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Rumor and “Common Fame”: The Impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham and Public Opinion in Early Stuart England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2016

David Coast
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Abstract

This article reexamines the parliamentary impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham, the royal favorite of King Charles I, by placing this event in the broader contexts of political culture and social change in early Stuart England. Buckingham's enemies based the impeachment on “common fame,” claiming that his faults were a matter of public knowledge. Charles, however, believed that the charges were based on seditious rumors. The impeachment undercut an important element of elite rhetoric that associated rumor with the rebellious multitude, revealing ideological divisions over the nature of grievances and the legitimacy of popular speech. The article contextualizes the impeachment within 1620s underground literature that purported to present the views of the common people, arguing that there was a wider tendency to ventriloquize public opinion. When Buckingham's allies produced their own tracts featuring the persona of the “honest ploughman,” appeals to the authority of public opinion were clearly gaining in strength. By explaining this development in political culture with reference to the growth of a more politically reliable “middling sort,” the article contributes to debates about the relationship between social change and political conflict in early Stuart England.

Keywords

Charles IBuckinghamImpeachmentParliamentRumorPublic opinionCommon fameSamuel Turner
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 241 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2016 

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References

1 For copies of Turner's queries, see TNA, SP 16/22, fols. 99r, 101r; Landsdowne 491, fol. 149r, British Library (hereafter BL); Harley 161, fol. 59v, BL; Harley 161, fol. 59r−v, BL; BL Add. MSS. 22474, fol. 11v; Tanner 72, fol. 109b, Bodleian Library (hereafter Bod.); Carreg-lwyd Deposit MS 651, National Library of Wales; ZCR 63/2/21, Cheshire Archives. For copies in letters and diaries, see Zuane Pesaro to the Doge and Senate, 27 March 1626, Calendar of state papers and manuscripts relating to English affairs existing in the archives and collections of Venice and in other libraries of Northern Italy 1625−6, ed. Allen B. Hinds (London, 1913), 366 (hereafter CSPV); Mead to Stuteville, 17 March 1626, Harley 390, fol. 27r, BL; London newsletter, 18 March 1626, Harley 390, fol. 29r, BL; Francis Staresmore to Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, 23 March 1626, Carter 77, fol. 274, Bod.; TNA, C115/108/8630, James Palmer to Scudamore, 18 March 1626; Anonymous diary of public events, MS 0.7.3, fol. 3v, Trinity College, Cambridge University.

2 For the “blessed revolution” in English foreign policy, see Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621−1624 (Cambridge, 1989). For Buckingham's political career, see Roger Lockyer, Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham 1592−1628 (London, 1981).

3 For Buckingham's growing unpopularity from 1624, see Alastair Bellany and Thomas Cogswell, The Murder of King James I (New Haven, 2015), chap. 8.

4 For the attack on Buckingham in 1625, see Maija Jansson and William B. Bidwell, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1625 (New Haven, 1987), 394−99, 448−49; Simon Adams, “The Protestant Cause: Religious Alliance with the West European Calvinist Communities as a Political Issue in England, 1585−1630” (PhD diss., Oxford University, 1973), 368−69; Christopher Thompson, “The Origins of the Parliamentary Middle Group, 1625−1629,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 22 (December 1972): 71−86, at 78. See also “A Speach made by Sr Robert Cotton, knt and Baronett in ye Lower house of Parliamt assembled at Oxford 1625,” Egerton 3378, fol. 15v, BL, which was not delivered. I am grateful to Noah Millstone for drawing this source to my attention.

5 For the early lines of attack, see Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics (Oxford, 1979), 278−89. For Eliot's parliamentary career, see J. N. Ball, “Sir John Eliot and Parliament, 1624−1629,” in Faction and Parliament: Essays on Early Stuart History, ed. Kevin Sharpe (Oxford, 1978), 173−207.

6 Ball, “Sir John Eliot,” 181−83.

7 Pursell, Brennan, “James I, Gondomar and the Dissolution of the Parliament of 1621,” History 85, no. 279 (July 2000): 428−45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cust, Richard, “Prince Charles and the Second Session of the 1621 Parliament,” English Historical Review 122, no. 496 (April 2007): 427−41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guy, John, “The Origins of the Petition of Right Reconsidered,” Historical Journal 25, no. 2 (June 1982): 289−312CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reeve, L. J., “The Legal Status of the Petition of Right,” Historical Journal 29, no. 2 (June 1986): 257−77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, chap. 5. Russell's argument regarding negotiations and his claim that that Buckingham's opponents sought his “reformation” rather than his “ruin” is based on a misreading of the evidence. See David Coast, “‘Reformation’ or ‘Ruin’? The Impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham and Early Stuart Politics,” Historical Research (forthcoming). For the impeachment of Buckingham, see also Colin Tite, Impeachment and Parliamentary Judicature in Early Stuart England (London, 1974), chap. 7; J. N. Ball, “The Impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham in 1626,” in Mélanges Antonio Marongiu: Studies Presented to the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, vol. 25 (Palermo, 1967), 35−48; Flemion, Jess Stoddart, “The Dissolution of Parliament in 1626: A Revaluation,” English Historical Review 87, no. 345 (January 1972): 784−90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 787; Robert Zaller, The Discourse of Legitimacy in Early Modern England (Stanford, 2007), 632−641.

9 Bellany and Cogswell, Murder of King James, chaps. 8−12.

10 Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life (Harlow, 2005), 56; Cogswell, Thomas, “The Warre of the Commons for the Honour of King Charles': The Parliament-Men and the Reformation of the Lord Admiral in 1626,” Historical Research 84, no. 226 (April 2011): 618−36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cogswell, Thomas, “The Returne of the ‘Dead Alive’: The Earl of Bristol and Dr Eglisham in the Parliament of 1626 and in Caroline Political Culture,” English Historical Review 128, no. 532 (June 2013): 535−70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kishlansky, Mark, “Debate: Charles I: A Case of Mistaken Identity,” Past and Present 205, no. 1 (November 2009): 175−237Google Scholar, at 233; Andrew Thrush, The House of Commons 1604−1629 (Cambridge, 2010), 1:426; David Colclough, Freedom of Speech in Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 2005), 191; Derek Hirst, England in Conflict 1603−1660 (London, 1990), 117.

11 For the influence of the “ploughman” tradition in the mid-Tudor period, see Andrew McRae, God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500−1660 (Cambridge, 1996), chap. 1; David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (New York, 2002); John N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton, 1982).

12 Keith Wrightson, English Society 1580−1680 (London, 1982), 65−69; Andy Wood, “‘Poore Men Woll Speke One Daye’: Plebeian Languages of Deference and Defiance in England, c.1520−1640,” in The Politics of the Excluded in Early Modern England, ed. Tim Harris (Basingtoke, 2001), 67−98. For elite hostility to the “many-headed multitude,” see in particular Christopher Hill, Change and Continuity in Seventeenth Century England (London, 1974), 181−90.

13 Wrightson, English Society, chap. 6; J. A. Sharpe, Early Modern England: A Social History, 1550−1760 (London, 1987), 110−20.

14 Keith Wrightson, “Sorts of People in Tudor and Stuart England,” in The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550−1800, ed. Jonathan Barry and Christopher Brooks (New York, 1994), 28−51; Keith Wrightson, “Estates, Degrees and Sorts: Changing Perceptions of Society in Tudor and Stuart England,” in Language, History and Class, ed. Penelope J. Corfield (Oxford, 1991), 30−52; Steve Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, 1550−1640 (Basingstoke, 2000).

15 Andy Wood, The 1549 Rebellions and the Making of Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2007), chap. 5.

16 Copy of a letter from Samuel Turner to the Speaker of the House of Commons, 16 March 1626, 44M69/G2/30, Hampshire Record Office; “Dr Turners Speach in Parliament, 11 March 1625,” BL Add. MSS. 22474, fol. 11v.

17 “A defence for Doctor Turnor,” Tanner 72, fol. 78r., Bod.

18 Copy of a letter from Samuel Turner to the Speaker of the House of Commons, 16 March 1626, 44M69/G2/30, Hampshire Record Office.

19 William B. Bidwell and Maija Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626 (New Haven, 1992), 3:317.

20 Ball, “Sir John Eliot,” 184−85.

21 Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 266, 289, 322; Cogswell, “The Returne of the ‘Dead Alive.’” For evidence of collusion, see Sir James Bagg to Buckingham, 3 March 1626 or shortly thereafter, Notes and Queries, 4th ser., 10 (1872), 325−26.

22 For an account of Buckingham's growing unpopularity, see Bellany and Cogswell, Murder of King James, chap. 8.

23 Cogswell, Blessed Revolution; idem, “The People's Love: The Duke of Buckingham and Popularity,” in Politics, Religion and Popularity, ed. Thomas Cogswell, Richard Cust, and Peter Lake (Cambridge, 2002), 211−34; idem, “Thomas Middleton and the Court, 1624: A Game at Chess in Context,” Huntington Library Quarterly 47, no. 4 (Autumn 1984): 273−88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Adams, “Protestant Cause,” 359−60.

25 Kellie to Mar, 7 April 1625, Supplementary Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Mar and Kellie, ed. Henry Paton, Historical Manuscripts Commission 60 (London, 1930), 227; John Holles to the Earl of Arundel, 28 January 1626, Letters of John Holles 1587−1637, vol. 2, ed. P. R. Seddon, Thoroton Society Record Series 35 (Nottingham, 1983), 321.

26 “Upon the English fleete sett forth. Anno. 1625”; “Vox Britanniae Ad Hispaniam. 1626”; “Certaine verses made when my Lo: Cooke was made highe Sheriffe of Buckingham,” in Early Stuart Libels: An Edition of Poetry from Manuscript Sources, ed. Alastair Bellany and Andrew McRae. Early Modern Literary Studies Text, 1st ser. (Bristol, 2005), http://purl.oclc.org/emls/texts/libels.

27 [Viscount Rochford?] to Buckingham, 1623, Cabala, mysteries of state, in letters of the great ministers of K. James and K. Charles (London, 1653), 160.

28 Kellie to Mar, 22 March 1625, Mar and Kellie, 226. See Bellany and Cogswell, Murder of King James, 90−91.

29 TNA, “The Information of Martin Danby,” 26 November 1625, SP 16/10, fol. 52r.

30 Accusations against Buckingham, BL Add. MSS. 4155, fols. 143r−44v; EL 655/2, Cornwall Record office. Eliot seems to have employed at least one agent to gather information in London. See TNA, SP 16/18, fol. 95v, “Sir Iohn Eliotts Instructions to his Agents.”

31 Copy of a letter from Samuel Turner to the Speaker of the House of Commons, 16 March 1626, 44M69/G2/30, Hampshire Record Office.

32 When Eliot presented the charges against Buckingham in the House of Lords, he did glancingly refer to the “veneries” of Sejanus. See Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 3:223.

33 I have taken the version of the queries reported in Whitelocke's parliamentary diary and the very similar copy reproduced in TNA, SP 16/22, fol. 100r, as the most reliable versions. There are a number of similarly worded copies in a number of archives. See Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 2:268n60. The state papers also include two other versions that differ significantly. See TNA, SP 16/22, fols. 99r, 101r. Some copies claimed that there were seven or eight queries. See Landsdowne 491, fol. 149r, BL; Zuane Pesaro to the Doge and Senate, 27 March 1626 n.s., CSPV 1625−26, 366; Anonymous diary of public events, MS 0.7.3, fol. 3v, Trinity College, Cambridge University. Joseph Mead initially reported a garbled list of queries, along with the false report that they had been voted on by the House of Commons, to his friend Sir Martin Stuteville. See Mead to Stuteville, 17 March 1626, Harley 390, fol. 27r, BL.

34 Francis Staresmore to Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, 23 March 1626, Carter 77, fol. 274, Bod.

35 “Dr. Turner's queries against the duke of Buckingham,” Tanner 72, fol. 109b, Bod.

36 See London newsletter, 18 March 1626, Harley 390, fol. 29r, BL; Carreg-lwyd Deposit MS 651, National Library of Wales; “Dr Turners 6 questions that were deliuered in the lower house of parlament the 11 March 1625,” Harley 161, fol. 59r−v, BL.

37 Mead to Stuteville, 17 March 1626, Harley 390, fol. 27r, BL.

38 Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 2:261−62.

39 Mead to Stuteville, 17 March 1626, Harley 390, fol. 27r, BL; TNA C115/108/8630, James Palmer to Scudamore, 18 March 1626.

40 Ibid.

41 “Dr Turners 6 questions that were deliuered in the lower house of parlament the 11 of March 1625,” Harley 161, fol. 59v, BL; Mead to Stuteville, 18 March 1626, Harley 390, fol. 29r, BL.

42 “[D]octor Turner his speech in Parliament the second of March, 1625,” ZCR 63/2/21, Cheshire Archives; “Dr Turners Speach in Parliament, 11 March 1625,” BL Add. MSS. 22474, fol. 11v.

43 Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 3:162−63.

44 Cogswell, “The People's Love,” 211−34; Cogswell, Thomas, “‘Published by Authoritie’: Newsbooks and the Duke of Buckingham's Expedition to the Ile de Ré,” Huntington Library Quarterly 67, no. 1 (March 2004): 1−25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 A proclamation prohibiting the publishing, dispersing and reading of a declaration or remonstrance, drawen by some committees of the Commons-House of the late dissolued Parliament, and intended to haue beene preferred by them to his Maiestie, 16 June 1626 (London, 2nd ed.), STC 8826.

46 Mary Anne Everett Wood Green, ed., Diary of John Rous, Publications of the Camden Society 66 (London, 1856), 3. See also Bellany and Cogswell, Murder of King James, 247. Thomas Scott of Canterbury was no doubt referring to Buckingham when he wrote that those who were responsible for military matters were guilty of “treason and villanie” for allowing them to come to nothing. See Thomas Scott, “A true Relation of that which was done … at the Election” for parliament in 1626, CCA-U66/1, fol. 82r, Canterbury Cathedral Archives.

47 Zaller, Discourse of Legitimacy, 496−97.

48 Richard Cust, “The ‘Public Man’ in Late Tudor and Early Stuart England,” in The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, ed. Peter Lake and Steven Pincus (Manchester, 2007), 131; David Sacks, “Parliament, Liberty, and the Commonweal,” in Parliament and Liberty from the Reign of Elizabeth to the English Civil War, ed. J. H. Hexter (Stanford, 1992), 85−121, at 88, 92; Stephen D. White, Sir Edward Coke and “The Grievances of the Commonwealth,” 1621−1628 (Chapel Hill, 1979), 32.

49 Ann Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War (Basingstoke, 1998), 69.

50 Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 2:114.

51 D. H. Willson, ed., The Parliamentary Diary of Robert Bowyer, 1606−7 (London, 1931), 166.

52 Johann Sommerville, ed., King James VI and I: Political Writings (Cambridge, 1994), 189.

53 Ibid., 190−91.

54 Louis A. Knafla, ed., Law and Politics in Jacobean England: The Tracts of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (Cambridge, 1977), 258.

55 Sommerville, King James VI and I, 255; James's speech at the closing of the parliament of 1624, BL Add. MSS. 18597, fol. 205r−v.

56 “A Proclamation declaring His Majesties grace to His Subjectes for their reliefe against publique Grievances,” 14 February 1623, in Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. 1, Royal Proclamations of King James I, 1603–1625, ed. James F. Larkin and Paul L. Hughes (Oxford, 1973), 568−70.

57 See Sommerville, ed., King James VI and I, 190.

58 “Proclamation against publique Grievances,” 569.

59 “A Proclamation declaring His Majesties grace to his Subjects, touching matters complained of, as pubique greevances,” 10 July 1621, in Royal Proclamations of King James I, 1603–1625, 519.

60 “Proclamation against publique Grievances,” 569.

61 Lord Keeper's speech to the Lords and Commons, 29 March 1626, Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 2:392; Letter from Charles to the Commons, 20 April 1626, Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 3:36; “A declaration of the true causes which moued His Maiestie to assemble, and after inforced him to dissolue the last two meetings in Parliament,” 30 June 1626, STC 9246, 5; Letter from Charles to the Commons, 20 March 1626, Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 3:324.

62 Charles's speech to the House of Commons, 15 March 1626, Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 2:294.

63 Charles's letter to the Commons, 20 March 1626, Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 2:324. See also Charles's speech to the House of Commons, 15 March 1626, Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 2:294; Buckingham's speech to the House of Commons, 30 March 1626, Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 2:405.

64 Buckingham's speech to the House of Commons, 30 March 1626, Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 2:405.

65 For the presentation of grievances in the 1605−1606 session of James's first parliament, see Wallace Notestein, The House of Commons 1604−1610 (New Haven, 1971), 160−180.

66 Maija Jansson and William Bidwell, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1625 (New Haven, 1997), 302−5. For the petition of grievances in 1626, see Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 3:315−36.

67 White, Sir Edward Coke, 37, 188, 191.

68 Ibid., 41.

69 Michael Calvin McGee, “The ‘Ideograph’: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 66, no. 1 (February 1980): 1−16.

70 Cogswell, “The People's Love,” 211−34; “Middleton and the Court,” 273−88; “Published by Authoritie,” 1−25.

71 “To his sacred majesty, Ab Ignoto,” in Cabala Sive Scrinia Sacra, 3rd ed. (London, 1691), 256.

72 “A post Caution or rather a post mointion to the Common Speakers in the Lower house of Commons the two last Parliaments,” BL Add. MSS. 4155, fols. 77r, 85v.

73 Ibid., fol. 84v.

74 Ibid., fols. 77r−78v; 79r; 79v; 80r−v; 78r−v; 77r.

75 Ibid., fols. 78r; 77v, 82v, 84v; 82v−83r.

76 For the development of this conspiracy theory, see Richard Cust, “Charles I and Popularity,” in Cogswell, Cust, and Lake, eds., Politics, Religion and Popularity, 235−58.

77 See Virgil's Aeneid, book 4. For a detailed investigation of the representation of rumor in classical and early modern literature, see Philip Hardie, Rumour and Renown (Cambridge, 2012). For rumour in early Stuart political culture, see also Adam Fox, “Rumour, News and Popular Opinion in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England,” Historical Journal 40, no. 3 (September 1997): 597−620; Daniel Woolf, “News, History and the Construction of the Present in Early Modern England,” in The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, ed. Brendan Dooley and Sabrina Baron (Abingdon, 2001), 80−118; Claire Walker and Heather Kerr, eds., Fama and her Sisters: Gossip and Rumour in Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 2015); David Coast, News and Rumour in Jacobean England: Information, Court Politics and Diplomacy, 1618−25 (Manchester, 2014).

78 Francis Bacon, “Of Seditions and Troubles,” in Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding (London, 1857−74), 12:123−30.

79 David Cressy, Dangerous Talk (Oxford, 2010), 29, 37.

80 Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England (Oxford, 2000), 339.

81 TNA, SP 12/273, fol. 69r−v.

82 TNA, SP 16/21, fols. 136r−37r, “Relation made to a freind concerning the present affaires,” 28 February 1626. Conway made similar claims. See TNA, SP 16/523, fols. 73r, Conway to Buckingham, 12 March 1626.

83 “To his sacred majesty, Ab Ignoto,” 256.

84 Tobie Matthew to Buckingham, 29 March 1623, Harley 1581, fol. 80r−v, BL.

85 Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 1:565.

86 Ibid., 4:161.

87 Martin Ingram, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570−1640 (Cambridge, 1987), 328.

88 Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 4:207. See also “Dr. Turner's explanation,” Tanner 72, fol. 110v, Bod.

89 Copy of a letter from Samuel Turner to the Speaker of the House of Commons, 16 March 1626, 44M69/G2/30, Hampshire Record Office.

90 Zaller, Discourse of Legitimacy, 530; Colclough, Freedom of Speech, 139−40, 143, 148−49, 153, 156, 178, 183, 186.

91 Speaker of the House of Commons to Charles I, June 1626, quoted in John Rushworth, Historical Collections (London, 1680), 1:397.

92 “To the Kinges most excellent Maiestie the humble remonstrance off youre Commons, now assembled in Parliament 1626,” William Davenport's commonplace book, ZCR 63/2/19, fol. 43r, Cheshire Archives.

93 Bellany and Cogswell, Murder of King James, 249−58.

94 TNA, SP 99/27, f. 32r, Conway to Wake, 14 April 1626.

95 Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 2:342; Maija Jansson, ed., Proceedings in Parliament 1614 (Philadelphia, 1988), 410; Zaller, Discourse of Legitimacy, 606. Ironically, Malet had been on the other side of the argument about the legitimacy of proceeding on the basis of common fame on that occasion. See Jansson, ed., Proceedings in Parliament 1614, 385.

96 Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 2:420.

97 Ibid., 344, 357.

98 Ibid., 3:45−48. For other copies of the debate, see 44M69/L22/16, Hampshire Record Office; EL 655/4, fols. 21v−23v, Cornwall Record Office.

99 Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 3:45.

100 Ibid., 45−50.

101 Ibid., 16.

102 Ibid., 46.

103 Ibid., 45.

104 EL 655/4, fol. 22v, Cornwall Record Office.

105 For early Stuart libels, see Alastair Bellany, “Rayling Rymes and Vaunting Verse: Libellous Politics in Early Stuart England, 1603−1628,” in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (London, 1994), 285−310; Andrew McRae, Literature, Satire and the Early Stuart State (Cambridge, 2004); Croft, Pauline, “Libels, Popular Literacy and Public Opinion in Early Modern England,” Historical Research 68, no. 167 (October 1995): 266−85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 “Aduertisements of a Loiall subiect to his Gratious Soueraigne draun from obseruacons of the peoples speeches written by an unknown Author in Anno 1603,” Harley 35, fols. 460r−v, 461v, BL.

107 “The poore mans petition to the King,” AYL/186, Norfolk Record Office. I am grateful to Andy Wood for drawing this source to my attention.

108 Zaller, Discourse of Legitimacy, 576−84.

109 “Balaams Asse, or a Free Discourse touching the Murmurs, and feared discontents of the Time and directed to his then Maiestie King James By way of Humble Aduertisement,” Landsdowne 213, fols. 57v−60v, BL.

110 “If Saints in heaven cann either see or heare,” in Bellany and McRae, eds., Early Stuart Libels.

111 “The Common Peoples Apollegy to the Queene of Bohemia. 1623,” ibid.

112 “Tom Tell Troth or a Free Discourse touchinge the Murmurs of the tyme directed to his Maiestie by way of humble advertisement,” Tanner 73, fols. 199r−230v, Bod.

113 See Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, 20−35. For the issue of freedom of speech in general, see Colclough, Freedom of Speech.

114 “The Teares of the oppressed people of England,” 1623, Tanner 73, fol. 304r, Bod. It is possible that this was the tract that provoked James's poem “The wiper of the Peoples teares,” which was in turn answered by “An answere to the wiper away of the Peoples teares,” another poem that ventriloquized the common people.

115 Thomas Scott, Vox Populi (1620); Lake, Peter, “‘Constitutional Consensus’ and Puritan Opposition in the 1620s: Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match,” Historical Journal 25, no. 4 (December 1982): 805−25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

116 Thomas Scott, Vox Regis (1624), 2−3.

117 John Reynolds, Votivae Angliae (1624).

118 Anonymous letter to James, [early 1624], Harley 1581, fols. 395r−397r, BL.

119 Scott, Vox Regis, 2.

120 Anonymous letter to James, [early 1624], Harley 1581, fol. 395r, BL.

121 “Tom Tell Troth,” fol. 203r.

122 Ibid., fols. 202v−3r.

123 Scott, Vox Regis, 32.

124 “Tom Tell Troth,” fol. 199r.

125 Scott, Vox Regis, 31.

126 “Teares of the oppressed people of England,” fol. 304v.

127 Thomas Scott, The second part of Vox populi (London, 1624), 11, 35.

128 Ibid., 34.

129 “Tom Tell Troth,” fol. 202v.

130 Scott, Vox Regis, 35. For similar sentiments, see also “Tom Tell Troth,” fols. 202v−3r.

131 “Balaams Asse,” fol. 60v.

132 Scott, Vox Regis, 24; William Gorges, “Obseruations, and Ouertures for a Sea Fight vpon our owne Coasts,” Landsdowne 213, fol. 45r, BL.

133 Scott, Vox Regis, 18.

134 John Hatcher, “England in the Aftermath of the Black Death,” Past and Present 144, no. 1 (August 1994): 3−35, at 18.

135 Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, 36. The Plowman's Tale, wrongly attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer, was an example of this literature.

136 See Frederick J. Furnivall and J. Meadows Cowper, eds., Four Supplications (London, 1871), 1−15. Richard Tracy, A Supplication to our moste Souereigne Lorde Kyng Henry the Eight (London, 1544), similarly complains about clerical abuses, but does not ventriloquize the poor. Ibid., 19−58.

137 Tracy, A Supplication to our moste Souereigne Lorde Kyng Henry the Eight, 61−92.

138 McRae, God Speed the Plough, 23−57; Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance.

139 Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, 3.

140 Ibid., 45−49.

141 “Vox populi vox dei,” in Tudor Economic Documents:Being select documents illustrating the economic and social history of Tudor England, ed. R. H. Tawney and Eileen Power (London, 1924), 3:25−39; Pyers Plowmans exhortation vnto the lordes, knightes and burgoysses of the Parlyamenthouse (London, 1550).

142 McRae, God Speed the Plough, 49−52; Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, 43, 49; Keith Wrightson, Earthly Necessities (London, 2000), 153.

143 McRae, God Speed the Plough, 52.

144 Ibid., 52−7, 80−109.

145 For Martinist and anti-Martinist “ploughman” tracts, see I Plaine Piers Which Can not Flatter (1589); Richard Harvey, Plaine Perceuall the Peace-Maker of England (London, 1590).

146 D. C. Peck, ed., Leicester's Commonwealth (London, 1985), 74, 75−76, 96, 189; Lloyd E. Berry, ed., John Stubbs's “Gaping Gulf,” with Letters and other relevant Documents (Charlottesville, 1968), 30. For the ambivalent representations of the common people in Elizabethan drama, see Howard, J. E. and Strohm, P., “The Imaginary ‘Commons,’” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 549−77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andy Wood, Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 2002), 1−5.

147 For the Elizabethan “public sphere,” see Peter Lake, “The Politics of ‘Popularity’ and the Public Sphere: The ‘Monarchical Republic’ of Elizabeth I Defends Itself,” in Lake and Pincus, eds., The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, 59−94; Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, “Puritans, Papists and the ‘Public Sphere’: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context,” Journal of Modern History 72, no. 3 (September 2000): 587−627CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

148 Berry, ed., John Stubbs's “Gaping Gulf,” 92.

149 For the notion of the “invention” of public opinion, see Keith Michael Baker, “Public Opinion as Political Invention,” in Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1990), 167−99; Zaret, David, “Petitions and the ‘Invention’ of Public Opinion in the English Revolution, 1640−1660,” American Journal of Sociology 101, no. 6 (May 1996): 1497−555CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

150 Cust, “The ‘Public Man,’” 116−43.

151 Lockyer, Buckingham, chap. 4; Robert Zaller, The Parliament of 1621: A Study in Consitutional Conflict (Berkeley, 1971), chap. 2; Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, 171−73.

152 David Underdown, A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1996), 10, 33−34, 44−45; idem, Revel, Riot and Rebellion (Oxford, 1989), 123−26.

153 Cust, Richard, “News and Politics in Early Seventeenth Century England,” Past and Present 112, no. 1 (August 1986): 60−90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levy, F. J., “How Information Spread Amongst the Gentry, 1550−1640,” Journal of British Studies 21, no. 2 (Spring 1982): 11−34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bellany, “Rayling Rymes and Vaunting Verse.”

154 Peter Lake, “Constitutional Consensus,” 821.

155 “The Teares of the oppressed people of England,” 1623, Tanner 73, fol. 304r, Bod.

156 “To his sacred majesty, Ab Ignoto,” 256; “A post Caution or rather a post mointion to the Common Speakers in the Lower house of Commons the two last Parliaments,” BL Add. MSS. 4155, fols. 256, 84v, 82v−83r.

157 Walter, John, “A ‘Rising of the People’? The Oxfordshire Rising of 1596,” Past and Present 107, no. 1 (May 1985): 90−143CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buchanan Sharp, In Contempt of All Authority (London, 1980), chap. 4.

158 John Walter, Crowds and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2006), 183−86.

159 Lawrence Stone, The Causes of the English Revolution 1529−1642 (London, 1972), 79.

160 Hughes, Causes of the English Civil War, 133.

161 Ibid., 114.

162 Ibid., 122; Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550−1653 (Cambridge, 1993), 644−49.

163 Wrightson, “Sorts of People,” 36−37.

164 Wrightson, English Society, 181−89, 234−35; Wood, 1549 Rebellions, 187−94. For the moral and social connotations of the word “honest,” see Wood, Andy, “‘A Lyttul Worde ys Tresson’: Loyalty, Denunciation, and Popular Politics in Tudor England,” Journal of British Studies 48, no. 4 (October 2009): 837−47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 840−42.

165 Bidwell and Jansson, eds., Proceedings in Parliament 1626, 3:45.

166 “The Danger wherein the Kingdome nowe standeth: and the Remedy,” Harley 160, fol. 6v, BL.