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Libels in Action: Ritual, Subversion and the English Literary Underground, 1603–42

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The Politics of the Excluded, c.1500–1850

Part of the book series: Themes in Focus ((TIF))

Abstract

In the late summer of 1637, Thomas Wentworth, Charles I’s Lord Deputy in Ireland, tried to calm the frayed nerves of his ally William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud had been upset by a series of ‘libels’ posted around London that had bitterly attacked him for his role in the recent pillorying and mutilation of three Puritan critics of his regime. Wentworth drew on his own experience to offer Laud some comforting advice. ‘Those infamous and hellish libels’, he wrote, ‘are the diseases of a loose and remiss government’, and ‘all great ministers are commonly made the objects of them’. Ignoring them, he suggested, might actually be the best tactic.

An earlier version of this paper was presented to audiences at Stanford, George Washington and Rutgers Universities and has benefited from their questions and criticisms. Thanks also to Tom Freeman, Brad Gregory, Paul Seaver and Kevin Sharpe for advice on particular issues, and to Deborah Yaffe, editor supreme.

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Notes

  1. See Richard Cust, ‘News and Politics in Early Seventeenth-Century England’, P&P, CXII (1986), 60–90

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  2. Pauline Croft, ‘The Reputation of Robert Cecil: Libels, Political Opinions and Popular Awareness in the Early Seventeenth Century’, TRHS, 6th Series, I (1991), 43–69

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  3. Pauline Croft, ‘Libels, Popular Literacy and Public Opinion in Early Modern England’, Historical Research, LXVIII (1995), 266–85

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  4. Adam Fox, ‘Ballads, Libels and Popular Ridicule in Jacobean England’, P&P, CXLV (1994), 47–83

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  5. Andrew McRae, ‘The Literary Culture of Early Stuart Libelling’, Modern Philology, XCVII (2000), 364–92.

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  6. An extract from the Croydon Register printed in D. W. Garrow, The History and Antiquities of Croydon (Croydon, 1818), p. 289, states that Whitgift was buried before his funeral. This extract is the only evidence I have found for the hasty burial. Historians of death ritual have noted that early modern elite funerals needed time for preparation, but the usual solution to the inevitable effects of delay was to embalm the body or encase it in lead. see David Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997), p. 427. For examples of elite funerals performed without the corpse, see Clare Gittings, Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England (London, 1984), pp. 167–8. An interesting comparative case on funerary ritual, honour and dishonour is Craig Koslofsky, ‘Honour and Violence in German Lutheran Funerals in the Confessional Age’, Social History, XX (1995), 315–37.

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  7. A full consideration of the legal, political and ecclesiastical significance of this case is given in Alastair Bellany, ‘A Poem on the Archbishop’s Hearse: Puritanism, Libel, and Sedition after the Hampton Court Conference’, JBS, XXXIV (1995), 137–64.

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  8. See my Death of a Favourite: John Felton, Charles I and the Assassination of the Duke of Buckingham (Manchester University Press, forthcoming); and ‘Raylinge Rymes and Vaunting Verse’. See also James Holstun, ‘“God Bless Thee Little David”: John Felton and his Allies’, ELH, LIX (1992), 513–52

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  9. See J. A. Sharpe, ‘“Last Dying Speeches”: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth-Century England’, P&P, CVII (1985), 144–67

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  10. Printed in J. A. Taylor, ‘Two Unpublished Poems on the Duke of Buckingham’, Review of English Studies, XL (1989), 232–40.

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  11. Charles I’s relations with the ‘public’ — his shifting attitude to the task of explaining himself to his subjects — needs further study. For an important case study, see Thomas Cogswell, ‘The Politics of Propaganda: Charles I and the People in the 1620s’, JBS, XXIX (1990), 187–215.

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  12. For Elizabethan Catholics and their martyrs, see Peter Lake and Michael Questier, ‘Agency, Appropriation and Rhetoric under the Gallows: Puritans, Romanists and the State in Early Modern England’, P&P, CLIII (1996), 64–107.

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Authors
  1. Alastair Bellany
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Brown University, USA

    Tim Harris (Professor of History) (Professor of History)

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© 2001 Alastair Bellany

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Bellany, A. (2001). Libels in Action: Ritual, Subversion and the English Literary Underground, 1603–42. In: Harris, T. (eds) The Politics of the Excluded, c.1500–1850. Themes in Focus. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-4030-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-4030-8_4

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-333-72224-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4039-4030-8

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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