, 1615–1691 (Hereford, 1978). Hesse, Carla, Publishing and cultural politics in revolutionary Paris, 1789–1810 (Berkeley, CA, 1991). Hibbard, Caroline, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill, NC, 1983). Hill, Christopher, A nation of change and novelty: radical politics, religion and literature in seventeenth-century England, 2nd edn (1993). ——— Antichrist in seventeenth-century England, 2nd edn (1990). ——— Change and continuity in seventeenth-century England, 2nd edn (1991). ——— Intellectual origins of the English Revolution revisited (Oxford, 1997). ——— Liberty against the law: some seventeenth-century controversies (1996). ——— The century of revolution, 1603–1714, 2nd edn (1997). ——— The experience of defeat: Milton and some contemporaries, 2nd edn (1994). ——— The world turned upside down: radical ideas during the English Revolution, 4th edn (1991). ——— Puritanism and revolution, 3rd edn (1990). ——— Society and Puritanism in pre revolutionary England, 4th edn (1991). ——— The English Bible and the seventeenth-century revolution (1994). 245

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Hobman, D.L., Cromwell’s master spy: a study of John Thurloe (1961). Holloway, C.J. and Black, Joan (eds), Later English broadside ballads, 2 vols (1975–9) Holstun, James (ed.), Pamphlet wars: prose in the English Revolution (1992). Houston, R.A. (ed.), Literacy in early-modern Europe: culture and education, 1500–1800 (1988). Hughes, Ann, Gangraena and the struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford, 2004). Hunt, R.W., Phillips, I.G. & Roberts, R.J. (eds), Studies in the book trade in honour of Graham Pollard (Oxford, 1975). Huntley, F.L., Jeremy Taylor and the Great Rebellion: a study of his mind and temper in controversy (Ann Arbor, MI, 1970). Hutton, Ronald, Charles II: King of England, Scotland and Ireland (Oxford, 1989). ——— The Restoration: a political and religious history of England and Wales, 1658–1667, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1993). ——— The royalist war effort, 1642–6 (1982; 2nd edn, 2003). Jackson, Clare, Restoration Scotland, 1660–1690: royalist politics, religion and ideas (Woodbridge, 2003). Johns, Adrian, The nature of the book: print and knowledge in the making (Chicago, IL, 1998). Kaplan, M.L., The culture of slander in early modern England (Cambridge, 1997). Katz, David S., Philo-semitism and the re-admission of the Jews to England, 1603–1655 (Oxford, 1982). ——— The Jews in the history of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford, 1994). Keeble, Neil H., The literary culture of nonconformity in later seventeenth-century England (Leicester, 1987). ——— The Cambridge companion to the writing of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2001). ——— The Restoration: England in the 1660s (Oxford, 2002). Kelsey, Sean, Inventing a republic: the political culture of the English Commonwealth, 1649–1653 (Manchester, 1997). Kennedy, J., Smith, W.A. and Johnson, A.F. (eds), A dictionary of anonymous and pseudonymous English literature (1926). Kenyon, John and Ohlmeyer, Jane (eds), The Civil Wars: a military history of England, Scotland and Ireland, 1638–1660 (Oxford, 1998). Kewes, Paulina, Authorship and appropriation: writing for the stage in England, 1660–1710 (Oxford, 1998). King, John N., Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ and early modern print culture (Cambridge, 2006). Kishlansky, Mark, A monarchy transformed: Britain 1603–1714 (1996). Kitchin, G., Sir Roger L’Estrange. A contribution to the history of the press in the seventeenth century (1913). Klaits, Joseph, Printed propaganda under Louis XIV (Princeton, NJ, 1972). Knights, Mark, Politics and opinion in crisis, 1678–81 (Cambridge, 1994). ——— Representation and misrepresentation in later Stuart Britain. Partisanship and political culture (Oxford, 2005). Knuttel, W.P.C., Verboden Boeken in de Republiek der Vereenigde Nederlanden (The Hague, 1914). Kunze, B.Y. and Brautigam, Dwight (eds), Court, country and culture (Rochester, NY, 1992).

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Lake, Peter (with Michael Questier), The Antichrist’s lewd hat: Protestants, Papists, and players in post-Reformation England (New Haven, CT, 2002). Lambert, Sheila (ed.), Printing for Parliament, 1641–1700 (List and Index Society, volume 20, 1984). Lamont, William M., Marginal Prynne, 1600–1669 (1963). Lander, Jesse, Inventing polemic. Religion, print, and literary culture in early modern England (Cambridge, 2006). Lawrence, Ann, Parliamentary army chaplains, 1642–51 (Woodbridge, 1990). Lenihan, Pádraig, Confederate Catholics at war, 1641–49 (Cork, 2001). Levin, Carole, Propaganda in the English Reformation: heroic and villainous images of King John (Lewiston, 1988). Levy, Leonard L., Legacy of suppression: freedom of speech and press in early American history (Cambridge, MA, 1960). ——— The emergence of a free press, 2nd edn (Chicago, IL, 2004). ——— Blasphemy: verbal offense against the Sacred, from Moses to Salman Rushdie (New York, 1993). Lewalski, B., Writing women in Jacobean England (Cambridge, MA, 1993). Lillywhite, Bryant, London coffee-houses: a reference book of coffee-houses of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (1963). Lindley, Keith, Popular politics and religion in Civil War London (Aldershot, 1997). ——— The English Civil War and revolution: a sourcebook (1998). Liu, Tai, Puritan London: a study of religion and society in the City parishes (Cranbury, NJ, 1986). Loewenstein, Joseph, The author’s due: printing and the prehistory of copyright (Chicago, IL, 2002). ——— Ben Jonson and possessive authorship (Cambridge, 2002). Love, Harold, Scribal publication in seventeenth-century England (Oxford, 1993). ——— Attributing authorship: an introduction (Cambridge, 2002). Loxley, James, Royalism and poetry in the English Civil Wars: the drawn sword (Basingstoke, 1997). Lunger Knoppers, L., Constructing Cromwell: ceremony, portrait and print, 1645–1661 (Cambridge, 2000). MacDonald, Michael, Sleepless souls: suicide in early modern England (Oxford, 1990). Macinnes Allan I. and Ohlmeyer, Jane (eds), Awkward neighbours: the Stuart kingdoms in the seventeenth century (Dublin, 2002). Mackay, Charles (ed.), The Cavalier songs and ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 (1863). MacLachlan, Alastair, The rise and fall of revolutionary England: an essay on the fabrication of seventeenth-century history (1996). Macray, W.D. (ed.), The history of the rebellion and Civil Wars in England begun in the year 1641, 6 vols (1888). McCalman, Iain, Radical underworld: prophets, revolutionaries and pornographers in London, 1795–1840 (Cambridge, 1988). McDowell, Paula, The women of Grub Street: press, politics and gender in the London literary marketplace, 1678–1730 (Oxford, 1998). McKenzie, D.F., The Cambridge University Press, 1696–1712: a bibliographical study, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1966). McKitterick, David, Print, manuscript and the search for order, 1450–1830 (Cambridge, 2003). 247

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McRae, Andrew, Literature, satire and the early Stuart state (Cambridge, 2004). Madan, F.F., A new bibliography of the Eikon Basilike of King Charles the First: with a note on the authorship (Oxford, 1950). ——— Oxford books, 1468–1640 (Oxford, 1895). ——— Oxford books, 1641–1650 (Oxford, 1912). Maguire, Nancy, Regicide and restoration: English tragicomedy, 1660–1671 (Cambridge, 1992). Malcolm, Joyce L., Caesar’s due: loyalty and king Charles, 1642–1646 (1983). Maltby, Judith D., Prayer book and people in Elizabethan and early Stuart England (Cambridge, 1998). Manning, Brian, 1649: the crisis of the English Revolution (1992). ——— The English people and the English Revolution, 2nd edn (1991). Martin, H.J. and Chartier, Roger (eds), Histoire de l’édition Française, 4 vols (Paris, 1983). Matthew, A.G. (ed.), Walker revised, 2nd edn (1988). ——— Calamy revised, 2nd edn (1988). Matthews, Nancy L., William Sheppard, Cromwell’s law reformer (Cambridge, 1984). Mowry, Melissa M., The bawdy politic in Stuart England, 1660–1714: political pornography and prostitution (Aldershot, 2004). Mendle, Michael, Dangerous positions: the estates of the realm and the making of the answer to the XIX Propositions (Alabama, 1995). ——— Henry Parker and the English Civil War: the political thought of the public’s ‘privado’ (Cambridge, 1985). Miller, John, After the Civil Wars: English politics and government in the reign of Charles II (Harlow, 2000). Miner, Earl, The Cavalier mode from Jonson to Cotton (Princeton, NJ, 1971). Moody, T.W., Martin, F.X. and Byrne, F.J. (eds), A new history of Ireland: earlymodern Ireland, 1534–1691, vol. iii (Oxford, 1978). Moran, James, The development of the printing press (1971). ——— Printing presses: history and development from the fifteenth century to modern times (1973). Morrill, John S. (ed.), Reactions to the English Civil War, 1642–1649 (1982). ——— (ed.), The impact of the English Civil War (1991). ——— The nature of the English Revolution: essays by John Morrill (1993). ——— Revolt in the provinces: the people of England and the tragedies of war, 1634–48, 2nd edn (1999). Morris, Brian, John Cleveland (1613–58): a bibliography of his poems (1967). Morris, Brian and Withington, Eleanor (eds.), The poems of John Cleveland (Oxford, 1967). Muddiman, J.G. (see Williams, J.B.). Munter, R.L., The history of the Irish newspaper, 1685–1760 (Cambridge, 1967). Myers, Robin, The Stationers’ Company archive 1554–1984 (Winchester, 1990). Myers, Robin and Harris, Michael (eds), Author/publisher relations during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Oxford, 1983). ——— Economics of the British book-trade, 1605–1939 (Oxford, 1985). ——— Property of a gentleman: the formation, organisation and dispersal of the private library, 1620–1920 (Winchester, 1991). ——— Spreading the word: the distribution networks of print, 1550–1850 (Winchester, 1990). 248


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Unpublished theses and papers UNPUBLISHED THESES AND PAPERS

Brice, I.D., ‘Political ideas in royalist pamphlets in the English civil war, 1642–49’ (Oxford B.Litt., 1970). Cotton, A.N.B., ‘London newsbooks in the civil war: their political attitudes and sources of information’ (Oxford D.Phil., 1971). Crist, Timothy J., ‘Francis Smith and the opposition press in England, 1660–1688’ (Cambridge Ph.D., 1977). 266

UNPUBLISHED THESES AND PAPERS

Gadd, Ian, ‘ “Being like a field”: corporate identity in the Stationers’ Company, 1557–1684’ (Oxford D.Phil., 1999). Harrison, G.A., ‘Royalist organisation in Wiltshire, 1642–1646’ (University of London Ph.D., 1963). Hetet, J.S.T., ‘A literary underground in Restoration England: printers and Dissenters in the context of constraints’ (Cambridge Ph.D., 1987). Hindle, Steve, ‘Dearth and the English Revolution: the harvest crisis of 1647–50 revisited’, paper delivered at the Early-Modern British History Seminar at Merton College, Oxford in February 2006. Johnston, R.P., ‘The court books of the Stationers’ Company, 1641–79: a complete index and selected entries’ (Wellington, NZ, MA, 1983). Keblusek, Marika, ‘Boeken in de hofstad: Haagse boekcultuur in de Gouden Eeuw’ (Hilversum Ph.D., 1997). ——— ‘Boekverkoper in ballingschap: Samuel Browne, boekverkoper/drukker te Londen, ‘S-Gravenhage en Heidelberg, 1633–1665’, 2 vols (Leiden MA, 1989). Kemp, Geoff, ‘Ideas of liberty of the press, 1640–1700’ (Cambridge Ph.D., 2001). Klaas Faber, Benne, ‘The poetics of subversion and conservatism: popular satire, c.1640–c.1649’ (Oxford D.Phil., 1992). McElligott, G.J., ‘The newsbooks of Interregnum England, 1649–1660’ (University College Dublin MA, 1996). McKenzie, D.F. (ed.), The British book-trade, 1641–1714: a chronology and calendar of documents (1976). ——— The London book-trade in the later seventeenth-century (Sanders Lectures, 1976). Reynolds, Neil, ‘The Stuart court and courtiers in exile, 1644–1654’ (Cambridge Ph.D., 1996). Seymour, Michael, ‘Pro-government propaganda in Interregnum England, 1649– 1660’ (Cambridge Ph.D., 1987).

267

Index Agreement of the People, The 64 Alkin, Elizabeth 160, 181, 207, 208 All Souls College, Oxford 43 allegiances, see civil war allegiances Anderton, William 200, 215 Argyll, Marquess of, see Campbell, Archibald Armstrong, John 132 Arrocher, Lieutenant Colonel 206 Ashburnham, John 114 Ashmole, Elias 135 Atherton, John, bishop of Waterford and Lismore 61 Atkins, Thomas, alderman of London 48, 170 attribution, unsound methodologies for attribution of pamphlets 100, 103 authorship, collective nature of 99–105, 102–103 Aylmer, Gerald 4 Bacon, Francis 196 Barber, Sarah 51–2 Barrow, Isaac 102 Barwick, Edward 145, 149 Barwick, John 102, 144, 145, 149 Bastwick, John 191, 196 Bates, George 131, 136, 142, 178 Bayly, Thomas 132, 142, 180 Bellany, Alastair 50 Berkenhead, John 19, 43, 93, 96, 99, 102, 106, 122, 134 Bethan, Captain 162 Bishop, George 202 Bishops’ Wars, the 16, 72 Bland, Captain Michael 166 book history, see print culture Bostock, Richard 160 Bourbon monarchy 14–15 Braban, Ellen 181 Bradshaw, John 45–6, 57, 116, 137, 146, 152, 166, 167, 171, 172–3, 177, 178, 180 Bramhall, John 83 Briefe Relation, A 137 Browne, Mr 201 Browne, Samuel 130 INDEX

Burnet, Gilbert 101 Burton, Henry 191, 196 Butler, James, 12th Earl and 1st Duke of Ormond 65, 66, 67, 76, 123 Butler, Nathaniel 131, 140, 141–2, 171 Campbell, Archibald, 1st Marquess of Argyll 73 Carew, Thomas 143 Case of the Armie Truly Stated, The 101 Case of the Common-Wealth, Stated, The 116, 124, 141 Case of the Kingdom Stated, The 112 Catholic Confederates of Ireland 6–7, 33, 65, 66, 67 cavalier, definition of 5 Cecil, Robert, Lord Treasurer 50 censorship, see also licensing alleged ineffectiveness of during 1640s 150–1, 183–5, 188 effectiveness of 204–9, 215–16 new model of 210–24 problems with concept of 12, 198–9 rarely ends in court 168, 186–7, 195–6, 196–7, 219 reasons for effectiveness of in 1649 151–2, 176–7 recent historiography concerning 185–91 violence of 198 weaknesses of recent historiography concerning 186–7, 191–9, 199–204 Certain Disquisitions and Considerations 102 Charles I 2, 7, 13–14, 16, 20, 21, 24, 36, 46, 52, 57, 63, 70, 71, 72, 82, 90, 100–101, 115, 120, 121, 122, 125, 141, 143, 145, 146, 151, 164, 170, 191, 196 and Naboth’s vineyard 55 compared to Old Testament heroes 55 untrustworthiness of 20, 85, 88, 154, 157 harvest failures during his captivity 38 personal sufferings of, in captivity 86–7 Charles II 52, 53, 57, 60, 63, 75–6, 77, 79, 80, 90, 91, 92, 117, 196, 200, 214 Jersey Declaration of 34, 132, 143, 179 Cheka, see Stationers’ Company

269

INDEX civil war allegiances, rethinking of 2, 5, 96–8, 105–11, 111–18 shifting nature of 94–8, 105–20, 132–9, 148 no predeterming factors for 98 Civil War, First 1, 17, 18, 20, 21, 33, 48, 72 Civil War, Second 1, 24, 38, 54, 75, 87, 124 Clare, Janet 184 Clarke, William 27, 36, 223 Clegg, Cyndia S. 188–90, 192, 198 Cleveland, John 93, 94, 99, 106, 110, 122, 134 Colchester 11, 161, 162 Cole, Peter 202, 208 Committee, The 60–1 Commonwealth of Oceana, The 114 Commonwealth principles 124–5, 138 Compleat Angler, The 217 Cook, Master 131, 132, 156 Corbet, Miles 46, 58 Cotton, Anthony 28–9 Croft, Pauline 50 Cromwell, Oliver 11, 40, 46, 51, 52, 54, 62, 68, 111, 117, 119, 146 alleged promiscuity of his wife 46, 48 Crouch, Edward 105, 131, 132, 133–4, 136, 139, 147, 163, 167, 180, 181 Crouch, John 52, 60, 93, 94, 98, 99, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107–8, 111, 126, 133, 134, 147, 179–80, 181 Daly, James 2, 95 Danvers, Sir John 172 Darnton, Robert 48 De Generatione Animalium 218 de Groot, Jerome 18, 43 de Saumaise, Claude 136 Declaration and Protestation of the Governor and Inhabitants of Virginia 180 Defensio Regia 136, 179, 181 Defoe, Daniel 29 Dendy, Edward 166, 170, 171, 172, 178, 181, 205, 208 Denham, John 143 Dennington, in Suffolk 34 Dering, Sir Edward 16 Digby, George, 2nd Earl of Bristol 82, 90 Digby, John, 1st Earl of Bristol 97, 143 Digby, Kenelm 142 Digges, Dudley 83 Disney, William 196, 215 Doe, Mr 166, 179 Dorrington, John 180 Drake, Sir William, reading habits of 36 Dugard, Henry, Rev. 135

Dugard, William 132, 135–9, 140, 166, 167, 181, 207 as turncoat 137–8 Dutton, Richard 187–8 East, Lucretia 133 Ecce. The New Testament 159 Eikon Basilike 4, 32, 42, 101, 123, 131, 136, 143, 145, 147, 165, 179, 180 Eikonoklastes 137 Elenchus Motuum Nuperorum in Anglia 131, 136, 178 Ellis, William 132, 133, 139, 142, 167, 181 Elsemore, Captain 159 Englands Complaint 34 Englands New Chains Discovered 29 Fagel, Gaspar 101 Fairfax, Sir Thomas 20, 110, 141, 155, 164, 205, 206 size of Lady Fairfax’s breasts 171 Featley, Daniel 185 Ferne, Henry 83, 122 Fitzjames, John 37 Fleetwood, Charles 222 Flesher, Miles 133, 135, 142, 202 Frank, Joseph 150, 160 Freud, Sigmund 128 Frost, Walter 53 Fuller, Thomas 142 Gardiner, S.R. 68, 86, 150 Gatford, Lionel 34, 142 Gauden, John 101 Gazette de France 15 Gestapo, see Stationers’ Company Goldie, Mark 41, 203, 211 Gookin, Vincent 222 Graham, James, 1st Marquess of Montrose 76, 77, 79, 81 Gramsci, Antonio 198–9 Great Britaines Paine-Full Messenger 172 Grismond, John 131, 132, 133, 134–5, 139, 140, 144, 146, 178 Gunning, Peter 102 Hackluyt, John 89, 93, 98, 99, 105, 106, 107, 108–10, 111, 126, 158, 160 Hall, Joseph, bishop of Norwich 142 Hammond, Colonel Robert 48, 87 Hammond, Henry 144 Harrington, James 114, n 62, 137, 138 Harris, John 28, 179, 181 Harris, Tim 61 Harrison, John 140 Harrison, Martha 131, 140, 141 Harvey, William 218 Heads of the Proposals, The 70, 123–4

270

INDEX Heldersham, Francis 131, 140 Henderson, Alexander 146, 170 Henrietta Maria, Queen 4, 79, 143, 218 Henry VIII, King 100 Herrick, Ralph 142 Heylyn, Dr Peter 19, 115, 121 High Commission, Court of 84, 85, 107, 153, 192, 213 Hill, Christopher 183, 185, 194, 199 Hobbes, Thomas 139 Holden, Mr 166 Holt, Alexander 171 Holy Living 216 Howell, James 83 Hunscott, Joseph 160, 179, 200–01, 202 Hunt, Arnold 185, 195 Hyde, Sir Edward 17, 83, 90, 97 Inchiquin, Lord, see O’Brien, Murrough 66–7 Ireland, royalist attitude to shifting conditions in 65–9 Ireton, Henry 158 Irish Confederates, see Catholic Confederates of Ireland Irish language 41–2 James I, King 143, 189, 190, 191, 215 James II, King 196, 214 Jenkins, David 83, 196 Jews, see royalist newsbooks, anti-Jewish sentiments in Jones, Clyve 128 Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer, The 33 Klaas-Faber, Benne 50 Knights, Mark 9 Koran, The 205, 208 Lacy, William 102 Lambert, Sheila 190, 195, 199 Last Will and Testament of Philip Earle of Pembroke, The 99 Laud, Archbishop William 15, 106, 115, 185 Lenthall, Sir John 113 L’Estrange, Sir Roger 60–1, 173, 205, 214 Lewis, George 160 licensing, effectiveness of 212–13 see censorship Lilburne, John 29, 64, 168, 173, 197, 201, 206, 219 Lilly, William 156, 160 Louis XIII, King of France 84 Love, Christopher 139 Lowndes, Richard 131, 140, 141, 142, 148, 156 loyalist, definition of 5–6 see royalist Mabbott, Gilbert 155, 161, 166–7

Man in the Moon Drinks Claret, The 60, 103 Man in the Moon, The 24, 26, 32, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 57, 60, 64, 78, 80, 86, 90, 99, 104, 105, 107, 132, 133, 134, 147, 164, 166, 171, 175, 178, 179, 180–1, 201 Mare Clausum 137 Marshall, Thomas 35 Marten, Henry 46, 47, 48, 51, 62, 196 Massey, Sir Edward, Major General 109 McKenzie, Donald F. 190, 209 Merchant Taylors’ School, London 132, 135, 137, 181 Mercure Anglois, Le 130 Mercurius Aulicus (1643–45) 19, 20, 24, 27, 33, 82, 96, 102, 111, 145 Mercurius Aulicus (1648–9) 23, 46, 54, 103, 110 Mercurius Bellicus 42, 47, 71, 74, 88–9, 99, 103, 104 Mercurius Bellonius 107 Mercurius Britanicus 102, 111, 112 Mercurius Carolinus 48 Mercurius Clericus 24 Mercurius Dogmaticus 46, 110, 158 Mercurius Elencticus 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 45, 47, 57, 58, 70, 74, 81, 84, 86, 87, 90, 103, 110, 131, 132, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 166, 170, 171, 175, 178, 179, 181, 206 Mercurius Hibernicus 33 Mercurius Melancholicus 45, 46, 47, 58, 71, 73, 74, 89, 99, 103, 104, 107, 109, 110, 131, 133, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 207, 223 Mercurius Militaris 109–10 Mercurius Politicus 31, 33, 116, 117, 118, 119, 168, 182 Mercurius Pragmaticus 3, 5, 22, 24, 27, 29, 32, 34, 37, 41, 47, 53, 57, 59, 64, 68, 70, 71, 72, 74, 76, 79, 80, 81, 84, 87, 90, 99, 103, 104, 110, 112, 114, 115, 117, 118, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 131, 132, 133, 140, 141, 142, 156, 157, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 175, 178, 180, 181, 182, 207 Mercurius Psitacus 47 Mercurius Veridicus 160 Mildmay, Sir Henry 113, 166, 179 Milton, Anthony 135, 189 Milton, John 101, 135, 137, 138 Moderate, The 167, 172 Monck, George 67, 68

271

INDEX Montrose, 1st Marquess of, see Graham, James Morrice, Roger 196, 221 Morton, Thomas 122 Moseley, Humphrey 217 Motive to all loyall Subjects, A 160 Mumford, Mr 131, 132 Naboth’s Vineyard, biblical story of 56 Necessity of Christian Subjection, The 122 Nedham, Marchamont 61, 93, 94, 98, 99, 100, 104, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111–26, 137, 138, 139, 163, 168, 170, 171, 172, 178, 181–2 as a royalist 120–26 as republican hero 117, 118–20 attack on Charles I (1645) 111 audience with Charles I (1647) 112–13, 121 Neville, Henry 60 Newcombe, Thomas 168, 173 Newes from the New Exchange, Or The Commonwealth of Ladies 60 Nicholas, Sir Edward 82, 136, 143 Noodig, Continueerlick Acht-Dagen-Nieus 215 Norbrook, David 118, 120 Nouvelles Ordinaires de Londres 137 O’Brien, Murrough (Lord Inchiquin) 66–7 obscenity 45–8, see also royalist newsbooks, sexual libel in Occurrences from Forraigne Parts 31 O’Neill, Owen Roe 65, 66, 67, 68, 69 Orange, The 61 Ormond, Earl of, see Butler, James, 12th Earl and 1st Duke of Ormond Oxford English Dictionary 9 Oxford, production of royalist propaganda at 17, 106–7, 129 Oxinden, Henry 116 Parker, Martin 93, 94, 103, 105, 106 Parker, Mr, royalist spy 34, 143, 144, 149 Parliament Joan, see Alkin, Elizabeth Parliament Kite, The 34, 54, 207 Parliament of Women, The 204 Parliament Scrich-Owle, The 54 Parliaments X Commandments, The 158 patriarchy 51 Patterson, Annabel 184, 188 Peacey, Jason 7–8, 64 n 4, 100 n 18, 103, n 29 129, n 6, 169 n 77, 226 Pennington, Isaac 170 Pepys, Samuel 36, 200 Perfect Diurnall, The 33 Perfect Occurrences 33, 156, 159, 160 Perfect Weekly Account, The 174

Peters, Hugh 46 Pettegree, Andrew 38, 44 Playford, John 217 Pocock, J.G.A. 118, 120 pornography 45–48 Porter, Endymion 43 Potter, Lois 217 press censorship, see censorship Pride’s Purge 1, 64, 87, 163, 164 print culture and conservatism 7 and intellectual history 8 common problems in study of 8, see also attribution and authorship concept of ‘sociology of power’ 8, 92, 186–7, 224, 226–7 importance of serial publications 19, 37, 52, 227 new approach of this book to 7 importance of 19, 37, 98, 103, 128,140, 227 printers, centrality to underground networks 127, 152, 169, 172–3 Printing Act, September 1649 24, 37, 216, 151, 164, 168–70, 171, 171–2, 173–4, 175, 176, 193, 206 Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio 137 propaganda, characteristics of 10, 21 usefulness of definition in reference to the 1640s 9–11 Provost Marshall 161, 162, 179, 205 Prynne, William 141, 164, 184, 191, 196 Pym, John 141 Quarles, Francis 142 Quarles, William 102 Ratcliffe, Mrs 179 Raymond, Joad 9, 119, 120, 150 reading, see William Clarke, Sir William Drake, Thomas Marshall, Samuel Pepys and royalist newsbooks Resolving of Conscience, The 122 Richelieu, Cardinal (Armand Jean du Plessis) 15, 84 Rinuccini, Giovanni Battista 66 Rostenberg, Leona 137 Royal Charter Granted unto Kings, by God Himself, The 132, 142, 180 royalism, division into ‘absolutists’ and ‘constitutionalists’ 17–18, 82, 95–6 increasing appeal of in 1647 and 1648 20–3, 39–43, 44, 107–20 reluctance of scholars to take seriously 2, 121 weaknesses in the study of 4, 17–18, 95–6, 121–2

272

INDEX royalist allegiance, shifting nature of 94–5, see also civil war allegiances royalist authors, shifting allegiances of 105–20 royalist, definition of 5–6, 23, 124, see also royalist newsbooks, definition of royalist newsbooks, aims of 39, 59, 63 anti-Jewish sentiments in 57–9 as weapons of war 129–30 attitude to Church ‘as by law established’ 88–90 attitude to law and order 82–92 attitude to the City of London 63–4 attitudes to Scottish invasion 69–82 attitudes to the Levellers 63–4 authorship, collective nature of 99–105 changing audience for 37–8, 39–41, 43 cost of 24, 27 definition of 23, 124 distribution of 30, 34 print runs 28–29 reading of 35–43 scatological humour 45–8 sexual libel in 45–8 Royall Diurnall, The 53, 56, 80, 85, 110, 175, 181 Royston, Richard 32, 34, 129, 131, 135, 137, 140, 144, 145–9, 165, 166, 178, 200, 216 Rushworth, John 155 Scott, Jonathan 118–19, 120, 125 Scott, Thomas 46, 47, 48, 152, 172, 177, 179, 180, 181 Scribner, Robert 50 Scroggs, Sir William 169 Second Part of Englands new Chains discovered, The 166, 206 Seile, Henry 132, 140, 141, 142, 180 Selden, John 137 serial publications, importance of, see print culture sexual libel, importance of 50–2, see also obscenity and royalist newsbooks Sharpe, Kevin 36, 187 Sheppard, Samuel 93, 94, 98, 99, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110–11, 126, 158, 160, 166, 170 Ship Money 84, 107 Siebert, F.S. 161, 183, 194 Skippon, Major General 160–1 Smith, David L. 5, 18, 69, 95 Smith, Francis ‘Elephant’ 197–8, 215 Smith, Nigel 119, 120 Smuts, Malcolm 4

sociology of power, see print culture Spelman, John 83 Star Chamber, Court of 84, 85, 213, 170, 183, 191, 192, 207 state, the, definition of 12, 211–15 existence of 210, 211–15 reach and power of 153–82, 199–204, 204–12 Stationers’ Company 12, 39, 107, 133, 136, 144, 145, 146, 152, 153, 156, 158, 161, 166, 172–3, 174, 176, 177, 178, 179, 183, 191, 193, 194, 195, 199–204, 212, 213 ability to work with other organizations 204–9 comparisons with Gestapo and Cheka 12, 191, 199, 201 usefulness of Stationers’ Company to the state 199–204 Stephens, Robert 200 Stubbes, John 196 Swift, Jonathan 38 Sydney, Algernon 221 Symmons, Edward 22, 32, 145, 206–7 Taylor, Jeremy 144, 216 Taylor, John 93, 102, 105, 106, 172 Thomason, George 30, 33, 36, 112 Thompson, Anthony 185 Thompson, James 116, 178 Thomson, Mr 171 Thurloe, John 111 Tradescant, John 135 Treason Act (1649) 115, 167, 169, 206 Treatise of Magistracy, A 158 True State of the Case of the Common-Wealth, A 117 Twyn, John 196, 200 Underdown, David 50 Ussher, James 141 Van Delft, James 145 Venice, ambassador of, to England 23 Verney, Edmund 171 Verney, Mr 171 Vindication of King Charles: Or, A Loyal Subjects Duty, A 22 Virginia 180 Walker, Henry 42, 46, 58, 156 Walkley, Thomas 131, 140, 142, 143–4, 148, 179 Walton, Isaac 217 Ward, Seth 102 Ware, Sir James 135 Watson, Richard 215 Weckherlin, G.R. 185 Weekly Intelligencer, The 33

273

INDEX Wharton, George 93, 94, 102, 105, 106, 135, 159, 179, 181 Whitlocke, Bulstrode 162 William III 101, 192, 196 alleged homosexuality of 61–2, see also sexual libel and obscenity

Williams, John 132, 140, 142–3, 147, 180 Worden, Blair 119–20, 187 Wormald, Brian 83, 95 Wright, William 131, 132, 133, 139, 166

274

Other books of interest Control of Religious Printing in Early Stuart England S. MUTCHOW TOWERS Provides a narrative of the course of censorship which can profitably inform both literary and historical studies pertaining to religious literature, censorship, the Civil War, and the history of the Church of England. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY NEWS [A] fascinating new study. JOURNAL OF THE EARLY BOOK SOCIETY This detailed investigation of the effectiveness of the mechanisms of press control over print publication in Jacobean and Caroline England over a period of four decades begins with a comparative study of the publication patterns of the evangelical Calvinist Thomas Taylor and the Arminian Thomas Jackson, and supports its findings by sampling the religious press for the years 1607, 1617, 1627, and 1637, studying the development of press controls, and, importantly, comparing texts. The author contrasts the content of religious titles which were subject to pre-publication examination and licensing with those which were not, and investigates the texts for both evangelical Calvinist teachings and for evidence of Laudian ceremonies, practices, and doctrines. ISBN 9780851159393

The Cult of King Charles the Martyr ANDREW LACEY It is a tribute to this intelligent, fascinating and cogent study that it provokes far-reaching reflection. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW A major contribution to early modern British history. JOURNAL OF MODERN HISTORY The cult of King Charles the Martyr was first fashioned during Charles’s captivity, and the component parts were readily available to preachers and eulogists in the weeks and months after the regicide. However, it was the publication of the Eikon Basilike in February 1649 that established the image of Charles as a suffering, innocent king, walking in the footsteps of his Saviour to his own Calvary at Whitehall. The figure of the martyr and the shared set of images and beliefs surrounding him contributed to the survival of royalism and Anglicanism during the years of exile. ISBN 9780851159225

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