1 - The Legacy of Freedom of Speech

Summary

Freedom of speech was conceptualized in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and grew into common acceptance, primarily through Puritan belief in parrhesia in the Bible and through Puritans’ religion-based discourse asserting freedom of speech in books and sermons and speeches. This is, of course, contrary to the other authors, ancient and modern, who have discussed freedom of speech from a secular perspective based on parrhesia as it appeared in classical literature and other sources. However, those other authors generally underestimated the important role of freedom of speech in Puritan writing and thought and its influence on later English and American assertions of freedom of speech. The Puritan advocates of freedom of speech in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England were quite aware of the classical uses of parrhesia – most had received a classical education, a significant portion at Oxford or Cambridge – but they deliberately chose instead to rely on the biblical basis for parrhesia. Their frequent assertions of freedom of speech call into question the contention that "[f]ree speech as we understand the term ... remained nearly unknown to legal or constitutional history and to libertarian thought on either side of the Atlantic before 1776," as Leonard Levy claimed.

Freedom of speech and press had been championed primarily by those who sought an open debate on religion … Freedom of speech evolved as an offshoot … of freedom of religion – the freedom to speak openly on religious matters …

—Leonard W. Levy

In the modern world most speech and press is secular, and threats to the freedoms of speech and press are often perceived as coming from religion. However, at the time when freedoms of speech and press originated in the English-speaking world, the opposite was the case – advocacy of freedoms of speech and press primarily came from religious speakers. Further, freedoms of speech and press arose primarily from Judeo-Christian religious speech demanding them – religious publications, sermons, and addresses – in the English-speaking world. This chapter will discuss the origins of freedom of speech, and Chapter 2 will turn to the origins of freedom of press.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most threats to the freedoms of speech and press in England came from the government and its state church, and most victims of suppression of speech and press were religious people discussing religious perspectives on politics or religion.

There were many divisions in England in those centuries, but the most profound and serious division was on religious lines. During the reign of Henry VIII, as the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church and moved in a Protestant direction, the precursors to Puritans arose to press for full replacement of Catholic doctrines and practices with Protestant ones. The Puritans soon appeared;¹ they have been variously defined as people with “a principled belief in reform of the church” in England, “a distinctive group self-identified as ‘godly’” who sought to follow the Bible, or as they were described in 1581, the “hotter sort of Protestants.”² The Puritan movement came more and more into conflict with the Tudor monarchs who followed Henry and Edward VI – Mary and Elizabeth – and then into further conflict with the early Stuart kings – James I and Charles I. The term “Puritan” was not their choice of name – it was bestowed as a pejorative term by opponents – and it has been out of vogue with historians. However, the term was widely used during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and is far less cumbersome than alternatives.³ In opposition to the Puritans and other sects were the monarch and the state church (or more precisely, most of the hierarchy of the Church of England). The seeds were being sown for the seventeenth-century conflict between the early Stuart kings joined with the state church, and Parliament joined with the Puritans.

As Tudor and Stuart monarchs took steps to suppress disagreement, Puritans were major targets, particularly for their ways of persuading others, their speech, and their publishing. In response, some Puritans claimed a liberty of conscience that placed their obligations to God over their obligations to Caesar. Others refused to take the oath ex officio, which would obligate them to answer under oath all questions posed, and which then would obligate them to incriminate themselves and others. An increasing number claimed a liberty of speech that included a right to preach and publish their religious doctrines and to criticize the established church and government. From this came additional claims for a liberty of printed speech, or liberty of press.

In asserting a liberty of speech, Puritans were standing on an important belief from their theology in both the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They believed that New Testament uses of the Greek term parrhesia (boldness or liberty of speech) authorized and commanded freedom of speech. It was not just a few Puritan divines who made that point, as this chapter will discuss. Instead, it was virtually a Puritan article of faith. Their insistence on parrhesia from the Bible was far more extensive and vocal than the claim by less religious people to parrhesia from classical works.

Puritan support for freedoms of speech and press cannot be attributed simply to the fact that they were dissidents challenging those in power. It preceded their conflict with the Tudor queens and continued when the Puritans came to power for two decades, and then when they saw no chance of coming to power for the remaining decades of the seventeenth century. In and out of power, Puritans in England grounded advocacy of freedom of speech on the Bible, and particularly on the scriptural concept of parrhesia. They were consistent in that, though they were not notably consistent in offering the same freedom of speech to their adversaries.

The assertions of a liberty of speech and a liberty of press, as those concepts emerged in England, came mostly from those who would become the protagonists of the Puritan revolution, and opposition to those liberties, or at least to expansion of those liberties, came almost entirely from those who would become the royalists who supported the king and the Church of England. This chapter discusses writers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who expressly referred to freedom or liberty of speech. More could be written about authors who, without express reference, intimated support or opposition toward freedom of speech by discussing the importance of freedom of thought or freedom of religious belief, the benefits of hearing various opinions or of providing counsel to the king, or the connection to liberty generally or to particular liberties.

Government Suppression of Dissident Speech and Press in Tudor and Stuart England

Criticism of any of the three pillars of the English state – the monarch, Parliament, and the state church⁴ – was a crime in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The underlying reason was that the weakening of any pillar was thought to threaten the survival of the entire government.⁵ James I was typical of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs in fulminating that “whensoever the ecclesiastical dignity shall be turned in contempt and begin to evanish in this kingdom, the kings thereof shall not long prosper in their government and the monarchy shall fall in ruin.”⁶ Charles I was also typical in warning that dissidents “wilfully breake that circle of Order, which without apparent danger to Church and State, may not bee broken.” To prevent such breaks, he like his predecessors ordered repression of “any Writing, Preaching, Printing, Conferences, or otherwise” that maintained “opinions concerning Religion” that were inconsistent with “the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England,” as well as opinions concerning political issues that were inconsistent with the monarch’s views.⁷ Yet throughout the sixteenth century, as well as the seventeenth century, the monarchs and the state church itself continually redefined the “circle of order,” careening from ardent Catholicism to the break with Rome under Henry VIII to a vacillating Protestantism in that king’s later years to fervent Protestantism under Edward VI to rigorous Catholicism under Mary to a via media under Elizabeth that was too Catholic for Puritans and too Protestant for Catholics.⁸ Around such religious turbulence, dissident speech and publications were hardly a surprise, nor were government efforts to suppress them.

The peril hanging over dissident speech or publications, particularly when it criticized the English church or state, can be seen in the royal proclamations and decrees criminalizing speech and press and in the government prosecutions for the crimes of seditious words and seditious libels (publications), as well as of unlicensed preaching and unlicensed publications. These crimes were in addition to the expansive crime of treason and the numerous prosecutions under it, particularly under the Tudors, which are well discussed in other studies.⁹ That was the historical context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century assertions of freedom of speech, which this chapter will address, and also of freedom of press, which the next chapter will discuss.

Tudor Suppression of Dissident Speech and Press

Henry VIII, trying to quell the religious turbulence that his break with Catholicism unleashed, released proclamations against unlicensed preaching, seditious rumors, military rumors, and some plays. He expanded the existing censorship practices of the established church beyond heretical writings and utterances to other objectionable publications and speech. The “Acte Abolishing Diversity of Opynions” was only one of many restrictions on speech coming from Parliament.¹⁰ False rumors remained a problem for Henry’s successors, as Edward VI signed two proclamations against seditious rumors and two against rumor mongers, and Mary renewed the prohibition against seditious rumors in her first proclamation.¹¹ Unlicensed preaching was also a continuing concern, and Edward issued proclamations suppressing it and against sermons deviating from the day’s approved homily, as well as against some plays.¹² Elizabeth quickly renewed the prohibition against unlicensed preaching, and later barred unlicensed plays.¹³ The target “rumor mongers” and deliverers of sermons were mostly religious critics – those objecting to features of or oppressions by the Church of England.

As printing became more common, it attracted restrictions just as sermons and other speech had, which were enforced against dissenting religious publications. Henry VIII issued proclamations against heretical books, erroneous books, and unlicensed printing of the Bible, and he required publications to list the printer and author.¹⁴ Edward VI prohibited unreviewed printing, and Mary’s third proclamation renewed that prohibition, and then another proclamation supplemented it.¹⁵ Mary also proscribed printing or possessing seditious and heretical books (Protestant ones).¹⁶ Elizabeth, a decade into her reign, issued three proclamations against seditious books, and later four more against books by Separatists, other critics of the Church of England, and Catholics.¹⁷

Elizabeth’s government also formalized censorship of the press. The foundation was laid by an injunction in 1559, and a Privy Council ordinance in 1566 that prohibited printing works whose content violated the law and that subjected the printer or author to “three monethes imprysonment” and to destruction of all copies. That censorship system was followed by a Star Chamber decree in 1586, which announced its purpose as “repressinge of such greate enormyties and abuses” from printing as brought “intollerable offences … in the Churche, as in the Civill governement.” The decree also required licensing by the archbishop of Canterbury or the bishop of London before a work could be published, and limited the number of presses and printers.¹⁸ The censorship system also included roles for the High Commission and the Stationers Company.¹⁹

Tudor views of freedom of speech were epitomized by Elizabeth’s responses to the speaker’s request for Parliament’s freedom of speech that was made as each session opened.²⁰ “Privilege of speech is granted, but you must know what privilege you have; not to speak every one what he listeth, or what cometh in his brain to utter that; but your privilege is, aye or no.” Parliament emphatically was not to “meddle with reforming the Church, and transforming the Commonwealth.”²¹

During Elizabeth’s reign, prosecutions of authors and publishers in the Star Chamber were mostly for religious works.²² For example, the Star Chamber “silenced” four leading Puritans in 1573.²³ The foremost prosecutions of speech and press were of John Udall, a Puritan minister; Sir Richard Knightly, also a Puritan activist; and John Stubbs, a printer. Udall was convicted of seditious libel for writing a book that said Church of England bishops and much of its ecclesiastical law were contrary to the Bible. He was sentenced to death, which came by death in prison after three years there instead of by execution.²⁴ Knightly was judged guilty by the Star Chamber for assisting seditious Puritan books.²⁵ Stubbs was found guilty of seditious libel for publishing an assault on the queen’s rumored marriage to a Catholic prince. He was sentenced to having his right arm chopped off.²⁶ Those were not the only Elizabethan victims. John Copping and Elias Thacker were hanged in 1583 for circulating books that one of the queen’s proclamations deemed “seditious, schismatical, and erroneous.” Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, Separatist Puritans, were found guilty of devising “seditious books” and were hanged in 1593.²⁷

The Puritans, the prime targets of most of these royal proclamations and government prosecutions, continued to multiply, both inside and outside the Church of England.²⁸ Inside, large numbers of Puritans pressed for reformation.²⁹ Outside, Puritan sects appeared in addition to Presbyterians, such as Separatists, Congregationalists, and other Independents,³⁰ in addition to Brownists and other Dissenters such as Baptists, Quakers, and Levellers.³¹

As the Tudor years ended in 1603, peril indeed hung over dissident speech and publications, and particularly over religious ones. That continued under the Stuarts.

Early Stuart Suppression of Dissident Speech

James I regarded the Puritans as “verie pestes in the Church and Common-weal … breathing nothing but sedition and calumnies.” Even before his accession to the English throne, he published his dislike of “the humors of Puritanes, and rash-headie Preachers, that thinke it their honour to contend with Kings, and perturbe whole kingdomes.” He issued proclamations in 1620 and 1621 against “intermeddl[ing] by Penne or Speech with causes of state,” and against “licentious speech of matters of State.”³² He had already released proclamations against Puritans intermeddling with the established church, which had become incessant. And he had removed the radical Puritan ministers, whom he called “seditiouse schismatikes,” from their livings during 1604–06.³³

In December 1621, James gave an equally restrictive response to the speaker’s standard request for freedom of speech for Parliament as the session opened, colored by his worry about the recent outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War and his indignation at recent indications that Parliament opposed his negotiations for a Spanish (and Catholic) bride for his son Charles I. As he had done in 1604, 1610, and 1614, James objected to efforts in the House of Commons “to argue and debate publicly of the matters far above their reach and capacity.” He commanded “that none therein shall presume henceforth to meddle with anything concerning our government or deep matters of State, and namely not to deal with our dearest son’s match with the daughter of Spain.”³⁴ The Commons responded with a petition that said that “your Majesty doth seem to abridge us of the ancient liberty of Parliament for freedom of speech, … the same being our ancient and undoubted right.” James indignantly replied that “you usurp upon our prerogative royal, and meddle with things far above your reach.” He added that “we cannot allow of … calling it ‘your ancient and undoubted right,’” because “your privileges were derived from the grace and permission of our ancestors and us.”³⁵ The House’s Protestation, in response, asserted instead that “every member of the House of Parliament hath and of right ought to have freedom of speech, to propound, treat, reason.” The Protestation so enraged James that he had the primary author, Sir Edward Coke, arrested and confined in the Tower of London, and later personally tore it out of the parliamentary journal.³⁶

James and Charles periodically prosecuted dissident speech, which was often in religious terms, as seditious or heretical. In this, James marked a turning point from the Tudors, whose major prosecutions had been mostly for high treason. The major prosecutions during James’s reign instead involved religious heresy and criticism of his foreign policy. In that period, for example, two men were convicted of denying the trinity (bringing James the dubious distinction of reigning over the last burning at the stake for heresy in England), and a lawyer was convicted for censuring the war waged by the king’s daughter and son-in-law for the crown of Bohemia and for applauding the defeat of Protestant forces in Prague.³⁷ Charles continued the new direction, with six major prosecutions for speech, and more for publications, along with less celebrated proceedings. The prosecutions of words during Charles’s reign involved censorious words about the king’s government, his ministers, the nobility, and members of Parliament. In that period, for example, a merchant was found guilty of seditious words for saying that Turkey treated merchants better than England did, and Sir John Eliot and two other members of the House of Commons were convicted of resisting the king’s command to adjourn Parliament by physically holding the speaker in his chair until resolutions critical of the king could be approved, and of libeling some of the king’s ministers.³⁸ A Scottish lord was prosecuted for speeches against other peers, “tending to the sowing of Sedition betwixt his majesty and the said noblemen,” and a parson was charged with words bringing a judge into “scandal, ignominy, contempt, and vile character.”³⁹ A bishop was convicted by Star Chamber for leaking information from the Privy Council and spreading false news “to the scandal of his majesty’s Government.”⁴⁰

Like his father, Charles tried to bring religious harmony by proclamation, soon after his accession, and then again thirteen years later.⁴¹ He also issued proclamations against dissident publications, particularly religious ones, and prosecuted printers and authors, again particularly religious ones, as Chapter 2 will discuss.

The Puritan Revolution and Dissident Speech

Conflict between the royalist side – Charles I and the dominant party in the Church of England – and the parliamentary or Puritan side – the majority of Parliament and the Puritans and others – turned into the clash of royalist and parliamentary armies during the first and second civil wars (1642–46 and 1647–48).⁴² They culminated in Charles’s trial and beheading in January 1649. The causes of civil war have been debated for three and a half centuries. Whether whigs and revisionists were accurate in calling the civil wars “the last of the Wars of Religion” or claiming that “[r]eligious issues precipitated action in the 1640s,”⁴³ or whether post-revisionists and others were accurate in disagreeing,⁴⁴ the religious divisions between the royalist side and the Puritan side were real and sharp.⁴⁵ Hence many through the years have called the conflict the “Puritan revolution.”⁴⁶

In the midst of that revolution, liberty was discussed in three series of debates within the parliamentary army, at three encampments.⁴⁷ The Reading debates, in July 1647, focused on arrangements for settling the king’s and people’s rights. The Putney debates, in October and November 1647, centered on political liberty and parliamentary reform. After a delay resulting from the second Civil War, the Whitehall debates, in December 1648 and January 1649, were devoted to religious freedom. The debates themselves were an exercise in freedom of speech, including freedom of petition, and showed the growth of affirmation of those freedoms.⁴⁸

Freedom of petition figured significantly in those debates, because petitions to the king or to Parliament were the most common form of speech outside Parliament. Shortly before the Reading debates, the nine proposals in the “Representation of the Army” included “the right and freedom of the people to represent to the Parliament, by way of humble petition their grievances.”⁴⁹ Freedom of petition needed legal protection because petitions often resulted in criminal prosecution for seditious words or seditious libel.⁵⁰ Regimental agitators pointed to such prosecutions, three months later, in demanding repeal of “all the orders, votes, ordinances, or declarations, that have passed either to discountenance petitions, suppress, prevent, or burn petitions, imprison or declare against petitioners, being dangerous precedents against the freedom of the people.”⁵¹ After the Reading debates, “The Heads of the Proposals” were sent to Parliament and also included a demand for “liberty of the people to represent their grievances and desires by way of petition.” Other position statements during the debates reaffirmed freedom of petition and called for its legal protection.⁵² In the Putney debates, the people’s freedom of speech via petition and parliamentary freedom of speech and debate were briefly discussed,⁵³ but other issues predominated.

What followed these debates was an epitome of the failure of Puritan government. General Fairfax sent a letter from Putney insisting that Parliament repress the “scandalous and abusive” pamphlets and “the poisonous writings of evil Men sent abroad daily.” In less than a week, the Commons penalized unlicensed publications, punishing writers with forty-day imprisonments or forty-shilling fines, punishing printers with destruction of printing equipment and twenty-shilling fines, punishing booksellers with ten-shilling fines, punishing hawkers with whippings, and instructing officials to enforce the censorship law and to search suspected homes without warrants. Two years later, in January 1649, the Rump Parliament ordered renewed enforcement of that law.⁵⁴ Following Charles I’s death that same month, a series of short-term experiments in republican government filled the next decade – the Rump Parliament, the Council of State, the Little Parliament, the newly elected Parliaments, the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, succession by his son, and briefly again the Rump Parliament – until Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660.⁵⁵ Those experiments failed miserably, as Parliament was manipulated and dismissed, as one man ruled in its place, and as freedoms were generally not expanded but restricted. Instead of protection of speech, some critics were arrested, jailed, and prosecuted. For example, John Lilburne and John Wildman were confined in the Tower for a Leveller petition critical of Parliament.⁵⁶ Lilburne was returned to confinement because of the publication of another Leveller petition, Englands New Chains Discovered in early 1649, and Richard Overton, William Walwyn, and Thomas Prince joined him in the Tower over that publication.⁵⁷ Instead of offering freedom of press, suppression of unofficial newspapers was rigorous, and licensing of the press was reimposed with periodic lapses, though the number of prosecutions was modest.⁵⁸ Freedoms of speech and press were further assaulted by additional broad laws against treason. The inability of the Puritan Revolution to protect such important freedoms as speech, press, petition, and conscience was part of what Jonathan Scott called “the inability of the revolution to successfully define itself institutionally during the interregnum that accounted for its constitutional failure.”⁵⁹

The Later Stuarts and Dissident Speech

The restoration⁶⁰ of Charles II to the throne in 1660 gave him, and the Convention and Cavalier Parliaments, the opportunity to rebuild the English state differently from the absolutism of the earlier Stuarts and of the Interregnum. Constitutional limits could have been placed on the monarch and, for that matter, on Parliament. Rights of the subjects could have been secured, including rights of speech, press, and conscience. That opportunity was spurned. Instead, Charles II looked backward to the powers of the earlier Stuarts, and southward as well to the absolutist state in France.⁶¹ He and the Cavalier Parliament rebuilt church and state on earlier Stuart lines, including the premise that speech, press, and conscience must be restricted to have a viable state.

Consequently, freedom of speech was restricted by the very first enactment of the Cavalier Parliament, as the Act for Preservation of the King criminalized words as treason, on the premise that “the late troubles and disorders did in a very great measure proceed from a multitude of seditious sermons, pamphlets and speeches.” It remained high treason “by any printing, writing, preaching malicious and advised speaking” to “imagine, invent, devise or intend” harm to the king; and it was sedition for words spoken or published to call the king “a heretic or a papist,” or to “incite or stir up the people to hatred or dislike of the person of his Majesty or the established government.”⁶² Speech was further restricted by the Act against Tumultuous Petitioning in 1661. Its premise, like that of the Act for Preservation of the King, was that “petitions, complaints, remonstrances and declarations … have been made use of to serve the ends of factious and seditious persons” and were a major cause of civil war. That law made it a crime to gather more than twenty signatures to a petition (unless authorized in advance by certain officials), or to deliver a petition accompanied by more than ten persons.⁶³ As the “popish plot” and the exclusion crisis brought parliamentary conflict with the monarch during 1678–79, Charles II issued a proclamation entirely prohibiting petitions to the king.⁶⁴ The Commons reacted by expelling a member who denied the “natural right” and “undoubted right of the subject to petition the king to reform grievances.” Undeterred, James II sought to suppress the right of petition ever further by prosecuting seven bishops for their deferential petition to the king, for relief from his requirement to read his declaration indulging religious Nonconformists, and treated their petition as seditious libel.⁶⁵ When the judges in the case split evenly over whether the bishops’ request was a libel, the jury was left to judge that issue and found the bishops not guilty.

Likewise, freedom of press was restricted by the Licensing Act of 1662, which closely emulated the Star Chamber’s decree of 1637 and which reaffirmed earlier assumptions that the state must be protected from dissenting publications.⁶⁶ Other restrictions of the press are summarized in the next chapter.

Freedom of conscience was restricted as well, despite Charles II’s initial promise of “liberty of tender consciences” and that “no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matters of religion which do not disturb the peace.” He made that promise in the Declaration of Breda in 1660, and expanded upon it by the Declaration in Favor of Toleration two years later.⁶⁷ Those gestures were merely expedient, as Charles II inherited a kingdom divided on religious fault lines deep enough to have produced a revolution and overthrown a monarchy.⁶⁸ In actuality, he “agreed that Dissent was politically and socially subversive.” The king quickly issued a proclamation against “seditious meetings and conventicles under pretence of religious worship,” and then assented to laws punishing Nonconformists and ordered strict enforcement.⁶⁹ Another measure of expedience, Charles II’s Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, showed the extent of prior persecution, as the king released 491 imprisoned Nonconformists and licensed 1,610 Nonconformist preachers.⁷⁰ Parliament quickly undid toleration and strengthened persecution of Nonconformists with new laws.⁷¹ The king’s insincerity was shown as he withdrew the Declaration of Indulgence the next year in order to get parliamentary appropriations.⁷² The fate of toleration was sealed until after the Revolution of 1688, as the alleged “popish plot” heightened fears and repression of Catholicism, as the exclusion crisis heightened fears of succession to the throne by the Catholic James II,⁷³ and then as the newly crowned King James II took steps to protect Catholics and, incidentally, Protestant Nonconformists.⁷⁴

Further restriction of freedom of conscience came out of restoring the Church of England to its prior beliefs and practice, as Charles II issued the Worcester House Declaration in 1660 and reinstated a single church subordinate to the king as its head. Soon after that, the Cavalier Parliament enacted the Clarendon Code to enforce uniformity of faith and practice, by imposing four criminal restrictions on Nonconformists.⁷⁵ The Act of Uniformity expelled them from the established clergy (causing Puritans and other Nonconformists to be deprived of their offices and livings), and the Corporation Act excluded them from local office. The Conventicle Act fined and imprisoned Nonconformist preachers and worshippers, and the Five Mile Act forced those preachers away from their former parishes and other towns.⁷⁶

These renewed restrictions on speech, press, and conscience stimulated continued demands for their protection, but that only brought partial success with the Toleration Act in 1689 and the end of press licensing in 1695. Greater successes came in America with the new states’ declarations of rights and then the Bill of Rights and its protections for freedoms of speech, press, and religious exercise.

Assertions of a Liberty of Speech in Puritan Theology

Those sixteenth-century royal restrictions on liberty of speech provoked claims that not only Parliament but the clergy and the people of England had a liberty of speech that church and state should not deny. Those claims were made by the Puritans throughout most of the sixteenth century and all of the seventeenth century.

Sixteenth-Century Claims of Liberty of Speech

Those English people who were educated in the classics encountered brief references to boldness or liberty of speech. Books on rhetoric typically referred to liberty of speech, and plays by Euripides did as well.⁷⁷ Besides classical works in the original Greek and Latin, translations began to be printed in the sixteenth century of classics that mentioned “libertie of speech,” by Demosthenes, Isocrates, Cicero, Plutarch, and others. Those noted the need for each person “to saye his minde,” and “to give his counsell,” to protect “the country’s welfare,” or in Cicero’s words, to make “utteraunce at will.” A treatise on government by Sir Thomas Elyot, a diplomat, reiterated the importance of liberty of speech in informing rulers of problems, warning of the damage done “to pryncís [princes] and theyr realmes, where liberte of speche hath ben restrained.”⁷⁸

However, in that century by far the most common books referring to freedom of speech in England were Christian religious works, not classical works. Erasmus, in his paraphrase of the New Testament, described the apostles’ “libertie of speache” in proclaiming “that Jesus was the saviour of the worlde.” Bishop John Fisher, in a treatise on prayer published after his beheading by Henry VIII, spoke of “libertie of speache,” and Thomas Stapleton, a less known Catholic prelate, pointed out that John the Baptist “died for the like liberty and fredome of speache” after he rebuked the adultery of King Herod.⁷⁹ Protestants particularly claimed a liberty of speech, as they challenged the Roman Catholic faith. Published sermons of Heinrich Bullinger, the Swiss reformer, preached that Jesus Christ taught “with greate libertie of speache,” and sermons of Rudolf Gwalther, another Swiss Protestant theologian, said that “libertie and fraedome of speach ought to be in the ministers of the worde to accuse publike offences.” Zacharias Ursinus, the author of the Heidelberg Catechism, included in his comments on it that “Truth comprehends liberty of speech, or boldness.” Amid England’s religious ferment following Henry VIII’s break with Rome, others, particularly those favoring full reformation of the Church of England, similarly claimed a biblical basis for liberty of speech.⁸⁰ By contrast, some Church of England bishops resisted that trend, such as William Alley, who described Demochares’s jibe at King Phillip as words that “savoured of to[o] much liberty of speech,” and Thomas Bilson, who wished to stop the mouths of hereticks “to barre them freedom of speach,” though not to harm them.⁸¹

What was liberty of speech taken to mean, by these sixteenth-century writers? One form was the liberty of speech of Parliament, which John Hooker, a historian of Parliament, described as the Lords and Commons having “libertie of spéech, and freely to utter, speake and declare his minde and oppinion to any Bil or question to be proposed.” Parliamentary liberty of speech was based on classic writings, the historian John Speed noted; it was not based on religious writings.⁸² Another form of liberty of speech was boldness – ”when in the presence of those to whome otherwise wee owe dutie and reverence, wee speake boldly and confidently.”⁸³ A third form of liberty of speech was for religious preaching, worship, and discourse. That “freadome of speache” is “necessary for preachers, and they that prophesie,” to speak the truth, Peter Martyr said.⁸⁴ It was thwarted when people were excluded from religious assemblies or not allowed “free debate.”⁸⁵ That third form of liberty of speech was obviously based on religious grounds, and soon was broadened to apply not just to priests and prophets but to all people or at least to all religious people, as we will see shortly.

The burning issues of the day were, as always, politics and religion, and those were the primary areas where statements were prosecuted and where liberty of speech was claimed. “Such ought to be the liberty of speach in every well governed commonweale” that it was used to condemn vice, Stephen Gosson wrote, as for example when Daniel warned Nebuchadnezzar that “we will not serve thy goddes nor do reverence unto that Image” of gold, when Old Testament prophets condemned “the corrupt Judges,” and when John the Baptist decried the ruler’s sin.⁸⁶ Criticism of the state church, the Church of England, addressed both politics and religion. Liberty of speech was prayed for to “rebuke al false doctrine, blasphemous superstition, and abuses in thy Church,” by Johann Habermann and three years after by Thomas Bentley.⁸⁷ An often-repeated example was the prophet Isaiah “rebukyng the synne of the pryncis and people” and because of his exercise of “libertie of speche” being sawed in half.⁸⁸

The Roles of Classical Parrhesia and Biblical Parrhesia

The Greek term parrhesia was defined by a 1612 dictionary as “courage, or liberty of speech.” The term was similarly defined by seventeenth-century works on rhetoric as “liberty or boldnesse of speaking”⁸⁹ and by modern discussions of Greek classics and scriptures.⁹⁰ The related verb parrhesiazomai meant speaking confidently or boldly or freely, and the noun parrhesiastes meant “one who speaks the truth” or “he who speaks freely.” In the Roman world, the Greek term parrhesia was used as “a Greek loanword” or was replaced by the Latin libertas or licentia.⁹¹

Various Greek and Roman writers used parrhesia to refer to boldness or liberty of speech. They were summarized in an outstanding study by the leading scholar in this area, David Colclough, along with their many meanings, and in famous lectures by Michel Foucault.⁹² The classical writers were cited regularly in study and discussion of rhetoric and the classics in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England⁹³ and were the basis for some individuals advocating freedom of speech in those centuries. Colclough identified a number of such individuals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including one Puritan, Thomas Scott, and a few other authors mentioned a lone religious advocate or two.⁹⁴ Other modern scholars have noted the classical mentions of parrhesia,⁹⁵ or the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century references to them, often following Foucault.⁹⁶ However, most of those modern authors who noted any classical references to parrhesia ignored or gave a disproportionately small number of references to parrhesia in the Bible or in Puritan and other theological writing. Typical modern scholars are Joris van Eignatten, Ineke Sluiter and Ralph M. Rosen, Arlene W. Saxonhouse, Leon van den Broeke, and Irene van Renswoude.⁹⁷

Biblical authors used parrhesia in a similar way, such as the Apostle Paul practicing great “boldness of speech” and the other apostles speaking with boldness, as Colclough recognized.⁹⁸ The Hebrew scriptures used parallel terms for freedom of speech, which Puritans and others also cited. Building on those biblical terms, Puritans in England claimed a right of free speech, as did some of their Lutheran and Reformed cousins across Europe.⁹⁹

In England, that biblical basis, rather than the classical texts, was the dominant foundation for asserting a freedom of speech, and religious people were the predominant people proclaiming parrhesia or freedom of speech, in the sixteenth century. The same was true of England in the seventeenth century.

The Religious Source of Liberty of Speech in the English-Speaking World

It is not surprising to most people that liberty of conscience was principally advocated by religious “enthusiasts,” like Roger Williams and William Penn, in seventeenth-century England.¹⁰⁰

It is surprising to many, however, that liberty of speech also was primarily championed by religious people – the Puritan side – in seventeenth-century England and that it was based on a religious text – the Bible. For example, Edward Reynolds (Fig. 1.1), a Puritan minister within the Church of England (and later a participant in the Westminster Assembly), wrote in 1632 that “the Gospell bringeth liberty,” a sacred thing, which gave “a plenary freedome to the consciences of men” and gave other liberties including “great boldnesse or liberty of speech,” or parrhesia. (Reynolds recited the Greek term, and quoted three biblical verses that used it.)¹⁰¹ Puritan writers interchangeably said that liberty of speech was from the Bible, from the gospel, or from God. Richard Bernard, another Puritan rector and author, wrote that gifts from God included “free libertie of speech,” and William Strong, also a Puritan (an Independent, and a member of the Westminster Assembly), noted that it was “the Lord who hath given to his Ministers great liberty of speech.”¹⁰² If God or the Bible gave liberty of speech, then the most important – not the least important – form of that liberty was religious speech.

Figure 1.1 Edward Reynolds, engraved by anonymous artist (late eighteenth through early nineteenth century), after engraving by David Loggan (published 1658).

© National Portrait Gallery, London.

A brief note: Identification of individuals as Puritans is based on their description in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, if there, or otherwise on their older description in the Dictionary of National Biography, and on participation in the Westminster Assembly and ejection from Church of England positions in 1662.

In the seventeenth century, the request by Parliament for liberty of speech and debate continued to be made by the speaker of the House of Commons as each session opened. Parliament continued to claim that liberty as its ancient right.¹⁰³ The monarch’s response continued to treat it as a matter of grace rather than right, as we saw. Similarly, the Church of England’s Convocation occasionally was said to offer “liberty and freedome of speech” to clerical participants, giving “free power of speaking to every one that desireth to speake” and forbidding none “by any terrors, force, threatening, or any other thing.”¹⁰⁴ But neither gave rise to a broader liberty of speech outside the transactions of Parliament or Convocation, except for wistful claims that citizens had freedom of speech while Parliament met¹⁰⁵ and rare claims that liberty of speech gave support to petitions to Parliament.¹⁰⁶ That broader liberty came from another source.

The Rise of Puritanism and Demands for Liberty of Speech

As the seventeenth century progressed, Puritanism developed into the three main groups of the 1640s and 1650s: Presbyterians, Independents, and Sectaries.¹⁰⁷ The Presbyterians sought to convert the Church of England to an established Presbyterian church (succeeding briefly in 1645 and after) and to suppress other faiths. The Independents, while resigned to a Presbyterian national church, sought toleration for dissenting Protestants including themselves. The Sectaries were a heterogeneous collection of more radical faiths, including Levellers and Fifth Monarchists.¹⁰⁸ During the civil wars, the Presbyterians generally controlled Parliament, while the Independents controlled the army, producing unresolvable tension.¹⁰⁹

The Puritan side of England’s religious and political landscape regularly proclaimed a liberty of speech, based on parrhesia in the Greek scriptures and equivalent terms in the Hebrew scriptures. Puritan writers did so in Bible commentaries, other theological works, sermon collections, and histories, so extensively and consistently as to make liberty of speech almost an article of their faith. Puritans aimed this religiously based concept of liberty of speech against the Stuart restrictions on their speech, and often mentioned aspects of liberty of speech such as preaching, witnessing, censuring sin, prayer, and public discussions.

Much of the Puritan discussion of liberty of speech centered around ministers (who were the people most directly threatened by governmental and Church of England restrictions). Thus, God “gives ability and liberty of speach to his Ministers,” Edward Elton (a Puritan rector) wrote in 1615, and “Boldnesse, courage, and freedom of speech is needfull for a Minister,” William Gouge (also a Puritan rector) said four years later.¹¹⁰ That included preaching, as two Puritans said. Thus, “the man of God must preach his Word boldly, as … Peter, and John who used great freedome of speech,” John Trapp noted, and should “use great boldnesse or liberty of speech,” Edward Reynolds added.¹¹¹ That also included speech outside sermons, as two other Puritan ministers noted. A minister should speak “al the Lord commands him to speake” with “libertie and freedome of speech” and without fear, William Sclater wrote, and should have “freedome of speech … to publish boldly the wil and counsell of God,” William Attersoll said.¹¹² That “liberty and freedome of speech” included “reproving sinne wherefo[r]ever he findes it,” not just in private, but “reproving of sinne … even to the faces of the greatest, both in publike and private,” John Downame (or Downham) and Thomas Gataker (also Puritans) specified. In public religious consultations, there was “free libertie of speech” where there was “open conference and dispute allowed about the controversies of Religion.”¹¹³

Much of the Puritan discussion of liberty of speech involved the laity, and not just ministers. A “Compleat man” could “speake his mind … freely” and could exercise “freedome of speech in reproving of sinne,” Puritan minister Richard Stock said, and all believers could use “libertie and freedome of speech” in “profession of our Faith before men,” a vicar of uncertain theology, John Downe, noted.¹¹⁴ “Freedome of minde” was inextricably tied to freedom of speech, wrote Sir Edwin Sandys, a politician closely related to the Puritans. There was a right of “every person or persons, yea Jewes and Papists, to write, dispute, confer and reason, print and publish any matter touching religion, either for or against whomsoever,” said Leonard Busher, a Baptist layman.¹¹⁵ All Christians could “use freedome of speach” in prayer to God, “telling Him all our Mynd,” and a biblical verse “signifieth, Libertie to speake all our mynde,” another Puritan (Presbyterian) minister, David Dickson, stated. All Christians had “great liberty of speech, and boldnesse of the Saints in their prayers,” Andrew Willet (by some definitions a Puritan) wrote.¹¹⁶ If believers had liberty of speech in praying to God, it was a short step to say they had liberty of speech in talking to fellow men and women of whatever station.

All of these Puritan writers based their arguments on the Bible, and half explicitly cited parrhesia in addition to English-language verses. A number of other Puritans did the same, including Richard Greenham, William Attersoll, Thomas Taylor, William Whately, George Throgmorton, Henry Burton, and Jeremiah Burroughes.¹¹⁷ Comparatively very few writers based their arguments on classical writings or other nonbiblical sources, and those that did were generally not Puritans.¹¹⁸ This was all true of the period of the Puritan Revolution as well.

There were non-Puritans who mentioned liberty of speech – generally Church of England ministers, royalists, or both, typically doing so to restrict the Puritan side’s assertion of a liberty of speech. Peter Heylyn (Fig. 1.2), a Church of England clergyman and a historian, directed his attack at parrhesia, anathematizing a Puritan’s “so celebrated Parrhesia, that freedome and liberty of speech, against Kings and Princes” and godliness, and condemning that “Parrhesia, which you so extoll” and use “chiefly in such opposition as was made to Kings.” Heylyn denounced classical liberty of speech as “licencious” and a cause of loss of liberty.¹¹⁹ A chaplain to King Charles, Thomas Hurste, exploded that “liberty of speech, it is the female of sedition, and in time the Grand-mother of treason.” Another Anglican minister, Samuel Page, outdid him, warning that “there is no such way to impudent freedome of speech, as a bold contempt of authority. It is one of the provoking sins of our time, the ever-bold liberty of speech and procacity of the pen, censuring and depraving Superiours, scandalizing all.”¹²⁰ Edmund Layfielde, another preacher, fretted that we “take too much liberty of speech to our selves.” An anonymous writer was notably understated in saying that princes “doe take very distastefully” to “Liberty, and Freedome in speaking.” A royalist historian, Thomas Gainsford, rejoiced that blessed England was not like France, where subjects practiced “base and servile behaviour, with poore and miserable expenses, with obscene and filthy lodging,” and to cap it all off, “with licentious and ill becomming liberty of speech against both Court and Common-wealth.”¹²¹ The lines were drawn between the Puritans and the royalists.

Figure 1.2 Peter Heylyn, engraved by Robert White (published 1681).

© National Portrait Gallery, London.

The Puritan Revolution and Demands for Liberty of Speech

The exalted position of freedom of speech, or parrhesia, as a near-article of faith for the Puritan side of England reached its zenith during the Civil Wars and the Interregnum. Two typical Puritan ministers, Joseph Caryl and John Robotham, defined references to parrhesia in the Bible as “to speake with freedome and liberty of speech; (as the Greeke word signifies,) to speake all a mans mind, without fear or favour of any man,” and as “libertie of speech, and boldnesse of face, when a man intrepidly and undauntedly utters his mind before great ones, … when neither majesty nor authority can take off his courage, so as to stop his mouth.”¹²² Numerous other Puritan writers discussed aspects of biblical liberty of speech. That liberty came from God and from the gospel, wrote Burroughes (an Independent minister in London) and William Strong (also an Independent minister and Westminster Assembly participant).¹²³ It included coming “with boldnesse, or rather with free liberty of speech,” to God in prayer, and “speak[ing] our minds … freely to God,” said such Puritans as Johann Crell, Burroughes, Henry Lawrence (a government official and Council of State member), John Downame (a rector), Joseph Caryl and William Carter (Independent divines in London), William Bridge (an Independent minister in Norfolk and former fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge), and David Dickson (a Church of Scotland minister and University of Glasgow professor).¹²⁴ If an individual could approach Almighty God with liberty of speech, that individual could approach government with that liberty. Consequently, parrhesia included “liberty and freedome of speech” to “utter the message of the Lord” and, to “the great men of the World,” the “Kings, Potentates, and the greatest States-men,” to “rebuke them and tell them of their sins,” according to such Puritans as John Carter (a Church of England rector in Norwich and supporter of Parliament in the civil war years), Alexander Grosse (a Presbyterian minister in Ashburton), and John Trappe (a Church of England rector in Gloucestershire).¹²⁵ It included “liberty of speech” to proclaim the truth. To ministers, “great liberty of speech” was given by the Lord, in the words of Trapp and Strong, along with Puritans Johannes Wolleb (professor at University of Basel) and Francis Roberts (Church of England rector in Somerset).¹²⁶ To defendants in court, “liberty of speech” included to testify for oneself and “to speak my mind freely without interruption,” said Levellers John Lilburne and John Wildman. To participants in religious councils, it included freedom to discuss issues.¹²⁷

Liberty of speech was infringed, Richard Baxter noted, “when the higher Powers deterre all from contradicting” them and when religious Dissenters were prohibited from expressing their beliefs. It had also been denied, an anonymous writer (“C.S.”) said, the year after Charles I was beheaded, when “our mouthes were bung’d up in Kings and Bishops times,” as people feared they “may unhappily incurr offence (if it were made publick) for presuming to meddle with State-matters.” That writer praised the “Blessed change” from Stuart rule to the Commonwealth and to “the Liberty of speech wherewith we are now indulg’d” (as of 1650). Petitions from two counties similarly complained that “the Kingdome for many yeares past hath groaned under … Arbitrary Government,” which among other things “hindr[ed] the freedom of speech by imprisonment of their Persons.”¹²⁸ While the Interregnum was not a bed of roses for free expression, instead censoring newspapers and periodically requiring licensing of books and pamphlets, it at least allowed arguments that “Clergiemen” as “mere errable men” should not assume “a power of judging and censuring opinions” and that “neither side” should have “greater liberty of speech, writing, Printing, or whatsoever else, then the other.”¹²⁹

All of these Puritan authors, as before, founded their assertions of liberty of speech on scripture, and a quarter explicitly cited parrhesia, as did Simon Ford (a Church of England rector in Reading).¹³⁰ Puritans’ claims were sometimes also founded on freedom of conscience, as we will see at the end of this chapter. John Milton’s support for freedom of speech was the least typical, reflecting the “tension between ‘humanism’ and ‘radical Puritanism’ in his mind.”¹³¹ In a 1641 work he briefly affirmed “liberty of speaking” and lamented its disappearance when “the voyce of Truth for these many yeares … hath not bin heard but in corners.” In 1644 in Areopagitica, Milton’s pamphlet against reimposing licensing of the press, he began with the statement that true liberty is “when free born men … may speak free,” and he made his plea, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”¹³² Comparatively very few Puritans in England in the period from 1641 to 1660 based a claim of freedom of speech on classical writings, though Milton embellished his works with classical allusions. The Puritan reasoning crossed the Atlantic, as was evident in similar references to freedom of speech by New England ministers, such as John Cotton and Thomas Cobbet.¹³³

As Puritan belief in freedom of speech reached its apogee, royalist and Church of England acceptance of freedom of speech reached its perigee. Some of the latter agreed that someone who “had liberty of speech … was not to be restrained, or apprehended, nor disparaged,” and identified biblical parrhesia as liberty of speech.¹³⁴ Others referred to liberty of speech in the limited sense of a capability of speaking. Some were downright hostile, such as Marchese Virgilio Malvezzi, who warned that “Liberty of speech and writing against a Prince without danger, makes him loose his respect, and respect once lost produceth rebellion.”¹³⁵ And others similarly narrowed parliamentary freedom of speech, saying it was not a right but “the favours of Princes,” and “not a power for men to speak what they will or please in Parliament,” or a protection in the case of “willfull, malicious, [or] treasonable speeches.”¹³⁶ But the royalist side rarely mentioned freedom of speech, in comparison to the Puritan side of the nation, other than references to Parliament’s freedom of speech.

The Remainder of the Seventeenth Century and Puritan Demands for Liberty of Speech

Puritan theology continued to emphasize parrhesia, saying it “signifies freedom of speech, when a man speaks his whole mind freely.”¹³⁷ That continued to incorporate “boldnesse in speaking,” with “no man hindring, no nor so much as discouraging them,” and “boldness, or liberty, and freedome of speech to God in prayer.”¹³⁸ But it was not limited to prayer, and more broadly denoted “Liberty, in speaking or doing any thing towards God or Man”; “why should not liberty of Speech be allowed to all” among believers?¹³⁹ Freedom of speech included “reproving of sin … even to the faces of the greatest, whether in publick or private.” Much less frequently than these, freedom of speech continued to be used to refer to an opportunity for speaking.¹⁴⁰

As before, all of these Puritans grounded their assertions of freedom of speech on scripture, and half mentioned the term parrhesia in the Bible.¹⁴¹ A few raised freedom of speech to the level of a natural right, like Thomas Doolittle, who said that it was “the Inborn Right of an Englishman,” echoing John Lilburne in the 1649 trial, who had proclaimed that it was a “right, not only by the law of God and man, but also by the Law and light of nature.”¹⁴²

And as in earlier periods, royalists and Church of England ministers generally held a very negative view of freedom of speech. They reprinted Francis Bacon’s disparagement of “Swarms and Volies of Libels (which are the Gusts of Liberty of Speech restrained, and the Females of Sedition),” which referred to the time of Henry VII. They printed a royalist rector’s description of the Puritans’ “pretended Loyalty” and “Mines of Sedition” and “Powder which blew up the Foundations both of Church and State,” by the “Principal Engines” of “Liberty of the Press, and, … Licentious abuse of the Pulpit,” during the reign of Charles I.¹⁴³ Royalist writers impugned Puritan dressing of slander as liberty of speech, which “Bely’d the very Religion that they pretended to,” and charged that “the rebellious faction” was wildly inconsistent in arresting and committing to jail any supporter of King Charles who “durst assume the due freedom and liberty of speech, to declare his mind concerning the grievances and troubles of the time.” A Church of England rector prayed “that I may never abuse the Liberty of Speech, into the Licentiousness of Vain or Evil Speaking,” as he obviously believed some did.¹⁴⁴

The continuing national division also was visible in discussions of parliamentary freedom of speech. A reprinted book by the arch-royalist Sir Robert Filmer, of Patriarcha fame, contended that Parliament’s freedom of speech was “not a power for men to speak what they will, or please, in Parliament; but a Privilege not to be punished, but pardoned for the offence of speaking more largely than in duty ought to be.” Other royalists said that parliamentary liberty applied only to negligent slips of speech and “not to wilful Reflections, much less to treasonable Speeches, against the King and Government,” or to speeches that made “odious Insinuations and Reflections upon the King, … the House of Peers, upon the Bishops, upon the whole Church, with the Canons, the Homilies, the 39 Articles, … and the whole Government of State,” which were criminal.¹⁴⁵ Still others inveighed against “the Fanaticks” and their “railing Speeches” in Parliament that abused the king and reviled the Church of England and that should be treated as criminal, and against the “Firebrands” in Parliament who abused liberty of speech.¹⁴⁶ By contrast, the opposing party extolled “Liberty of Speech, and Debate,” as “the very Essence and Soul of all Councils,” and said that without it “a Parliament cannot be a legal Parliament, because not a free Parliament.”¹⁴⁷

As the eighteenth century arrived, successors in England appeared who spoke of freedom of speech, such as John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who wrote Cato’s Letters.¹⁴⁸ These successors built on the large literature asserting freedom of speech, from the preceding two centuries. That large literature was predominantly Puritan in origin, and its assertion of freedom of speech was based squarely on the Bible and biblical parrhesia. They also built on the growing body of works asserting freedom of religion, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Those works were also largely Puritan in origin, and naturally flowed from freedom of speech about religious beliefs to freedom of speech about other beliefs.

Assertions of a Liberty of Speech Arising from Liberty of Conscience

Liberty of conscience was also demanded by many Puritans and other Dissenters in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Demands for freedom of speech arose from notions of freedom of religion, as well as from theology and biblical parrhesia. As historian Leonard Levy noted, “freedom of speech and press had been championed primarily by those who sought an open debate on religion.” “The citizen’s personal right of freedom of speech evolved as an offshoot of … freedom of religion – the freedom to speak openly on religious matters.”¹⁴⁹ Many historical examples of demands for freedom of religion are also examples of its inclusion of freedom of speech.¹⁵⁰ From the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century, “freedom of expression was treated primarily as an aspect of a wider issue, that of religious toleration.”¹⁵¹ That became particularly prominent during the Stuart prosecutions of religious minorities in the seventeenth century.

Early in the seventeenth century, Leonard Busher’s proposal for liberty of conscience included the right of “every person or persons, yea Jewes and Papists, to write, dispute, confer and reason, print and publish any matter touching religion, either for or against whomsoever.” His pamphlet influenced a new generation as it was reprinted in 1646.¹⁵²

Similarly, in 1632, Edward Reynolds (a Puritan minister) said that the Bible and Christ granted full freedom of conscience:

Now the Gospell giveth a plenary freedome to the consciences of men; they may be commanded by their owne consciences, but their consciences cannot be commanded by any but by Christ. The Sonne hath made them free from all others, that he onely might be the Lord over them.

In his next paragraph, Reynolds tied that to parrhesia and translated it as liberty of speech:

We use great boldnesse or liberty of speech; for why should he, who bringeth unto men glad tidings of glorious things, which offereth unto them the blessed Hope of Eternall life, bee affraid or ashamed of his Office? Though Rome were the seate, and that emperour the first Dedicator of the persecutions of the Church, yet even unto that place the Apostle was not ashamed to preach the Gospell of Christ.… And therefore it is both the honour and duty of the dispencers of the Gospell to speake boldly as they ought to speake [citing Ephesians 6:20].… This was the prayer of the Primitive Saints for the Apostles of Christ, Grant unto thy servants, that with all Boldnesse they may speake thy Word

[citing Acts 4:29].¹⁵³

The italicized passages from the Bible translated liberty of speech or boldness of speech from parrhesia.

Eleven years later, during the Puritan Revolution, Henry Robinson published a book entitled Liberty of Conscience: or The Sole means to obtaine Peace and Truth, and wrote that liberty of conscience required that equal liberty of speech and of writing and printing must be enjoyed by all faiths. He said that “this combat must be fought out upon eaven ground, on equall termes, neither side must expect to have greater liberty of speech, writing, Printing, or whatsoever else, then the other.”¹⁵⁴

The next year, Roger Williams’s groundbreaking book on freedom from religious persecution claimed a right for every minister to determine “what he shall preach or pray,” even if government disagreed. Not just ministers, but “God[’]s people have been immovable, constant and resolved to the death, … in preaching and professing the true worship, contrary to expresse command of publicke Authority.” He pressed elsewhere for “Libertie of free (really free) debates[,] disputes, writing[,] printing etc.”¹⁵⁵ A year later, Richard Overton published a book against persecution, and objected that Charles I and the royalists “Stoppeth Presses” and “Suffer[] nothing to be Licensed, Printed, Preached, or otherwise published, but what himself alloweth,” denying freedom of press under the censorship decree; and they also “stopt the mouthes of all good men,” denying freedom of speech. “Thus he dealeth with the Godly party” (the Puritans).¹⁵⁶

Any number of other Puritans and other Dissenters combined support of freedom of religion with acknowledging that it entailed freedom of speech. An early Puritan anthology included Robert Johnson’s essay refusing to subscribe to three statements demanded by a bishop and claiming a minister’s right of “speaking against the corruptions remayninge in the government” of the Church of England and in the Book of Common Prayer. The bishop’s demands had the effect of “abridging of that libertie which I ought to have and freedome to speak.”¹⁵⁷ During the Puritan Revolution, Marchamont Nedham responded to an opponent’s tract by agreeing that those that “cry out for liberty of conscience” also seek to “use liberty of speech, with Christian moderation,” while disagreeing that that was a bad thing.¹⁵⁸ Several statements by the Levellers condemned “tyrannous and superstitious Parliaments in making orders, ordinances or laws … concerning opinions o[n] things supernatural,” and further censured them for frightening people from “liberty of discourse.”¹⁵⁹

Other Puritans made “liberty in professing Religion” the basis for liberty of speech, such as Crell and a Puritan peer, Lord Brooke.¹⁶⁰ A leading Leveller, William Walwyn, made “freedome of his minde, and exercise of his conscience,” the basis for “freedome of discourse.” He anticipated John Milton’s most famous passage in Areopagitica by proposing that “every one freely speake his minde without molestation” because “plaine truth will prove all, sufficient for vanquishing … errour.”¹⁶¹

The same was true of John Locke, as he published his first Letter Concerning Toleration late in the seventeenth century. He stated that “liberty of conscience is every man’s natural right” and that the “jurisdiction of the magistrate” did not reach inward belief but only “civil concernments.” From this concept came freedom of speech and belief: “The magistrate ought not to forbid the preaching or professing of any speculative opinions in any church.”¹⁶² Like many of his age, Locke was not consistent and did not allow freedom of conscience to all Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim practices, but he allowed a much wider scope than most writers of the time.¹⁶³ A recently discovered manuscript shows him to have been less intolerant of Catholicism than previously believed.¹⁶⁴ Almost innumerable other examples can be given of freedom of religion serving as the basis for advocacy of freedom of speech, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the same is true of the eighteenth.¹⁶⁵

One of those examples was James Madison, the “father of the Bill of Rights.” For him as for so many others, acceptance and defense of freedom of religion led to acceptance and defense of freedom of speech. His Memorial and Remonstrance, arguing that freedom of religion would be violated by Virginia’s proposed tax to fund churches, repeatedly appealed to a broader freedom of opinion and speech. Its first claim was that “the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men, but only could follow their unalienable right of religious “conviction and conscience.” Its last claim was that governments “have no such authority” to subsidize some religions, as the bill provided, and instead “are bound to leave this particular right untouched and sacred,” along with other rights such as freedom of press.¹⁶⁶ As a recent biographer wrote, Madison’s “struggle for freedom of religion” was what “led him to think more broadly about civil liberties in general,” and “turned his creative and persistent intellect to work on the problem of protecting individual rights.”¹⁶⁷

***

Freedom of speech was claimed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England and grew into common acceptance, primarily through Puritan belief in parrhesia in the Bible and through their assertions of that freedom by using religious speech in books and sermons and speeches. There were others who mentioned freedom of speech from a secular perspective based on parrhesia in classical literature and on other sources, but they were a far less significant collection of advocates in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Puritan advocates of freedom of speech in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England were aware of the classical uses of parrhesia – most of them received a classical education, a significant portion at Oxford or Cambridge – but they deliberately chose instead to rely on the biblical basis for parrhesia. Their frequent assertions of freedom of speech call into question the contention that “[f]ree speech as we understand the term … remained nearly unknown to legal or constitutional history and to libertarian thought on either side of the Atlantic before 1776.”¹⁶⁸

This religious speech of Puritans, demanding freedom of speech based on the Bible’s provisions for parrhesia, was the primary impetus for growing recognition of freedom of speech. Without religious speech, freedom of speech might not have grown beyond rhetoric classes about the ancient Greeks and Romans, or at least would not have broadened nearly as much or as fast in the western world. Also in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Puritan demands for liberty of conscience, which often was said to include freedom of speech for such things as preaching, discussing, and publishing, were another significant impetus for expanding recognition of freedom of speech. In both cases, it was Judeo-Christian religious speech, not secular speech or other religions’ speech, that obtained and expanded freedom of speech, ultimately for all people.